Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon (audio)

Your Quick DNC Fix: Dr. Wilmer Leon’s Highlights!

Join Dr. Wilmer Leon as he takes you inside the 2024 Democratic National Convention at Chicago's United Center. Get a first-hand look at the electric atmosphere, from behind-the-scenes preparations to exclusive interviews with political heavyweights like Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, and Terry McAuliffe. Discover the key issues driving the convention and why this election is critical for communities of color. Don't miss this dynamic, insider's perspective on the DNC as Dr. Leon connects the dots between politics, culture, and history!
Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!
Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!
Announcer 1 (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Announcer 2 (00:14):
It's the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Join the conversation with web channel politics and color powered by bit Central Globecast, Blake Hahn Media and AZA Group.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:34):
Wilmer Leon here at the Democratic National Convention 2024 coming to you from the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, in the house that Mike built. And we thought we'd just go inside, go down to the floor of the arena as they're preparing for the event to kick off tomorrow, Monday with Joe Biden going to be the primary speaker at the event opening up the event. And let's get a little behind the scenes look, see how they're setting things up, listening to some of the music. The DJs are preparing for the introduction of the states and all kinds of different roll calls. Votes are going to take place, all kinds of things that they're doing here. Let's go inside and get a peek behind the scenes here on the floor at the 2024 convention and just wanted, again to give you a little insight, the behind the scenes as things are setting up, they're testing out the musicians, the temps are playing as we're here. And you can see you've got CNN, you've got the NBC news, Fox News, PBS, all of the channels and all of the networks that you're used to seeing from the other side of the camera. We can see as they've got the stage set up, it's a really, really beautiful backdrop that they've created here for the convention, the
Announcer 3 (01:46):
Democratic Party, the 47th President of the United States
Tiana Thomas - Volunteer (01:50):
 I am here to be politically aware and to be civically engaged in what is going on with the Democratic Party and this nation's politics.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (01:57):
So as a volunteer, what are some of the things that they have you engaged in?
Tiana Thomas - Volunteer (02:01):
So I'm serving as a foreign press liaison, and so I'm working with the foreign press and making sure that they get to where they need to be and that they're educating Americans abroad about what's going on with the DNC.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (02:11):
Yes, we do have a special guest here. We have the former governor of Virginia, Terry McCullough. Thank you so much for joining us, governor. Well,
Terry McAuliffe - Fmr. Gov of MD (02:18):
It great to be with you, man. Excited.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (02:20):
Why are you excited?
Terry McAuliffe - Fmr. Gov of MD (02:22):
Well, let's see. This is my 13th convention. Okay. I've run a couple of these. I've chaired them, chaired the National Party. Usually when you have these events, it takes a day or two. The warring factions got to come together after the primaries. None of that. This time everybody's together. There's joy, there's happiness. Record amount of money's been raised, record amount of grassroots supporters have signed up to knock on doors. We've never experienced anything like this. It's extraordinary. So I'm pretty fired up. Got a long way to go, but I'd much rather be us than them.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (02:53):
My guest, rear Admiral retired Mike Smith. He is the president and founder of the National Security Leaders for America. Admiral Smith, thank you so much for joining us.
Ret. Admiral Mike Smith (03:03):
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (03:05):
Many would say we didn't expect that this would be the National Security Year, that it has become a lot of things going on out there. What do you see the immediate future looking like?
Ret. Admiral Mike Smith (03:18):
I think the immediate future, given how close the race is, is potentially frightening.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (03:27):
I'm joined by Ashanti Golar, president of Emerge. Yes. And you are building a woman led America, one woman at a time.
A' shante Gholar, President, Emerge (03:34):
Yes. We are so excited to be here talking to you today.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (03:38):
Thank you for joining us. So what type of training program do you provide?
A' shante Gholar, President, Emerge (03:42):
So what we do is break down and demystify what it takes to run for our elected office for women. We do this through our signature training programs, our bootcamps, our step forwards. But most importantly, we let women know that they already have what it takes. We just give them those tools, the skills, the resources, but most importantly, a network of support so they don't have to do it alone.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (04:08):
Politics and color was able to catch up with Senator Bernie Sanders as he was entering the floor of the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, Illinois. And here's what he had to say.
Reporter (04:18):
Senator Sanders, how does it feel to be here at the Democratic National Convention?
Bernie Sanders, US Sen. Vermont (04:22):
Well, it feels great. Nice to see that Michael Jordan statue.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (04:25):
He was obviously happy to see the statue of Michael Jordan and was expressing the increase in energy that is being now demonstrated and felt throughout the entire party. Politics and color was also able to catch up with California Congresswoman the Maxine Waters here at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Rep. Maxine Waters CA (04:42):
Well, I want to tell you, I'm a friend of politics. I stuck with him until he made his decision. I think he said to some of us a long time ago, you have not back and I'll have, he's done everything that he says he would do. He's an honorable man and he did the most historic and fantastic things when he and endorse
Dr. Wilmer Leon (05:03):
Congresswoman Maxine Waters was expressing the appreciation that chief feels for the service provided by President Joe Biden. And that is felt throughout the entire Democratic party. Senator, I'm joined here by Malcolm Kenyata, Pennsylvania State representative. My first question, there's a lot of enthusiasm here that the gears have shifted dramatically over the last three weeks. What is in it for communities of color?
Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta - PA (05:28):
Everything. Everything. I will say it this way. America is great, but everybody hasn't benefited from its greatness. And a part of what we know is that there are far too many families who are experienced in life the way that I did. I grew up in a working poor family in North Philly. My dad was a social worker, my mom was a home health aide. I spent a lot of my life moving around five, six different places by the time I graduated high school, got my first job at 12 years old, washing dishes at a little restaurant. And a part of what I learned very early on is that for far too many families, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you get up every single day working your heart out, and yet you can't look your kid in the eye with a straight face and say it's going to be better for you than it is for us right now or than it was for me.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:24):
Congressman Glenn Ivy, fourth District of Maryland. Prince Georges County, prince
Glen F. Ivey - US Rep, MD (06:28):
Prince Georges County.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:29):
Thank you so much for joining me.
Glen F. Ivey - US Rep, MD (06:30):
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (06:32):
One of the questions that I've been asking most of my guests, why is this 2024 election so important to communities of color?
Glen F. Ivey - US Rep, MD (06:40):
Well, two sets of reasons. One is that there's a lot of positive things that are coming out of the Biden Harris era from the legislation they put in place trying to keep the cost down on prescription drugs. Insulin was the first one, but there are others coming now, trying to continue expanding internet access so everybody has the opportunity to use it because it's not optional anymore. You need it for homework, you need it for doctor's appointments, you need it for all kinds of things. So they're trying to build that out as well. And abortion rights and reproductive rights.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (07:10):
Why is that so hard to do? People would think in this country that internet access would be a given...!
(07:20):
Wilmer Leon live from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois at the United Center for Politics and color.com
Announcer 1 (07:26):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
 
 

Don't Miss Out: Exclusive DNC Content and 2024 Election Preview

Brace yourself for exclusive, insider access! I’m Dr. Wilmer Leon, and on my "Connecting the Dots" podcast, I’m taking you straight into the heart of the Democratic National Convention. I’m sitting down with America’s most powerful voices to uncover the strategies and stakes behind the epic showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. These are the interviews and insights you won’t find anywhere else. Don’t miss out—stay tuned for a sneak peek of what’s coming in this can’t-miss series!
Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!
Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!
Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15):
Hey folks, Dr. Wilmer Leon here, coming to you from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, in the United Center, the house that Mike built here for the Democratic Convention. Whole lot of energy. Really, really great energy. Much more than one would've thought if Joe Biden were still the nominee. We've done some tremendous, tremendous interviews. You can see them at Connecting the Dots, connecting the dots with Dr. Wimer Leon. You can also go to Politics and Color. Go to politics and color.com. You'll be amazed at the folks I've been able to talk to, the information I've been able to get and the things that you're going to learn. Stay here with Connecting the Dots with Dr. Wimer Leon. I'm out
Announcer (01:04):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
 

Free Speech Under Fire: The High-Stakes Trial of the Uhuru Three

In this episode, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Chairman Omali Yeshitela to explore the fight for free speech as the Uhuru Three face charges for opposing U.S. government narratives. Together, they uncover the shocking connections between the trial, colonialism, and the global struggle for freedom.
 
Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!
Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!
 
Wilmer Leon (00:00:00):
The first amendment of the Constitution reads as follows, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or the press or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. With that, here's a very simple question. If Congress cannot make a law abridging, which in law means to diminish or reduce in scope the freedom of speech, then why will the Yahoo three have to go on trial on September 3rd, 2024 in the federal court in Tampa, Florida? If you want to know the answer to that, let's find out
Announcer (00:00:53):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:01:03):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the much broader historical context in which most of these events take place. During each episode of this podcast, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events and that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is or are the indictments of the Uru three are the indictments of the Uru three a test case for the federal government. If Chairman Yella, penny Hess and Jesse Neville are convicted in this political attack, will free speech as we know it in this country, no longer exist for anyone. Let's talk with my guest. He's a political activist and author. He's the co-founder and ker chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, which was founded in 1972, and he also leads the Uhuru movement and he's one of the Uhuru 3 Chairman, Omali Yeshitela. Welcome back to the show.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:02:23):
Thank you so very much. It is good to be with you again. This question of free speech is something that reverberates so many means, and this you give me access to speak with your show, and that's extremely important because some people recognize that how people who want to speak affect it negatively if they cannot speak. But many people do not recognize that a free speech attack does not only prevent me from speaking, it prevents people from hearing what I got to say. So it's an assault on people's ability to hear something that the government might not want heard or any other source. And so it's a critical question and it's one of the things that gives such significance being able to be here with you Brother Leon.
Wilmer Leon (00:03:19):
So the three of you are being charged with a violation of statute 18 USC, section 3 71, conspiring to commit an offense against the United States and acting as an agent of a foreign government and foreign officials to wit the Russian Federation without prior notification to the Attorney General as required by law in violation of 18 USC 9 51 A. With that as the technical description of what you all are charged with, what does that mean and what is the basis of these baseless charges?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:04:00):
I think it's a really important question because what the government is doing is using some facts to obscure truth, to hide truth. The fact is, I did not register with the United States government as a foreign agent. That's a fact. But the truth is I'm not a foreign agent, never have been one, and I've always only worked for African people. They said that we ran candidates for office in 2017 and 2019 because the Russians wanted us to do that and paid for it. It's a fact we ran candidates for city council and mayor in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2017 and 2019. But the truth is the Russians did not pay for this. The Russians was not the idea of Russians, and we've been involved in Micropolitics and have been teaching other Africans how to be involved in Micropolitics for decades. They used the fact that we participated in a tour that was actually hosted by Fran fan's daughter throughout the United States, a committee of the United Nations checking on the conditions of African people, and we collected petitions on the question of genocide and fact.
(00:05:29):
We did go on that tour, we called it a winter tour, went to Jackson, Mississippi, Washington DC I think New York, and one or two other, Chicago, Illinois. That's a fact. We did those things. But the truth is that we did not do this for Russia. We did it because we wanted the United Nations to deal with this issue of genocide and reparations for African people in this country. So what they've done is take these facts and then construct a false conclusion for people, and it's extremely dangerous. And they do this at the expense of First Amendment because everything they've charged us with has to do with us speaking with us utilizing the Bill of Rights or utilizing the First Amendment that you just mentioned in the opening of this show. But they cannot say that we are attacking them because they use speech. They cannot say they're attacking us because just because we ran for office, which is something that we are supposed to have a constitutional right to do, it says not because they spoke.
(00:06:35):
It's because they spoke because the Russians wanted them to speak. The Russians wanted them to sow discord. The Russians wanted them to run for office in St. Petersburg, Florida as a stepping stone to somehow Russian interfering in the election, the national elections in this country. So that's dangerous because that means that anybody, oh, and it's a fact that I went to Moscow in May and September of 2015 at the invitation of a non-governmental organization, anti-global movement of Russia to participate in discussions with other people around democratic rights and around self-determination for peoples from various places around the world. So those are facts. I did that, but it is a lie that I was a Russian agent and I did it in the service of Russia. I did it because Zuckerberg and because the New York Times and because the Washington Post and because the Democratic Party and various other entities refuse to give access to black people so that we can speak independently about what our situation is. And you got to remember what was happening in 2014, 2015 with Mike Brown uprising because of the police murder of that young man in August of 2014, I think it was because of all kinds of police murder right before that one, the brother who was choked to death in New York, just all kinds of things were happening and the story of our people from our own initiatives could not be heard. And so I wanted to be heard, and I've been struggling for our story to be heard all around the world for the longest period of time.
Wilmer Leon (00:08:35):
Well, everybody knows that if you are planning to conspire against the government, if you're planning to bring down the American empire, the City Council of St. Petersburg, Florida is where you're going to start. That's the underbelly. That's the soft spot. That's the weak link in the American Empire is St. Petersburg, Florida. So I can see where the government would get the idea that, oh my gosh, the City Council of Florida and then the world, you mentioned that when you said you were brought to Moscow on behalf of an NGO, A non-government organization that made me think about the myON coup in Ukraine and Samantha Power and the NGOs that the United States has used to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine. How the United States has been trying to overthrow Venezuela through NGOs.
(00:09:48):
They've got a playbook as it relates to non-governmental organizations. They've got a playbook and they understand very clearly how that game gets played. So that's one of the hypocrisies that immediately jumps out at me. And another one is they, they're claiming or they're charging you with running people for elected office. When apac, it was published in the New York Times back in April, that APAC came out and said they are committing 100 million to the 2024 election to unseat democratically elected officials who they deemed to be operating against the interests of Israel. And Jamal Bowman has been a victim of that. And Co Bush became a fell victim to that in Kansas City.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:10:48):
She's from St. Louis, Missouri. So
Wilmer Leon (00:10:50):
St. Louis, thank you. Thank you. I get my Kansas City and my St. Louis mixed up. I got you. Yeah, in St. Louis. So here we have APAC operating on or for the interests of the Zionist government of Israel saying publicly we're spending a hundred million, I think they spent 7 million to 1C Bowman. So there seems to be some inconsistency if not in the rule of law, at least in the practical applications here.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:11:22):
Yeah, and that's true. I mean, especially APAC is a splendid example, and it doesn't have to register as the people who accept that money as foreign agents. They don't have to register anything like that. And tremendous amounts of money, as you said, are involved in that. And there are corporations who do the same thing who work for foreign governments and it's well known and they haven't had to file as foreign agents. And the thing is that they claim that our movement took, I think they said either $6,000 over seven years or $7,000 from the Russians over six years. And they have taken, you talk about how they use facts to obscure truth because we do forums and we do events online and people make contributions to us online. And the A GM, the Russian anti-globalization movement may have made some contribution to us online, but you're talking about they say that over six years or seven years, we got something like $6,000 from that movement.
(00:12:52):
But even if we had, it would not have been illegal. But the point is that we raised $6,000 in a few hours. We raised 300 and some odd thousand dollars just to defend ourselves in this case that we are involved in. So they would take this poultry sum of money compared to the millions and billions of dollars that come from groups like APAC and from other kinds of, and from corporations funnel into this country and to employ people, corporations from other places around the world. And so this is just a fabrication, and they play upon the ignorance of people. They say, for example, there are someplace in this indictment, they said that we went to Moscow in 2015 or 16 and with all expense paid trip, this gives some impression of some great luxury that we, what was afforded to us. And by all expense, they mean that they paid for the air flight there.
(00:14:05):
They paid for where we stayed and for food. Now, I've gone on events, I've gone to international events sponsored by NGO, close to the government of Spain, and they spent a lot of money. They spent money to bring me there and two other people, one of whom was from England into Spain, they paid us, paid me for coming as well. But they would take this thing with Russia because the plot there is they've done so much work demonizing Russia saying Russia is the key. That's why Donald Trump, they say, Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election. Trump the Russians won the election. This is the kind of stuff that they're feeding the public. And so it doesn't matter. That's why it's so important for us to have this kind of discussion because they don't want this kind of stuff to get out even in a courtroom. They will place restrictions on what we can talk about in the courtroom. And that's why it's important for us to recognize that the trial has already begun. And this is some of the testimony that we are involved in at this very moment.
Wilmer Leon (00:15:14):
From what I understand, you have gone and spoken and gone to conferences in Ireland, in France, in England, in Spain, but all of those countries are European countries. And so long as Europe is paying the tab, then everything's fine. I've gone to Iran twice, similar types of programs, been brought to peace conferences and human rights conferences in Iran, and they pay my airfare, they pay my hotel bill, they pay my meals while I'm there. That's standard operating procedure.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:15:58):
But you're talking to them and
Wilmer Leon (00:15:59):
They give you an honorarium. Many of them will give you
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:16:02):
An honor, but we didn't even get an honorarium from Russia. But you think about this, you're talking to a jury that many of whom never even leave the United States, don't have an understanding of how this stuff is. And so that sounds like some real esoteric can thing to people, local people here in the Tampa Bay area or in this district where they intend to put us on trial, they intend to lynch us.
Wilmer Leon (00:16:31):
In fact, I don't know the events that you attended, but when I went to Iran, I was there for the first trip. I was there for 10 days, and not only did I participate in this human rights conference, I lectured at 13 universities throughout the country. I was in constant motion. It was not a vacation. In fact, I even got to spend two hours with former President Deja while I was in Iran. But I'm saying that traveled all over the country by car, by plane, man. It wasn't easy work. The honorarium, for as much as I appreciated receiving it, if you broke it down to an hourly rate, no. When I say it wasn't worth my time, I don't mean that it wasn't worth my time. I mean, it didn't equate to a decent hourly rate. So
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:17:37):
I just thought it was really important and I think it is important. And every time I get an opportunity to tell the world about the conditions of African people in this country, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to say even when you are involved with the United States to other countries, because it's designated almost the entire world, its enemy. And I'm saying that the United States accuses other countries of these egregious kind of things that you have to hold the mirror up to the United States and force it to look at the treatment of African people, forced it to look at the situation that they've had. Mexicans in cages at the southern border forced it to look at the fact that 2024, now you've got a situation where there are concentration camps just like Gaza, so to speak, that they refer to as Indian reservations.
(00:18:30):
This is the reality of the United States. And I want people to be able to recognize that the condition of African people are similar and that we want support. I've told them we are not looking for pity. We are not looking for charity. We want solidarity in the struggle that we are involved in. We believe that we have the right to be a self-determining people, and we believe that there's nothing in the Constitution of the United States that should prohibit us from saying that we have that right. Even if we say it in Russia, even if we say it in places like Venezuela or in Nicaragua where I have been, or Ireland, as you mentioned, we have the right to be able to say that by the Constitution. So either you got to burn it up, tear the Constitution up, and this is the conundrum that they have. And as you know that since they've attacked us, we've seen charges all across the board on so many people. Similarly charged being agents for foreign government, Scott Riter, et cetera. Yes, Scott Ritter just the other day,
Wilmer Leon (00:19:37):
Scott. Scott Ritter is a friend of mine, and I just had Scott Ritter on another show that I do. And the FBI just raided his house last week, took his computers in talking to Scott, what they really seemed to be after in his case, because he was a weapons inspectors and he had all the evidence that proved there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iran. They took that trove of evidence from him and we'll have to wait and see. And his point was because they want to rewrite the historic record and they want to, no, I'm not going to put words that he didn't use. They want to rewrite the historic record and they want to cleanse the record of the information that he possesses.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:20:30):
Yes. And of course we see Assange just getting out of prison right now for, I've forgotten how many years he was locked up,
Wilmer Leon (00:20:39):
His
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:20:40):
Speech, it's Freedom of Press, some of the charges against us attack assaults on free press. They had chat us because we did an interview on burning spear.org. That's our newspaper, that's the.org. We did an interview with the Russian saying that the people have a right to know the position that's coming from Russia. We, Zuckerberg, Facebook, everything had blocked anything that people were trying to talk about that represent the position that might be coming from Russia just like they do now about Palestine. And so we did an interview, and so they said that was evidence of the fact that we worked for the Russians. So I mean, this is the kind of stuff that they've done, but it's a real treacherous situation because they're at a place where they say that if you have a position that is the same position of another government, another country, and what have you, then they can charge you with working as an accomplice of that government in some crime that they claim that government is creating. And that's a dangerous kind of thing. I mean, you talked about your trips and stuff to Iran, and that's especially true when you look at Iran because they've identified Russia, Iran, Venezuela,
Wilmer Leon (00:22:01):
China,
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:22:02):
China, Korea as these enemies that they're contending with and they don't want anybody to know a truth that's independent of what it is that they have to say.
Wilmer Leon (00:22:15):
And when you peel back the layers of the onions, whether you're talking about Russia, talking about China, talking about Venezuela, Iran, what we're dealing with is anti imperialism. What we're dealing with is what's really at the crux of this issue. It's not communism, it's not socialism, it's not any other kind, ofm, anti-fascism, colonialism and anti imperialism at the crux, because that's what the empire sees as being the greatest threat.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:23:02):
It is the question. And from our analysis, the whole emergence of the Soviet Union, things like that came about as a consequence of the Communist Party. The Bolsheviks at that time refusing to participate with the rest of the colonial powers in the world in that first imperialist world war to redivide the world. And that was a world that was an extreme crisis for the whole social system. That's the timeframe. You look at this 1917 being the Russian Revolution, you're looking at the time of World War I, as they call it, a timeframe that saw a struggle even happening throughout this country bombing of Tulsa, Oklahoma. People everywhere resisting this colonial domination and Russia became a serious factor because unlike the rest of the colonial powers, Russia refused to participate in that world war, to Redivide the world. And that turned all of them against Russia too. So the Russian revolution happens in 1917, and by the way, much of some of the law that we have been victimized has its origin in that timeframe as well. Russian Revolution in 19 17, 19 18, all the colonial powers, including the United States and Japan invade Russia. They invaded Russia to crush it. And that struggle that they talk about with Ukraine and what have you, some people are able to see a beginning in like 2014 when the
Wilmer Leon (00:24:47):
Maidan coup
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:24:49):
Maidan coup. But I'm saying even
Wilmer Leon (00:24:50):
Before, thank you, Samantha Power.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:24:52):
Yeah, but even before that, they've been dealing with Russia going back, like I said, a more than a hundred years. And even the NATO that they use in Ukraine and NATO that they use to kill Gaddafi, this NATO has its origin. It was created for the purpose of containing a crushing Russia. So this is not a new phenomenon. This is something that's been going on for a long time because they saw at one time Russia being aligned with the colonized peoples of the world and with the working peoples of the world. And this was a system that could not tolerate that and could not tolerate it spreading globally.
Wilmer Leon (00:25:40):
In fact, if you fast forward to the late fifties and the sixties, and you look at the anti-colonial movements in a number of African countries such as South Africa, such as Angola, which you find is the Soviet Union was involved in providing funding, training weapons to freedom fighters, supporting anti imperialist, anti colonial movements in those countries leading to the freedom of a number of those countries along with Cuba and some others. So people really need to understand the broader, they need to connect the dots here and so that they can understand the broader, in fact, historic context in which these events take place. People need to ask themselves, where is Patrice Lumumba University folks who was Patrice Lumumba? Where is Patrice Lumumba University? It's not in Nigeria, it's not in Swaziland, it's in Moscow.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:26:49):
And I spoke at Patrice Lamu before an organization of migrants that were located in Russia. That was one of the things I spoke for. And I think it's really important to say that they intend to provide some kind of Russia expert who will testify that Russia has a history of creating foils, creating forces like our party and our movement to undermine the United States and undermine Western powers, et cetera. And they will use the kind of stuff that you're talking about as evidence of complicity of Russia in being in control of us, because Russia did support the struggle in Angola and various other places and trained and funded and supported. Then they go back all the way to that to show that there's this historical trend coming from Russia, even though it was the Bolsheviks that they're talking about, that was for the purpose of corrupting, undermining the United States and the Western powers, the democracies.
(00:28:04):
They would show that that's the typical thing that we are typical of dupes of Russia, if not dupes cooperatives of Russia based on the stuff that you just mentioned, which you and I think is right on you, and I think is glorious. I mean, that puts them in a situation. Have they saying Mandela, who they love, he is the Negro. They love that. Mandela took support from the Soviet Union and was refused along with other African countries to condemn Russia around the Ukrainian question precisely because of the history of Russia as it relates to people who are struggling for freedom.
Wilmer Leon (00:28:45):
And the Palestinian question as well
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:28:47):
Palestinian Question,
Wilmer Leon (00:28:49):
Nelson Mandela was very clear that as he was fighting for the rights of South Africans, he was on record as saying, even when we win this struggle, we will not have completed our mission until the Palestinians are free.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:29:08):
Yes, yes.
Wilmer Leon (00:29:09):
So in fact, a lot of people don't know the first person, the first head of state that Mandela went to see when he was released from Roobben Island was Fidel Castro. A lot of folks don't know that history, but in fact, Mandela said, and I'll paraphrase, your enemy is not my enemy, and I am not going to allow you to select who my friends and who my enemies are.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:29:37):
Sure, sure, sure. That's the thing. 60 years ago, African people in this country initiated the freedom summer in Mississippi, and we dealt with the freedom summer in 1964. It was revolving around just democratic rights for black people been murdered, especially in Mississippi, which was the headquarters of much of the terror being murdered, African people being denied access to the ballot just as what's happening with us as quiet as Kept, I fought for the Civil Rights Bill, I fought for the Voting Rights Act, and now I'm being charged because of participating independently in the electoral process. But 60 years ago, freedom Summer student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the key force in creating the freedom Summer. And people came from all around the country into Mississippi, a lot of white people came, and this was something that SNCC did deliberately in part because they knew that if white people came the ruling class media that was no longer paying attention to the Civil Rights movement, just as they don't in this movement, if white people came, then the media would come with them because some of them children of media owners and big shot white people, and also the white people who came would face some of the same threats that Africans were facing in Mississippi.
(00:31:06):
And as you know, on the first day of Freedom Summer 1964 and Mississippi, three people died, two of whom were white.
Wilmer Leon (00:31:15):
Goodman and Cheney. Right.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:31:19):
And that brought a lot of attention to it. But off of that movement in 1964, that 1964 that pushed the Civil Rights Act, that pushed them to have to in 1965 passed the voting rights legislation. But 1965 is also the year to kill Malcolm X, so that even though now you can vote that they're doing things to eliminate what you would vote for, they killed Malcolm X 1968. They killed Martin Luther King, 1969. The war against the Black Panther Party was clear to everybody around the whole world that you had the head of the FBI declaring that the Black Panther Party represented the greatest threat to the internal security of this country. They arrested 21 members of the Black Panther Party on a conspiracy charge in New York on a more than a hundred charges, including threats to blow up the flowers in the botanical garden, that thing that lasted for two years, and they beat every one of the charges, and they were ridiculous charges in the first place.
(00:32:22):
But you had this period. So what we've done is we are now engaged in the Freedom Summer, summer Project, freedom Summer in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is right across the bridge from Tampa, Florida, where the court that we will be going to is located and we are inviting everybody. We've already begun. We're going door to door, talking to people, educating the people in the community about this case and about other things that's happening in the world. We are having forums and discussions of people are doing street corner stuff with banners, et cetera. We are calling people to come in the same Peterburg Florida now. And then of course, on August 31st, we have a massive mobilization that's going to be happening where people again will be coming from. We've got commitments for participation from Cornell West, from Jill Stein, from Charles Barron, from just a host of other people. Everybody's going to be in St. Petersburg, Florida for Freedom Summer. And the Freedom Summer is going to have similar consequences from this, that the freedom summer of 1964 had that gave rise to the civil rights bill, that gave rights rise to the Voting Rights Act. That gave rise to the Black Power Movement in 1966. All of these things came out of that. And we are rebuilding a whole movement, but with this attack on us, we are reestablishing the legitimacy of the entire struggle against colonialism and against imperialism.
Wilmer Leon (00:33:52):
We're talking about the First Amendment, we're talking about the right of freedom of speech. And there's a whole campaign, as you've mentioned Zuckerberg a couple of times, and there's a whole campaign against social media access and freedom of speech on social media. The United States government is using Zuckerberg, they're using some of the others to assist them in platforming people. And what this really comes down to is the power of the narrative, whose story is going to be told
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:34:32):
That's
Wilmer Leon (00:34:32):
It, and by whom?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:34:34):
That's it!
Wilmer Leon (00:34:35):
 So it's not so much that what you are advocating is seditious. No. The problem the government has is the narrative you are telling, the facts that you are providing is counter to that narrative, and then that threatens the empire.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:34:58):
Yes. Yes. That is the truth. And I'm reminded of this movie, I forgot the name of it, but you had these two characters. Tom Cruise I think played some kind of lawyer and Jack Nicholson and Oh, you
Wilmer Leon (00:35:14):
Can't handle the truth. Yeah, I
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:35:16):
Want the truth. I want the truth Say you can't handle the truth. That's essentially the case with the United States. Now,
Wilmer Leon (00:35:24):
Let me quickly jump in, because there's a reason that your narrative about Ukraine and my narrative about Ukraine and Russia's narrative about Ukraine are basically the same because we're telling the truth, the truth. And all you have to do is Google what we say about it. Google the Maidan coup Google. Now I'm drawing a blank on the agreement that they reached the Minsk courts. Yes, Google the Minsk courts, Google the Midon coup. Go back and look at when Joe Biden met with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, and Putin told Biden, I'm giving you my security demands in writing. That's, and I expect your response in writing. And Joe Biden ignored him. You can Google Secretary of State Baker meeting with Gorbachev and promising Gorbachev, NATO will, if you agree to the reunification of Eastern West Germany, I guarantee you NATO will not move any further eastward towards Russia, towards the Soviet Union. That's all fact.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:36:43):
Yes. But fact, you can't handle fact. You see, because what they've done, first of all, just think about who controls the narrative. I've seen Kamala Harris, she is just thrown this thing out about, the slogan is We won't go back. Now, that's our slogan. Not one step backwards, not one. That's no retreat.
Wilmer Leon (00:37:08):
No retreat. Not one
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:37:10):
Step back, not one step backwards. So what happens is Zuckerberg won't let anybody hear what I got to say. I go on Facebook or on social media, and there are fewer people who see me than there are members of one of our local organizations. They won't let that happen. But so Kamala takes this because it resonates, because it speaks to the reality of black people who say, we won't go back. We're not going backwards, not going to let you push us back in the back of the bus. We're not going to do any buck dancing and shuffling and this kind of stuff. Not one step backwards, right. That's our position. And so now Kamala, because it resonates with black people, Zuckerberg won't let the people hear that from us. So Kamala comes forward, we won't go back. This is a part of the process that they're trying to solve a particular problem of the Democratic party to reenergize it among African people, many of whom are even going to the Republican party and Trump and others was just discussing not going to vote at all. So that's the controlling of the narrative, how that narrative gets out. That's a critical question. And that's the question of free speech as well. And that's why it's so important again, that we are having this discussion now.
Wilmer Leon (00:38:24):
In fact, there's another slogan that if folks knew the true origins of it, it would have an impact on the narrative that is from the river to the sea, from the sea that is now being described, or it is being used as this racist trope by Palestinians who are using it to say they want to cleanse historic Palestine of Jews. No, actually, folks, and look it up, because it's fact. That was the Zionist slogan.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:39:04):
It was
Wilmer Leon (00:39:05):
Back in the thirties.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:39:06):
It was, they wanted it all. That's what they were saying. They wanted it all from
Wilmer Leon (00:39:10):
The river to the sea,
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:39:11):
From the river to the sea.
Wilmer Leon (00:39:13):
And what they don't tell you about the slogan now is what do the Palestinians say from the river to the sea? Palestine will be free. They're talking about democracy. Yes. They're talking about one person, one vote.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:39:31):
They're
Wilmer Leon (00:39:32):
Not talking about genocide and removing people from their homes, killing their olive trees
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:39:39):
And taking come back home. They're saying, let the people come back home. Because the truth of the matter is, the way they've distorted this whole history is that in Palestine, there were Jews, there were Muslims, there were Christians all living together in Palestine. And now you have this situation where the settlers brought in by the imperialist Palestine. You can go back to Balfour Declaration in 1917, I think it was. You can go back to the agreement that was made, that SS
Wilmer Leon (00:40:21):
Pico agreement.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:40:21):
Yeah. That created the borders that now Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, white people did that and for their own benefit, et cetera. And then they act like they're surprised because there's chaos happening in those circumstances. So they've distorted this history, and it's all right for them to put lyrics in a song called From Sea to Shining Sea, which was a decoration that all of this land of indigenous people, they wanted all of it. It's not like they brought a million people here when they came. There's just a handful. But they set out to take every square inch from sea to shining sea. And we say from sea to shining sea, the indigenous people will be free and from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free. But history is something else. You can't make it go away just because you don't like it
Wilmer Leon (00:41:21):
As much as they're trying and they're doing as
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:41:22):
Much as they're trying.
Wilmer Leon (00:41:24):
And again, I have to go back to this whole idea because one of the things that I have found in reading history is that the United States, when the United States finds itself in conflict, that's when the government becomes very sensitive about what's being said and who's saying it, and when it's being said. So you can go back to World War, and you touched on this, you can go back to World War. And that's when we first started seeing anti sedition laws when the United States was involved in World War I and was very fearful about losing the war. Then the United States was very concerned about people speaking out against what the government considered to be their interest. And then after those forces were vanquished and the dust started to settle, well, then things started to relax and folks started saying, well, and then we had the same problem in World War ii, and then after the threats were vanquished, then you could just about say anything. So with the attacks on you, with the attacks on Scott Ritter with the attacks on others, is that a signal to you that the United States is scared?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:42:46):
It is a signal that the rulers of this country experience a very fragile situation. It is not like they control the world the way they used to. It is not like they can tell people to shut up and people would do what they say. They couldn't get even stooges in Africa to come out and support their position on Ukraine. They can't get people who they consider backwaters in their backyard, who they've characterized as Banana Republics in the past to just do what it is that they want them to do. They can't control Nicaragua, and they've tried and they can't control Venezuela, and they're even up to this point, they can't control the Palestinian people who are resisting. And so it's a very fragile situation because it's a situation that rests upon a colonial motor production where the entire process of human beings engaged in production in the world today is on a foundation of parasitic foundation of colonialism. And so it is a very tenuous situation for them. And I'm reminded of this statement by George Orwell in the book 1984, when he says, who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past, the past, and this is where they found themselves in a really shaky foundation of controlling the past.
Wilmer Leon (00:44:11):
That's why they go after Scott Ritter because he has the historic documents.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:44:16):
Yes. And that's why they're attacking us, right? They don't want history to start in 2014 when they say that somehow I became a stooge of Russia. That's where they want history to start. They don't want history to start with a murder of black people that would have incentivized us to take the kind of political stance that we take. They want to say the history of our party over the last 50 or more years. And our position consistent around genocide, around reparations, around, and actually I developed, excuse me, a pamphlet tactics and strategy that included looking for allies around the world and the struggle against colonialism, but that they don't want to talk about. So from their perspective, they're trying to control the past in that courtroom. They want to control the past. They've even moved that they want to deny us the right to use the First Amendment as a defense. Do you hear what I just said?
Wilmer Leon (00:45:19):
Say it again.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:45:20):
Yeah. They want to deny us the right to use the First Amendment as a defense in court.
Wilmer Leon (00:45:29):
And that centers around, I haven't studied that point, but I believe it's because they know on that point, they lose they. So what they're saying is it's not a matter of, you don't have the right to say what you've said. It's that we don't like what you're saying,
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:45:54):
But that's the real deal. But the way they cloth that, the way they try to hide their hand, and I think it's so shallow, it's so weak, is they say, well, hell,
Wilmer Leon (00:46:03):
If I figured it out, it ain't that deep.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:46:08):
Oh, that's funny. What they're saying is that we are not attacking them because they said something. We are attacking them because they said it because the Russians told 'em to say it. So they liquidate, they try to liquidate the free speech question by turning speech into an act. Do you see
Wilmer Leon (00:46:27):
As a foreign agent?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:46:29):
Yes, yes, yes. And it's ridiculous.
Wilmer Leon (00:46:34):
I want to be sure I don't forget this point. To your point about erasing history, another example of that is Hamas' attack on October 7th. The 99% of the narrative is this conflict started on October 7th, ignoring the Nakba in 1947. That has absolutely nothing to do with this and the over 50 years of genocide, oppression, and war crimes. Oh, no, forget that. That had nothing to do with October 7th. That's another example of what you It is.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:47:14):
It's an example. And the fact is, one thing we know is that there are people who don't know me, don't know the African people Associates party, the who, the movement. And they hear us say something and then they hear the United States government say something. Sometimes they might have some struggles in trying to understand who might be telling the truth. The fact is that the oppressed must have truth because we cannot win freedom without truth. The oppressor cannot have truth because they can't have slavery where truth is involved. And so this is the thing that you start off knowing that those people who oppress, and there's no way you can deny the historical oppression of African people unless you control the courtrooms like they do now you have guns that can wake people up at five o'clock in the morning or with flash bank grenades and things like that.
(00:48:16):
The fact is that there are certain things that cannot be controlled, cannot be denied in terms of the history of oppression of African people in this country. And what they would do, of course, is they would use examples like Obama and Kamala Harris because they want to contain the struggle around racism. And you say, well, racism doesn't exist anymore. Not as bad because we elected a black president, or we are getting ready to select another Negro president, Negro Indian president. But it's not about race as such except to the extent that race represents and identifies a colonial population. The fact is we suffer from colonialism. So you can have black people who represent the colonial empire, just like you've had that African people, Mobutu and all over Africa and other puppets like that, and Africa,
Wilmer Leon (00:49:08):
William Ruto in Kenya being bought off to help the United States invade Haiti.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:49:14):
That's right. That's right. And so that's what they've been able to do. And that's why the colonial question, understanding that colonialism is so important, and not colonialism just as a policy, but as a mode of production that came into existence with the first time in human history where there was a single world economy. And that world economy was something that was initiated by Portugal's attack on Africa in something like 14, 15. And then started the dispersal of African people and others who in what is now Europe, jumped in and participated in this process. That's where you got the So-called America from, that's where you've got Brazil, that's where you've got all of these territories throughout the So-called South America as a consequence of that initial attack and the world economy that was knit together for the first time in history, that that is not just a policy of a particular government as it may have been when Portugal started, as it may have been when some other countries started.
(00:50:20):
But now it's the basis of the whole world economy. It is a colonial mode of production. And to the extent that we understand this and really get a hold of that, we don't have to have somebody, Russians or somebody tell us what to do. We know that when colonialism tries to exert itself or when people are fighting against colonialism, it's part of a common struggle. And so I had never met Nicaraguan in my life when the Nicaraguan revolutions heated up and we organized in San Francisco Bay area, we organized the first mass meeting solidarity with Nicaragua people because we understood that was our struggle too. And we built the whole movement in support of Nicaragua because it is one mode of production. The colonialism is the thing that n this whole process together where you have colonizers and colonized and the vast majority of the people in the world experience the negatives of colonialism through this colonial motor production. It's only a handful of people. And that's something that's not widely understood either. Only a minority of the population benefits from this economic system that they've created on the backs of African and colonized people around the world.
Wilmer Leon (00:51:42):
And as you talk about Nicaragua, about three weeks ago, Chiquita Brands was found guilty in a Florida court of funding death squads in Columbia, and they were held to have, now they have to pay millions and millions and millions of dollars to the survivors. I just use that as another example of the colonialism that you're talking about. And that whole story right there could take us into another hour about immigration because the question that's not being asked in this political context about border protection and immigration, they keep talking about what are we going to do with all of these people that are at our border? But they don't ask why are the people coming in the first place? And so again, because we could talk about Haiti, why are there Haitians at the border in Texas and Mexico, California, and because the United States is decimating the Haitian economy, why are these people coming from Guatemala, Honduras, all over central and South America? Because the United States has decimated their economies and the people have no other choice?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:53:13):
That's true. And I think even a related truth is the fact that when people talk about immigrants, sometimes they like to call America just a nation of immigrants. The melting pot, they call it the nation of immigrants. And we say, first of all, America's not a nation. It's a prison of nations. And that black people are not immigrants. We are captives. That's how we came here as captives. Now we are the only people other than the indigenous people who did not come here looking for a better way of life, but lost a better way of life as the consequences having been brought here. When you look at all the places where Europeans have gone to running from poverty, running from disease, running from despotism, from monarchy, and a feudal system, they came here, they came to the Americas, they came all these other places. They occupy New Zealand, Australia and things like that.
(00:54:08):
So when you look at immigrants, when you look at immigrants, and when they say that America's a nation of immigrants, what they're talking about is them. They are the ones who are immigrants. And why the hell did they come? They were running from chara, and this is the origin of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights because they faced tyranny in the divine right of kings. They had no rights. So they came here to this land, and then they initiated laws and things like that to protect them from tyranny. But they won the freedom to oppress because when they were doing this, African people were enslaved. The Bill of Rights, the First Amendment was ratified by the United States Congress in 1791. 1791. African people were under the whip, under being enslaved, beaten and raped and stuff legally. So it wasn't for us. And this is something I'm trying to help white people understand that what they do is they will pick someone that they have made extremely unpopular.
(00:55:18):
When they want to attack a basic and fundamental right, they would pick someone they think they've made extremely unpopular, and they will use them as the means to attack that, right? They can't attack my right to free speech in many ways because I never had it look at people like Emmett Till, who they butchered because they said that he whistled at a white woman. And the fact is that black people learn how to shuffle and hold their heads down and not look up and not say anything that white people would find offensive. And this has been the history. So when they come at the Bill of Rights, when they come at the First Amendment as quiet as it's kept, they're simply using us as the means by which they can attack the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, the constitutional democratic rights of everybody in this country, including white people. And we see evidence of that. You talk about Scott Riter, you talk about all these other people who they're attacking now, not in total disregard of what the Constitution is supposed to be about.
Wilmer Leon (00:56:21):
Hands off uru.org, hands off uru.org. What do you want, folks? And before I ask that question, lemme say this to those of you who are watching this that are just saying, oh, these guys, these guys are tripping. These guys are drunk. Look, folks, just research we're talking about, that's all you got to do. You can either summarily dismiss us or again, look up the Maidan Coup, look up the mens courts. Look up Chiquita brands being found guilty in a Florida court for sponsoring Death squads in Columbia. Look it up. And what you'll find is we're confusing you with the facts. That's what we're doing. So chairman, yes, Ella, what do you want my audience to do as it relates to the Uhuru 3?
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (00:57:19):
Well, one thing I want the audience to do is to understand that we are not guilty of anything they've charged us of. They've used the facts, as I mentioned earlier, that I went to Moscow, that we ran people for office, et cetera. And they've used these facts to obscure the truth and the truth that we didn't do what they said to do. Our lawyers though, for the sake of court argument, says that even if we did it, it's protected by the Constitution. So that's one thing I think is really important. And the other thing is that we are transparent. You don't engage in some kind of conspiracy to overthrow disabuse the government in public. Everything that we talk about, it's in our newspaper. They don't have to use flash bang grenades, bust down doors and stuff like that. Get a copy of the newspaper. It only costs a dollar.
(00:58:13):
Go to our websites. Everything is spelled out. The books that we were printed, all of it's in the books that we've written. So people should go to Hands Off Hurro, that's HandsOffUhuru.org. HandsOffUhuru.org. We want you to read the indictment. We want you to see it. We want you to see our response to that indictment. We want you to see their response to our response, read it. And because we believe that if people know the truth and the court is aware that people are aware of the truth, et cetera, it makes, it enhances the ability of the court to go by the law, which is what we want them to do, because they are using the law to pursue a political objective, destroying our movement, destroying the struggle of African people to win freedom and to take away basic rights from other people.
(00:59:06):
So we want you to read the indictments and the political, the court documents that's associated with that. We want you to come to St. Peterburg Florida. Come now, come anytime and stay as long as you can because we are going to be doing this work moving toward a massive event on August 31st, and then from August 31st, which is the weekend before the trial in Tampa, right across the bridge on the September 3rd, there's a trial. And we want you to be at that trial. So come and organize on the ground, come to Summer to the summer project that we've initiated here, the Freedom Summer in St. Petersburg, Florida, where we'll be educating people, organizing, doing forums, doing door-to-Door work, doing political education the whole bit. And that's what we are looking for. And we say HandsOffUhuru.org. And we really appreciate all the support that the people have given. And you comment Wilman, thank you so very much as well.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:11):
It is
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (01:00:12):
Melody.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:14):
Melody Graves. As always, without her, you and I would just be sitting here talking to ourselves.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (01:00:20):
I got it.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:22):
Chairman brother Omai Yeshitela, thank you so much for joining me today.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela (01:00:27):
Thank you. I really appreciate being here, and I want to thank your audience. It is just splendid to be here with you. Thank you so much.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:33):
And folks, as Chairman Omali Yeshitela just said, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon, stay tuned. There are new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, and follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. That Patreon page is very, very important because your contributions help and enable us to do the work that we do here. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you all again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon Uru. Have a good one. Peace. We're out
Announcer (01:01:31):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

The Dark Side of Democrats’ Relationship with Americans of Color

In this gripping episode of "Connecting the Dots," Dr. Wilmer Leon and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Jeter expose the Democratic Party's desperate reliance on voters of color to save them from political collapse.
 
Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!
Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:00):
I have two questions. The first question, has the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the black hands that feed it? Here's the second question. Has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby taken advantage of
Jon Jeter (00:00:25):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge?
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:00:32):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which a lot of these events occur. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. Black Agenda report has a piece entitled How the Democratic Party Committed Suicide by Biting the Black Hands That Feed It On today's episode. The issues before us are, as I stated at the top, has the party in fact committed suicide and has the African-American community allowed itself to be taken for granted and thereby to advantage of for insight into this?
(00:01:35):
And for answers to these questions, let's turn to my guest. He's a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. He's the co-author of a Day Late and a Dollar Short, dark Days and Bright Nights in Obama's post-Racial America. His work can be found at Patreon as well as Black Republic Media. He's the author of this piece. He is John Jeter brother John Jeter. Welcome back. The pleasure is all mine, brother. Thank you for having me. You opened your piece as follows, the Democratic Party dug its own grave decades ago when it began trying to siphon voters from the Republican party or the GOP by appealing to conservatives and ignoring the needs of its strong base of African-American people. If political parties were prominent people, you'd have stumbled upon this obituary. Today, the Democratic Party, one half of America's longstanding ruling duopoly, and the author of political movements as disparate as Jim Crow and the New Deal died Wednesday, July 24. It was 196 sources said the cause was suicide following along illness. John, that's incredibly, incredibly creative. I've gone through the coroner's report. I can't make heads nor tails when it comes to the cause of
Speaker 3 (00:02:58):
Death.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:02:59):
So what was the cause of death on July 24th?
Speaker 3 (00:03:03):
It sort of slit death by a thousand cuts, but slitting your throat a thousand times slowly over the years. Man, I really, that piece really meant something to me. I am, as I think you would say, you are a man of a certain age and I remember very clearly Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 88 campaigns for President. I remember the energy and the excitement. I remember, even though I was just in my teens and early twenties, I remember that it was electric, those campaigns. And then I remember Bill Clinton running for president and I voted for Bill Clinton. But I remember thinking, I remember holding my nose while I voted because I remember Bill Clinton lecturing Jesse Jackson about Sister Soldier lecturing black people going to black church, lecturing black people about how we have failed Martin Luther King. And I didn't quite understand it other than I thought, well, bill Clinton is like most white people I know, racists most, not all the most.
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And I just wrote it off as that when I was a young journalist at the Detroit Free Press. Later, I got to Washington the same time as Bill Clinton In 1993, January of 1993, I got to the Washington Post, and it sort of dawned on me over the years, particularly as I heard democratic presidents and democratic candidates for President repeat these same tropes scolding black people. I remember, and I was in a very different place at this point, but I remember Barack Obama talking down the black people in a way that just really offended me, scolding black fathers for their failure to raise their kids when a study at that time had been produced, which showed that black men who are separated from their families are actually better parents, actually spend more quality time with their kids than any other ethnic group. Barack Obama telling a black church, I believe it was in South Carolina, that a good plan for economic development would be to stop throwing Popeye's chicken wrappers out of your car window, right?
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Just the infantilization of the black voting block, black electorate. And it struck me that this is by design. They're talking to white people. And then this is only in the last few years where I read David Roder, the labor economist, labor, labor historian, I'm sorry, who wrote about the Reagan Democrats in Michigan, who we elected the blue collar white workers who we elected Ronald Reagan, president who crossed over to elect Ronald Reagan president. And how his polling showed that their main motivation was race or racism, I should say. They did not like black people. They defined black people as pulling down the party. And they divided Democrats as people who catered to blacks who were lazy welfare, all the tropes that were popularized by, built by Ronald Reagan. And it struck me that the Democrats in 92, the astrophysicists, I believe they talk about solar systems that are so distant, you can't see the sun, but you can tell by the movement of the planets that there is indeed a solar system by the movement of the stars and the planets that there is indeed a sun there, that it is indeed a solar system.
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No one really wrote it down really. Although the poster Stanley Stanley, I can't remember his name now, but the post of the Greenberg for the Democrats, he came close, but we can see by their actions that the Democrats in 1992 especially were wrestling with how to win the White House after they had been exiled by 12 years of Republican rule. And they decided they chose between Jesse Jackson's campaign, which was trying to reunite that New Deal coalition, tenuous as it was, but it was still a new deal, coalition of black and white workers, and then Ronald Reagan's approach, which was to basically return to the old Southern Democrats, George Wallace, basically, and refusing to be out in worded right, keeping up this racist animosity and resentment.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:07:40):
I think that was Strom Thurman who originally made that quote, I will never be. Right.
Speaker 3 (00:07:45):
Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. George Wallace took it to another level, and I think that that has been the Democrat's problem ever since. And you would think a child could have told them, this is not going to work well for you to antagonize purposefully your base, but this is the moment we're in where you see the Democrats, it's almost like a circus, a dog and pony show where Democrats spend four years openly denouncing or renouncing their black base and then in the election year trying to make up for it, trying to gin up the black vote. It is almost like this awkward dance that they're doing. And now we're seeing the culmination, because this has been going on pretty much for the last 30 years. I think Obama was the Navy or the Zenith, depending on how you want to look at it. But I think that it's really run its course. I think it's possible Kamala Harris can win this election, but even if that is the case after four years in office, the Democrats are a spent force. They can't continue this dance.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:08:52):
So to those who would say, well, wait a minute, John, how can you say that the party is biting the hand that feeds it when you've had a President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, and they are set as we assume that when they come out of their convention in a couple of weeks, that Kamala Harris will be the nominee for 2024. So how do you answer those folks who say, well, they're not taking us for granted. Let's assume that she wins in November. They've had two African American presidents. We could talk about African Jamaican, but we'll just put Kamala in the box over 20 year span,
Speaker 3 (00:09:48):
And they've completely ignored, completely frustrated black demands, right? You think about Kamala Harris. Well,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:09:57):
Barack Obama told us we didn't make any demands, which is why we didn't get anything. When he was asked that question. His answer was, you didn't demand anything. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:10:06):
And I would have to say, he's actually got to give the devil this dude. He was right on that one. Hey, look, the 2008, what they did, what the Democrats did in pushing Barack Obama passed Hillary Clinton was a stroke of genius. It really was. They had the perfect candidate to whip up to generate this black excitement, excitement in the black community, which at that same time, they were ripping off through these subprime mortgages, right, which were disproportionately aimed at blacks, black homeowners. And what they did by pushing Obama to the fore, the Democrats, I'm talking about bringing blacks, gin up the black vote, getting blacks excited about someone who at that point, Barack just didn't have much of a record for serving the black community. But he went on in his eight years in office to openly excoriate sc disappoint the black community. And in fact, I think you could argue that in terms of black people, I'm 59, I'll be 60 years old in January.
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I would argue that Barack Obama has been the worst president in my lifetime for blacks. What I mean by that is the opportunity that he had in 2008 during the Great Recession, the opportunity that he had to actually begin to redistribute, and I'm not talking about socialism or communism. I'm talking about just redistributing wealth, just shaving off a portion of that onerous debt that many of us had accrued through these illegal, that's not my term, that's the FBI term illegal loans, fraudulent loans that the lenders made, and he could have shaved off proportion of that debt revived consumer buying power as we speak. We're talking, we're in the midst of the Wall Street, has seen a week really of decline. And the reasons, because Barack Obama set this in motion by not responding to the asset bubble in 2008, that asset bubble popped.
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Usually how you deal with an asset bubble is you shave off a portion of the debt and you put people in jail to disincentivize a fraud, but you shave off a portion of the debt because that will revive buying power. Barack Obama didn't do that. He actually threw more money at the lenders. And so right now we don't have body power and who's leading that? African American. So I say that to say, to answer your question, that the blacks who have been candidates for high office, particularly for the White House, have been put there because they will participate. They will join in on this dance of scolding black people for the benefit of the white vote, and then doing this dance, this sort of vaudevillian kind of act where they, every four years talk about what they've done for the black community, what they're going to do for the black community, how much they love black people.
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And I think it's run its course. I feel that it's run its course. And let me just end with this. And I really do believe that the legacy of Barack Obama, we've always had class tension within the black community. Now I think we're going to see the eruption of a real civil war, a real class war within the black community where the black elected officials are very much like conservatives and very much like white liberals. I think we're getting to a point now where we're going to see that the fault lines are very sharply drawn and the black elected officials, black celebrities, van Jones and Jay-Z and Bakari Sellers, that all these people are going to be seen as class enemies to the working class black community and the people who are its allies.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:13:57):
A couple of things. One, you mentioned the asset bubble and former President Obama giving the money back, basically bailing out the banks and not bailing out the homeowners. And I remember because to your point, that would've been the move. Don't give the money to the banks, deal with the loans, and that way you would've enabled people to stay in their homes. You would've been able to maintain the integrity of a number of neighborhoods, even down to the level of public schools and public school budgets because they get their money from property taxes by maintaining the value of property. There are a whole lot of things, a whole lot of benefits that would've come from that action. Instead of giving the money to the banksters, give the money to the homeowners. And I remember a press conference where former President Obama was asked why he did it the way he did it. And his answer was, and I remember this very clearly, his answer was, I didn't expect the banks to do this. People were asking him, why hasn't the money that you've given to the banks been loaned out? Why hasn't that money been distributed to the communities in need? And he said, I didn't expect the banks to do that. I said, well, man, that's what banks do,
Speaker 3 (00:15:23):
And maybe you shouldn't have run for president if you don't have that kind of understanding of finance.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:27):
Well, but that's the same guy that told the Banksters, I'm the one standing between you and the people with the pitch for us.
Speaker 3 (00:15:32):
Right? Right. And I believe it was in that same interview, I believe it was where he said that the reason he didn't bail out the homeowners who had been defrauded of their homes to these subprime mortgages, he said he didn't want to invite moral hazard. Well, moral hazard is exactly what he invited. But on behalf of the banks, not on behalf
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:15:52):
Of, oh, see, I thought he said Merrill haggard not moral hazard. My bad. I thought he didn't like country and western music. I'm glad. I'm glad you straighten that out for me. And the other thing you mentioned about former President Obama, and what I assume we're going to see from Vice President Harris is they have, I call it menstrual diplomacy. They are being used to sell imperialism and neoliberalism. And because it's coming from them, because Kamala Harris was selling us invading Haiti along with Linda Thomas Greenfield and so many, but because it was black people selling it, then there must not be anything wrong with it. We must be able to go ahead and accept it because of who it is that's selling it to us. I want to read another paragraph from your piece wherein you write, you write, it's important, however, to view Biden as a vital organ to a larger body politic that finally flatlined after failing to address a chronic illness, akin say to a diabetic eating Big Max every day for the past 30 years, Biden does not in fact owe his failed reelection bid to senility, though his cognitive decline is apparent.
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But to his party's strategic decision three decades ago, to compete with Ronald Reagan's, GOP for racist, white suburban voters, white suburban voters, by openly repudiating the Democrats electoral base of African-Americans. And that gets to what you just opened with. But I also think it's important for people to understand that by taking us for granted and by allowing ourselves to be taken for granted, the Democrats know we're not going anywhere. And so that enables them to speak to a lot of issues while actually appealing to that white middle class male voter because they don't want to appear to be a party that's too black. They don't want to appear to be a party that's catering to black people. John Che.
Speaker 3 (00:18:23):
No, that's exactly right. I think I ride with black people. I rock with black people. I will to the day I die, particularly the black working class. My father was a UAW member. And as much as the unions are fraught with racism, I still claim the working class. That's the class I was born into in the class I will die in. Although if I hit the lottery, I guess I'll be a Cadillac Communist at that point. Maybe. In
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:18:50):
Fact, really quickly, really simply, the CIO was we got the AFL CIO because the A FL was racist and okay,
Speaker 3 (00:19:03):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And then the CIO turned racist. But that's another story. But no, this is really a choice that the Democrats made, which just shows how unimagined they were. If they had followed Jesse Jackson's model pulling more and more people, which by the way was what RFK planned to do before he was assassinated, was to pull more and more people into the tech, younger people, it's very conceivable they would've never have lost an election over the last 30 years. Right? It's very conceivable. We have 110, a hundred million voters at least every year who are eligible to vote, who don't vote. Pulling those people in more of those people in by giving them something to vote for would be a winning strategy, a sustainable strategy. The Democrats just relied on their own. They just reverted to reform, right? Racist Democrats like Bill Clinton, like Ben Pitchfork, Tillman, that's who they're, and they can't sort of snap out of that.
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And so now they're stuck. They're stuck with this dance. It's very awkward dance, performative blackness. That's what Barack Obama is. That's what Kamala Harris, they perform, but they're not radical black political actors because if they were, and we have to bear some of the responsibility for this failure. We black people who have historically been the most sophisticated voters in the United States since they ran Barack Obama, we have for some reason forgotten that we have agency in this that if just sit and wait four years to go cast a ballot for whoever they put up for us to vote, that we might well be buried under a ton of ash, like some lost city of Pompeii or whatever. Because our parents and our grandparents knew much like they did in Chicago with Harold Washington, they faced the same dilemma. The Democrats just basically crapping on them and then asked them for their vote.
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And they decided in 1982 that, oh, well, we'll just get our own candidate to run. And they got Harold Washington. They drove each other to the polls, they registered voters. They raised money even though they didn't have much. They raised money and they got him by the finish line right now, it won't look the same way now probably. But the point is that they used their imagination. They didn't just sit there and say, oh, well, this is who we got to vote for. They did something about, they demonstrated their own agency. We need to get back to that. But lemme just say this too, on that point, I do feel though that this isn't a way, a culmination of what Malcolm said when he said, I think there will be another civil war in this country, but it won't be black versus white. There'd be the haves versus the havenots.
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And I believe we are getting closer to that. You see now these campus protests that emerged over the spring, which were led by the vanguard of which was Jewish people and Arab people and black people, I think that's going to be the coming revolution where we see what's happening in Gaza, rightfully so, has become the moral center of the universe. But that cause Gaza, which of course does not speak well with Kamala Harris, that cause I believe is going to intersect. We already see it intersecting with other causes. Cop city in Atlanta, right, the Jim Crow justice system. We see it intersecting with these other causes. That's how revolutions are born. So I say all that to say that I think that the Democrats are going to be on the wrong side of history. I think this deal, they struck this Carthage Genian peace deal that black Democrats have struck with the party. I think that it has run its courts and the people no longer have any use for it. I don't know if Trump or Ka Harris is going to be the next president, but I know that the American people are going to lose either way.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:23:12):
And I think evidence to what it is that you've just articulated in terms of this confluence of interest between Jewish Americans, between Arab Americans and African Americans, we're seeing now how Republicans are taking control at the electoral board level, the local electoral board level. They are now denying elections. They are now failing to certify elections. And this is something that people need to pay very, very close attention to because they are gaining control of the apparatus itself. And when they get control of the apparatus itself, then that's going to make our challenges even that much more difficult in terms of challenges, in terms of electoral politics, is going to make our challenges even harder to be successful at when you have members of election boards that fail to certify elections, not because they find wrongdoing in the process, but simply because the candidate that they backed. Look at Donald Trump gave this speech. He was in Atlanta today, I think it was Sunday or Monday, and he's pointing to people in the crowd that are at his campaign rally who are members of the county Boards of Election, and he's applauding them and lauding them for how loyal they are to his efforts.
Speaker 3 (00:24:48):
Oh, wow. I did not realize that. And that's very dangerous because these elections, these presidential elections tend to be battles of attrition who can do more to turn to vote, which means that they're very slim margins. So I mean, if Donald Trump has a little bit of leverage with the elections board in Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia, you might as well hand the presidency over to him now. So this is something else.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:17):
Well, and that's why he is saying, Christians, after this election, you won't need to vote. I mean, he is saying to people, oh, I've got this. I don't even need your vote. I've got this. And after this election, you won't need to vote. And that goes back to, and I think this went over the heads of a lot of folks. His key advisor, the guy that's in jail now went to jail.
Speaker 3 (00:25:50):
Oh, baton. Baton.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:25:51):
Steve Baton said, our objective is the deconstruction of the administrative state. Steve Bannon was very, very clear about Trump's objective is to deconstruct the administrative state. And I don't think many people paid attention to that. And that is what we see with the January 6th attack on the Capitol with they're getting their talons into local boards of election with this whole project 2025, which isn't new. It's all wine in new bottles. But all of those things are culminating with the Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (00:26:44):
Yeah, no, it's really a historic time. We don't know how it's going to turn out. But I mean, if you look at the situation on the ground and Nazi Germany, say in 1934, it'd be very similar to what we're seeing now with this demagogue clearly rising up. And then you see all the other parties in Germany, although we only have one here in the United States, you see all the other parties sort of seeding that ground to this demagogue and the people who support him. And that's shaping up here. And the Democrat, again, it could be an opportunity for the Democrats to actually say, okay, we're going to step in and we're going to restore democracy, but they don't really care about democracy. How do we know the same people who are complaining about January 6th? And the Trump supporters who wanted to overturn the election just announced that the winner of the election in Venezuela is the guy who came in second passed the post, right?
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And then the silliness. Well, we believe that the election was stolen. The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter has called the elections in Venezuela, the freest and fairest he has ever observed. Correct. National lawyers, gu, when they're now, and they said, no, this election is fine, but we're going to say that this guy who's a conservative in a country that is 13% black, and probably half of them are of mixed race, we're going to say this white conservative went in there and over and basically beat the socialist party, the Olaine revolution that has been in power since 1998. And not just beat 'em, but beat 'em by 34 percentage points, I
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:22):
Believe. Now, I was calling this out months ago, and folks, you need to really understand this, and there are numerous, if you go to Oroco Tribune or you go to venezuelan analysis.com, you'll find plenty of articles on this. So the United States started backing the Russian, the Venezuelan conservative candidate, marina Machado
Speaker 3 (00:28:50):
Machado,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:28:52):
And then she was convicted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court and found to have been basically an unregistered foreign agent. She was operating, I think, on behalf of Peru, I think it was Peru, against the interest of Venezuela. So they said, you are, because you have been operating as this agent for another country against Venezuelan interests, you can't run in the election. So the United States started backing her, knowing she couldn't run, and then they found the Gonzalez, the guy that replaced her, but he's basically her mouthpiece. And I was saying all along the United States is backing her, knowing she can't win, and then backing Gonzalez, knowing he can't win, so that when they lose, they will claim the election was fraud. And that's exactly, now here's the problem. So the United States goes in to Venezuela and they try to ment civil unrest the same way that Victoria Newland went into Madan Square.
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That's right. And overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine leading us to where we are now in Ukraine. The difference between, or one of the differences between Ukraine and Venezuela, or a couple differences. One, the people are armed. There is a armed popular militia that when the bell rings, or as George Clinton would say, when the horn blow, you better be ready to go. They come in the street packing. In fact, we know this, when we had what we call the Bay of Piglets, about a year and a half ago, some American mercenaries tried to float their way into Venezuela, and they were stopped by a group of Venezuelan fishermen that arrested these guys damn near killed them, but exposed them for trying to come into the country to overthrow the government. So you've got a very strong citizen, heavily armed citizen militia in Venezuela. And here's the other thing. It's not about Maduro. No, it's about the Bolivarian revolution.
Speaker 3 (00:31:28):
That's right. That's right.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:28):
These folks are
Speaker 3 (00:31:32):
Right.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:33):
Ugo Chavez is the man. So they see Maduro not as Maduro. They see Maduro as an agent of the revolution.
Speaker 3 (00:31:46):
That's right. That's right.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:31:47):
I'll make one more statement about this because you know more about this than I do. I'm going to make this point. This is hyperbole, but I want to say they would say, Nicholas Maduro be damned. It's about the revolution. It's not about him as an individual. And so long as he stays true to the revolution, they will stay true to him. When they see him deviate, he's done.
Speaker 3 (00:32:17):
I could not agree with you more. I have not stepped foot in Venezuela in 20 years, although I talked to people who are still on the ground there every once in a while. I'm going to tell you something, man, I have never seen, and I've lived in South Africa, I've been through most of Africa, through half of South America. I've never seen France. Nan talked about the need for revolutions make to create the new man, the new woman, a different consciousness. I'm not sure I ever knew what that meant until I went to Venezuela. They really have a different consciousness. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I think a lot of that was Hugo Chavez. I mean, it really does come down, man. He was as brilliant. I've met Mandela, who I think highly of. I met Mugabi. I never met a man who's more charismatic, more powerful, more visionary than he was.
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Robert, I met later in life. I don't know what he was like earlier. Same with Mandela. But Chavez was visionary, and I so have to say that so much of this revolution is doing his understanding. When the United States organized a coup in 2002, the people, they weren't as well armed. They didn't have the malicious then, although some of them had armed the people because the government, the news media, which was controlled by the wealthy, the oligarchs in Venezuela, they told the people that Hugo Chavez is on the beach and she would kicking it with Fidel Castro. The people had these hammer radios. They got on the ham radio and said, nah, that ain't what happened. He would never abandon us like that. I think he's a mirror for us. Let's go get 'em mostly with pots and pan. And you can look at, there's a documentary, I can't remember the name of the documentary.
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It's black women who were in the front pots and pans, and look, you're going to give him back. Right? And they did. Right. It took a couple days. It took a little while, right? About two days, right. Cause like I said, they mostly just had pots and pan. But thank God back. Now, look, I think that the vote, which was the closest, it's been, I think in 28 and 20, 26 years now, the vote just a little bit beyond 50% from Mad Gerald. I think it was 53. I want to say it was like 53, 46 or something like that. Yeah, I saw 51 to 44, but something like that. But anyway, it's a diminished margin. I mean, they have had inflation. These sanctions have taken an effect. And I know the people I talked to on the ground, I lived in Ecuador for a year or so a few years ago, and you saw more and more people coming to Ecuador who were disillusioned with the BOLO volume revolution.
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And these are people who would've been supportive, people who were of color, mestizos, no blacks, but mestizos. Anyway, so I do think that it's lost a little bit of its luster. But this is what I know, they did not put up a right wing candidate was talking about taking Venezuela back to what it was in 1989 before what they call, I think they called the characters Z. When the president basically told the Venezuela one day we're not going to convert to neoliberalism and ratchet up the bus prices and all that. And the next day they went to work and the bus prices had doubled. And so there was this ride, and that's what produced hug job is. So what I'm saying is that there's a of the Venezuelan voter, the average Venezuelan, I wish we had it here in the United States because they understand as Fred, I know you're going to get sick of me quoting Fred
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:35:47):
Hampton. Right? I'll never get sick of you quoting Fred Hampton.
Speaker 3 (00:35:50):
But it's like the Venezuelans understand. I wish we understood it. I wish you peace if you willing to fight for it. The Venezuelans, they live by that, right? And so, I don't know. I can't tell you, the United States is very powerful, even though we're a diminished force, I can't tell you they'll always be able to hold off the United States, but they're going to have to fight them for Venezuela.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:36:10):
So we started this with your piece, how the Democratic Party committed suicide by biting the hands that feed it. And the way that we got to this discussion about Venezuela was a discussion about democracy and how Joe Biden tells us democracy is on the ballot. And Kamala Harris, the democracy is on the ballot. And Donald Trump democracy, we ought to protect democracy while we're going around the world, overthrowing democracies. That's why we're fighting in Vene in Ukraine because the United States overthrew the democratically elected government. We're trying to have regime change in Russia while the Russians, you can talk about their form of government, all you want to, it is democratic by their definition. And he was democratically elected. We can talk about Syria, we can talk about what they're trying to do in China as it relates to Taiwan. We can talk about what's going on in Gaza. We keep talking about we're defending democracy in Israel, democracy for who
Speaker 3 (00:37:19):
Democracy.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:37:19):
You even have, there are even Jews in Israel that aren't a part of the Democratic. So that's how we, so, okay. I just wanted to kind of bring us all back to this vice President, Kamala Harris, and still use the word presumptive, because even though she got the vote she needed through the Zoom process, they're going to have a convention which I will attend as a journalist not carrying anybody's banner.
Speaker 3 (00:37:56):
You sure you don't have that vote blue? No banner who? Banner at home you going to take
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:38:03):
No. So, okay, so now she has announced her running mate, and Tim Walsh has debuted as her VP pick in Philly. And my question to you relative to this, is the story that Harris selected Waltz to be her running mate, or is the story that she did not select Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, as the team gets ready to kick off its five state tour, which of those, and they both could be the story, but because we kept hearing that she was going to, A lot of people thought Shapiro was going to be the pick and the fact that they were kicking off in Philly, and now they're not awkward, but which one is the story?
Speaker 3 (00:39:18):
Yeah, that's a great question. I have to say, if I had to bet money, if I had to bet the farm, I would say that the Democrats are going to lose this election. But I do think Waltz is probably the best choice that she could have made. Shapiro would've been catastrophic, I think just because whether exactly, whether they want to admit it or not, Zionism is on the ballot, right? Right. We know Kamala has said she's a Zionist, right? We know she's had meetings with APAC in which she has asked for it not to be recorded. She is a Zionist. She supports Israel's right to defend itself when it has no such, right? No more so than the Nazis did in Germany. Anyway. So waltz, I think really
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:02):
Minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I need to say. So folks can clearly understand that you are stating that Israel does not have the right to defend itself. That statement is based upon international law,
Speaker 3 (00:40:21):
Law,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:40:21):
Law. Yes. You're not making this up, right. Kamala Harris coming out and saying, Israel has the right to defend itself as a prosecutor. She should know better because that's wrong. It is just, you might as well say the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. The world is not flat, even though when you stand out on the horizon, it looks that way. It ain't necessarily so, and the sun does not revolve around the earth.
Speaker 3 (00:40:56):
And the rest of the world knows this. Right? The Palestinians are an occupied people. You have the right to, that's why
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:02):
They're called oppress occupied
Speaker 3 (00:41:05):
Territory's not right. International law. It's not international law. We'll
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:08):
Continue, but I just want to be very, very clear on that point.
Speaker 3 (00:41:12):
Yeah. I just think it's so interesting though. I mean, it seems to me that their choice of, am I pronouncing his name right? Waltz?
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:41:20):
Waltz. Waltz. Waltz. No, WALZ.
Speaker 3 (00:41:24):
Wall. Okay. Waltz. Okay. I think it's a concession to the anti-Zionist protests that I still think are going to be a very big factor in this convention. Chicago is home to the biggest, the largest Palestinian population in the country. And Lord knows how many black people are going to come out and support because they're protesting their mayor there who did a mini, he's a Obama Mini me ran, left, and is governing, right? So it does seem like it's like the best choice. It gives them a shot. He softens their edges, Kamala's edges, the Biden Harris administration's edges in terms of Zionism. But it softens his edges. It doesn't eliminate, from what I understand, he still supports Israel, right? Absolutely. And I don't know. Look, one thing we have to be honest about now is that the media is very much complicit in this game that the Democrats are running, and that's what it is.
(00:42:26):
The media is very complicit in this. And so are they going to really ask the Harris ticket, Kamala Harris' ticket to tough questions? I don't know. But you'd have to assume that somewhere between now and November that they're going to be confronted in a very public fashion with this question though. Well, what are you going to do about Israel? And that's why I see them losing this race, if nothing else. And I know that foreign policy does not often decide a presidential election, but I think given the state of the first live stream genocide in history, which Daily is bringing these unbearable images into our homes, that combined with their failure to do anything for their black base, especially black men, I have a hard time seeing a path to victory for the Democratic party.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:43:19):
Well, staying in that region. Another thing that folks, you got to stay tuned because these dynamics are changing minute by minute, Hassan Nala, the head of Hezbollah, came out and said, look, we are going to respond. Lemme take a step back. Secretary of State was telling us, Monday, 24 hours, 24 hours, and we expect that Iran is going to respond with man you
Speaker 3 (00:43:57):
Like he knows.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:44:00):
So Cassandra Sharla comes out and says, well, we're going to respond, and now we don't care what the outcome is. He came out Monday in a very clear speech and said, we are going to respond. We're going in hard, and we don't care what you do. Anah in Yemen saying, please send missiles our way, because every missile you send towards us is a missile you can send in the Palestine. Now, this is the poorest country in the world, the poorest country in the world. They have shut down. I'm talking about Yemen. Yemen, they have shut down the Red Sea. You can't get nothing in or out of the Red Sea. There's a port in Israel called the Port of OT has gone bankrupt because Ansara Allah has been sending missiles into the port of ot, like 13, 1400 miles away. And they're saying, we welcome the fight. Look, that's some smoke you don't want,
Speaker 3 (00:45:36):
Right?
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:45:37):
Because if we were in South central la, this would be the bloods and the Crips saying, I'm about that life.
Speaker 3 (00:45:45):
Right? Right. The ties and Hezbollah and Hezbollah, you know that about that life. They handed a behind whooping to Israel in 2006, which Israel's never forgotten, right? No. And the ties, I mean, man mean you talk about solidarity. I mean, they, they're what anybody who says they're a revolutionary aspires to be a revolutionary needs to look at. They have a picture. We can take the picture. Well, no, maybe don't take the picture Martin Luther King down, maybe put the Houthis right next to it everywhere kitchen.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:19):
And see, they're not new to this game.
Speaker 3 (00:46:23):
No.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:24):
When Anah, I believe means a helper of God,
Speaker 3 (00:46:30):
Know that,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:31):
And I believe that comes from the time of the prophet. May peace be upon him. They traced their lineage that far back when he came through that region, they were assisting him.
Speaker 3 (00:46:46):
Oh, I did not know that.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:46:48):
So when that's your psyche, when that's your North star look, when Mike Tyson tells you to stop kicking the back of his seat on an airplane, you might want to stop kicking his backseat back of his seat on airplane.
Speaker 3 (00:47:02):
You might consider doing what he says. Yeah. I
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:05):
Dunno if you remember that story. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (00:47:06):
I do. I do.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:07):
When they had to carry that guy off of the plane
Speaker 3 (00:47:10):
And he got off lucky
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:13):
Because he was able, he survived the assault.
Speaker 3 (00:47:15):
And I
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:47:16):
Don't mean assault in illegal term ass whooping. So anyway, anyway, all of this, I bring this up again, folks. I'm trying to connect these dots. We get into September and October, vice President Harris may be asking questions about the regional war that is ongoing, because that's where we're headed. That's what Israel wants. They are trying to bait the United States into a conflict in the region. And now you've got the supreme leader in Iran saying to Hezbollah, go ahead on, do what you got to do. He's not saying, pump your brakes. Partner saying, do what you got to do. And he's saying, do what you got to do, because we about to do what we got to do.
Speaker 3 (00:48:17):
We about to put in that work too. And I don't mean to be glib about it, man, this is a horrible thing that's happening. But you've got to look at it. Americans really need to look at it in context. Context. Wait minute.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:27):
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don't send your money yet, because there's a bamboo steamer that comes with this deal. Turkey Toa,
Speaker 3 (00:48:34):
Right?
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:36):
Erwan is saying we in it too. He says, if we have to go in now, he can be a funny dude.
Speaker 3 (00:48:43):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:48:45):
He is at least saying, oh, if we got to go in, we're going in.
Speaker 3 (00:48:51):
Yeah. This is a perfect storm. I mean, this is the worst perfect storm I've ever seen in my lifetime. You've got this on the one side you've got, and you really think about it, this revolutionary consciousness that has been strengthened and amplified by Israel's decision to commit genocide in front of cameras. And then when we say, yo man, that's the genocide. They say, what's your point? Right? This is the end of Israel. Your
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:49:22):
Problem is,
Speaker 3 (00:49:23):
Yeah, exactly. As we know it, Israel, Israel will never go back to what it was on October 6th of last year. It just won't. Right? It's not going to happen. And the United States, I don't think it's going to go back to what it was on October 6th of last year, either what it's going to be, I don't know. But this is, we're really seeing the end of it, and you can see it in a couple things. One is the congealing of this resistance movement in the Middle East against the white settler colonialism of Israel and the United States and the West. You see it with the bricks whose GDP cumulatively has surpassed the United States. Russia, I believe, has said at reported, they're arming the Houthis. Right? They're arming the Houthis. I've read the, but I dunno if it's true or not, right? And then you've got the peace day resistance, a recession.
(00:50:12):
Oh, I didn't even think about that. Right? You've got, in the Sahel region in Africa, you've got this resistance is forming, and you've got all of Africa starting to sort of assert itself and say, wait a minute, why do we need these people who speak French, who speak English in here, telling us what to do? They claim to be the boss. Why do they take our resources out? Pay us nothing, take our resources out. You've got that congealing, and then you've got the peace state resistance. You've got that also in South America, although it's in bits and starts, the pink tides kind of a ebb and of flow. But then you've got the peace state resistance, which is what some economists and financial people believe is, at the very least, a very brave and very deep recession. And some people are saying, could be the greatest depression, the greatest depression that the world has ever seen. And there are numbers. I mean, United States has never been 35 trillion in debt.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:07):
That
Speaker 3 (00:51:07):
Never
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:08):
Happened against a $25 trillion GDP.
Speaker 3 (00:51:11):
I mean, come on, man. So we've got a lot of issues said
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:16):
That, try to get a mortgage with that bank balance,
Speaker 3 (00:51:19):
Man. I was looking at the loans for, and then we've got credit card debt up the kazoo, and the average interest rate, I believe is 25% of these credit card rates. And we're dealing with all these, no, that's the problem. We're not dealing with these problems. We don't address, we don't face these problems.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:51:34):
So all of that, I wrote a piece, you're with her, but is she with you? Yeah. And the piece is contrary to what many people want to say. It's not anti Kamala. It's pro us. Yes. The question in the piece is, what are you as an African-American community demanding from her? And we have just articulated a number of very important issues that are and will impact how much you pay for a pack of chicken wings, a gallon of milk, and a loaf of bread
Speaker 3 (00:52:18):
Question.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:19):
So it's great that she's an AKA. It's great that she went to Howard. It's great that she can do what she do, but what does she stand for? What if you go to her website right now, zero policy, zero, not nary policy reference,
Speaker 3 (00:52:47):
But she has Megan, the stallion, twerking for
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:49):
Her. Oh, well, then that gets my
Speaker 3 (00:52:51):
Vote. I'm just saying,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:53):
Hey, I, amen.
Speaker 3 (00:52:55):
You know what, Earl? You know what Earl but said about black voters, right?
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:52:59):
Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (00:53:01):
I dunno if I can repeat it here, but all we want is a warm toilet seat. A tight, tight, what was it? And a pair of shoe apparently to say,
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:53:17):
So here's folks, here's the question. Politics. We are so caught up in the politics of personality and the politics of phenotype. We are trying to defend, oh, Donald Trump said she isn't black. Who cares when a pack of chicken wings is $21 a pack, when organic, a gallon of organic milk is $12 a gallon. That matters to me. I drink organic milk. Why are we so caught up in that? When your tax dollars are funding genocide, when your tax dollars are paying the salaries and the retirement of Ukrainians, and you don't have a retirement plan, your pension plan went out the window 25 years ago. That's right. We're paying Ukrainian pensions and healthcare. And healthcare and education budgets are numeric representations of priority.
Speaker 3 (00:54:36):
That's right. That's right. A moral document, as King said. That's
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:54:40):
Right. And we keep being told, we don't have the money. We don't have the money, but F sixteens just landed in Ukraine, which I'll say in the next 10 days will probably be blown into rubble. But we're sending F sixteens. So Lockheed Martin is happy. John Jeter, am I hating black women because I'm questioning policy issues related. Oh, we have to give her a chance. What did Barack Obama say when members of the Black Press said, you didn't really do anything for the black community, said you did not demand anything.
Speaker 3 (00:55:34):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:36):
Frederick Douglas says, power yields nothing without demand. It never has. And it never will. That's
Speaker 3 (00:55:43):
Right. That's right.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:55:44):
But when I asked the question, well, what are you demanding? Oh, no, Wilmer. See, you have to give her a chance. Oh, here's the other. I'll make, explain. Now I'm going to turn it over to you. So you've got folks like Simone Sanders that say, well, she's been vice president for four years. Kamala has earned it. And then you say, but wait a minute. So while she was vice president, what'd she do? Oh, well, you have to understand that vice presidents, those jobs, their job description is really very vague, and you can't really expect, well, no. See, you can't have it both ways,
Speaker 3 (00:56:23):
Right? That's right. You
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:56:24):
Can't tell me she earned it by being vice president. And then when I ask you, well, what did she do? You can't tell me. Well, she didn't do anything because vice presidents don't do anything. John Jeter.
Speaker 3 (00:56:35):
Yeah. We really need to raise our level of play. All Americans do, but particularly African Americans, because we have historically been the vanguard of this revolution, of the revolution in the United States, a progressive working class revolution. We need to raise our level of play. We need to deepen our understanding of politics. We need to do exactly as you say, we need to develop a list of demands, make them and stick to them. I'll try to say this very succinctly. I'm coming out with a new book in September next month, class War in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? I began the book talking about a political movement in the 1870s in the reconstruction period in Virginia where blacks were the majority of a political party called the read adjusters. Poor whites, mostly farmers and blacks in Virginia, who decided to team up and to the elites of both parties, Republicans and Democrats were trying to take their tax money and pay the bonds, the money that was loaned to Virginia by the wealthy, the aristocrats, the Confederates, the people who really were responsible for the war, the Civil War.
(00:57:55):
And they said they wanted to pay exorbitant interest rates 6%, which would be actually pretty low these days. This coalition said, no, we won't do it. So this group, the Readjusts, they lowered interest rates, they
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:58:07):
Readjusted the loans.
Speaker 3 (00:58:09):
They spent this money on schools and things like that. They started feeling themselves, and the white party leader said, well, the blacks were saying, well, we want also, we want enter the whipping post. We want this and we want that. And the whites in that party, the adjusters didn't hear 'em. They didn't feel 'em, right? So they didn't do it. So the brother said, because it's just black men who voted at that time, although we know that their black women supported them in this. But black men said, okay, cool. So the next election, the readjust lost everything. And they realized, to their credit, they said, oh, they were serious. And so when they returned to power, they did everything the brother said, they eliminate the whipping votes. In the book, there's a point where they talk about the Patronist jobs. They handed out to blacks because black were 60% of this party. There's a postmaster who said, I think it was 1881. He said, my office is so full of blacks, or might have said colors at that time. My office is so full of colors. It looks like Africa in here, right? This is 1881. So I said, that's the same in
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:18):
Virginia.
Speaker 3 (00:59:18):
In Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy, right? 1881, people read this and they said, I was lying. I did not make it up. It is a true fact, as we say, right? We need to return to that mindset, that understanding. We need the people in Venezuela like the Houthis, like the Lebanese, the Hezbollah, Lebanon. We need to return to that level of understanding and raise our revolutionary metabolism. Look, man, as Fred Hampton said last time, I'll quote Fred Hampton today, if you say you want to do something revolutionary, but you say, I'm too young to die, you don't realize you are already dead. It's a lot of dead men walking in this country right
Dr. Wilmer Leon (00:59:59):
Now. John Jeter, my brother, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
My pleasure, man. Always a pleasure.
Dr. Wilmer Leon (01:00:08):
Folks. Thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Go to that Patreon account. Help us out, please. This isn't cheap. We need you to make this work. Leave a review and share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out
Jon Jeter (01:00:58):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
 

The Legacy of Eugenics Alive in Today's Politics

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Wilmer Leon (00:00):
So here's a question. How does the false construct of race, and yes, it is a false construct or the real constructs of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to or support for a political candidate. Let's find out
Announcer (00:26):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:33):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of connecting the dots, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions about the broader historic context in which most events occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events and the impact that these events have on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is, as I stated, how does the false construct of race and it is a false construct and or the real issues of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to and support for candidates for insight. Let's turn to my guest, Dr.
(01:35)Chantel Sherman is a historian and journalist whose work documents deconstructs and interprets eugenic themes in popular culture, identity formation among African-Americans and reproductive apartheid in carceral spaces and within marginalized communities. Publisher of Acumen Magazine, author of In Search of Purity, eugenics and Racial Uplift among New Negroes, 1915 and 1935, as well as popular eugenics in television and film. Also, she's a novelist of Fester and Spill. Dr. Chantel Sherman, welcome back. Good morning. Thank you for having me. And as always, thank you for joining me. And I got to add, she's a very, very dear friend as well, so I get to call her Chantel, before we get to the question posed in the open, A viewer of our last discussion reached out to me and wanted us to elaborate on the issues of eugenics in medicine because many of us know some things about the Tuskegee study as well as Ms. Henrietta Lacks, but there's an awful lot more to eugenics and medicine than just those two issues. So starting there, particularly with the Tuskegee experiment, I elaborate, clarify what you know to be some of the misunderstandings about that, a little bit about Henrietta Lacks and then where are we with eugenics in medicine?
Shantella Sherman (03:10):
Sure. It's a loaded question because it actually has, the response is almost a series of volumes, quite frankly, but to synthesize this understanding, eugenics means what you're trying to do is create better people. And in order to create better people, you have to know what they're made of, what makes good stock, what makes good genes. And so what we've tried to do in this country through eugenics is to create better people by restricting who can and who cannot have children incarcerating people performing sterilizations for sterilizations on folks who we deem as unfit. And so it's not just about the body, but it's the body politic. So if I determine that you're poor, for instance, it's believed that poverty is in your DNA diseases are automatically in your DNA. And so black people as a whole, were considered to be contaminated. We are still considered to be largely contaminated.
(04:17)We are a bad gene pool, we are a subhuman group according to science and eugenics. So based on this, studying any type of disease means studying black people, and sometimes it means injecting them with certain things. So with Tuskegee, there's been a bit of a revisionist history about these are black people who had syphilis and we simply did not treat them in order to see the development of the disease or the course of the disease over years. The truth of the matter is many of these men were injected with syphilis, and that's the original documentation that we don't necessarily look at. We have to get to a point where we're looking at the entire scope of information and data. Alabama, Tuskegee was not the only place where these syphilis studies were taking place. The serological studies were taking place in six different states and they were all connected to sharecropping or farming communities, sharecropping communities where the black people there could not necessarily leave of their own free will.
(05:23)And then based upon that, you had a population that you could study, you could inject with different things. I've seen studies where folks are literally looking at how pesticides work by spraying cotton fields and leaving the black people who are working in the cotton fields in the fields so that as they develop lung conditions, you now start to talk about how black people don't have the capacity to breathe in certain places or they have bad lungs or these other things as if they're genetic, when the truth of the matter is you are experimenting on them. And so we've been the Guinea pigs unwittingly in this country for a long time, but because the stroke and the core of the information is based upon black people being somehow contaminated anyway, being less human, then we become like the lab rats or the little white mice in the labs where constantly we're having things tested on us and we don't necessarily know this. Then the scope of that becomes black people are 10 times more likely to have this. They're 10 times more likely to do this or to die of these conditions, or their behaviors lend themselves to these particular things.
Wilmer Leon (06:39):
When you said make better people, it was inferred, but I want to state the obvious. When the Nazis were trying to make the superior race, they were not doing this for the betterment of mankind, even though in their warped racist minds, they thought, so this was not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination. They were trying to make better white people at the expense of people of color. Is that hyperbolic on my
Shantella Sherman (07:22):
No, it's on point. I mean, the fact of the matter is if you consider non-white people to be subhuman, there we go. Or a subspecies. Let's pull this into America. When you say American, you're not talking about black people, you're talking about white people. That's why you have to add these hyphens, African-American, because America is the culture. It is also the race. It is also the health. It is also the patriotism. It is also the citizenship. And so this language becomes loaded. So when you say American, I'm looking at things that are talking about the American birth rate. The American birth rate is not going down when we're talking about black people or Hispanic people. So where in America is the birth issue? It's an American issue. It's a white issue.
Wilmer Leon (08:15):
It's a very white issue. And I'm quickly trying to put my hands on a piece by Dr. Walters here. I think I have it that speaks to this in the political context where, well, I can't find the quote, but he basically talks about, it's very important to understand that, oh, here we go. This is from white nationalism, black interests, and so this is your eugenics. On the policy side, if a race is dominant to the extent that it controls the government of the state defined as the authoritative institutions of decision-making, it is able to utilize those institutions and the policy outcomes they produce as instruments through which it is also structures its racial interests. Given a condition where one race is dominant in all political institutions, most policy appears to take on an objective quality where policymakers argue they're acting on the basis of national interests rather than racial ones. So that's Dr. Walters telling us, if I can just cut to the chase, when white folks run the show and they speak in the national interest, they're talking about their interests, not ours, and that's absolutely okay. Alright,
Shantella Sherman (09:55):
That's it.
Wilmer Leon (09:55):
So two other points about Tuskegee that I think are very important for people to understand. I know there were black nurses involved and weren't there also black physicians involved?
Shantella Sherman (10:08):
Absolutely.
Wilmer Leon (10:09):
And there is some question about whether there was actual consent. How much of this did they actually know or were they dupes? Isn't that a question that gets posed?
Shantella Sherman (10:24):
It's a question that's posed often because the belief is that if there's a black person in the room that they're going to side for black people, they're going to defend, they're going to try and help. But the reality is when we're talking science, we're talking medicine and science on behalf of the nation, on behalf of American Americans, we want to make sure that we have a healthy pool of black people as well. So it benefited and it benefits currently many black leaders to hold onto these eugenic things and these eugenic tropes and these eugenic theories where even though we don't talk about sterilizing people in the same way we did, then you still hear people say, black people, even this person has too many kids, they don't need to have any more kids. They're on welfare already. So what do you do? You
Wilmer Leon (11:18):
Give them Ronald Reagan's welfare queen,
Shantella Sherman (11:20):
Right? Well, right. If a white person says this, it's racist. If a black person says she already has 10 kids, she doesn't need anymore. She can't afford 'em, now she's neglecting them. We start with this other thing and it becomes, so what do we do? Give her no plan or something. And if that doesn't work, go ahead and give her a hysterectomy. That's eugenics.
Wilmer Leon (11:41):
An example of that on the other side is Octo mom.
Shantella Sherman (11:45):
Exactly,
Wilmer Leon (11:47):
Exactly. She got a TV show or she was trying to get a, there were people who were saying, oh, this woman is out here tripping and something needs to be done. But there were also those that wanted to glorify her, put her on television in order to generate revenue,
Shantella Sherman (12:11):
Generate revenue, but also public opinion, where she was one, a single woman, she already had one child that she was having trouble supporting. Then it became who should have access to IVF and all these other things, and then who's going to pay for all of these eight now nine children that she has? And it was like, what is she going to do with them and dah, dah, dah, dah. But you give the duggars one, she's single. If it's the Duggars who are just full of all types of deficiencies over here, I'm using eugenic terms. I'm sorry. All of a sudden it was like, right, give them a TV show. Give them money, give them this, give them that. Because what you're doing with television is programming people to believe some people need this, some people don't. If this was a black female in Chicago, in the Robert Taylor homes years ago and she had 10 or 11 kids, you'd be running her up a flagpole at this point and talking about the degeneracy and her kids are going to be this and there's no father in the house and all of these other things.
(13:09)So when you push this politically and you start talking policy, this is what you're concerned about. We should be concerned about on a local, national, and even an international scale. And so as you start to talk about candidates, we have to have a clear understanding of where our potential leaders fall, whether they're black or white, because black people are also Americans. And so we're living the American dream, and I don't want these people living next to me and I don't want a prison next to me and I don't want halfway house over here, and I don't want the school of kids over here and I don't want this, this, this and this. And that's an American thing, even if the person or the kids or the people I'm talking about happens to be brown just like me.
Wilmer Leon (13:57):
So to wrap up the Tuskegee, what are the two biggest misnomers about Tuskegee that you want this audience to have a better understanding of before we get to Henrietta Lacks? What do you want people to understand about Tuskegee?
Shantella Sherman (14:13):
The Tuskegee was not the only place, and I don't even like it being named, that it was the Eugenics records office. Serological studies. And you had five other places, five other places other than Tuskegee, where these serological tests were being done and they did not necessarily stop.
Wilmer Leon (14:34):
Oh, meaning that they're still ongoing. I know they were going well into the seventies at least.
Shantella Sherman (14:43):
And if Tuskegee is the only one that they're talking about, what makes you think that? The serological studies that were taking place in Mississippi and in Tennessee, in Georgia, just in North Carolina. In North Carolina, and again, there's a whole record of this, but we don't talk about that and we don't talk about the black people intrinsically involved in these studies and in this research,
Wilmer Leon (15:08):
Henrietta Lacks, if you would elaborate,
Shantella Sherman (15:13):
One thing that we don't discuss with Henrietta Lacks is that the fact of the matter is that she was at Crownsville, she was in Maryland. Once again, you must make the connection between eugenics and these carceral spaces, either asylums places where you need to have a mental rest. I don't like even calling them. It's a home for the mentally ill. This person may have been having menopausal symptoms. They have women in there, they were reading too much. There's a Howard University professor and his name Escape Smith, the moment high ranking Howard University professor. He was caught up in Crownsville at some point and died there. And
Wilmer Leon (15:52):
For those that don't know, what is Crownsville?
Shantella Sherman (15:54):
Crownsville was the Maryland, it's, we would say asylum now, but it was a place for people who were feeble minded or had mental health issues. And you could be put there for any of a number of reasons. But once you were there, this was the one specifically for black folks. So a whole black neighborhood was cleared in order to put this asylum there and to let you know what they thought of black people, they made the black people who were supposed to be the patients actually build the hospital itself. And it remained open for quite a while, but it was a place of torture. It was a place of experiments. And Henrietta Lacks ended up there. And so while people are, she's telling people, okay, I'm having fibroid issues. The potential cancer issue, once you're in these spaces, you don't have rights over your own body.
(16:45)So the experiments and the biopsies and the whatever else are also taking place in these spaces. And so that's where she was when all of this transpired, grabbing her cells, studying her cells. If you knew the cells could give us the cancer treatments that we have today, were you actually trying to treat her or were you trying to advance science? And so we have to start looking at who were some of the black doctors that were there, who were the other universities? You have universities that are attached to these asylums. And so it's not just, even if you're talking to Tuskegee, it's not just Tuskegee as the area, it's Tuskegee, the university, it's Howard or it's me, Harry. It's black institutions as well. And you have to look at this. Some of this is a class issue, but it's always a consciousness issue. You all right?
Wilmer Leon (17:40):
And just so people know that Henrietta Lacks, she was the first African-American woman whose cancer cells are the of the hela cell line, which is the first immortalized human cell line, and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. And a lot of people made a lot of money,
Shantella Sherman (18:05):
Still are
Wilmer Leon (18:06):
Hundreds of millions of dollars off of her body. And up until recently, her family did not receive any type of compensation for the illegal use of her body. And I want to put it in the context of body because when you talk about cells and people go, oh, cells, what the hell? No, it was her body that they used to create an incredibly valuable, some would say invaluable. You really can't even put a value on it. And up until recently, her family, I can see you want to go ahead. Go ahead.
Shantella Sherman (18:52):
Well, when you start talking about the value of black bodies, we can go currently, as of last year, the children that were involved, there was a situation in Philadelphia, 1985 where it was a group of what they called militant resistant black folks, the Africa Family
Wilmer Leon (19:12):
Move
Shantella Sherman (19:12):
Movement community. They were in a lovely community. And so they had this move project that they were doing, this is their thing. And you had a black mayor at this point who said,
Wilmer Leon (19:23):
William, good,
Shantella Sherman (19:24):
There you go, mayor.
Wilmer Leon (19:26):
Good. Who was bad?
Shantella Sherman (19:28):
I'm sick of having to deal with this. And instead of charging the house which had children in his whole family communal type of space, he said, let's drop a bomb, get a helicopter to drop a bomb on the house. Which of course ended up spreading. It tears up the entire neighborhood. But here's the point with this, two of the children that died in the bombing, somehow their bodies were sold given over to the University of Pennsylvania for study for research. Because the idea is, is there a difference in the brain and the mentality of a resistant black family and their children, their progeny that we need to be aware of? So now you have a university studying the brains and the body parts of dead children. The family does not know. The family did not know until last year that the university didn't even know that the bodies were sitting on the shelf Now
Wilmer Leon (20:30):
Because some of the other children survived and are now in their thirties and forties. Absolutely.
Shantella Sherman (20:36):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So they had to give those but become, we're going to give you the bodies back so they can be interred. What were you doing with these children? You were studying them, you're studying them not just as cadavers. They were being used in the classroom for what purpose though? And so I think that we need to really grapple with the fact that there's a value to black bodies, even if there's not a value to black people. The culture is amazing and this and this, but there is a value to black bodies that we don't talk about. And so there are folks that are, you have dollar signs on you when they see you, they have dollar signs on your womb, they have dollar signs on you as you matriculate through life and you navigate different systems. And the goal is to extract as much as possible while we are just kind of not paying attention to any of it.
Wilmer Leon (21:34):
There is the adage, you are a product of your environment. And so people will look at me, look at you. And how did you all become PhDs? Well, they haven't met your mother. I've had the blessing. They haven't met your parents. They haven't met my parents. We are products of our environment. So when you look at the children in the Africa family from move in Philadelphia, those children, there was nothing biologically different that made them one way or another. They were products. They were raised a certain way just as they want to talk about black on black crime, ignoring the fact that crime occurs everywhere. You tend to commit crime in the space that's closest to you against those that are closest to you. And that poverty is one of the greatest contributors to a criminal element. Not psychosis, not phenotype. And final point as they talk about black crime, who did the mafia commit most of its crime against other Italians? Who did the Polish Mafia? Who did the Russian mob? Who does the Israeli mob commit crime against those that are closest to them, but we don't understand it in that context.
Shantella Sherman (23:19):
Wiler, I'm going to throw this in here real quick. The University of Pennsylvania has a long history of studying black folks, especially ones that they consider to be degenerate types. For years, I did a series for Acumen Magazine called the Crack Baby Turns 30. And it looked at a study, a longitudinal study that the University of Pennsylvania was doing where they actually studied the children, the newborn babies that were left at the hospital by women who were crack addicted at that point. And they had these terrible lines in their notes saying things like, these children don't look you in the face. They are born with a pathology. They will be criminals and they will be murderers. And they don't even cry like real babies. They're like animals, okay, 30 years on and they're studying these kids every month 30 years later, they come back and say, each one of those children provided they were given to an aunt, a grandparent or someone else, and they were loved on and taken care of.
(24:21)They turned out just fine. None of them have been in prison. None of them have committed crimes. None of them have had out welock babies, most of them. I think they said 90% of them have been to college. Alright. So it automatically tells you that the nature versus nurture is really just a dream. It's a dream sequence in some madman's laboratory where you're going to try and make a case by creating an environment where you're defunding this and unhinging people and then saying, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy or this is all about the numbers and these are the stats and this is where this goes. And it is simply not true.
Wilmer Leon (25:04):
Some may have heard me tell this story before, but nature versus nurture, really quick example, I went to a private Catholic high school in Sacramento, Christian brothers high school and had to pay tuition to get there. So whether it was hook or by crook, I can obviously afford to be there. I'm there. So the guidance counselor at the time, Mr. Patrick O'Brien sees me wearing a Hampton sweatshirt and I'm walking down the hall and he says, Wilmer, what is that? And I said, oh, this is the sweatshirt from the college I'm going to go to. And he says, you're going to college? I said, yeah, Mr. O'Brien, I'm going to college. He said, Wilmer, have you ever thought about trade school? I said, no, I have never thought about trade school. He says, well, why not? I said, because honestly, Mr. O'Brien, I don't want to have to take the ass whooping that I'm going to take if I go home and tell my parents I'm not going to college. Now there's nothing against going to trade school, but in my house.
Shantella Sherman (26:13):
Exactly.
Wilmer Leon (26:14):
That was not an option,
Shantella Sherman (26:16):
Not one. So
Wilmer Leon (26:21):
It was all a matter of environment. And so people look at my son now who just graduated from Hampton, and the boy understands he has two options, conform or perish. So it's not a miracle, it's an environment. It's a level of expectation that is set. It's a matter of standards that must be maintained and understanding if you follow the path, life is great. If you deviate from the path, you might have a problem on your hands and you have to make a decision, do I want this problem or do I? That's all. Am I wrong?
Shantella Sherman (27:12):
No, I mean it's spot on. And I think that again, we understood this 50 years ago in a way that we are not passing that information down now. So the fact that someone can come to me now with eugenic thoughts and tell me if a black child hasn't learned to read by the time they're in the third grade, they have automatically lined themselves up to go to prison. Who came up with that foolishness?
Wilmer Leon (27:38):
Wait a minute, I'm one of those kids. I'm one kids.
Shantella Sherman (27:45):
Come on now.
Wilmer Leon (27:46):
I was reading well below grade level when I was in the third grade and they had shifted, and that was the time when they had shifted how they were teaching reading away from phonics to sight words. Fortunately for me, my parents, we had a very dear friend, Mrs. Bode, Mrs. Gloria Bode, who was a reading specialist, she would come to the house three times a week after dinner. She taught me phonics. And within Goy, it wasn't even a month, I went from reading below the third grade level in third grade to reading at the seventh grade level. All she did was teach me phonics.
Shantella Sherman (28:40):
Exactly, exactly. So the fact that you can add fake science over here with the eugenic themes, add it to policy, trickle it into the school system, add some funding issues with this, it's like I need you to understand that's what public libraries are for. I need you to understand that every child learns at a different rate. I need you to understand that if there's calamity all around this child outside in the neighborhood, they're not listening for concentration purposes and it may be hindering them. There are things that we knew and we knew how to meet those challenges to ensure that the children in this great space would be able to matriculate. We haven't gone bonkers. So why is it that we are feeding into this and actually accepting that it's true? And then getting on television and saying yes, as a black psychologist, it is true that if black kids don't start reading, you have black people who don't know how to read until they are adults, but they've never committed crimes and they didn't turn into degenerates. So why are we leaning this 10 toes down? It really is a fact.
Wilmer Leon (29:47):
I know some of those people who became very productive individuals and education became very, very important for them because they understood the value of what they didn't have. And they instilled in their children who went on to college and went on to get master's degrees and other advanced degrees, and many of those kids didn't even realize until after they got out of school that their parents couldn't even read.
Shantella Sherman (30:13):
Many people went to their graves as black people and white people who never learned to read period, but that was not a part of their character. If you can't read, you're automatically going to become a criminal. That's not the way this works. It's not the way it works. So the fact that we bought into this again tells me that we're moving back into these eugenic themes without, it's the popular social eugenics that the average everyday person is just like, yeah, that makes sense. It does not.
Wilmer Leon (30:43):
It only makes sense if you don't have any sense. So moving into these popular eugenics themes, getting to now the question that I opened the show with, how does the false construct of race and yes, race is a false construct or the real constructs of culture and cultural identity factor into our opposition to or support for a political candidate. And that all centers around, and I'll state the obvious here at right now, the presumed democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, whose father is Jamaican, whose mother is Indian, and she in some circles is considered to be an African-American woman. I've heard her referred to as such. I've also heard her in many current commercials referred to as an Indian-American woman. And I want to stress this is not a judgmental conversation.
Shantella Sherman (31:54):
No.
Wilmer Leon (31:55):
Let me throw it to you, Dr. Sherman.
Shantella Sherman (31:59):
The issue at hand warmer is that however many of those boxes she chooses to check that show diversity or
Wilmer Leon (32:06):
Check for her
Shantella Sherman (32:08):
Either way, either way, all of those lend themselves to the greater eugenic conversation, which is she is non-white. Okay, 1924, racial integrity, that act coming out of Virginia said there are only two races. Skip the Monga, Loy Caucusi. We're going to scratch all of that. There are only two races, white and non-white and the fact that she's also female, that's another thing that we have to deal with. Public perception, American public perception, sometimes global public section of what it means to be any of these things or an amalgamation of all of these things. And some people may be offended by the term amalgamation, a mixture. We're all a mixture of a bunch of other things. What does that mean? And so each one of these people who are definitive about whiteness and Americanism and patriotism, they're questioning as they did with Obama citizenship. They're questioning her womanhood at this point. They're questioning as
Wilmer Leon (33:15):
They did with Michelle Obama.
Shantella Sherman (33:17):
Exactly. They're questioning. But on this side, how many kids does Kamala have? And then the fact that,
Wilmer Leon (33:26):
Didn't JD Vance call her a cat woman because she doesn't have any biological children of her own?
Shantella Sherman (33:31):
What is that exactly?
Wilmer Leon (33:34):
Wait a minute. I got to mention when I mention his name, we always must say for those who don't know, JD Vance is now Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee. He's the same guy who about three years ago compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. So one has to ask the question, how does the guy who three years ago called another guy Adolf Hitler, wind up standing next to that guy as his vice presidential nominee. He didn't even call him Mussolini. He called him Hitler
Shantella Sherman (34:07):
And pay attention to the fact that when Kamala, Kamala was named as Joe Biden's running mate, once again, I heard the senator call say, okay, now we are going to have aunt your mama in the White House. This woman doesn't look like aunt your mama, no connections whatsoever. But all of a sudden this is what folks are thinking of you in these spaces all along. And so the nastiness of it starts to come out the thing. Wait
Wilmer Leon (34:40):
A minute, and that takes me to Tiger Woods when he first won the master's tournament and the year after the master's tournament, the winner gets to determine the menu for the player's dinner. And Fuzzy Zeller says, oh, we going to have fried chicken tonight.
Shantella Sherman (34:58):
Fried chicken and watermelon.
Wilmer Leon (35:00):
There you go.
Shantella Sherman (35:01):
Yeah. So again, my question is if we are that removed from the plantation at this point, why are you constantly trying to throw people back onto it? Or these are the only references that you're coming up with when you can clearly see in front of you that this isn't the case, it's the Fair State University, their whole thing, their memorabilia collection that they have of racist items that came up 1870 and moving forward. And it was like while we are saying they're racist, these are the things that keep peace in many white minds. I need an anama salt and pepper shaker. I need an anama cookie jump. I need to put her face on the pancake box. I need to have two little black kids as the icons or the folks that I'm using for gold dust soap powder and for this and for that and for the other.
(36:00)And so in researching how labels and emblems and mascots were created, you start to find that when white people feel uncomfortable in this country, they tend to hold onto the things that they did love about black people. And so that hasn't changed. We're going to show Kamala dancing and we're going to show her doing all of these things, loving cats, the things that make white people feel good and feel comfortable and feel wholesome and feel whole. She is a part of our group. And at the same time you have black people who are going, but she's married to someone who's not black.
Wilmer Leon (36:40):
I was asked that question, I won't mention the woman's name who said to me, Wilmer, why do black men, Hey Kamala Harris. And I said, I don't know that black men do hate Kamala Harris. I haven't seen any data. I said, but let me pose this to you. Why does she hate black men? And it was what I said, well, she didn't marry her brother. And I said, so I'm not equating the fact that she didn't marry a brother to say that she hates black men. I am just posing that as a ridiculous premise to your ridiculous premise and riddle me that and I couldn't get an answer.
Shantella Sherman (37:28):
No, we are still stuck in an antebellum mindset. Many folks are just still stuck there. And so it doesn't make sense that I can walk into a room and someone is waiting for me to flip some pancakes or am I the cleaning lady? Am I here for any type of servant position? Nothing wrong with servants, but when you visually look at a person and you start to assess them, not my character, not any of these other things, but sight, you're seeing me for the first time. If your reaction is to put me into this particular position, you need to ask yourself why. This is something that as the commander in chief, potential commander in chief of this country, that she's going to have to face down in the same way that President Obama had to. But she's also going to have this added level of this is a female who does not have children and all of these other, she's suspicious to folks. She's suspicious to the nation. And that is simply unfair and it's unfounded, but it's how we do things here a lot of times.
Wilmer Leon (38:40):
So let's take the other side of this because when she first announced that she wanted to be president in this, after Joe Biden stepped down, the narrative was she's earned it. She deserves it. I think it was Simone Sanders Townsend who was saying, and some of her other surrogates who were saying, what does the Democratic, what problem does the Democratic party have with wanting a black woman at the top of the ticket? It was all about her being an AKA. She went to Howard and she can do the electric slide. We were falling into that same mindset in terms of rallying the troops around her instead of asking the questions, where does she stand on Gaza? What's she going to do about Ukraine? What's her policy on Cop city? Where is she on the George Floyd Act and policy issues? And when we started listing policy issues and wanting her to articulate where she stands on policy, then the question becomes, why are you hating on the sister? Why do you hate black women? No, I don't hate black women. I know that AKAs Howard University and I have two degrees from Howard, so I ain't hating on Howard and being able to do electric slide that ain't going to feed the bulldog.
Shantella Sherman (40:16):
Well, and the truth of the matter, I don't believe our percentage is 13% still because it's just not fathomable we've been producing. So I'm going to say the black population is country. Let's say it's at about 18% right now. Alright? You still have the whole rest of the country that to some extent mentally and emotionally, you're going to have to reunite in the same way Obama had to reunite them because they had blown apart with even the thought of having a black man in office. Okay, you're going to have to suture us back together.
Wilmer Leon (40:54):
Donald Trump was the reaction to Barack Obama.
Shantella Sherman (40:58):
Absolutely. And the belief that even at this point, I still have people saying, Barack Obama is running the White House behind Biden all this time. And I'm going, are you serious? So it doesn't matter the truth. The truth doesn't matter at this point. It's what you feel. And I'm telling people it's not about what you feel. Your feelings don't enter into the facts at this point. Thank you. I need you to start talking about the fact that the housing in this country is so deliberately greedy and ridiculous that working people are living in homeless shelters. All right? I need you to talk. College
Wilmer Leon (41:33):
Professors in California are living in their cars.
Shantella Sherman (41:38):
I need you. And this is across the country and quite frankly across the globe. So I need you to talk to me about investing and divesting in certain things. I need to know where Kamala stands on certain things. I haven't really heard. I don't know what her platform is on certain things. I would love to have someone talk to her rather than having Megan thee stallion up dancing with her. I don't care about that. I don't want to hear about that right now. You're telling me people are blowing me up about Project 2025, which by the way is nothing but the NATO group and some other folks from 1925 still trying so much conservative policy. This isn't new.
Wilmer Leon (42:14):
It's not new. It's called New Gingrich's Contract with America.
Shantella Sherman (42:18):
Thank you. Nothing on that list is new. Nothing on it is new. So it's like even if it were true, and I understand that a lot of it is not true. It wasn't in the 880 page document that most people haven't read. When I started sifting through it, it was like that didn't happen. That's not in the document. That's not there. These are proposals. And do you know how many think tanks put out proposals every time there's about to be a change of leadership? So it's like don't get up in arms. This is something that we always face. But in the meantime, can you tell me where if this were something that was about to take place, where are your local leaders positioned on this? Because we got Biden in office right now, but you still can't afford to get a bag of potato chips for less than $4 or $5 right now. What is going on with the cost of living and the American dream? Why are you having corporations buying up housing so that the average person can't afford 'em?
Wilmer Leon (43:10):
BlackRock,
Shantella Sherman (43:12):
Help me out.
Wilmer Leon (43:14):
People don't understand that As a result of the Covid crisis and the mortgage crisis and all of these homes that people were put out of BlackRock and other venture capitalist companies were buying up the housing stock and they weren't putting the housing stock back on the market for sale. They were putting the housing stock back on the market for rent. Absolutely
Shantella Sherman (43:45):
For rent. And if you're charging, there's nothing, I'm going to say it on the record, there's nothing inside Washington DC that's worth $5,000 a month as a two bedroom apartment. Nothing. Nowhere in this city is it worth it. But those are the going rates. And so we can look at this. Go ahead, I'm
Wilmer Leon (44:02):
Sorry. And as Vice President Harris is on the stump saying, Donald Trump is a convicted felon. And as a former prosecutor, I know how to deal with felons. I know that personality well, when you had Steve Mnuchin in your sights when he was the bankster in California and your staff brought you a thousand felonies committed by the man, you didn't pursue the case against Steve Mnuchin who wound up being our Secretary of Treasury under Donald Trump. So don't hate Malcolm said, when my telling you the truth makes you angry, don't get angry at me. Get angry at the truth. I don't do the electric slide. I'm not an A KAI am in the divine nine, but I don't do that. And so those things don't matter to me, Dr. Sherman,
Shantella Sherman (45:00):
It's going to have to matter to us what the policies and standpoints are that Kamala Harris brings to the table. I just want to know her positions on things. I have the lesser of two evils true as it appears, and I believe she would make a wonderful president, but I would love to know where she stands on all of these issues that are also international issues that are also, I've been trying to get someone from the state of California, a representative, and I don't have to call the person's name to talk to me about the sterilizations that are being forced on black and Spanish women inside California penitentiaries for the last eight years. And I can't get a callback. So I want you to understand that it's not about blackness. It's about I need you to make sure that my American dream isn't a nightmare, that you get to blame on Donald Trump or anybody else. We have black elected officials. We're not holding anyone accountable and we're not holding them accountable from the moment we elect them. You're not asking the proper questions, and so you
Wilmer Leon (46:04):
Won't get the right answer.
Shantella Sherman (46:06):
I want Kamala Harris to win. I put on the T-shirt, all of that. But in the meantime, I want to know where she stands on some things that impact my quality of life and the quality of life for the folks who are around me. I've crossed 50 years old at this point, so I'm trying to figure out if I had to go lay down and retire somewhere, is there a patch of dirt in the woods for me that you want going to then come through and arrest me for being homeless on and lock me up for it? That's a reality. They're locking up homeless people. It's their laws in certain states now. And these states have black representatives. No one's talking about this. We are talking about the suits that people are wearing and their connections and affiliations with other things that don't benefit us at the moment.
Wilmer Leon (46:51):
And rappers
Shantella Sherman (46:52):
Well, and just while you dancing, when it comes time to pick your kid up from the daycare center, are you going to find out that they've raised the rates? So you got to pay $3,500 a month for the kid to go to the daycare?
Wilmer Leon (47:04):
And two things. One is we keep hearing that we can't afford to provide quality daycare to people across the country, but we can send a trillion dollars to Ukraine. See, budgets are numeric representations of priority.
Shantella Sherman (47:26):
And also add to that, even if we didn't have the money, we had the consciousness, we had the heart to say that the grandmother in the neighborhood who was opening her home should still be able to do that without being licensed to a point where she has to pay $2,500 to the city and go to a class for eight. She raised 10 kids and 15 grandkids. She knows what she's doing. You've kept us from being able to have that communal space. Now that's not just, I want some money that's being vindictive. You're setting up the parameters, the variables that are going to lend to the things that you're talking about as black people and poor people. You're creating poverty. That's what you're doing right now.
Wilmer Leon (48:11):
Norway can do it, Finland can do it. Denmark can do it. They're doing it.
Shantella Sherman (48:19):
Anyone who is for their citizens can and will do it. The difference here is that we're not working together. We've always been fighting against each other. It's the infighting. I want my kids to be able to have it, but not your kids. I don't want immigrant kids. I don't want my kids around the Spanish kids. They're going to learn Spanish and it's too many of 'em and they're undocumented and they can have diseases, and I don't know what they're into. Well, the same thing was said about black people coming into white spaces. So if we're going to do America, we got to do America for everyone, and we got to make sure that these policies don't hurt this person in order to make me feel better. And in the long run, end up hurting me as well.
Wilmer Leon (48:58):
My current piece is you're with her, but is she with you? And the premise of the piece is, and I say this in the piece, it's not about her. It's about us. And what are we going to demand of her relative to us? Because that's what policy politics is all about. It's about policy output. It's not about the Divine nine and Howard University and the electric slide. It's about policy output. She went to the Cara comm meeting as vice president and try to convince the leaders of those Caribbean nations to be the minstrel face on American imperialism to invade Haiti. How does a black woman whose father is from Jamaica believe that our invading Haiti is a good idea? She didn't go alone. She went with Hakeem Jeffries and some other folks, Linda Thomas Greenfield. How do these black people, how do these black people buy into imperialist, neo-colonial policies like that? And so I make that to take us back to the eugenics question and the identity
Shantella Sherman (50:26):
Question, and I'll throw that to you because it's all about the fitness of the individual person or the group. And so Haiti has always been the bastard black child that even black folks don't want to claim a small minority of black folks always down for Haiti, always. I'm there with you. But there are all these people who are still, you want to glamorize Africa, but you won't set foot there. You want to go to Africa, but you don't want to stay there. You don't understand the politics, the culture, the language, the faith, none of it. But since it's been tagged onto you as African-American, you claim it. But again, when you get down to it, we still have eugenic thoughts as black people about who is fit and unfit, who is worthy, who is unworthy. And it's about nothing related to character. It is about nothing related to morality or how people handle you or them being good people.
(51:27)It's all about the same things that white people use the litmus test to define you. And so we cannot get away from that as easily as we think and things like this. When we get into a space like this, it magnifies it and we start to see ourselves and it does not look good. It doesn't look good on us at all. Haiti, poor black people, folks living in the projects historically by colleges and universities, not the elite eight, the big eight, but the rest of 'em, the ones that we don't really want to talk about this in them other states that we don't want to deal with, alright? We don't want to deal with that. There are things that we need to discuss to make sure that HBCUs and the Divine Nine still exists. If the federal government starts pulling money back. We've had the heirs desegregation case.
(52:20)We've had a similar case in Maryland where basically HBCUs are being said to be anti-white at this point. And in order to get the money that these HBCUs won for having been discriminated against with funding, it's being said, in order to get the money, you now have to have five to 10% of your student population be minority. That minority has to be white. So now you are giving free education to white students in order to get the money that's owed to you from having been discriminated against in the first place. You have to understand in street terms, we've been in a trick bag for a minute, right? And we need to stop playing games. It's late in the day. You need to heal your line. Alright, I'm going back to Hurston. Heal your line. You need to understand that you're about to get caught up in the very trap that you've been setting and you're not paying attention. You're simply not paying attention. We haven't been paying our alumni fees like we're supposed to. Our schools are still dependent on federal government funding and state funding. We are not standing alone. So we need to make sure that our leadership also understands that, that we need to have practical solutions and policies so that we're not reacting to things, but literally charting a course and setting it and staying on that course.
Wilmer Leon (53:44):
What are you demanding? And two things to your point about funding and HBCUs, the HBCUs in Maryland won a case against the Maryland government for not properly funding those HBCUs. As the state had funded, the predominantly white institutions went all the way to Maryland Supreme Court and the schools won. The Republican governor, Larry Hogan refused to give them the money that the court awarded and forced those institutions to negotiate a lower number. I don't remember what the numbers were off the top of my head, but
Shantella Sherman (54:33):
What? Yes, sir. What again? The exact same thing happened in Mississippi. And that's why I said that was the heirs desegregation case. And it was the exact same thing. The money that came down to fund the Mississippi schools, they gave the HBCUs less money when they disseminated. And it was like, okay, Mississippi won the HBCUs won the case, but the content, the little fine print said, we are going to give you the money, but now you are required at this point to add 10% of your population needs to be minority on a black campus that's not black students. And they said, we can pull in some Africans and some people that still fit. No, you need to have some white students on this campus now. So that was the quote. That's how they got around it. And it was like, wow, these are the nasty tricks that I'm talking about. And so if it happened in Mississippi and it's happened in Maryland, where else is this happening? Can I get leadership to understand this is how you tie black hands behind the backs of citizens that actually want to go to school.
Wilmer Leon (55:45):
Final thing, symbolism. And again, I'm getting back to ethnicity and cultural identity as it relates to Vice President Harris. And I'm not picking on her, she just is the poster child of this in the moment because there's an awful lot of symbolism that is being used here. And again, they rather be symbolic than talk about substantive policy output.
Shantella Sherman (56:22):
The symbolism goes to the heart of the nation. Whose nation is it? Whose America is it that's which one of the presidents?
Wilmer Leon (56:39):
Well, you mean we want, we want, oh
Shantella Sherman (56:41):
No, no, Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge. Okay, whose country is it anyway? And so you literally, you're having white Americans say, this is ours and we've allowed you to be here,
Wilmer Leon (56:56):
Tom Tancredo, and we want, and the Tea Party, which was the precursor to Donald Trump. We want our country back.
Shantella Sherman (57:06):
So again, but how have you lost it?
Wilmer Leon (57:09):
Who has it? Because I don't have it. Tom Tan credo. If you're listening, if you're watching, I don't have your country.
Shantella Sherman (57:18):
And again, so that's how you start again. You're going to see an explosion of language about women having babies and birth control and all this. And again, it's this. They're having natal conferences once or twice a year where people are talking about we need to get the country back. And getting the country back means we need white women to have babies and they're not having them. And so based on that alone, any white female who's out here supporting Donald Trump and all of these policies, they don't necessarily understand what you're about to do is send yourself back into the house because there's a good white man that needs the job that you're sitting in. You need to be producing babies bottom line. And if you're not, you serve no purpose. Now to the nation, that is a Hitler esque thing, but Hitler got it from us. So that is a Francis Galton thing.
Wilmer Leon (58:11):
In fact, thank you very much because you and I had talked about that Francis Galton father of modern eugenics, there's a book Control the Dark History and troubling present of Eugenics just by Adam Rutherford. Talk about Francis Galton and talk about Adam Rutherford's book.
Shantella Sherman (58:32):
Just the idea First Rutherford's book is an amazing examination. I think that it's something that pulls together a lot of the research from different spaces and different years and to synthesize it the way he has it makes it make sense to the average person, which is critical at this point. It's not talking above folks head. So you get to the critical analysis of we need these birthing numbers. Statisticians started coming in and Galton is right here in the middle of this. And you have the eugenics record office who are literally charting birth rates and they're trying to figure out with immigration, emancipated black people. And then you end up with Chinese people and all these other folks that are coming in. And then you start having women who decide they're not going to stay at home. These rates matter and they have mattered for the last 150 years because whoever has the birth numbers, when we start talking politics, these are voting blocks.
(59:32)And if I can put you under duress, if I can incarcerate you and then tell you based on the fact that you're in prison, you are no longer a citizen, so you are not able to vote because you have a felony charge. That is a reality for those black men who are huddled in prisons. But the other part of that reality is that because during the reproductive height of their lives, they're in prison, it means that they're not reproducing children. And so there's a duality to having black men and Spanish men and locked into these prisons and degenerate white men. We don't want babies from them anyway.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:08):
And the fastest growing cohort in prisons are women.
Shantella Sherman (01:00:13):
And when the women go into the prisons, they are automatically taken before what used to be the sterilization board. They're given a physical examination. If you're a black woman, a Spanish woman, and you have fibroids, they're going to tell you, we're not going to manage your fibroids while you're here. We're just going to recommend that you have a hysterectomy. Or they may not even tell you. So great documentary Belly of the Beast looks at the California state Penitentiary system and they're just ad hoc deciding to sterilize black and Spanish women without their consent and without their knowledge because they said, once we open you up, it's easier just to go ahead and snip you than to worry about having to pay for your children, either ending up in prison, being slow and retarded mentally having to go to special schools or having to pay through the welfare system because they're not normal. Because you're not normal. You're breeding criminals. And so we have to look at these things. I think Rutherford did a great job, but Galton has been talking about, he started talking about this when he coined the phrase, we were already talking about this and the black bodies on plantations started this whole, let's check the women's bodies and see what they can manage and hold as far as their fecundity, as far as they're being able to breed the next crop of Americans.
Wilmer Leon (01:01:28):
Are those eugenic practices relative to women of color in California? Prisons still going on as you and I are speaking right now.
Shantella Sherman (01:01:38):
Absolutely.
Wilmer Leon (01:01:40):
So our vice president, Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee is from Berkeley, was the DA in San Francisco, was the attorney general in the state of California, was the senator from California. I haven't heard anybody ask her this question.
Shantella Sherman (01:02:05):
I have not heard anyone ask
Wilmer Leon (01:02:10):
Anybody
Shantella Sherman (01:02:10):
Elected official. You've only had the Congressman Ell from North Carolina who got reparations for folks who had been sterilized, many of them black in North Carolina. He's since passed away. Virginia asked that people come forward if they had been sterilized, but people couldn't come forward because they didn't know they'd been sterilized. You took them in and told them that they had an appendicitis. So they didn't know that the reason why they didn't produce children is because when they went into the hospital, you decided to do a hook and crook on 'em. They didn't know. So based on just that information, you have very few people in the state of Virginia to come forward and to receive the money. California is now offering some reparations to folks. But if you're in those penal systems, it's still going on. You don't have control over your body.
Wilmer Leon (01:03:08):
And I want to be very clear to say, I'm not for those that just heard me ask that question and Wilmer, why are you blaming her for this? I'm not. I'm saying I haven't heard anyone ask her this question again because it's not about her. It's about us. And what are we as a political constituency? What are we going to do? What are we going to demand? What are we going to get if we are responsible for putting her in office, which everybody says Democrats can't win without black people.
Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Okay,
Wilmer Leon (01:03:56):
All right.
Speaker 4 (01:04:00):
Again, I think that she would make an amazing president again. I simply want to know what her policies are. I want to know how she's going to fight against and how she's sizing up her time in office. And that's what I want to hear from her. That's it.
Wilmer Leon (01:04:19):
Dr. Chantel Sherman, I am so appreciative of you joining me today, as always, dear. Thank you. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 4 (01:04:27):
Thank you. Anytime,
Wilmer Leon (01:04:29):
Folks, thank you all so much for listening and watching the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon, and my brilliant, brilliant friend and guest, Dr. Chantel Sherman. Stay tuned for new episodes each week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Follow me on social media. You can find all the links below to the show there. And remember, folks, that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter. And you can tell by this, we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you all again next time. Until then, I am Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace.

Biden is Out, but who Decides Kamala Harris is in?

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Wilmer Leon (00:00):
I am back. I'm back. I went to what I'm calling Cult Fest 2024, also known as the RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That was a site to behold. But with all that said, president Joe Biden has decided not to pursue a second term for 2024. Without a primary, without an open process, vice President Kamala Harris has quickly become the Democrat's. Presumptive nominee. Is this democracy or a Bernie Sanders redo? Stay tuned. We're going to answer those questions,
Announcer (00:41):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:49):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they are current, a vacuum failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur, thus enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue before us is the 2024 presidential election and how the Democrats are selecting their nominee. My guest is Tom Porter. He's a lifelong activist and scholar, former dean of the African-American Studies Department at Ohio University, former director of the King Center in Atlanta, former host of morning conversations with Tom Porter. Tom Porter. Welcome back to podcast, my brother.
(01:57)So Tom, as I said in the open President Joe Biden has decided not to pursue a second term for 2024 without a primary, without an open process. Vice President Kamala Harris has quickly become the Democrat's presumptive nominee. I believe she has now amassed the requisite delegates in order to become officially the nominee on July 8th. Clinton advisor, James Carville, who is one tricky, somebody wrote a piece entitled Biden Won't Win, Democrats need a Plan. Here's one wherein he wrote, the Jig is Up, and the sooner Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders accept this, the better we need to move forward. But it can't be by anointing Vice President, Kamala Harris or anyone else as the presumptive democratic nominee. We've got to do it in the open, the exact opposite of what Donald Trump wants us to do. Tom, it doesn't appear, at least at this point that the Dems are listening to Carville
Tom Porter (03:09):
And they shouldn't.
Wilmer Leon (03:10):
Okay?
Tom Porter (03:11):
And they shouldn't. I remember the most important black labor leader in the country came out of a meeting with Clinton Carville and Al from, and he said, Tom, they're a bunch of fascists. It is the Clinton Wing that took over the Democratic Party under the leadership of the Democratic Leadership Conference, which was made of Southern governors, which has gotten the Democratic Party in trouble ever since. And what that means is that Carville didn't want Kamala Harris. That's what that means. It had nothing to do with the open process and what have you. He wouldn't know open if he had a can opener,
Wilmer Leon (03:58):
But to his point about an open process, because further on in that piece, he talks about Clinton and Obama selecting, I think it was eight potential nominees, and that they needed to have regional town halls where these individuals would travel the country explaining their policies, introducing themselves to the electorate, and then based upon that, an individual would be, I think the term was selected, Tom.
Tom Porter (04:30):
Well, the effect of it is one of the things that Jesse Jackson and the Jackson campaign of 1984 is instructive and people should study that more. What Jesse found out that even though he was leading the other presidential candidates, that the rules of the Democratic party was stacked against him. It was called front loading. So for Carville they throw the word around democracy. First of all, the America's never been a democracy. It was born in slavery, genocide of Native Americans, and still the land from the Mexican. So the fact of it is it only had the possibility of becoming a democracy, and it has yet to come there. So what Carville is talking about it seems very, very interesting. But he who controls the process, controls the day, and I'll guarantee you that Clinton and Carville and that bunch are not going to have any kind of process that they don't control. And so it may look like it. I mean, it looks like Biden was chosen. He was number four. How did he get past three candidates and become number one? It wasn't open process. And I tell you one thing carve out and nobody else said anything because he was their choice because they wanted to stop Bernie Sanders.
Wilmer Leon (05:52):
There are those who say that Joe Biden was selected not to defeat Donald Trump. Joe Biden was selected to defeat Bernie Sanders,
Tom Porter (06:03):
And you are absolutely right. And that is what they have done. They did it with Jesse in 84. The whole Jaime thing was just that a hoax. Jesse never said it in any kind of way that was demeaning towards the Jews, but the JDL disrupted interrupted Jesse's announcement when he announced that he was going to run for president and hounded us, us being me, Florence Tate and Jesse, who were three people called the road team. When Jesse first started running in 84, they hounded us to JDO every place we went. And before we got secret service protection, it was Farhan and the FOI that protected us. So they were after Jesse from the beginning. It's instructed for people to read the platform of the Rainbow Coalition because Jesse has had the most progressive populous campaign in the 20th century.
Wilmer Leon (07:00):
I'm glad you brought that up. This takes us a bit off topic, but I think it is relevant because James Clyburn and a group of African-American leadership went in and met with Biden a couple of weeks ago, and that's when Clyburn came out with the line, we Riding with Biden. And one of the things that I said as a result of that was, what did you get for that endorsement When you walked into the room and you sat down with Joe Biden, did you put your own project 2025 plan on the table and say, look, Joe, here's what we need. Here's what we want. Here's what we demand. You're going to sign this or we're going to go back out here and tell people that you just fell asleep in the meeting. I don't know what they got for that. And based upon the way that this whole thing has gone, it seems as though they were once again on the wrong side of history. So for you to say that people need to go back and read the plan from the Jackson campaign, and then we can even go back to the black political, the Gary Conference,
Tom Porter (08:15):
Gary Convention, that
Wilmer Leon (08:17):
There's enough data. Go ahead.
Tom Porter (08:19):
Those are two documents that people need to read. Not only read, but they need to update them. That is the agenda that came out of the Gary Convention and Jesse Jackson's platform. Not only was Jesse's platform the most advanced in 1984, when I left the university, I was looking for something to do, so I decided to run for Congress and Jackie Jackson called me Jesse's wife and said, Jesse wants to meet with you. And I was in Cincinnati running for Congress, and I went to Chicago, spent the night at Jesse's house the day before 1983, and that's when Jesse asked me if I would work with him in the campaign. But I ran for Congress in Ohio and I ran in two counties that were 99% white and blacks and white in Cincinnati, which was a big city, said, don't go out there, show your literature, but don't show your face. Long story short, Mondell was at the top of the ticket. I got 2000 more votes than he did in Brown County and a thousand more than he did in Claremont County. He was at the top of stick. He was supposed to ticket, he was supposed to help me. The fact of it is it was just as populism that got basically these working class, mostly Republican whites to get behind Jesse because of his platform. It was a very populous platform to the left. Trump came along with a populous platform from the
Wilmer Leon (09:52):
Right, from
Tom Porter (09:53):
The right. And so the Democratic Party, instead of embracing Jesse's platform, which came out of the Gary Convention, instead of embracing it, they moved the leadership of the Democratic Party to the Democratic Leadership Conference and hired all of Jesse's people and gave them jobs which are meaningless jobs, moved the structure from the party someplace else. But these Negroes became deputy. This deputy, I call their names, but I don't want to, some of my still call friends, but they drank the Kool-Aid. And if you read some of the press around Clinton and his crew Al from, and James Carve, one theme was We don't need Jesse Jackson anymore. They marginalized Jesse so much so that in the convention in New York, Jesse didn't have a VIP pass. He had to come through the door like everybody else. That's Clinton and his crew, and Nancy Pelosi and Clyburn and all of the Negroes come out of that. Obama's position was to negate the progress and the black leadership that had gone before he calling Dr. King a simple country preacher, he couldn't carry Dr. King's dirty underwear.
Wilmer Leon (11:12):
Well, in fact, wait a minute. First of all is that negating the negation is the one question. And to your point, you can go and read President Obama's acceptance speech at the Nobel where he talks about Dr. King and then says, but I'm an American president. I have a different set of concerns that I must address. You don't quote Dr. King and then say, yeah, but you say, yeah, yeah.
Tom Porter (11:43):
But his job was to negate the advances that had been made and our responsibility, and this is what this generation of young people, when Joe Biden has to pass the torch, but not pass the torch, the Hakeem Jeffries and that crew, we have to negate them, which is called a negation of the negation, which is an affirmation of something at a high level
Wilmer Leon (12:11):
Because two negatives make a positive.
Tom Porter (12:13):
That's right. That's right. And so getting back to where we are now, of course Kamala Harris was not chosen as a result of some democratic process, and one would not expect that coming from the Nancy Pelosi, bill Clinton and them. And so the responsibility of this generation of young people and young people have actually shown from the mass worldwide protests around the George Floyd lynching, Greta and Climate can change the mass protests around the war and Gaza, the mass women protests around the world. There's a new populism that is emerging. And if Kamala Harris does not pick somebody to be the vice president to the left of her, she may have problems.
Wilmer Leon (13:16):
Now, when you say to the left of her, that's a very, very interesting designation because there are many who will say she is the left, that she was the left to Biden. And by the way, folks, Tom mentioned the Democratic Leadership Council, Joe Biden was an instrumental part of that as well. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Biden, they were all Nancy Pelosi. They were all part instrumental parts of moving the Democratic Party from the left. They want to say center, but it was actually to the right. So Tom, what do you say to those that say, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, Mr. Porter, vice President Harris, it's to the left of Joe Biden.
Tom Porter (14:03):
It wouldn't be difficult.
(14:07)I mean that's a distinction without a difference. They say Twi D and Twiddly dumb. She was as a black person, as a black person, she would have to be given the history that she is a part of, be the left of most white candidates. But at the same time, she was not on the left. And so for her to pick conventional wisdom is a bunch of Bs curse of all. Somebody's always been telling me, well, Tom, conventional wisdom or you don't understand real politics. I say, I'll tell you where you can go with both of those. So conventional wisdom says that she should pick somebody from a state that she needs a governor. The protests and the mass movements that are happening, the populous movements that are happening are to the left. And they're to the left because the Democratic party and the Republican party are so far to the right. But what used to be when we said left, we meant socialists or communism.
(15:28)But the left today is anything left of the Democrat or Republican parties. But if she is to, there are two things that I think that are important now. One is the platform. One is the platform. I mean, she's going to be the vice president, the president nominee. That's a foregone conclusion because any of these other people who want to jump up, they can't go anywhere. What's this guy out of? West Virginia said that he was thinking about running, right? The base. Yeah. The base of the Democratic party is black and growing Hispanic, and he's not going to get any votes from them. And so for him to say that he might run and they know it. They know it. And that's why they use Clyburn in 2020 who just as he said, we riding with Biden, we know Joe and Joe know us. I mean some of that old coon foolishness. So they know they can't move without black folks. But the same time they hoping that they got other cly burns
Wilmer Leon (16:45):
And they know they can't move without black folks, but they never offer substantive legislation to demonstrate a commitment because for as much as they know they can't move without us. They don't want to appear to the broader demographic that they're with us.
Tom Porter (17:11):
Well, the fact of it is if they were true and honest, Jesse Jackson would've become leader of the Democratic Party just like Trump did. Obama could have become the leader of the Democratic Party, but that wasn't his job. His job was to look good. He and his wife while doing nothing, my daughter sent me a magazine cover the other day where Obama was on there, and it was something about the new generation of Kool. He was supposed to be the replacement for Miles Davis and Malcolm X, all of the black people. We considered to be cool just because they taught him how to dress and walk black and he could shoot a basketball. So he did not want to be head of the Democratic party. He liked his job. He had barbecues and all kind of black folks in the White House, and they line dance and did what they did, and then he came out and did nothing. So the key thing now for the Democrats, if they want to win, I wasn't going to vote for Joe Biden anyway, and I already said it, and anybody that co-signs what he did in Gaza, he could be running against the devil and I wouldn't vote for him or the devil, so I wasn't going to vote for him.
(18:38)Kamala Harris, black people going on the glory, they went on the glory with Jesse Jackson. They went on the glory with Barack Obama because black people feel their late nationalism that when we get somebody black, we'll get a better deal if we get somebody white. But as they say, you might be my race, but you're not always my taste. But they're excited about Kamala Harris. They're all this money and black women on Facebook are putting on with camera. I don't have a problem with that. The problem is what's going to be the platform and is she going to choose somebody to the left of her a more populous candidate? Because if she's not going to do that, then what are we talking about more the same? And the other thing that the Democratic Party has to do in the new world that we live in, they've got to loosen the grips that the Israeli lobby has on the party.
Wilmer Leon (19:38):
What about, I want to quickly go back to the issue with the African-American women and this proclamation or this statement, this sentiment that Vice President Harris has earned the right to be the vice president. And that any attempt to either have a more open process or anything that might challenge that is a threat to black women, it's a threat to black womanhood. Your thoughts on these politics, this whole identity politics thing, because she's a black woman, now all of a sudden is hands off.
Tom Porter (20:24):
Yeah, I understand that sentiment, but I understand it. It's like with Obama, we knew we questioned Obama, but the black women said that Michelle would keep him in line. Remember that?
Wilmer Leon (20:42):
Oh yeah.
Tom Porter (20:43):
They said,
Wilmer Leon (20:44):
Because Michelle we're from Chicago. And when she said that, I said, oh, we got some straight gangsters up in this joint. We got some
Tom Porter (20:52):
Elkins. But it was also because she was darker
Wilmer Leon (20:56):
Than
Tom Porter (20:56):
Obama. And even though Obama himself said he was a mu mother, he was sure about one thing, and he really wasn't black. He was clear about that. So I understand the sentiment, but everything else in our politics we've got to be serious about.
Wilmer Leon (21:20):
Not sentimental.
Tom Porter (21:22):
Not sentimental. That's what Dr. King said and his great thing about power, he said love without power. He said, power without love is reckless, but love without power is weak, sentimental an anemic. And so I understand that everybody wants to see somebody. I'd like to see short guys run the world. I'm five six. Nobody's deeper than that.
Wilmer Leon (21:53):
No, Tom, it's taller than that.
Tom Porter (21:57):
You're absolutely right. So I understand the sentiment, but that's the reason why I tell people that you must study deeper. You can't be all form and no content because then you end up saying that Michelle is darker than Obama and therefore she'll keep him in line. They were both like Clinton and Hillary, which was their role model, latter Day Bunny and Clyde's. So I understand that sentiment, but unless they turn it into something, unless they talk about the platform, what is the platform going to look like? What is camera going to run on? I mean, I see her quietly distance herself from Netanyahu's visit. She's going to be in Indiana, but then she's going to secretly meet with him. It's not so much a secret. So we've got to be, these are very, very serious times. And as they say in my neighborhood in Ohio, now's not the time to be nut rolling. So these are very, very serious times. And so when we look at passing the torch, who are we passing the torch to? Not Hakeem Jeffries, not the rest of these niggas, Roland Martin, they're all getting in line. They're getting in line without even discussing the platform.
Wilmer Leon (23:26):
Well, first of all, could Kamala Harris get away with not meeting with Netanyahu, understanding the power of apac, not meet with Netanyahu and still win the election?
Tom Porter (23:42):
I think she could.
Wilmer Leon (23:43):
Okay.
Tom Porter (23:44):
I don't think, see, APAC has never been challenged,
(23:49)And APAC represents that group in the Jewish community who attempts to control everything that they can, particularly in the black community, whether you're talking about the music, the culture, or what have you got to say it. We got to say it because if we don't say it, then we allow ourselves to be chumped. And the fact of it is, is that it's got to be challenged and she won't, but she can challenge it by who she picks and what the platform's going to be. In apacs power is basically through the media, the media and its money. It's not the numbers that they have that can put a candidate in office except maybe in New York City, but she won't. But that has to happen. We cannot allow a group of people to control significant aspects of our community and not say something about it.
Wilmer Leon (24:58):
Wait a minute. And to that point, to those that listening to this conversation, want to jump on the antisemitism train and accuse us of being antisemitic, APAC said, and you can go back and look it up in the newspaper, they were going to invest 100 million into the Democratic primary process to be sure that they would unseat or prevent from winning candidates whose politics were to the left, and that they deemed to be anti-Israel. That's not us making this up. That's them making the declaration. All we're doing is highlighting and calling your attention to what they said. So we're not making this up.
Tom Porter (25:51):
I let those kinds of conversations roll off my back that you anti-Semitic, the same way when somebody says, if we get into disagreement and the first thing they go to is you got a Napoleonic complex. And my answer to that, would I be wrong if I was tall? So you can't be afraid of all these things because they going to come at you anyhow. I said to Jesse, when the ING thing came up, I said, man, just don't cop to that. And some of the people who were around him told him to cop to that. It was the biggest mistake that he ever made because they never heard him said it, and he never said it in a derogatory way. About, on the other hand, in our first meeting in New York, Percy Sutton met us before we were supposed to meet with the Jewish leaders of New York with a yako on his head telling us how we had to talk and act in front of the Jews in New York. So look, I don't pay any attention to that. We have to challenge, we have to cash all checks when it comes to us. And it has to be a Pan-African perspective where we really, where the continent and blacks in the new world. We've got to challenge those things that oppress us because if not in this serious time, Trump them are going for all of the marbles.
Wilmer Leon (27:18):
Yes, they are. I mean,
Tom Porter (27:19):
They're going for all of the marvels, and there's enough Democrats, white Democrats who will side with that stuff. Because quite frankly, where we are right now, in order to solve the world's problems, we have to understand two things. Who's been in charge of the world for the last 400 years? White men look at the state of the world. They forfeited the right to run the world, but you're not going to give up just because you enslaved. A bunch of people stole the land from the Native Americans. If we give up, we'd have to give up what we got. It's too bad, but we not giving that up. And that's what trumped them. That's what Hitler was riding on. That's what Trump didn't riding on. We don't want to give. Democracy is what it means to pay reparations, give some of the land back to the neighborhood. What the hell with democracy? That's what they're saying.
Wilmer Leon (28:13):
I want to quickly go back to your point about challenging APAC and other type of organizations, and I want to tie it to what's going on in Gaza now nine months into that conflict. And the Zionist government of Israel has been taken a ass whooping for nine months straight. And so this whole mythology of the invincibility of the IDF, that they're this phenomenal military force and they're getting their ass whooped. And so the whole mythology behind this thing is being exposed. And so just as it's being exposed there, it's being exposed here. The question is, are we willing to do what we have to do to challenge that mythology in alliance with those that are fighting in Gaza? Does that make sense?
Tom Porter (29:12):
Sure, it makes sense. Well, the fact of it is, given the geopolitical alignment in the world today with China and Russia and Brazil and different formations coming together, even the EU who has been lockstep with Israel, the eu, it can no longer hold to that position because without Africa, Europe is broke in terms of the resources. And so the Israel, where it appears to be winning because of the devastation that it is reaping on the Palestinian people, there will be a reckoning, and it's coming slow, but it is coming even among the evangelicals who say that the rapture will come when Israel is safe and secure within its borders, and then Israel will be destroyed.
Wilmer Leon (30:12):
Look at Yemen. Look at what Yemen has been able to extract or the force that they've been able to exact upon in terms of their involvement in this process. A small Yemen is considered to be the poorest country in the world. They control the Red Sea. They're sending missiles 1200, 1400 miles across Saudi Arabia and decimating important ports that Israel controls. The whole dynamic is shifting. So with that, when you look, you've talked about the platform. I remember when the platform committee meetings used to be broadcast on television, and I used to sit and listen to 'em. I know I need to get a life, but I used to sit and listen to 'em. That's not happening anymore. So how does a candidate, Harris, what type of platform does she articulate having sat there for years while the Biden administration is involved in genocide, while the Biden administration has wasted trillions of dollars in Ukraine, how does she formulate a platform that takes us away from that failed, attempted world domination and moves us closer to the direction that the world is actually going as in bricks in the South and the Chinese?
Tom Porter (31:47):
Well, as if we look at the Middle East,
Wilmer Leon (31:52):
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is what I was trying to get to. Go
Tom Porter (31:55):
Ahead. If we look at the Middle East,
Wilmer Leon (31:59):
Is that a reasonable question to
Tom Porter (32:01):
Ask? Not only is a reasonable question to ask, but it's a reasonable question to expect that it be answered. You can't allow a small country in the Middle East, which was settled by people who were not from, that had no connection to the original inhabitants of the Middle East to control the future of the Western world women. There's a movie called Rollover, and this was when the Arabs dominated the money thing through it started Kris Christoff and James Fonder and the Greenspan character played by Hume Cronin. At one point, the Arabs were not going to roll over the money, and Hume Cronin said, you are playing with the end of the world. That's where we're at. You can't allow a group of people since Jesus time to control your system in the way that these people do, because it won't work with people talking about if they leave the dollar,
Wilmer Leon (33:26):
Which they are doing,
Tom Porter (33:28):
Which they're doing, somebody else loses their influence because there's nothing back in the dollar to begin with talking
Wilmer Leon (33:38):
About other than more dollars.
Tom Porter (33:38):
Yeah, talking about only a paper Moon
Wilmer Leon (33:45):
And Tom, people really need to understand for it because it's not really being articulated here in the Western media. Again, the power of the bricks, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now about seven or eight other countries have joined the organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, those two as quiet as is kept in the West man, they kicked the French out of Niger. You look at the development of the Sahel cooperation organization, man, they are kicking ass and taking names. They are finally moving beyond flag independence, and they are now actually taking control of their economies and they are taking control of their countries and they are kicking the west out.
Tom Porter (34:42):
The Palestinian leadership met for two days in Beijing. I mean the world, one of the most popular soap operas used to be. As the world turns
Wilmer Leon (34:55):
In daily city,
Tom Porter (34:58):
The world is turning. And quite frankly, it's turning away. Not so much from the West, but from the ways of the West. And they don't get it. They don't get it. You can't put sanctions on the whole world without putting sanctions on yourself. You can't tell people they can't come to America, and you'd be welcome in Panama and Costa Rica and Brazil. It doesn't work like that. Or you'd be welcome in Africa. It doesn't really work like that. You tell the people they can't come. Well, clues the borders work both ways. We can open 'em and close, and you can't. I mean, the policies are so stupid in the West. I mean, it's almost particularly in the United States because they have sold this white nationalism for so long, they'd actually believe it themselves. The world is going on without them.
Wilmer Leon (35:52):
And to their point, I'm looking up here seeing if I could put my hands on it, but I can't quickly, Dr. Ron Walters wrote a book a while ago, white nationalism, black Interests, and I strongly suggest that people get ahold of it. To your point about the policy and the borders, which they say that the Biden administration put Kamala Harris in charge of the borders. I was at the RNC and this woman, Latinos for Trump is who I was talking to. And she was talking about the border, the border. The Democrats have just, I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. You are not even talking about the American foreign policy in these countries that is decimating their economies and forcing these people to leave their countries to come here. And she looked at me very puzzled and quizzical, and I said, lemme give you an example. Chiquita Banana last week was convicted in federal court in Florida of having sponsored death squads in Guatemala. So Chiquita Banana, a US corporation is killing Guatemalans, torturing Guatemalans. And that isn't motivation for them to leave their countries. She didn't even want to touch that, didn't want to
Tom Porter (37:18):
Touch it. I mean, it's very interesting that Trump would say that the people who are coming across the border are taking jobs from blacks and Latinos. Who does he think are coming across the border?
Wilmer Leon (37:33):
Oh, I asked her about Haitians. I said, the United States. Thank you. Hakeem Jeffries, thank you Kamala Harris, thank you. Linda Thomas Greenfield, the United States is trying to rein invade Haiti. Where are the Haitians supposed to go?
Tom Porter (37:51):
I mean, the fact of it is we have got to make sure and say to anybody that says that they represent us. Hakeem Jeffries, John Clyburn, governor
Wilmer Leon (38:06):
Gregory, Gregory
Tom Porter (38:06):
Meeks. Gregory Meeks, that if you're going to represent us, this is the platform brother. I mean, you had Hakeem Jeffries and Jonathan Jackson down here in Maryland supporting the guy from that owns Total Wine and Liquorice who was running for Senator Now, I dunno,
Wilmer Leon (38:28):
David Tron.
Tom Porter (38:29):
Yeah. And also Brooke. I didn't have no dogging hunt. But how do you come down here in this neighborhood and you support a white candidate who was no more distinguished than Officer Brook for what? Well, I know what Johnson Jackson did. He's in the same business. He's a liquor distributor and by man owns Total Wine. But I understand that he paid off some of Hakeem Jeffries and John campaign debts. So I don't know. But that's not representing us. You're not representing us if you're not on the side of the Palestinians. If you don't believe in the two state
Wilmer Leon (39:10):
Solution,
Tom Porter (39:11):
You're not representing us. If you don't understand what's happening in Africa or Haiti or Cuba, 70% of the people in Cuba of African descent. So you putting sanctions on your own people, you can't be co-signing that. And we got to say this, we got to negate the negation. We, as Margaret Walker said, let a new race of men and women rise and take control. That's what time it is.
Wilmer Leon (39:38):
So how do we get the presumptive right now, democratic nominee, Kamala Harris as a woman of color, as a multi-ethnic woman, Jamaican and Indian, how do we get her to speak to those issues?
Tom Porter (40:02):
First of all, we got to energize the black community because they're counting on that. And we've got to say to black women, these are the issues that we think, and there are black women who agree with us. These are the issues that we think that are important to the black community, and we need to have townhouses. We got to not only reenergize our black community, but we need to reenergize a movement because the struggle's not over. And we've got to put before, we can't just say that Kamala, you black, and therefore whatever you do is cool because it's not cool.
Wilmer Leon (40:45):
But that's the narrative right now, we are so ecstatic, and I'm speaking in the global, we are so ecstatic now that she is in this presumptive position and they are saying that she has earned the right to be there simply because she's black, because she's a woman and because she's been the VP for four years. But when you go back to when she ran for the number one slot, she was the first one out the race. She had zero delegates. She got less than 5% of the vote. Black people didn't even vote for her. Wait a minute. And final point, Tulsi Gabbard torched her ass in 45 seconds. And folks, I ain't hating. I'm just putting out the data, Tom.
Tom Porter (41:39):
Well, I mean she's earned the right as much as anybody else, but that's not really saying anything.
Wilmer Leon (41:46):
Okay?
Tom Porter (41:47):
It's not ever saying anything. The question is, now you here and this is what we're saying.
Wilmer Leon (41:52):
So what you going to do?
Tom Porter (41:53):
Yeah, this is what we're saying. We already went through Obama with this stuff and see, we got to quit accepting this notion of the first black to do this. The only reason why, I mean, you take the question of black quarterbacks. The only reason why there were no black quarterbacks in the NFL until there were some had absolutely nothing to do with. There were black quarterbacks, quarterback at junior high, black high schools and colleges ever since. There were some. And so the fact that you decide to let us in don't have anything to do with it because we've earned the right, we've earned the right. Our ancestors paid the price for us to be any damn thing. We want to be in this country. But now, if you're going to represent us, this is what we need at this point. And if you can't do that, it's okay. Do like Biden did go sit next to him while he's fishing, but we have got to have more programs like this. Too many people are not rolling in the press. You have people who, when I was in radio, well, you got to do both sides. There's no good side to slavery. I'm not even going to attempt that one so
Wilmer Leon (43:04):
Well. In fact, Tom, I've always, particularly when I started talking about Palestine, and I'd get calls from Jewish listeners who would tell me that I'm not balanced. And I said, no, I'm not trying to be balanced. I'm the counterbalance. Because anything that the positions that you want to articulate in the narrative that you want to hear, you get it in the Washington Post, you get it in the New York Times, you get it in the LA Times, you get it on M-S-N-B-C-I-A, you get it on CNN all day every day. So I don't have to present that because it's already presented. I'm the counter to that. And I think I got that from you, by the
Tom Porter (43:46):
Way. Well, it's very, very interesting. I was watching the BBC yesterday and the BBC hosts was saying, Kamala Harris is black and Asian, as if these would become factors. And she had an affair with Willie Brown. I mean, first of all, she's running against the cat who's damn near serial rapist
Wilmer Leon (44:12):
And admitted as such.
Tom Porter (44:14):
But then nobody mentioned that JD Vance's wife was Indian. Nobody talked about Nikki Haley being Indian. It only comes up with his black people
Wilmer Leon (44:29):
Who I talked to at the convention and was an empty can just full of talking points. Go ahead.
Tom Porter (44:38):
And so we going have to, the black community is going to have to defend her even if she doesn't want us to defend her because they coming at her.
Wilmer Leon (44:49):
Oh, no question.
Tom Porter (44:50):
They're coming at her and somebody's going to slip up and use the N word.
Wilmer Leon (44:56):
In fact, when I was at the convention, I was on the floor right after they nominated JD Vance, and that whole process ended the day session. I'm doing my standup with the convention floor in the background. And this other news entity had allowed us to use their standup space. And as I'm wrapping up, I say, I find it interesting that a guy who just three years ago was telling America that Donald Trump was the next thing to add off. Hitler is now going to be standing next to this add off Hitler as his vp. I said, how does that happen? And when I said that, the guy who allowed us to use his space came up and said, you guys got to go. You guys got to go. And we said, well, wait a minute. So anyway, but I raised all that to say that question. I'm not hearing many people ask, JD Vance said that Donald Trump was the next thing to Hitler, and he's now standing next to his Hitler.
Tom Porter (46:13):
Well, I say this about JD Vance and I put it on Facebook that he is either the white version of the Spook who sat by the door or he is the opportunist of the highest order. And I think it's probably a combination
Wilmer Leon (46:28):
Of nation of the two.
Tom Porter (46:29):
Yes, yes, yes. And I think Trump may be a little bit concerned now because Trump is in hot water because people don't like him now. They tolerate him. You think Mitch McConnell lacks Trump?
Wilmer Leon (46:44):
No. Oh, well see, in fact, I'm glad you said that because my advice to the Democrats right now is just put together a clip, a montage of JD Vance, of Little Marco Rubio of what's the dude from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, all of these folks who were, most of whom were sitting in Trump's box last week at Cult Fest 2024, which is also called the RNC Convention, put a montage of them, of Lindsey Graham saying, he's a narcissist, he's a bigot, he's an idiot. All of those put all that language Cruz, all the folks that were in that box kissing his butt. They need to tell the truth.
Tom Porter (47:40):
And at the same time, the Democrats, they've got some work to do. Oh, where do you think all of those people who were supporting Bernie Sanders in 2020, it's one thing for Bernie Sanders to be with the party, but those people, that's the reason why I said if she doesn't really pick a populous candidate as Vice President running mate, or if the platform is not one that is of a populous nature, she's got serious problems.
Wilmer Leon (48:12):
Those former Bernie people are part of that new crew called the Dual Haters. They're part of that new crew that is saying, we don't want either of these buffoons talking about Biden and talking.
Tom Porter (48:25):
And the fact of it is a significant number of the American people didn't want either one of 'em either. Correct. It was the press and the polls. And I say to people that polls are designed to shape and mold public opinion not to reflect the truth of public opinion. And of course, the other thing that nobody's ever, we haven't looked at, who are these people in the press? How many of them are actually Republicans? I know Lester Ho is Now, I'm not saying he's a Trump, but I'm just simply saying, because the press has been very, very lack in covering Trump. I mean, he lies. They never say that he lied. We are going to fact check him. Why don't you just say he lied about this? He lied about that. That's, that's the operative word. He lied.
Wilmer Leon (49:21):
In fact, I'm glad you brought up the polls because that part of the conversation got away from me for a minute because, and I know that the whole issue with Kamala now has just surfaced. So current polling hasn't taken place yet and hasn't been analyzed. But when you go back to, in looking at the numbers, you go to real clear politics. Trump at 58.4, Kamala Harris at 32.9. Now she has gained traction over the last couple of days, but still 58.4 to 32.9, that's not where you want to be with four months out from the election.
Tom Porter (50:14):
Yeah, but I think she has ignored the polls. I remember again.
Wilmer Leon (50:18):
Oh, absolutely.
Tom Porter (50:18):
Absolutely. I remember, again, traveling with Jesse and Negroes always ask these questions. They don't ask these questions. And they said, well, let's face it Jesse Jackson, you can't win Reverend Jackson. You got no organization, all this kind of stuff. And at that time, it was seven candidates in the race, and Jesse said, I'm number three, at least four other candidates that'd like to have my place. And so I think she has to ignore the polls because the polls are all part of the establishment, and they got a dog in the, and what's on the agenda now? What's on the agenda now is whether or not capitalism can in fact solve depressing problems that are facing the world today. And I would say that it can't. And so then what is the solution? I mean, I'm not saying that I have a solution, but I can say, what ain't the solution because it hasn't worked.
(51:19)And therefore we got to be trying something new with some new people. And so the changing of the guard and the passing of the baton includes the passing away from white men, the same white men that who've been running the world, and the same white women who've been aligned with them. The passing of the church means that we got to not go with these Negro leaders who've been appointed, but to find our own leaders and to elect our own leaders, and the ones that don't do what we want 'em to do, we punish them by not electing them. Again,
Wilmer Leon (51:54):
Final question to you then. As you look at Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee, I've been saying it can't work by just changing the messenger and not changing the message.
Tom Porter (52:12):
Oh, absolutely.
Wilmer Leon (52:13):
Go ahead, Tom Porter.
Tom Porter (52:14):
I mean, absolutely. We've already been there before. We've been there with Obama. Obama had, in the first term, he had the House and the Senate. He did nothing. And so we can't just change the message, the messenger or be satisfied that the messenger looks like us. We can't have got the demand and insist that people who represent us at whatever level, they represent us from the city council to the Congress and what have you, that if you're going to represent us, represent us. And if you not get the hell out the way,
Wilmer Leon (52:55):
But Tom, so what do you say to those AKAs that are ski win and doing the electric slide behind Kamala Harris and saying, oh, no, no, no, you can't do that now. Oh, no, no, no. You can't say that now because you can't put that on her now because we have to get her elected. And if you play those cards now, you're going to put her in a very precarious position and we'll lose the opportunity to have the first woman as a president. So what do you say to them that will respond in that manner?
Tom Porter (53:30):
We don't need a first black woman president because she's black. It's like people who say people fought and died for the right to vote. That's a lie. I fought and I didn't die for the right to vote, not for the right to vote, but the right to vote for something and somebody that would represent me. And so as the old folks say, you might be my race, but you're not my taste unless you willing to do what the ancestors have done. The legacy that you've inherited is not a legacy of people who went along to get along. It's a legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer. It's the legacy of Dr. King. It's the legacy of SNC and Core. That's the legacy. And if you ain't in that legacy, then get the hell out the way. Whether you a KAI don't know nothing about Greek organizations because I'm gamma delta iota damn independent. But my point of it is, we could no longer listen to these kind of arguments. I mean, these arguments go slow, slow. They say go slow. I mean,
Wilmer Leon (54:43):
Yours will come by and by.
Tom Porter (54:45):
Yeah. But we are past that. The world is in a serious position. And last side, look, we're in the world whether we are talking about the environment, whether we are talking about violence in the street, whether we are talking about homelessness, whether we're talking about whatever we're talking about, black people are impacted about that. And if you ain't for that, then get back. And we have to say that. I mean, I have no problem with saying to people, including in my own family, now look, if you ain't going to do nothing, get the hell out the way. I mean, I say that to my daughters, my grandkids, my friends. If you ain't going to do 'em, don't come around me because that ain't my style. And my heroes were Dr. King and Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer. They weren't AKAs or Deltas. We didn't care nothing about any of that. And some progressive people were part of those organizations. But we can't, if she can't get elected on a platform that's a progressive platform than how is she going to govern as a progressive.
Wilmer Leon (56:02):
I want to thank my guests, brother Tom Porter. Man, thank you so much for joining me today.
Tom Porter (56:10):
It's been a pleasure, brother.
Wilmer Leon (56:12):
Folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon and Tom Porter. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow me. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links to the show below in the description below. And remember, folks, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here. Unlike a whole lot of folks, we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out
Announcer (57:05):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Covering the Conventions

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:15):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. There's a lot that's been going on this week. Both Biden and Trump failed to deliver during the so-called debate. Biden's obvious cognitive decline captured the news cycle over Trump's obvious racism, lying, and failure to demonstrate a command of the subject matter. After that horrific display by President Biden, Democrats are now scurrying around like rats on a sinking ship trying to decide if they need to rearrange the chairs on the Titanic called the Biden Harris campaign. Vice President Harris is angry that her name is not at the top of the list of potential Democratic party options to replace Biden. She has her surrogates now out and about asking if that's due to the Democratic Party elite not wanting a black woman at the top of the ticket. Well, that's true. Dems don't want a black woman at the top of the ticket, but that's not her problem.
(01:24)Her problem is wait for it, wait for it. Her. She didn't get 4% of the vote when she ran in 2020 and she was the first candidate out of the primaries on the Democrat side. African-Americans didn't even vote for her. Folks can't understand what she's talking about because she is the sous chef of the word salad. Anyway, all of that to say I'm on my way to Milwaukee to cover the Republican Convention, so we're going to be away for the next two weeks when the convention starts. Go to politics in color.com for election coverage that will be relevant to you and to your interests and concerns. That's where you'll find me. You'll find me in Milwaukee streaming over politics in color.com. So as always, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week except for the next two because I'm going to be preparing for the Republican Convention in Milwaukee where you can find me@politicsincolor.com.
(02:35)Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review. Please, please share the show. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Go to Patreon and please make a contribution because these processes aren't cheap to get into. This is where the analysis of politics and history converge. Talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again in two weeks. Follow me on politics and color.com. Broadcasting live from the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a good one. Peace. I'm out
Announcer (03:26):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Julian Assange and the Cost of Truth: How WikiLeaks Changed the World

Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube!
Our guest this week, Steve Poikenon can be found at his website here. 
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Dr Leon (00:00):
Now, usually I start this part of the show with a question or a few questions, but today I have to make a statement. After 13 years of either being held up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain, or being in Belmar Prison in solitary confinement, Julian Assange walks free. Why does this matter what led the Biden administration to finally come to its senses and accept a deal? Why should this matter to you?
Announcer (00:42):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Dr Leon (00:49):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the events and the broader historical context in which they take place. This enables you to gain a better understanding and to analyze events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issue before us is what's the significance of WikiLeaks and what's the impact on the freedom of the press? My guest for today's conversation is the host of AM Wake Up and Slow Newsday, which you can watch live on Rock Fin and Rumble, and you can listen anywhere. Podcasts are served. Steve Poin and Steve, welcome.
Steve Poikenon (01:51):
Thank you very much, Wilmer. It's good to see you not on the radio,
Dr Leon (01:57):
Man. Well, I have the perfect face for radio from what they tell me, and it's great to see you to be able to put a face with a voice. We've been talking for a couple years now, and it's finally great to be able to put a face with a voice. So footage tweeted by WikiLeaks, I think Julian Assange's wife showed him walking up the stairs onto an aircraft bound for Sipan in the US administered Mariana Islands. He has agreed to plead guilty to one count under the espionage act of conspiracy to disseminate national defense information. Steve, what were your thoughts when you first heard the news that Julian Assange was free?
Steve Poikenon (02:44):
I was a little stunned. This is something that we've discussed on and off over the last couple of years, and certainly in the last couple of months there have been substantiated rumors that the Biden Justice Department was preparing some sort of plea deal, whether or not the Assange team was going to accept it. That was the thing that we didn't have any certainty about whatsoever. They obviously have gone forward with accepting the deal. He should be, at this point, touching down or walking into the courtroom in the Marianas Islands says a lot about the state of the US empire that we even have a district courthouse in the Mariana Islands. That's just wild to me to begin with, but from the best that I can tell, and Wilmer, you may correct me if I'm wrong, from the best that I can tell, there's nothing in the initial plea agreement that says Julian won't be allowed near a computer or won't be able to access the internet.
(03:51)Can't give speeches or interviews or can't have documentaries made about a situation. So by all accounts, up to this point, it appears that when he walks out of the courtroom later in the next couple of hours, he will be a legitimately free human being, and that is a win in and of itself. I'm a father. I can't imagine being taken away from my kids for making the US government angry and then having to know that they're growing up without me. And so the ability for him to take part in raising his own children, I think is the biggest godsend out of all of this. And then we can get into the implications and the impact that this is going to have on press freedom and citizen journalism and everything else going forward. But the huge win here is that he's no longer an inmate in the Guantanamo Bay of the United Kingdom where he was being held with the worst criminals on the island, having never once committed any crime of any sort of significance that would warrant that cell.
Dr Leon (05:12):
Do you have any idea in terms of why the Mariana Islands other than is the closest space that will enable him then to go from there to his home of Australia?
Steve Poikenon (05:25):
I think that was the ultimate deciding factor was proximity to Australia. It's not like the US can't construct a kangaroo court anywhere, and it's not like if they didn't have a different provisional, different courthouse, they wouldn't be going through the same sort of performative motions in the eyes of the Biden administration. I think the guilty plea is the thing that they were looking for, something that they could make at least a political, if not a legal for, and then also to not have it be an election issue going forward.
Dr Leon (06:04):
And from what I understand, this is not precedent setting because this was the result. This is the outcome of a plea deal. This did not actually come as the result of a trial.
Steve Poikenon (06:17):
If they would've gone to trial and evidence presented and a conviction was rendered and then upheld by a judge, then it would establish a legal precedent because he pled and pled out to time served for what he'd already done. The only thing that it can be used to set a precedent for is politically, or I guess emotionally or spiritually, where people are more hesitant to approach national security reporting or classified information, talk about it, disseminate any of that. And that is I think the real ultimate goal of not just the Biden administration, but the Trump administration and ultimately the Obama administration from where all of this stems is to redefine journalism in the future.
Dr Leon (07:10):
I want to read from the paragraph from the Washington Post as they reported out this story, Julian Assange's plea deal, sparks global celebration and condemnation reactions were divided as WikiLeaks. Julian Assange heads to a US Pacific territory to cement a plea deal that could soon set him free. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange's tentative plea deal with the United States, which could soon bring an end to his years long international legal legal saga, drew celebration and criticism reflecting the divisive nature of his role in obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents. A couple of things. One is the condemnation side of this. The only folks that I can see that would be condemning this deal are people that are tied to the Trump administration, people that are tied to the Biden administration. I don't understand where they get this idea that there's all this divisiveness and condemnation.
Steve Poikenon (08:23):
There were the usual, the people you just spoke of, but Mike Pence was one of the loudest. There have been a number of former Trump administration officials and a number of former Obama administration intelligence apparatus and national security apparatus officials who have expressed distaste. This now and again, realize that to be opposed to this means you wanted to see a 50-year-old man, 51-year-old man get effectively tortured to death in a US prison for the rest of his life. That's what being in opposition to this effectively means. The reasoning behind it though is because information is currency. Assange and WikiLeaks were a broker of this information that wasn't part of the sanctioned club, and so Pompeo called them a hostile rogue intelligence agency, non-state intelligence agency. If you are viewed like that amongst the apparatus that's making the national security decisions, it doesn't matter what the end result is, if it's not your wholesale destruction, they're going to be displeased.
Dr Leon (09:43):
There's another paragraph. While Assange supporters saw him as a courageous whistleblower of government misdeeds, his critics saw him as a self-promoter oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause, oblivious to the harm that his leaks might cause. There has not been one shred of evidence presented to show that any harm other than embarrassment by Hillary Clinton and some of the other government officials who were identified through these WikiLeaks releases, maybe their egos were damaged. But short of that, there's been no harm. WikiLeaks publication of the Afghan War logs did not obscure the names of Afghan civilians who provided information to the US military and omission that dismayed human rights groups and national security officials. Who are they talking about? Steve?
Steve Poikenon (10:49):
Okay, so when they say that the harm that they're talking about, it's not just their ego, it's their ability to continue to spy on their friends and allies that was harmed. It was the harm that was done by letting people know what the US government is doing with our tax dollars and our names. But Wim
Dr Leon (11:07):
Steve, it's not as though the allies did not know that they were being spied on. Remember what happened with Bill Clinton and Angela Merkel's? I think it was the Clinton administration and Angela Merkel's cell phone. I mean, it's not as though we don't know. We don't know Israel. It's not as though we don't know that Israel is spying on us. I mean, it's the game that they play.
Steve Poikenon (11:31):
It is the game that they play, but we're not supposed to know. And the rest of the diplomatic core is all that operates on the pretense and the fiction that it's not happening. That everybody's there to politely try to sort out the ills of the world and that all of the espionage going on in the background is never to be brought up. It doesn't have to stop. You just can't talk about it. If you bring it to light, then the whole operation gets blown up. And that's why WikiLeaks is parent company is called the Sunshine Press. The whole point of it is to bring it into the daylight, that kind of stance from a political point of view, from a journalistic point of view that's going to get you targeted, which is as we saw exactly what happened leading to 13 years of illegal and arbitrary detention.
(12:29)Just one quick point to what you were talking about though, when you see major press outlets come out now in defensive Assange, these are, and you had mentioned it, I think even this morning, some of these instant outlets that are reporting on it are outlets that shared the same information. Are these guys then going to look at the plea agreement and go, golly, if Julian Assange isn't being charged as a journalist, does that mean that everyone who has ever shared a piece of classified information can be charged under the Espionage Act? Because Wilmer, I don't know about you. When I read the plea, when I read the plea deal, they're charging Assange as a private citizen. They're not charging 'em as a publisher. They're not charging 'em as a government contractor or a government employee. And those are prior to this, the only people that could get a charge for conspiring to disseminate classified information in this manner. So is that saying that Nick, the janitor or Dan the trucker or whoever your English teacher is now susceptible to Espionage Act charges?
Dr Leon (13:48):
Well, I think one of the reasons why they're not charging him as a journalist, because that was one of the issues that was being presented in his defense, is that as a journalist, he has the right to disseminate this information. So if they charged him as a journalist, then I think that would probably throw a wrench in their own argument. But to your point, one of the ironies here is when you read the Washington Poll story and the New York Times reporting out on this is that they were complicit in disseminating the information that he made available. Hence during the Obama administration, they called it the New York Times conundrum, and many say that the reason the Obama administration didn't charge him is because Barack Obama didn't want to open up that can of worms.
Steve Poikenon (14:45):
Well, certainly the idea that the Biden administration would try to with less competent people than were in the Obama administration is somewhat ridiculous. The only reason they could get a plea deal out of the guy is because they'd been torturing him for five years on top of the seven and a half, eight, almost eight years of being confined to one and a half rooms in the most spied on building in London, which is saying a lot because London has more cameras per capita than any other major city. But more cameras were pointed at the Ecuadorian Embassy than anywhere else in London for a very long time. That kind of constant surveillance is going to wreak havoc on an individual. And I got to tell you, Wilmer, it really did surprise me seeing the video, the very brief videos that we have seen of Julian, the last I had heard, he had been in very poor health. He had suffered a stroke or a mini stroke 18 months ago, 20 months ago, something like that. So to see him moving that rapidly, being able to stand walking
Dr Leon (15:59):
Up the stairs to the plane,
Steve Poikenon (16:01):
Being able to stand that upright when we had all been told that his back was wrecked and stuff like that, I'm really, really taken away by that. And I can only hope that he remains in that good of health or gets a little bit better shape from here on out because I was imagining the worst I was. And we haven't seen that. So that's very heartening.
Dr Leon (16:32):
This some will say is a very obvious question, but I think it still needs to be asked and answered Why this deal? Why now? Because when I look at, when I read the plea, when I see what the Biden administration got out of this, could have done this five years ago, he's out on bond. They could have allowed bond five years ago. He could have, instead of being tortured in solitary confinement in Belmar prison, he could have been walking the streets of Piccadilly Circus. So why now?
Steve Poikenon (17:14):
There's a number of different factors, and one is that it does get eliminated as an election year issue. Trump, regardless of the reality that he's the guy who had Julian arrested was able to successfully run on, we love the WikiLeaks. Have you seen the WikiLeaks? Can't get enough of the WikiLeaks. He was able to gain a lot of ground with that. So it is popular among Americans to want to at least think you have some sort of transparency with your government or think you might be able to have some sort of citizen accountability with your government, which is one of the benefits that WikiLeaks provided. So that's off the table, the Biden administration, because people have goldfish, brain can try to spin it as well. Donald Trump's the guy who had 'em thrown in jail and we're the guys who let him out. Well, you didn't let him out.
(18:11)You made him plead guilty to something he didn't do after torturing him for five years and threatening every one and everything that he held dear, that's coercion. That's not a liberation. That's coercion. That's not a victory in any way, shape or form. And I've seen some on the progressive left already try to be like, Hey, man, Trump locked him up, bite him, let him out because he forced him to plead guilty to something that he didn't do. I think we all just need to keep circulating that last part until it sinks in. But we discussed for a number of years on the critical hour how it is a huge problem for the Biden administration or any administration to have Julian Assange on American soil even if the trial takes place behind closed doors in the Eastern District of Virginia, because then you are really putting the press on trial in America for everyone to be forced to pay attention to. And that's something that not Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, definitely not Merrick Garland is capable of dealing with or quelling in a manner that doesn't look like a total brutal dictatorship. And that's what it was going to turn into.
Dr Leon (19:35):
We have been saying for a couple of years, the one thing, the Biden, for all of the discussion about extradition and all these appeals and the United States sending attorneys to London and going through the barrister and all of that stuff that they were doing, we kept saying, they do not want this man on American soil. They were trying to kill him through the process. Let's drag this thing out for as long as we possibly can and hope the man dies in Belmar prison. We were saying the last, in fact, I remember having a very extensive conversation with you where I was saying, I think the time has come for the Assange Camp to flip the script and take the deal. Tell Merrick Garland, we want to come to the United States. Please extradite us. We want to be on American soil. And we kicked that around for a while.
Steve Poikenon (20:41):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the last thing that any government wants to deal with is having all of its media suddenly turn against it. And in the US, even though the mainstream media is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state, there are people who are allowed to operate with a little bit more freedom. And those are the people who usually command the largest audiences because they're allowed to show a little bit of authenticity on mainstream airwaves, and people are desperate for that. So they don't want their press turning on 'em. They don't want free Assange banners every time they pan into the crowd at a sporting event. They don't want free Assange banners signs every time they go do a man on the street interview. They were in the worst possible position you could be having to make up your case entirely. And having a still somewhat engaged public to where they could mount not just a resistance, but a real jury nullification campaign and a real on the ground, real time education of exactly what their government is trying to do. Via the prosecution of Julian Assange, again, under the Espionage Act of 1917, we're going to take an Australian citizen with a publishing company, publishing outlet, registered in Iceland, give him fake charges in Sweden, imprison him in London and have a Icelandic FBI snitch, make up a whole bunch of stories about him, then recant his testimony. I think Aile, because that's the thing that happened. Pedophile. Yeah, a convicted, convicted pedophile.
Dr Leon (22:40):
And you haven't even gone through what we did as it relates to Ecuador and what we did in terms of the Ecuadorian election to be, now I'm drawing a blank on the president.
Steve Poikenon (22:51):
Lennon Moreno was more Moreno. Yeah.
Dr Leon (22:55):
We didn't even go through what the machinations that the United States went through to get Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Steve Poikenon (23:05):
Yeah. Or touch on the security company that was there at the embassy, uc Global, which was hired first by the Ecuadorian government to provide security then by the CIA via a spook convention effectively at one of Sheldon Adelson's casinos, who was one of Trump's biggest donors at the time, where the head of the security company wound up getting arrested, trying to flee the country after it was discovered that he had had this double dealing with the CIA. And then it was revealed that because of the illegal spying equipment morales's company had placed in assange's rooms at the embassy that led to a planning session with the American CIA where they were plotting out how to kidnap and murder Julian Assange. That was Mike.
Dr Leon (23:56):
They
Steve Poikenon (23:56):
Came to,
Dr Leon (23:57):
That was Mike Ell at the time. And so what folks, and you laying this out, what folks really need to understand is this is not some tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. All you got to do folks is Google it. It's there in mainstream press that this is what the United States went through trying. These are the illegal machinations that the United States government went through in order to try to get this guy.
Steve Poikenon (24:28):
Absolutely. And people feel certain ways about the gray zone or what, you don't have to read the initial reporting that Max Blumenthal did based off of the reporting that the Spanish outlet El Pais did. Michael Isikoff, two years later, 18 months later, Michael Isikoff through Yahoo News, did the same story, picked it up and took out some of the more poignant points so that he could fit it into a Yahoo story and put out that version of it. But it's there in several mainstream outlets everybody should know. Mike Pompeo tried to have a journalist and publisher assassinated or kidnapped and then assassinated just to prevent him from being able to testify in his own defense is all you can really assume at that point. You're trying to take him out while you have him basically captured. You want to make sure he never works a day in his life again, and you damn sure want to make sure that he doesn't testify because then it becomes part of a court record and then somebody can sue to have that court record or it'll be public
Dr Leon (25:40):
As a wrap up to this part of the conversation. So I never thought I'd see, this day I thought Julian Sal was going to die in Bell Marsh. What do you see as being the more immediate impacts to this as it relates to press freedom and journalism and some of the longer term impacts? And some of that, I know we won't really know until we hear from him, but your thoughts,
Steve Poikenon (26:10):
I hope it inspires people to kind of see where the new limits are, because most journalists have just been not necessarily holding back, but the amount of leak based journalism has basically vanished the amount of journalists truly going out there and trying to bring to light some major problems. Boeing comes to
Dr Leon (26:35):
Mind. Investigative journalism.
Steve Poikenon (26:37):
Yeah. I want to believe that Julian Assange breathing air again will be a beacon to people to do investigative journalism more often, better than they have been, however you want to frame it. I want that to be a spark that pushes the current boundaries and hopefully pushes 'em back a little bit because it's been relatively restrictive over the last several years.
Dr Leon (27:08):
There's another issue related to this. It was in consortium news, help us fight theocracy Psychological operations or PSYOPs are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations and groups and individuals. William Casey, the CIA director under Ronald Reagan said, we'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And what happened with Julian Assange, I think is a perfect example of this type of behavior by the American government.
Steve Poikenon (28:02):
It is. And if you look at the amount of government shenanigans that have occurred in the last four, five years since they yanked Julian out of the embassy, there we're seeing more and more lawsuits being brought against major pharmaceutical companies for vital information that they withheld during the last several years were we found out that a lot of what we were originally told about the January 6th incident, and a lot of what happened then was not necessarily true. There's been multiple court cases that have kept political parties from taking part in the American political process. They've kept, Lawfare has been levied against everyone from the aru, the Aru fellas,
Dr Leon (29:07):
Mali. Yes.
Steve Poikenon (29:09):
Yeah, I can never, I know, yes. Ella is something that is just not chambered for me. It's not. But from those guys to, like Alex Jones has been a victim of lawfare. Donald Trump has been a victim of Lawfare, and the entire time there hasn't been a really adversarial reporting outlet with the international foundation that WikiLeaks has with the international audience, that WikiLeaks has to mount a citizen and open source intelligence challenge to any of this and the myriad ways, not just through the restrict Act or the new antisemitism bill or a number of the different laws in Europe and Europe, has the internet been shrunk down significantly? But Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter stating that he wants to turn it into WeChat where your entire internet based existence is on through this one app. I would imagine that Julian Assange would have a lot to say about what Elon Musk has been up to.
(30:24)He'd have a lot to say about what happened with the WHO or the NIH over the last several years, but we haven't had that opportunity. And that to me is something that the US government can put as a Big W in their column. That's something that MI six could put as a Big W in their column and really goes right back to those forward documents where they were outlining the plan for what they wanted to do with WikiLeaks. They didn't get to scatter the organization to the winds the way they necessarily described 14 years ago. But when's the last time we got a WikiLeaks drop?
Dr Leon (31:07):
Well, and for folks that may not understand the significance of this, of course, it was the shooting of the civilians, the murder of the civilians in Iraq and the journalists in Iraq that were shot during the war. And WikiLeaks put that footage out for everybody to see the war crimes that were being committed. So if WikiLeaks had been allowed to continue to operate, I would think our understanding of Ukraine would be different. Our understanding of what's being done in Taiwan would be different. Our understanding of what's being done or trying to be done in North Korea would be different. We would have a lot more insight and information into the illegalities, whether they be international law, whether they be American law, whether they be war crimes, that the United States and its allies have been engaging in these various engagements around the world.
Steve Poikenon (32:15):
You're correct. And let's also recall that WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks alone disclosed the transpacific partnership. They were the outlet that that agreement came to. They published it, people looked at it and went, no, you want to do what? No, no. And those kinds of trade agreements being disclosed that were done in the dark, away from the eyes of the American public with zero opportunity for public comment or any sort of pushback that made WikiLeaks more dangerous in my opinion, then disclosing video of something that according to even the guys in the helicopter was like a three times a day event in Iraq. And it's something that people in the military kind of shrugged off like, well, yeah, that's what we do. But to the average citizen, it's shocking and horrifying, but not as shocking and horrifying as the United States government wants to set up a corporate court, and it will be a couple of CEOs that determine your future. And if you say something untoward about them on the internet, then they're appointed magistrates from the corporation will decide your faith. That's what the TPP was promising. And any outlet that is going to disclose information like that is suddenly become the most dangerous organization on the planet.
Dr Leon (33:49):
And when you said that, that I'm drawing a blank on his name, the attorney that sued ExxonMobil in Brazil,
Steve Poikenon (33:58):
Steven Inger,
Dr Leon (33:59):
Steven Inger, and how Mobil ExxonMobil was able to use a judge. I mean, they just flipped that whole thing. Don Zinger on behalf of the Indians in Brazil, sues ExxonMobil wins an ungodly amount of money, and he winds up going to jail and ExxonMobil because of what they were able to do with the judicial system in New York, it was criminal. So when you talk about a corporate magistrate, Don Zinger is what popped into my head.
Steve Poikenon (34:42):
And it was because of an agreement that happened during the Trump administration that that was even possible. And they basically dismantled the TPP, they put certain parts of it into different trade agreements and provisions, and then they got the quasi corporate court because the judge, I believe had been a former Chevron attorney. Correct. And that's how that may even be how he got his judgeship was Chevron bought his way into the judgeship. And that is kind of ordinary corruption, but it's ordinary corruption that also has multinational trade agreements codifying it. And again, in the absence of a WikiLeaks or an organization like it, disclosing these kinds of agreements on the regular, you're not going to get the rapid dissemination of that information amount, a successful pushback in time to stop it. You're not going to be able to get people on the same page understanding it because there's no trust with a number of these.
(35:48)All of these other outlets are so disparate, nobody's really consolidated in a way that will lend the immediate mass public trust in what you're doing. Like Lit WikiLeaks had built up over a number of years to the point that when 2015, they disclosed the tpp, people from all over the world held rallies immediately, and there were people out in the streets immediately, and it became an election year issue and it wasn't. And people had to change their tone on it and say to the point where Donald Trump even won a lot of people over by saying, it's a bad deal. It's bad. I don't want to be any part of it. Hillary Clinton had to answer for it. They all had to answer for it. On that debate stage back in 2016, it became a real issue. And so if we don't have these kinds of things moving forward, we're going to be in a significantly less informed spot than we were a decade ago. And in the internet age, that should not be how information is progressing.
Dr Leon (36:51):
And final point here, and I want to go back to this William Casey quote, and this is the former director of the ccia A and Ronald Reagan will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. And that takes me, you've heard me say this too many times, Edward Bernas and the book Propaganda folks, you need to get a copy and you need to read Propaganda by Edward Bernas because that's to a great degree what Bill Casey was talking about. And this whole idea, the whole idea of psychological operations, PSYOPs and the PS ocracy.
Steve Poikenon (37:47):
Yeah. And fifth generation warfare is an asymmetrical warfare conducted on the citizenry, and that's conducted via all elements of propaganda. We're 12 years into living in a reality, a post Smith month modernization act reality. When the Smith Modernization Act passed and went into effect, government propaganda, military propaganda, and government analysts and experts became part and parcel of the media the better part of a halfway through a generation's worth of 24 hour, seven day a week asymmetrical warfare where the vast majority of the people walking around don't even know that they're at war, let alone with their own government, nor that their own government openly declared war on them. That's how good the propaganda is. Everybody should study Bnes. Everybody needs to internalize that the United States is the most propagandized country on the planet. And the only way that we can get out of that is if we understand the landscape that we're standing on and we start to look at how not necessarily individual people that make up that landscape operate, but the institutions that allow for those people to move freely on that landscape operate. And those institutions, we've been shown over and over and over again to be untrustworthy, to be acting not in our interest, to be acting at the behest of not even people in their own country. And yet for some reason, we still get Berna back into thinking that you can vote your way out of an oligarchy
Dr Leon (39:44):
And so quickly am wake up slow news day. Where do people go? What do they get when they listen to it?
Steve Poikenon (39:50):
You can go to am wakeup show.com for absolutely everything. We are live Monday through Thursday from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM Pacific us. There's content on the channel pretty much all the time. We stream out live on Rock fin and Rumble, and then you can catch them pretty much anywhere and everywhere else. And yeah, just thank you so much for having me on. I really have always enjoyed our conversations. Very glad to do your show.
Dr Leon (40:22):
Well, I got to thank you my guest, Steve Kin, for joining me today. I greatly, greatly appreciate you giving me time out of your schedule, and I always look forward to the conversations that we have and look forward to having many more with you here on Connecting the Dots. Thank you, Steve.
Steve Poikenon (40:37):
Thank you, Wilmer.
Dr Leon (40:39):
And thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon, and Steve mentioned the Smith Mut Act, M-U-N-D-T Act. You all can Google that. Look it up. But simply put, for about 60 years that act prohibited the United States Department of State and the broadcasting Board of Governors from disseminating government produced programming within the United States over fear that these agencies would propagandize the American people. However, in around 2013, Congress abolished the domestic dissemination ban, which now has led to this big heated debate about the role of the federal government in free public discourse. Folks, stay tuned for new episodes every week and follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, make a contribution. We would greatly, greatly, greatly appreciate it. Doing this every week is not an inexpensive venture. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Follow us on social media. You can find all the links below to the show. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics and culture and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out
Announcer (42:20):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Russia's Nuclear Sub in Cuba: What It Means for the U.S.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Wilmer Leon (00:00):
There have been tensions between the US and its neighbor 90 miles to the South Cuba since 19 59, 65 years. Why? And are there indications that changes on the horizon or will the issues become more significant?
Announcer (00:27):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:33):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which these events occur. During each episode of this program, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. My guest for today's show is a Cuban American journalist, radio host, author, and host of RTS Direct Impact. He is Ricardo Leon Sanchez de Ronaldo, also known as Rick Sanchez. Let's connect some dots. Rick, welcome to the show.
Rick Sanchez (01:33):
Hey, it is great. Great to be here with you. Wilmer. Always a pleasure, doctor.
Wilmer Leon (01:37):
Did I get it right?
Rick Sanchez (01:38):
Well, yeah, you did. I mean, I don't use it anymore, but it's funny. I guess one point back in 1958, when I was born on July 3rd, my mother named me in little Guanabacoa, Cuba, a suburb just outside of Havana. The doctor said, what are you going to name this kid? He's ugly as hell, but let's give him a name anyway. And she said, Ricardo de San Aldo. So there you go. Is part of the history in Latin America, which I think is a great thing in our culture, you carry the mother's name for at least one generation. So when a woman marries a man and they have a child, that child will carry her name for at least that one generation. Whereas in our culture, you just throw the mother's name away.
Wilmer Leon (02:17):
Well, out of respect to your mother. So just a little historic context, because context for me is always so important. Cuba's ruler CIO Batista.
Rick Sanchez (02:35):
Oh yeah, the old Batist. You're
Wilmer Leon (02:37):
Starting there overthrown. He was overthrown by Fidel Castro, his brother, Raul Checo Rivera, and a lot of other folks in 1959.
Rick Sanchez (02:47):
That's correct.
Wilmer Leon (02:47):
This revolution had and continues to have powerful and profound domestic and international repercussions. Give us your thoughts on where the countries, the US and Cuba is today. Because for example, a lot of people don't really even appreciate the impact that this relationship has on us. Domestic politics.
Rick Sanchez (03:14):
Oh my God. Politics are fascinating in that sense. I don't think there's ever been a better example of a country that is being castigated more than Cuba has been castigated by the US government. No country in the history of the world has been sanctioned and castigated economically for a longer period of time than Cuba has. The United States has done everything possible for some 70 years to literally keep Cuba under its thumb, by the way. And Cuba's economy has paid for it drastically. Remember when I was in Cuba interviewing Fidel Castro in 1991 during Glas and Troika? I remember at the time that I talked to Castro and I asked him about what was happening. He seemed desperate. He had to be desperate to invite me to give me an interview on the island. At the time, they don't usually talk to Guanos. I am a guano.
(04:15)A guano means a worm. A worm is somebody who left the revolution and betrayed the revolution. But I left because my parents left. I mean, I was two years old when I left Cuba. But it's funny because I'll just say this, that era, that 1991, I go and I talk to Castro in Cuba, which was really fascinating. Then I go to New York and I talk to Gorbachev, and I asked Gorbachev, I was working as a correspondent at NBC, and I was assigned to go to New York to speak with President Gorbachev, and I asked President Gorbachev about Fidel Castro, and I said, you were recently in Havana. You and Mr. Castro apparently have had a falling out. He didn't even go see you at the airport. And Gorbachev stops right there, Wilmer. And he says to me, you know what your problem is. You know what the problem you have and the problem with all you Cubans, you're obsessed with Castro.
(05:07)Why are you asking me a question about Castro with all the things going on in the world? I don't want to talk about Castro. Next question. I was like, whoa. I couldn't believe he was coming at me like that. But it just shows. There's an old story if you want to talk history, and I wrote this once in one of my books. I said, let's see if I can quote myself here. Cuba was the slave of the Spanish, the prostitutes of the Americans and the child of the Soviets. It has always been taken and oppressed and used and mistreated by somebody. First, it was the Spanish. They broke from that. Then they got the Americans. The Americans really screwed the Cubans over in every way they could. Americans just owned 70% of the land in Cuba. Think about that for a minute. So it was easy for Fidel Castro to turn to these people back then and say to them, they own 70% of your land. You can't own a business here. They control the government. Batista works for the mafia, which he did. By the way. He was one of the most corrupt presidents. Literally, the mafia ran Havana. So when he says,
Wilmer Leon (06:20):
Watch the Godfather,
Rick Sanchez (06:22):
Yeah, the scene in Godfather two. So in the end, let me close with this. The US government, like the Spanish government, and in many ways, like the Soviets all used and abused Cuba. And to this day, Cuba is suffering the consequences of it because it's a sad place economically to go. And the US to this day is doing everything possible to punish Cuba and keep him under the thumb with an embargo that still persists. And they also have him on a list called the States that condone terrorism lists. There's only like three or four countries, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and a couple others. And I mean, really, Cuba, it's tough to be Cuba because of that.
Wilmer Leon (07:10):
So to that point, at the end of May, it was reported that the Biden administration eases some economic restrictions on Cuba. Private enterprises with no link to the government will be granted access to US banks and additional internet services. The Biden administration seems to have amended and clarified a number of sanctions against Cuba, allowing private entrepreneurs and businesses again to open US bank accounts. They portray this as increasing support for Cuban people. But we'll talk about what that really means. The acronym Micro and Deanna's impress us.
Rick Sanchez (08:10):
Yes,
Wilmer Leon (08:10):
Rick Sanchez. Small
Rick Sanchez (08:11):
Businesses. Small Businesses is what Businesses Small. Yeah, yeah, essentially. I mean, it's a bunch of acronyms. Too many letters for a very simple description. You're absolutely right. And you know what? I think the Biden administration did a good thing with that. A lot of people have been pushing for it. And what it basically says is the Biden administration is looking at Cuba and saying, wow, there's something going on in Cuba for the first time in some 60 or 70 years. Now, I thought what Obama did was fantastic. Obama was the first president, thank God, who came along and said, why do we hate these people? Why do we have to have an enemy that's 90 miles away because of something between Khrushchev and Kennedy? And Eisenhower? Man, that's been a long time. Let's turn over a new leaf. Let's start something new. And Obama allows the United States and people in the United States to start traveling to Cuba. Suddenly, Cuba starts doing really well. People in Miami start going to see their cousins. They're buying, they're trading. Suddenly the Cuban economy starts to show signs of life. It was all really good
Wilmer Leon (09:13):
Cruise lines.
Rick Sanchez (09:14):
What cruise lines, exactly. The whole thing had the promise of starting all over again. So let me attack that first before I tell you about the people you mentioned a little while ago. But we have these absolute morons in Florida politics in particular. You have some idiot named Marco Rubio, for example. You got another guy named Rick Scott. These guys, they live off of hate. The only way that they can stay in power is to make sure the people in South Florida vote for them. And the only way they think the people in South Florida will vote for 'em if they scare them into thinking that somehow Cuba is the boogeyman. It's a horrible communist country that's coming to kill and blah, blah, blah. And because of that, people in South Florida, even if they really deep down don't think that, and even if they really deep down would love nothing more than to be able to visit their mom and their dad and their brothers and their sisters, and to somehow create some kind of reproachment with Cuba, they're afraid to say it.
(10:18)So they say publicly, oh, I hate Cuba. It's horrible. Yay. Marco Rubio. They're afraid because they live in an environment in South Florida, which is run by the older exiles and by the Marco Rubios, where they think if they say that they're not going to get a job, they're not going to be hired. Nobody wants to be called a communist in Miami. So it's this vicious cycle that has continued for so many years, and it's the politicians who continue that. Marco Rubio went to President Trump as soon as President Trump came into office, and he said, here's what you have to do. Cancel everything Obama did. Kill it, destroy it. Make sure people are never allowed to go to Cuba, make sure families are not allowed to see themselves, et cetera, et cetera. And this idiot Biden went along with it. When he got into office, instead of going back to the Obama thing, Biden's been acting like more of a Republican than the Republicans. So finally,
Wilmer Leon (11:12):
Wait a minute, because he was playing to the politics in South Cuba,
Rick Sanchez (11:19):
In South Florida.
Wilmer Leon (11:20):
I'm sorry, south Florida. Thank you. Exactly. He was playing to the politics. Because if my memory serves me correctly, when I look at the demographic data of both Obama elections, when you break it out by age, the older Cuban Americans voted Republican. Their children voted. Obama did, which is why Obama carried Florida both times,
Rick Sanchez (11:57):
And they voted for Clinton as well. But
Wilmer Leon (12:01):
Yeah,
Rick Sanchez (12:01):
It's interesting that soon after that, to be elected president in the United States, you must go to Miami and say that you're an anti-communist and down with Castro, even though he's dead. But people still think he's alive. People still think Russia's a communist country, but whatever. That's another thing. And
Wilmer Leon (12:16):
Elvis, Elvis is still alive.
Rick Sanchez (12:18):
It's like, it'd be stupid, but
Wilmer Leon (12:20):
Whatever. In fact, Elvis and Castro are going to be in Vegas in August.
Rick Sanchez (12:26):
So you have to come to South Florida if you're running for president and say all these patented lines like a script. But then Obama said, okay, I'm going to say all that crap. But then when I get into office, now that I'm in my second term, you know what? I'm going to try and open Cuba back up. Nobody's had the intestinal fortitude to do that, and by golly, I'm going to do it. And he did.
Wilmer Leon (12:47):
Credit was that partially due to agribusiness, US agribusiness seeing a market in Cuba,
Rick Sanchez (12:56):
Which still exists by golly. But for some reason, Trump got rid of it because Trump does whatever he thinks some guy tells him, and he has a bunch of rich friends who are Cubans. So they told him, get rid of everything Obama did. So he did. And along now comes Biden, which brings us back to your point, and it's the me Pimas along. Now comes Biden and enough people get to Biden and say, look, there's actually entrepreneurs in Cuba right now. There's these young guys who are starting these small businesses, and they're distribution centers, and they're actually beating the government at their own game. You've got a socialist country and you have all these young entrepreneurs who are selling vacuum cleaners and clothes and water bottles and glasses. I visited them. I was just there the other day in Cuba, and I was amazed by what I saw.
(13:43)So somebody got to Biden and said, look, if nothing else, throw these guys a bone. There is right now, so many restrictions on any Cuban citizen. They can't use phones, they can't use internet, they can't use American banks. They can't trade with other countries. They are totally isolated, locked up. It's nasty in a horrible, one of the worst sanctions in the world. So finally along comes Biden or somebody in the Biden administration, and they open that up a little bit, and they let these entrepreneurs start to have banks in Florida. Good idea. Now, the other side, the Cuban government looks at this and says, well, wait a minute. But the way you wrote this, you say they can't have any ties to the Cuban government. So you're saying you're going to run an enterprise again in our country, but we're not allowed to monitor it.
(14:31)We're not allowed to tax it. We're not allowed to have contact with them. Go to hell. We're not going to do that. I mean, this is back to Batista again. You guys want to control the economy of our country. So when I met with Cuban officials in Havana last weekend, and I sat down with somebody from the president's office, but not the president himself, but one of the high ranking foreign policy guy, he said, look, here's how we feel about, because I told him, I said, look, whatever it takes, go along with it. This will be good for the Cuban people. And he goes, look, we want to go along with it, but we've got to protect ourselves too. I mean, we want to make sure that we at least have some say in this new system.
Wilmer Leon (15:13):
It is our country.
Rick Sanchez (15:15):
Yeah. See, that's where the thing is difficult. But you know what, in the end though, I think my bottles half full. I'm going to half full guy. I think this is a good thing. It might be a starting place, and it might be the beginning of something that could hopefully flourish and turn Cuba into what it should be. It's a beautiful island, a mecca for tourism where a lot of very successful people have come from. It's such a shame that it's deteriorated into what it's become simply because the United States was angry 70 years ago and has never stopped being angry and has now turned it into a political football.
Wilmer Leon (15:59):
First of all, it was the mob that was pissed 70 years ago.
Rick Sanchez (16:03):
That's true.
Wilmer Leon (16:04):
And so one of the things that I've been saying for a number of years, United States, if your game is as good as you says it is,
(16:15)Then alleviate the sanctions, remove the sanctions. Let the Cuban people see the benefit of the United States. And if your game is as good as you say it is, then stop sanctioning them. Because we know sanctions have never worked. All sanctions do is create a greater sense of nationalism because the entity in charge is able to say, your suffering is not my fault. Your suffering is their fault. They're the ones that are not allowing you to trade. They're the ones that are not allowing you to talk to your relatives in the united. All of that. So it creates a greater sense of them versus US nationalism. So I've been saying for years, just release the sanctions, let the Cuban people decide for themselves. Now, with all that being said, and
Rick Sanchez (17:19):
Let me just underscore here's where you're right, because what you're saying is by having sanctions, you give the Cuban government an excuse to fail, which they have taken. And most countries do. They say, well, and by the way, I mean they're partly right. How the hell can we succeed? We're not allowed to trade with other countries. We can't trade with you. We're not allowed to do business in the United States. We can't buy oil and gas from any of NATO countries or any European countries or any G seven or anything. So we're kind of flummoxed in not being able to succeed the way we should. Now, the Cuban government has also made its economic stupid mistakes as well, to be fair. But nonetheless, they do have that excuse, and it only exists because of the embargo. You're right.
Wilmer Leon (18:03):
So now my question to you, when you've talked to the Cuban officials, did anybody mention the National Endowment for Democracy? And here's why I asked that question, because what this whole, and help me up with the pronunciation.
Rick Sanchez (18:25):
No, that's right. Me.
Wilmer Leon (18:27):
What this whole thing sounds like to me is the NDA, the national end down for democracy. Like they went into Ukraine and Victoria Newland threw around a bunch of cookies to a bunch of Nazis, and they overthrew the Ukrainian government. This sounds eerily reminiscent of a tactic used by the NDA. We're going to fund Cuban small businesses. We're going to show them the wonderful benefits of democracy in the United States as we entice them to overthrow their government. Is that a concern that the Cuban government has?
Rick Sanchez (19:06):
It is, and it should be. But at the same time, speaking to you as a Cuban who has watched the history of this country for so many years, when you're eating dirt, anything becomes a sirloin steak. So at this point, the level of desperation in Cuba is so bad. I mean, I don't know if you've had a chance to go there, but recently I have not. I've ever seen it. The people are really hungry. I mean, nothing works. Everything's slow. There's no efficiency. I mean, it is down to a crawl in Cuba. And if they can at least have something that works. I mean, you compare it to Ukraine, but Ukraine is like one of the basket, the bread, the corrupt
Wilmer Leon (19:52):
Countries
Rick Sanchez (19:52):
In the world, and it has a good economy. The only problem with Ukraine was it was super corrupt, but the economy was good. There's billionaires in Ukraine. I mean, there ain't no billionaires in Cuba, my friend. I mean,
Wilmer Leon (20:03):
No, no. I only compare it to Ukraine in the context of the NDAs involvement in fomenting a coup. Because the president in 2014 was that Jankovich. Yeah, was in the eyes of the United States. Too close to Russia in order to, you're
Rick Sanchez (20:25):
Smart to say that. You're smart to say that. And I think you're right. I think we would be foolhardy not to consider that given our history, the United States of America, this country we love, but can't help but notice that our CIA goes all over the world and screws things up and abuses people and kills people, and assassinates people. They tried 13 times to assassinate Fidel Castro. I mean, they put poison in his cigar. They put poison in his diving suit. I mean, it's crazy. So yeah, we need to also remember and reconcile into anything. We look at exactly what our state department and our CIA and the administration, whatever administration it is, is capable of based on the history and what they've done in the past. That said, I still believe we should try and be optimistic about this and try and figure out a way to use good old fashioned ingenuity to make this work.
(21:18)And I think it's at least the beginning of an opening that didn't exist before. The problem is as soon as there's another presidential election, whatever's done that moves the needle forward will be pushed back because Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and all these other morons who could give a crap about the people of Cuba who are really the ones suffering, not the government, they could give a crap about those people. We'll do whatever it takes to squeeze the hell out of the Cuban economy even more just like they've done in Venezuela and in other places around the world, Guatemala, et cetera, et cetera, because they're mad at some guy who may have said something leftist. Its nuts. But that's actually what has taken place and what our government has done, as you well
Wilmer Leon (22:03):
Know. So the question that I posed is are there indications that changes on the horizon or will the issues become more significant? And the latter part of that question has to do with, last week, a squadron of Russian ships, including a frigate capable of firing hypersonic missiles, arrived in Cuba as part of an international partnership program. Now, that immediately took me back to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Rick Sanchez (22:33):
It was a show. It was Well, go ahead.
Wilmer Leon (22:35):
Go
Rick Sanchez (22:35):
Ahead. The genesis of that, you well know because I know you and I speak a lot and we talk about these things, but the genesis of that is that both Macron and President Biden intimated that they would be willing to use missiles, our missiles. They will give permission to Ukraine to shoot missiles into Russian territory. The next day, Putin picked up the phone and says, oh, so let's see. They have a country next to our territory. Guess what? We've got some friends next to their territory too. He picked up the phone and sent three ships to the Cuban Harbor. Why? To send the world a message that two can play that game. And essentially it's a tit for tat where Putin is trying to tell the US administration, okay, you got some missiles in Ukraine. I got some nuclear subs in Havana. Let's talk. By the way, we got more nuclear warheads than you guys.
(23:30)Do you want to start this thing? Let's go. I mean, it was like, oh my God and the world, and I'm sure there's a lot of bravado coming from Washington, but in the end, I guarantee you they kind of got the message. I almost get the sense there's already backing off going on a lot of NATO countries, and certainly half of the mps in the German parliament came forward and said, this is crazy. Stop this crap. No more weapons to Ukraine that can be used to shoot into Russia. That can start another world war that we are going to have to pay for, not the Yankees, not the Americans. So I wouldn't be surprised if the genesis of that, which led to that, which what you just mentioned, is the three ships in Havana, is what may be causing a little bit of a slowdown now in the Ukraine push, especially on the part of many members of the European community.
Wilmer Leon (24:22):
There you go. So what does that say to you about the empire? What does that say to you? Because 10 years ago, going back to the Godfather, I'm drawing a blank. I'm going to Des name. When the Turk hit the Don and they said 10 years ago, could we got it? Could we have gotten to the Don like that Soso, when Soso hit the Don 10 years ago, could we have got the Don is slipping, so is the Don, the us, is the Don slipping because 10 years ago, Vladimir Putin couldn't have made that play.
Rick Sanchez (25:08):
No. Let me just say this, and it's a two part answer, I think. One, I think if you ask the average American in the United States, should the embargo be lifted, I think 90% of them will say yes,
Wilmer Leon (25:21):
Absolutely.
Rick Sanchez (25:22):
They think it's silly.
Wilmer Leon (25:23):
Absolutely. If
Rick Sanchez (25:23):
You ask the average young American under 30 or something and tell 'em they can't go to Cuba unless they fill out 19 forms and get a special visa and all kinds of crap, whatever
Wilmer Leon (25:35):
It is, or fly to the moon and get a flight from Southwest from the moon,
Rick Sanchez (25:39):
They're going to say, why? What's the difference between that and Mexico? That and The Bahamas, Cuba's right next to The Bahamas. People go back and forth between The Bahamas and Cuba every day, and they're fishing together and stuff. So it makes no sense. It's silly. So two things, A, as time goes by, younger people will look at this and think it's just ridiculous, shameful and foolhardy. Two, when I spoke with Cuban officials in Havana last weekend, and we were sitting in the hotel bar, and I asked the ambassador, the guy who used to be the ambassador to the United Nations Kabana, who's an interesting man and very guarded, and I said, are you guys going to play a waiting game? And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you know what's going on in the world? The Western powers are now being pushed back by Brazil, which is your friend by Iran, which is your friend by
Wilmer Leon (26:32):
Russia, Venezuela, your friend,
Rick Sanchez (26:34):
Right? China, which is your friend. So suddenly you have all these allies who've created these interesting consortiums which are fighting back against the western power, which have always had you under your thumb. So does that make you look at things a little differently? And he just kind of smiled at me and he said, we're playing by different rules now. And I said, okay, we'll leave it at that because I don't want to get myself or you in trouble. So I get a sense that they know that and they think that could be a reproachment as well for the island.
Wilmer Leon (27:11):
And for people to really understand, they have to understand the development of bricks.
Rick Sanchez (27:16):
Of course,
Wilmer Leon (27:17):
They have to understand a number of the leaders that the United States labels as dictators and labels as anything but a child of God. President Xi Jinping is traversing the world and is a respected diplomat. Vladimir Putin traversing the world a respected diplomat. Nicholas Maduro traveling. He's sitting in Iran talking with President. Well, now the Supreme leader, these guys are being recognized internationally as diplomats. Tony Blinken is considered a goon.
Rick Sanchez (28:11):
Yeah, it's funny the way things have now developed, and we are seeing a world that's changing, and I think that the world order for lack of a better term is not what it was before. And Cuba is really, I think, in a unique position. I mean, here's an island with 11 million people that's 90 miles away from the United States and has had a 70 year torment of economic sanctions and resistance against it. And suddenly it's in a position where it can finally make peace with Washington. Or it can tell Washington to go to hell and say, you know what? We're going to be a part of B bricks. We're going to be a part of the global south. We're going to be a part of all of these things, and we don't want anything from you anymore. We think we can get it over here, especially if there's a change in currency or in the monetary policy that these guys are able to adjust, which
Wilmer Leon (29:05):
They are in fact implementing. Look at the deal between India and Russia. India is buying Russian oil based on the ruble, which by the way, Joe Biden said he was going to turn it into rubble, but that's now one of the top five fastest growing economies in the world.
Rick Sanchez (29:28):
Well, but the thing is, the thing that look bothers me about all of this, and I think it probably bothers you too, is just the all out hypocrisy. I'll give you an example of something that happened overnight, just within the last 24 hours. The Chinese have apparently come up with a fantastic ev. I drive a Tesla. I love EVs. I think apparently they've come up with something that they make for 20 to 30,000 less than what I paid for my,
Wilmer Leon (29:55):
I thought it was 15. They make it for 10.
Rick Sanchez (29:57):
Yeah, it's crazy. They're making, and it's a great vehicle. It's fantastic. So they basically said, we want to introduce this car, this Chinese car, the Chinese technology into Europe. And the Europeans are saying, no, screw you. We're not going to let you do it. You want to put your cars in here? We're going to give you a 40% tariff, 38.7 actually, but pretty close, man, that's almost half. That means if they sell a car for $20,000, they really have to sell it. People there still have to pay 40 plus be the administrative fees and everything else. The tariff alone is brutal. It's punishment. So yesterday afternoon, Beijing announced it's going to start considering putting tariffs on all pork products. Now, the Chinese eat more pork than anybody in the world. 50% of the pork that's eaten in China comes from Europe. So the Chinese are now telling the Europeans, okay, you want to put a 40% tariff on our cars and our technology? We're going to put a 40% tariff on the pork, the pork Spaniards, which by the way is where all the 50% of the pork eaten in China comes from Europe. And 20% of that comes from Spain. So the who's going to get screwed? The poor farmer in Spain who has the pig farm. So the whole thing is cyclical. But my main point in that story is I thought that we were the country who pushed for democracy and free markets. Free
Wilmer Leon (31:21):
Markets,
Rick Sanchez (31:22):
Where
Wilmer Leon (31:23):
The fuck, the invisible hand let the market decide winners and losers. Adam Smith told us that.
Rick Sanchez (31:30):
Right? It goes back to your point about Cuba. It's like we say, well, we don't like Cuba because it's a communist country. So we do everything possible for them not to be able to compete in the free market. And then we say, we believe in the free market. Well, if you believe in the free market, you got to let China play. You got to let Cuba play. And you can't say, I don't like how they smell, or I don't like their policies, or I don't like their system of government. Everybody gets to play, right? That's what the free market means. Oh,
Wilmer Leon (31:59):
And by the buy, just really quickly, the United States made the conscious decision to export its manufacturing to China. We de-industrialized. That's true. The United States
(32:17)Why? For cheaper labor. Why for greater profit? Now, what we found is the Chinese have found a better way to beat us at our own game. Once you learn how to play the game, then you got to learn how the game gets played, and we can't break that code. I got it. My brother, Rick Sanchez, thank you so much for joining me today. I love you, man. You're a great guy and a great friend and a great golf partner. Well, you are too kind. You probably just need to get out more. Hey folks, thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me. I'm a great guy. I'm a great friend. I'm a great golf partner, according to Rick Sanchez with me, Dr. Woman Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You'll find all the links below in the description. Go to that Patreon site. Please make a contribution because, hey, I got to pay Rick. It ain't cheap. Anyway. This is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis. It's just chatter. We don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wimer Leon. Have a great one. Peace and blessings. I'm out
Announcer (33:54):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Eugenics Refuses to Die

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Wilmer Leon (00:00):
Let's play a word association game. When I say eugenics, what comes to mind? What does it mean? Is the opposition to critical race theory a eugenics construct? is eugenics alive and well and still impacting our culture? Does eugenics influence the character portrayals in movies that you see in commercials? And what are your children being taught in school and why?
Announcer (00:35):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Wilmer Leon (00:43):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which most events take place. During each episode of this podcast, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic and the broader historic context in which they occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that are impacting the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is eugenics. Is it a warped pseudoscience of the past or is it still impacting how people view each other? My guest is a historian and journalist whose work documents deconstructs and interprets eugenics themes in popular culture, identify formation among African-Americans and reproductive apartheid in carceral spaces and within marginalized communities. She's the author of In Search of Purity, popular Eugenics and Racial Uplift Among New Negroes, 1915 to 1935, and Pop U, popular Eugenics in television and film. She is Dr. Chantel Sherman. Chantel, welcome to the show.
Dr Shantella Sherman (02:19):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Always.
Wilmer Leon (02:23):
Before we get to your work as a researcher and historian, let's talk about your work as a researcher, historian, and journalist. You're the founder of the Acumen Group and you're also the Acumen Group, publishes Acumen Magazine. What is the Acumen Group?
Dr Shantella Sherman (02:43):
The Acumen Group is basically an institution where we are training, it's a nonprofit where we're training folks to deconstruct the things around them, specifically related to eugenics, but also related to race to the world around them, how we construct identities not only racially, but within our families, within our nation, and how we view and observe the worlds around us. So the goal with the Acumen Group was to take what it is that we have in institutions and do a trickle down, or I like to say like a sprinkler system, so that every person has the ability to actually see what it is that we're studying, know what folks are saying when they create policy, understand the dynamics that go into creating policy and the power that they have to change it. But since most people aren't comfortable being in school anymore, or they figure once they reach the 12th grade, then that's it. They stop reading, they stop, I'm having conversations. They stop really engaging with the process of life. And so the goal is to tool people up, first of all, by making them comfortable with being in classrooms again, being armchair historians and armchair politicians so that they understand the world around them and then giving them the tools to actually go out and change the things that they need to change.
Wilmer Leon (04:06):
And Acumen Magazine, how often is it published? Where do people get it? What's in Acumen Magazine?
Dr Shantella Sherman (04:14):
Acumen Magazine came about because we have students, a lot of students who once they got the information, they were on fire. They really wanted to be able to tell this information and represented it and reproduce it. And so we created the magazine as a quarterly. It is student led, it is student produced with me at the helm doing much of the graphic design and the editing. But it is students from around the globe at this point that showcase their research. It is dialed down in a way that it's journal quality, but in a rather popular and inviting way of reading it. So it's more like a magazine, even though it feeds like a journal.
Wilmer Leon (05:00):
One of the things that has stood out to me, as you and I talk about all the work that you're doing, all the research that you're doing, all the presentations, it seems as though, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. It seems as though there's a lot more interest in your work abroad as in Europe than there is here in the United States.
Dr Shantella Sherman (05:24):
Yes, it's the quick answer. I think that there's a real passion across the globe, but specifically in these European spaces, because even though eugenics took off here in America, and I think it was the perfect laboratory for the pseudoscience, it in fact originated in Europe. And so the concept of how to create better people, the concept of how to nation build it comes from them as part of the colonial mainframe. And so it's that colonizing empire with its tentacles. But how do you manage people that you consider to be less than, to be inferior, to be the world's workers, to be low on the totem pole? How do you manage them? And so Europeans are still looking at this in other ways. They never stopped the eugenic mainframe. They never stopped the cogs and the wheels from spinning. And so when we look at things today, and I know we'll get to this artificial intelligence or people talking about genomes and helping with medicine, creating the medicine that you need based upon gene pools and gene sets, these are all tentacles and legs of the original eugenics movement.
(06:45)And so if we don't understand what that is, then the folks in Europe understand it. And so they're courses, they're college courses are designed to fit around this, whether it's law, whether it is political science, whether it's journalism, they understand that eugenics is still a part of the conversation. So for instance, Francis Go, who's considered to be the father of Eugenics, his original laboratory, the Eugenics Records lab, those societies are still very much in existence under different names. So the original Eugenics Institute under Francis Galton has now been renamed, and it's called the Adelphi Forum. And they're still having meetings early or as late as 20 23, 20 24. So part of, again, what the Acumen Group does is we send researchers, or I will attend myself, and we go in and we listen to how eugenics is now being talked about, or genetic research is now being talked about in a rather deconstructed way, so that folks are studying what happened, for instance, with Covid trying to determine through blood types or through environment who was more prone to having contagions.
(08:07)And that way it's no longer about the survival of the fittest, about who can survive different catastrophes and disasters based upon the help of science. Because if it's survival of the fittest, when the smoke cleared according to data, 63.7% globally of the folks who died from covid or complications from Covid were white people. So it makes sense that you then want to try and figure out if survival of the fit is about white people dominating people of color, but you have a pandemic come through, and the majority of the folks who passed away from this epidemic pandemic were white people. How do you explain that in a scientific way? So you'd start to study them all over again. So again, that's that eugenic tentacle still reaching out the way it does.
Wilmer Leon (09:00):
So let's take a step back and start with a definition of this pseudoscience known as genetics, known as eugenics. And after you define it, explain why it's a pseudoscience.
Dr Shantella Sherman (09:16):
Perfect. The term itself came about roughly 1840, though folks have believed that you could create or build better people or better societies through reproduction probably since the beginning of time. So the idea was that you can, in the same way you manufacture or manipulate the DNA, we weren't using the term DNA then, but germ plasm of plants and animals. You want to breed in certain things and breed out certain things. We believe that some point in this country and across the globe that you could actually do the same thing with people. And Francis goin took this science to a different level. And at the time it was considered a science. It was a bonafide science. The theories were that in the same way that you reproduce height and weight and hair color and eye color and things like that and pass them on to your children, that you could also pass along your characteristics.
(10:15)So they were stuck. There was a gene for lying, there was a chromosome for stealing. It is the belief that if you mix this type of person with this type of person, you'll end up with these type of children. And the belief eugenically was that these genes sat for generation after generation after generation. So if you had a great, great grandfather who was a criminal, that criminality was in your genes and the genes of your children, and that it was just one thing that would potentially push it on out, or in other instances it just manifested itself. So we know it to be a pseudoscience. All of the theories were fallible because if that was the case that meant that we just have a world full of criminals, we would have a world full of liars. And it's not to say that this, to some extent we don't, but these are things that can't be set aside.
(11:13)One of the things that is really defining about eugenics as well is that poverty is considered to be in your DNA. So this is the reason why, again, when we start talking about social sciences and reform work, the belief is that if you are born poor, you're going to stay poor. If your parents were burden on society, you will be a burden on society. If you had a child born out of wedlock somewhere along this family tree, that that immorality is in you and therefore you have to be watched, monitored, segregated, kept from doing things that other Americans do or other British do or other whomever do, because there is a discogenic taint, if you will, a contamination to your gene pool. And so that's where we get the marriage laws that are restricting folks. So we get segregation to restrict people from coming together.
Wilmer Leon (12:12):
So as a part of this, and I say this all the time, and usually people look at me, the whole construct of race is an artificial construct. Race does not exist. Racism exists because that is a thought process based upon the artificial construct of skin color, hair type, nose type, all of these types of elements that we attribute to race. That's an artificial construct grown out of the whole eugenics. Pseudoscience.
Dr Shantella Sherman (12:56):
Absolutely. And the reason why America became such a tremendous laboratory for the quote science at the time, is that Africans came over looking like traditional stereotypical Africans, very, very dark in complexion, very broad noses, very thick lips. And by the time you get to emancipation, you need eugenics to go through and measure noses and measure the thickness of lips because skin color is no longer attributed necessarily to white or black. You have enough black people who are, their skin tone is light enough that you cannot tell them from a white person,
Wilmer Leon (13:37):
Hence passing.
Dr Shantella Sherman (13:39):
Exactly. And there were enough at this point that you end up with your Dred Scott Case with your Plessy versus Ferguson with people saying, how can I identify this person as black when I can't by the naked eye see that they're black? And so we start to attribute within the eugenics mainframe things like 60 or 70 different measurements that every American at some point has to go through, whether it's through the school system, the public health system, which is just being birthed all around the same time. And so you have these folks like Frederick Hoffman who was a statistician who worked for Prudential Life Insurance, which is still around, who literally came up with a 330 page manifesto. He called it an article, I called it several volumes, but it was about who the Negro was and his health deficiencies and why black people as a whole did not deserve life insurance or health insurance because they were naturally predisposed genetically to cancers, to calamity, to disease, through filth, and just we were immoral, and it was our behaviors that created the discogenic bodies, the unfit bodies. So eugenics is the science of the fit over the unfit. And when you understand it that way, you also understand that there were as many, at some point as many white people who had to deal with this concept that they were not white enough. And so understand that any white person, when we start getting into things like the Racial Integrity Act, any white person who is not white enough is automatically classified in the black column. All right? Anyone who's not white, 100% white is now considered to be black.
Wilmer Leon (15:34):
So this takes us to the whole discussion about the one drop rule, and if there's one drop of black blood in your body, you are black. And in the south, particularly, I want to say Louisiana, but it might've been other places you had designations such as quadron, which meant you were one quarter black terone, you were one eighth black. That's where a lot of these designations came from. And I think it's important, I think for people to understand that if you're trying to construct a society that has in it a racial hierarchy, that white people are at the top of the pecking order, and black people are at the bottom of the pecking order, that white people are the dominant black people are the servant, then if you're trying to construct and maintain this type of social order or what you and I'll call disorder disorder, then you need this type of pseudoscience as the mechanism of proving or validating these warped racist theories.
Dr Shantella Sherman (16:44):
Absolutely. And within that same mainframe, Wilma, also understand that because you have so many people who at this time could be classified as mixed race, I could be classified as mixed race at this point based on the fact that I'm not dark enough. But then there were qualifiers that were put into place according to skin tone, even within darkness. So I think that you see the film cast, it touches on eugenics so briefly that I went, but that wasn't their purpose. That's okay. But the reality is you also had these qualifiers attached to different skin tones. So the closer a person was to whiteness, it was also debilitating to that black person.
Wilmer Leon (17:32):
Why do you say, wait a minute, why do you say whiteness and not just white? Are you being grammatically correct or is Oh,
Dr Shantella Sherman (17:38):
Yeah, I'm
Wilmer Leon (17:39):
No, no, no, but or is there a differentiator between, because when you say whiteness as opposed to just saying white, what distinction are you drawing?
Dr Shantella Sherman (17:54):
When I say whiteness, I'm taking on the character. I'm taking on the tone. Thank you. Not just the physicality of it. Thank you. I'm also taking into consideration the mentality of it. So sometimes I use film so that you'll get this, the Birth of a nation, the fear was not about the dark-skinned person that you could know and identify. It was all of a sudden about this mixed race, black person who gets into the White House, who gets into, I want you to pay attention to where I'm going with this. Who gets into Congress, who gets into these places where he does not belong? And so all of a sudden there's a different level of fear that says, if this person who I can't necessarily identify as black, black, see, we started out as docile and lazy and these characteristics, but all of a sudden you mix the parents, white man, black woman.
(18:48)Then they're ledgers that I read that say things like the lighter the person is, they take on the sinister qualities of the white master who produced this person. So all of a sudden he's crafty, he's diabolical, he's a rapist because he's taking on his daddy's quality. So in the birth of a nation, what did the woman say? This is a fate worse than death to have a black man touch me and rape me the way his father, this white man has done previously. This is a part of that white character, eugenically showing itself in this now mixed race, black child, the virtue of white women basically is code. You're putting a mirror to those genes. And basically the fear was these are not just enslaved people or newly emancipated people. These are the sons and daughters. In many instances of the whiteness, the power structure that has been there.
(19:49)So if you're telling me that eugenically within the DNA, all of those things that have been experienced and lived experiences and in the DNA and in the germ plasm of the oppressors are now in their offspring who are free to do whatever it is that they wish to do on the face of the earth, and they have the mobility to move about, all of a sudden this fear is driven into the average white male that says, now I have to be concerned not just with my children, my black children having sexual contact with the white children that I don't want them to have contact with. But I also have a fear that my children will have the type of sinister character that would allow them to elevate themselves in a way that corrupts genetically, socially, medically in every possible way, these children that I'm looking to protect in the first place.
(20:51)And so you end up with, I sometimes call it a schizophrenic nature of racism, which is I must protect, there's a fear of me dying or being annihilated. And so you end up with folks like Starter who's talking about the rising tide of blackness. You're talking about fear of losing genetic power, but if this is survival of the fittest and you are superior, there's nothing in my black jeans that could possibly contaminate you. That's just not possible. So it's not logical, it's not scientific in any way, but it has become the social and medical mainframe for what we do under racism.
Wilmer Leon (21:39):
In your work, you have the ABCs of eugenics, and we don't have time to go through all of them. So folks, go to the acumen group.org, dot com
Dr Shantella Sherman (21:57):
Org.
Wilmer Leon (21:58):
Go to the acumen group and.dot org. So for example, you have the American Breeders Association, the first national membership based organization promoting Eugenics. Talk about just quickly, the American Breeders Association and breeding out and cultural lag, these kinds of constructs and ideas that this whole thing was built around.
Dr Shantella Sherman (22:28):
Well, I mean the American Breeders Association, it was about breeding cattle. It was about breeding animals, farm animals. But the belief was, again, if I can breed out certain things in my animals, why can't I breed them out of my children or the community around me? And so the American Breeders Association understand that they were the first informal university, I would say, because most people were farmers. We were in an agrarian society. Everyone was still building and growing. And so what comes out of that are your beauty contests. So when you had your state fair, you would have the American Breeders Association sponsoring it, and they would have the section for the fattest calf and the biggest cow and the nicest squash and the best tasting cherry pie. And then on the other end, they would have the baby contest, the fitter families contest. And the idea was, if you're going to have this much control over everything else in your environment, why wouldn't you also have that same level of control over your household and over the people around you?
(23:35)And also Wiler, it sets up this thing where we do this all the time without thinking about it, you can go down the street and look at a person and them based on how they look. And I'm not saying, oh, his shoes are run over. You look at the face and you say, oh, his eyes are too close together. There's something wrong with that brother. Or Look at the slope on his head, or his lips are just way too big. Or We do this unconscious, we don't think about it. But these are all those eugenic theories and thoughts that were brought down to a playground level, if you will. And we went through this thing called the ugly laws, where anything that didn't satisfy our eyes, we could then conscript to being unfit. And so people who wear glasses, people who weren't wearing braces at this point, so if your teeth were not quite the way they could be, if your ears were bigger than folks thought they should be, you were nicknamed, you were bullied, you were pushed aside. Usually your teachers or nurse or doctor would say there was something wrong with you when really there wasn't, and you were then segregated from the rest of the children because you were an eyesore.
Wilmer Leon (24:49):
That takes me to, in your ABCs, there's language, and I'm glad you put it at the playground level, because there's language that became adopted into our dialogue that had to do with, I think the word is infirm, putting people in institutions, institutionalizing people. So words such as feeble-minded words such as retarded hearted. There were classifications that were associated or ascribed to people. And again, a lot of that language has become common parlance, but there was eugenic constructs tied to this language.
Dr Shantella Sherman (25:37):
Eugenics birthed that language, and I keep saying it did not exist in that way beforehand. You may have said this person a little slow or we're going to put the dunks cap on 'em, that type of thing. But you still saw that there was value in the person. You wouldn't segregate them from the rest of society or from the village or from the town. This was just the person who was a little slow. They still, for the most part, went to the same school. When eugenics enters into the frame though, what it says is that if other children see this, they will believe that this is normal, and we need to determine not what is natural, but what is normal, what we will and what we will not accept. And so you get terms like moron, idiot, buil, and within those high grade buil, low grade buil, medium grade buil, and each one of these was based upon iq.
(26:27)And so you have early IQ tests. At the time, there was the term test, you had the Goddard test, you had different social scientists and psychiatrists who were coming in and basically saying, if I give this child this test, it shows that they have the aptitude of a two to 3-year-old. If they're in that range, then we're going to say that there are moron. If they have an aptitude of four to a 5-year-old, we're going to say they're an idiot. And you keep going up this way. The problem is not everyone's going to school. Not everyone is in the same region. So I mean, as of
Wilmer Leon (27:05):
20 agrarian cultures did not see the need for advanced mathematics and science and reading. You don't need that to bale hay. You don't need that to chop cotton
Dr Shantella Sherman (27:18):
Wilmer. When I do the research, I find that organizations like the four H Club was originally a eugenic organization.
Wilmer Leon (27:27):
Wow. Did not know that
Dr Shantella Sherman (27:29):
The goal was to keep all of the people who were migrating. See, black people weren't the only ones migrating from the south because this became an economic imperative. You also had white people migrating from the Midwest into these other areas. But when they did, they lost the character of the Midwest and they started doing things. They started doing way too much drinking, way too much partying. The girls went wild. They lost their biblical way, they lost their American way. And so the goal was to give them something that would make them stay in the Midwest. They'll make them shun all of the other stuff that's out there. So you started saying, the folks out there are unfit and you are fit, and you live from the land. And so the goal was to make sure you had four H folks who understood you are America. And so when we look at the IQ test and your SATs and your acts today, all of these eugenic tests were originally designed for the Midwest. And that's why folks outside of the Midwest do the worst on the test because
Wilmer Leon (28:32):
No, wait a minute, I didn't know. Now I've taken the LSAT, I've taken a lot of these tests. I did not realize that there was a geographic basis or higher that I did not know people from the Midwest do better. Why do people from Iowa do better on the exam than people from California
Dr Shantella Sherman (29:01):
Easily? Because the person who designed the test was in Iowa, creating it with the folks in Iowa so that they set the rubric. This is his name is escaped. VP Franklin, the historian who did this great piece about the test is designed for the dog. He said, A cat and the dog kept tapping each other and whatever. The dog wouldn't move. The cat is popping him in the head and running around. The dog is just sitting there. And it's like someone would say that that dog is lazy. No, the test is designed for the dog. The cat is the one with the problem, but you focused on the dog ignoring him. The cat is the one over here losing his mind. The goal is to change how you frame things. How are you looking at things? And so again, Wiler, you have to take a step back from everything that you're looking at and just kind of deconstructing and pull it back up. As a black man, if you go somewhere and you're defending your wife, they say, oh, he's brave. Depending on where you are. If you're a black man in the Midwest and you're defending your wife, I don't care from what it becomes. If it's a squirrel that runs out across her, then he's an animal abuser. Okay? It's all in.
Wilmer Leon (30:18):
He's a squirrel hater.
Dr Shantella Sherman (30:20):
He's a squirrel hater. Get him. It's all in the examination. Masculinity and manhood are defined by patriotism, Americanism fighting the rugged cowboy. It's all of that. When you see a black man stand up, he goes to save the day. They say, why is he looking like that?
Wilmer Leon (30:39):
Why is he so aggressive?
Dr Shantella Sherman (30:41):
Why is he so aggressive? He could have shot one bullet instead of 20. But you don't say that to Arnold Schwarzenegger, come on. How many times can you kill him? It is that. And so you start to pull back from all of that. Why are your children being suspended more than others? All children. It used to be you had psychiatrists, psychologists that would say all children begin to rebel between the ages of eight and maybe 12. And then again, when they hit a growth spurt of 14, 15, 16-year-old child, teenager is one of the worst animals to have to encounter because nothing is logical. Everything is either too much or too little. We used to understand that they're teenagers and they're doing teenagery things. All of a sudden they become criminals depending on who they are. And as the nation and the world becomes majority minority, many of the things that were once considered just to be the trappings of life, this is how people grow. This is a part of what children and teenagers do. They rebel a little bit. This is Jimmy Dean and all of this, all of a sudden that's out the water. It becomes, they're a menace to society. They are dangerous. They are aggressive. They're taking the funds of the nation. It's a waste because the people are a waste.
Wilmer Leon (32:09):
So let's go to, because you mentioned Jimmy Dean. I think rebel without a cause was the film. And I remember when my son was in high school, I had to say to him more than once, look, you can't do what your white friends do. You can't get away with the same things they're going to get away with. The police will come and take them home. They will come and take you away. So you need to be sure that you can't fall for that Okie-doke and the banana and the tailpipe trick.
Dr Shantella Sherman (32:46):
Exactly.
Wilmer Leon (32:47):
Right. Exactly. So you have a book called Pop You EU popular eugenics in television and film. And again, you mentioned Rebel Without a Cause, and Minister Society was the other term that you used, which is a very popular film. So how does this whole eugenics dynamic play itself out in the commercials? In fact, let me just, this is a very long-winded way, but to show my age, I remember when I started seeing interracial couples in commercials. That is a relatively new phenomenon. Folks younger than me, my son, he sees it as normal. When I first saw that, it might've been the Cheerios commercial with the biracial child, the father, the African-American father is on the couch. The biracial child comes and pours Cheerios on him while he is laying on the couch. And that child was obviously biracial. I lost my mind. What am I seeing on television? Because before that, there was no way in the world that you were going to see, particularly an African-American man with a biracial child. That had to mean the mother in terms of this dynamic was white. Oh my God, no. So that's a very long-winded way of me,
Dr Shantella Sherman (34:34):
Wil. No, but you're very right. It's a quick turn. It is been a very, very quick turn. And it's not even as if it's being presented the way it would stereotypically be presented. Again, you have to understand, this man is in the house. He's not, I don't want to mess with him because oj, this isn't something that's volatile. This is something that's very relaxed, and it normalized. It kind of evened it out. Those who had problems with it were ostracized. And
Wilmer Leon (35:03):
Of course, but a lot of people had serious, oh, a lot of folks, they took that commercial off.
Dr Shantella Sherman (35:13):
But what you do is you keep pushing against the breaker. You keep pushing against the breaker. And so one of the chapters that's coming up in the second volume of Pop U, which would be out later this year, it looks at the interracial dynamic and how you can now popularize this to a point where not only is it accept it, but it's lauded. So the series 9 1 1, you get a character like Angela Bassett leading the show who has a black husband starting out who comes to her after 20 years and says, I've been hiding the fact that I'm gay and I don't want to be with you anymore. And then enter this wonderful fire chief who's tall and blonde, and he's given all of the John Wayne in a modern context, and he's overwhelmingly in love with her, and he falls right into place. And everyone was like, oh, it's such a brilliant dynamic. And all I keep saying is, I actually love the show. I love the content, but could you have saved her husband? Could you have left an actual black family intact?
Wilmer Leon (36:28):
And why do you have to be gay? But this interracial, the introduction and the acceptance of the interracial then brought us into the LB two dynamic.
Dr Shantella Sherman (36:48):
You get to the first episode, this happens in the first episode, Angela Bass and this, and I can't, Athena and her husband. This is episode one, Athena. So if you're going to watch this, you're going to grow into this, and you're going to love the characters so much, it breaks that eugenic mainframe open. And I can understand why you have these old traditionalists who are literally watching television saying, it's garbage. It's the left. It's these people that don't, you're feeding us this garbage. They're going deep. But you're right, everything becomes, you have a lesbian couple there who's adopting biracial kids from a white drug addict. They threw in everything except the eugenic asylum. They put it all right there and then made each and every last one of them heroes. So every week you, yay. And they then the fight. So now it becomes normalized, not that it wasn't already happening around you in the first place. So is life imitating art? Is art imitating life? Who's fueling what? And so my thing is, so long as you can find a way of making sure that all sides are represented positively, you may be okay, but that's not necessarily what's been happening. So back to your original question with this, you can go back as far Sidney porter and the blackboard
Wilmer Leon (38:13):
Junk. Oh, I would say that who was coming to dinner to
Dr Shantella Sherman (38:17):
Be a waste?
(38:21)Well, in the heat of the night. So again, I think that he was the original testing ground. All of the isms in our society went through City 48 because he was beautiful and dark and upstanding, and they put him in a good looking suit. And he went in and he did the work. So you can do in the heat of the night when you're talking about whiteness and you have a black man standing in a room where there's a white girl having sex on the top of graveyards in the cemetery with indiscriminate men. And the fight is, why did you let my little sister say that? She's basically a whore in the presence of that black man. How dare you? We all know she's not right, but you made her say it in the front of him. You can't do that. So we're going to skip all of these other reasons why her whiteness is in question. And now the fault is on the white police chief for allowing a black man to understand she ain't really white. All of these are built into that Hollywood mainframe, and when you pull 'em apart, you kind of go, wow.
Wilmer Leon (39:31):
It's interesting that you, well, two things. One, blackboard jungle wasn't that set in London?
Dr Shantella Sherman (39:37):
No, no, no. That was the other one to start with. Love.
Wilmer Leon (39:41):
Oh, to start with love. Okay. Right.
Dr Shantella Sherman (39:44):
I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Wilmer Leon (39:45):
Well, Sidney Poitier, not African-American. Does the fact that particularly at that time is one of the reasons or one of the factors that enabled him to have those roles was because he was an African-American. Because we know at that time that foreign blacks were given much more latitude than African-Americans. That's why, for example, there were many African-American musicians that changed their names to foreign sounding names. I can't remember the brother, but there was one musician that used to wear this turban. The brother was from Cleveland, I think, and he used to wear a turban so that the promoters of the shows would think he wasn't from here, and then he would have more latitude. But you're saying that had nothing to do with Sidney Poitier.
Dr Shantella Sherman (40:55):
I think with him, he may have been slightly different. One, visually he fit the optics. And again, I think that you had a whole series of directors and producers at this point that were really trying to push the envelope. So I think originally in the first book, I deal with the fact that you have Sidney Poitier doing three different films that are dealing with discogenic children, the bad children, the teenager thing. So you get the blackboard jungle first, and then 10 years later you get to serve with love where he's in England dealing with British kids. And the first one, he is one of the students like Gordon General, he is one of the throwaways and they're calling them waste. Now, the concept of human waste, that's eugenic. There's certain people that should not be born. There's certain people who are burdened on society, and what you do is you put them in a garbage can and you have the school system sit on the lid all day so that people, you're babysitting, but you're not to teach them anything because they don't have the capacity to learn.
(41:53)The second one, you get British students, but it's Sidney Poitier teaching young white girls that you don't do the things that they were doing in the film. He's teaching manhood to British white kids. So once again, you're like, but it's him. And then the third film is a piece of the action where you have him back in America in an inner city, and you'll see the difference in how the children are viewed and what happens when you put Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby in front of these discogenic black kids in the middle of Chicago. How do you place them at that point? And so all of these things optically, what are you saying? Where are you trying to go with this? And so what are you saying about these kids? Are they still throwaways? And as they talk
Wilmer Leon (42:44):
About the objects, I want to be sure if you could spend just a couple minutes on, because I think a lot of times folks will look at these films and they don't realize what they're looking at. They don't understand the optics.
Dr Shantella Sherman (43:01):
Anytime you find a particularly dark-skinned man, see the darker person is the closer they are to their primitive ancestry. So anytime you get a beautifully dark black man and you put him in front of a screen, what the average person is looking for in this country is someone who's scratching their head and Yael Boston and scared and running, and whose eyes get big Manan Morton and someone who has the capacity of a child, he will have to be saved by whoever is the white hero because he doesn't have the capacity to think, to learn to do anything, but still scream and run. But you put Sidney Poitier in there, again, being beautifully black and eloquent and having integrity. Notice in each one of these films, Sidney Poitier is coming in unquote whiter than the white person that's in the film. He's coming in, they're more educated than the white people in the film.
(44:08)He's coming in as a sex object in many of the instances that you start to see. And that was not just taboo. It was literally turning the eugenic theories upside down. It literally cut out the bias. It slid it. And so it made you have to think, am I judging the elevator operator because he's doing something else? He actually has a brain. Am I conscripting people to places where they actually have a capacity beyond what it is that I'm seeing? If he's this dark and he's this brilliant, he has this type of mind and he has this type of integrity, and he has a wife and children back, and he's making money and all of these other things. And he attended college understanding everything that we're seeing in television and film was going against the reality of what was in front of people. That's the other thing.
(45:07)It's fantasy. It was fantasy. So all of a sudden, if folks don't have the capacity to know the difference between what is real and what is imagined through Hollywood, and all of a sudden I start giving you beautiful dark men who are brilliant and bright, I start giving you black women who have integrity and who are business women and who are matriarchs of their household and don't curse and beat their kids. And I'm walking around with the on welfare and this, this, and this, and all of a sudden you start to look at the people around you and realize you've been in fantasy land for a long time. The people around you really are wonderful and brilliant and American and all of these other great things.
Wilmer Leon (45:50):
Guess who's coming to dinner 1967. So this is a year before Dr. King is assassinated. Sidney Poitier. Talk about that dynamic in, and I think Spencer Tracy plays the father of the woman, the white woman that Sidney Poitier falls in love with.
Dr Shantella Sherman (46:12):
Well, and the whole thing, women becomes hokey after a while because it's almost as if they're preaching to you. Spencer Tracy is like, and as we go through the annals of history and just like, right. I love the fact though, in this film that you have the older black characters. You have the maid saying, you know, ain't got no business up in here with this girl coming into a house like this. Years ago, it wasn't even that you would've gone into the back door. You'd have been swinging from a tree. You ought to know better. And because you can't separate that,
Wilmer Leon (46:45):
You have to know your place.
Dr Shantella Sherman (46:47):
And I really did not like the fact that you had his parents, Sidney Poitier's parents are trying to warn him off like, listen, I didn't like that. Because it's like, in reality, those warnings are real today. Oh, absolutely. Hey, you watch where you step, right? Again, you don't do what they do
Wilmer Leon (47:06):
Well, so take us with that, because I wanted to try and show some type of lineage here. So where are we with this today? Because a lot of people would think that eugenics and how it manifests itself, that was then, we're not really seeing that. Now. You touched on it with 9 1 1 and all, but give us some examples of, because you spend an awful lot of time researching in terms of what we're seeing today. How is it manifesting itself today
Dr Shantella Sherman (47:43):
At the pendulum, wil, we quite frankly, you can swing too far in one direction and then it flips over. The reality is that many of the eugenic theories that we started with, we still have, we call them by different names. We don't say that a person is an idiot buil all of that anymore. What we say is their sub normal. We say that they need an emotional assistance program within the school. We say that we don't want to segregate them out, but we're going to find a way of pulling these things together. So even I
Wilmer Leon (48:18):
Think it's called a EP and alternative educational plan.
Dr Shantella Sherman (48:21):
Absolutely. But you keep everyone in the same space. And even the rubric is not really, it's still a eugenic rubric. Do you have both parents in your house? What is the income of the household? It's all of these other things that go back to what we call the three Ds. Delinquent dependent. What's the other one? Delinquent dependent. I always get to that last one.
Wilmer Leon (48:48):
It'll come to you.
Dr Shantella Sherman (48:50):
Yeah. All right. But it's the three Ds that most school systems, most medical systems use that determine how the child will fare in the school. But they start using this rubric when the three or four, and this is the reason why you have three year olds being suspended and expelled from school. They don't listen. They're aggressive. They're throwing tantrums. That's what three year olds do. But now there's a pathology that's attached to it. And so when you look at, yes, if I look at things like the cloning, because we moved into transhumanism and people go, oh, this AI and all of this other stuff, these are just fancy terms so that you don't understand that that original theory, survival of the fittest and white gene power and all of this, covid showed you something. So you're getting television shows where you're talking about cloning people, you're talking about orphan black, you're talking about AI integrated into things. You're talking about, we need to build better humans externally, because internally, white women are not having babies, and when they do, they're having non white men. Okay, the
Wilmer Leon (50:02):
Browning of America,
Dr Shantella Sherman (50:03):
Right? The browning of the world, right? Say there's a reason why they're calling London Stan now, because everybody, these aren't immigrants coming in. These are births in the nation. And so all of a sudden the culture of the nation is beginning to shift. So what we want to do is start having the people who would normally clean the streets or do other things. We have machines that do this now. And so what you're doing is creating a poverty class where folks won't be able to do anything except what you want them to do. And so we are getting back, you can't put 'em in asylums, but you can't put 'em in ghettos. You can't put'em in counsel housing. And so you start to understand that the television is starting to help you do this. You're getting different films about when we create better people that can assist us with being more human, you have more time to be human and go to yoga and do this other stuff. If someone else is doing the thinking for you. That becomes problematic in a number of ways. But what it does supposedly is secure your cells, your good cells, that fitness, because you're now being outnumbered.
Wilmer Leon (51:19):
I'm not even sure how to frame this question, but in listening to what you've just said, it ties to a conversation I was having yesterday in that we seem to be moving away from the collective to the individual with the iPhone and the iPad. It is a whole lot more about me as the individual and what satisfies me as the individual. I remember seeing these dance parties where kids will go with their iPods, listen to music in their own ears, in a group of people. Everybody's listening to different music. Everybody's dancing the same rhythm. Everybody's dancing to different rhythms because they're listening to different things. And this is supposed to be a party. I don't even know if that ties it, but that just came into my
Dr Shantella Sherman (52:21):
Head. No, but it does, because again, when I'm speaking of the term outnumbered, when we talk about transhumanism, the belief is that society, the world is going to basically at this point, because the good, the fit have been outnumbered by the unfit. Those who have the least ability and capacity to raise children are having the most children. Years ago, you would sterilize these folks, you would strike 'em as an idiot, em basil, you put 'em in an asylum or at the public health center for a couple days, you would sterilize them, do full hysterectomies or surgeries for the men, and then you let 'em back out on the street and say, okay, you can do all the damage you can do in your lifetime, which won't be long based upon your behavior, but you will not reproduce this foolishness into another generation. We're going to stop this. They're still doing this in prisons, by the way, today. Alright, so that's first and foremost. But what starts to happen is it's not that you want to be individual in and of yourself, you also want to be a celebrity. So everywhere you go
Wilmer Leon (53:26):
Likes taking
Dr Shantella Sherman (53:27):
Pictures of yourself,
Wilmer Leon (53:29):
I have to be liked.
Dr Shantella Sherman (53:30):
And then you can't function when enough people don't like it. But I've seen people sitting at a table and everyone's taking pictures of the food they're eating, the food they're drinking, they may look over at each other a little bit, but you all are family and you came together, but you're not even having conversations. So you're in a bubble by yourself and your own self. It's all
Wilmer Leon (53:50):
About this,
Dr Shantella Sherman (53:51):
Right? You're in a bubble by your own self and you can't relate. The mainframe is also speeding up so that I'm feeding you so much information at one time that you can't focus. And since you can't focus, it means it's doing something internally to you as well. At some point, Wilma, we may talk about the Rosetta Effect. Alright, go
Wilmer Leon (54:13):
Ahead.
Dr Shantella Sherman (54:16):
And this is one of my champion causes because it's about size and it's about weight and it's about happiness. Back in the 1950s, sixties, the country was trying to figure out where the healthiest spaces in America were, and they found that it was a little community upstate New York called Rosetta. And when they got there, they were like, this doesn't make sense. It was mostly a Italian spot, and everyone over there was just gargantuan. These are some big people.
Wilmer Leon (54:42):
This sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. No,
Dr Shantella Sherman (54:44):
No, no. And I don't mean I shouldn't say it like that, but it was the men had bellies out in front of them. The women were B, and people were short and styled. Some of 'em were tall, but based upon the eugenic theories, these should be the most unhealthy people with hypertension, diabetes, heart conditions, just heart attacks waiting around the corner. Their BMIs were just ridiculous. They got there, they started testing them, and they realized, yeah, they just eating crap. They eating prosciutto and ham and cheese and melon walking down the street. One guy says, I want to die with a meatball in my mouth. And they did that right? And they just, Kiki can and laughing and drinking a lot of wine. What they concluded in the study was that the people felt safe, they felt loved, they felt nurtured. They felt respected. The old people lived into their nineties and hundreds because they had people looking out for them.
(55:42)The children felt free to walk around in their neighborhoods and they had other people looking after them. And the middle aged, the birthing folks realized we have a community that will look after our children to keep them safe. We used to have that in the south, even under the duress of the lynching tree and other things. And that's why the lifespan was as long as it was, even though we were eating chitlins and hog malls and whatever else, it wasn't until the duress of society comes in and starts telling you, you're too this. You're too that. You're not enough of this. This is what causes this. This is how you get to that. You're not enough. They're giving you too much of this. And that is what we are dealing with. Now, within three years of the study coming out, we came in, America came in and told them, you don't want to live up underneath your grandparents all your lives. Sell the house and put them in a home. Send the kids to daycare. They'll get behind in school. They started feeding information to them about being more American. As soon as they became more American, guess what? They
Wilmer Leon (56:44):
Started dying faster.
Dr Shantella Sherman (56:46):
Hypertension showed up. And so the eugenic mainframe right now with transhumanism is going back to this and basically saying, you need yoga and water and to rest and music therapy and chelation and all of this. And the truth of the matter is, let the robot do the heavy lifting and you just live. Let the machine carry the baby.
Wilmer Leon (57:10):
Let me give you what I think is somewhat of a parallel here. The first time I went to Iran, I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel. When we weren't in meetings and lectures and whatnot, we would sit in the lobby of the hotel and drink coffee and interact. I saw all these women with surgical tape on their faces, Muslim women with surgical tape, and it was just odd. So after about the second or third day, I turned to my interpreter, I said, Ali, why am I seeing all of these women with all this surgical tape on their faces? And he tells me that Tehran is the nose job center of the Middle East. And that fairly wealthy Muslim women come to Tehran to get their eyes done and get their noses done. And I said, Ali, that's insane. These women are beautiful. And he says, yeah, but they're reading Western glamor magazines and they want to look like women from the west.
(58:41)So I'm in this interview, I'm on this television show on press tv, and the host asks me my thoughts about, I was there the first time I was there for 10 days, and he asked me my thoughts and I says, well, let me tell you something. I says, you guys, you don't have to worry about General Schwartzkoff. You got to worry about Colonel Sanders. And he says, excuse me? I said, based on what I see your adopting of the Western aesthetic is for your women. When that three piece in a biscuit hits, you guys are done. Hypertension, obesity, diabetes. I said, once you get a taste of those additives in American food and that salt hits you, I said, America will take you over in a minute.
Dr Shantella Sherman (59:45):
It's a wrap. It's literally a wrap. I mean, when we have folks right now, if you go the next time interview are out in the streets, go into the nearest target of Walmart, go down the aisle, not for cosmetics, but for things like deodorant and lotion, they're now putting additives in that specifically for melanated skin. And the goal is to bleach your underarm. Pitts. The goal is to lighten your skin as you're putting on your lotion. So it's not listed as a skin bleacher, but the combination and compounds that you would actually lighten your skin with are now in soaps, deodorant, lotions, anything that you can think of. And it's for every part of your body. Understand what I'm saying? And so I'm thinking, who really needs this?
Wilmer Leon (01:00:42):
Is that where this whole, because I've noticed these new commercials with the total body deodorant. Is that where that's coming from?
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:00:50):
That's also a part of it. Yes. Come on, come had baby soda since you've had life. So come on. Say that again.
Wilmer Leon (01:00:58):
You've had
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:00:58):
What? Baking soda. Oh,
Wilmer Leon (01:01:00):
Right.
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:01:00):
Everybody said if you were worried about sweat, I mean, come on, sweat and odor. We know how to deal with this. Again, country folks, you've been Virginian and lower. You got it. So the fact that you're now creating through Suave and Dove and shame motion, every brand now has something that, and they call it melanated. They're letting you know this is for people who are brown, who don't want to be brown anymore. This is for folks who don't want to be to appear unfit. They're now girdles for your feet. They're now, you want a smaller size foot. We got some tape and stuff that we can wrap your feet in so that you get a smaller size shoe. It's bizarro, but fit over unfit.
Wilmer Leon (01:01:51):
The Acumen Group is we could talk, well, you and I, we go through this for hours. The Acumen Group, you're holding your first annual eugenics conference in the United Kingdom in October. Talk about that. Give us a little bit of that, please.
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:07):
Well, we're still pulling all the logistics together at this point when we're, but I'm grateful to God that we're celebrating our 10th anniversary as of this year. 2024 is also for us, the 100 year anniversary of a lot of the eugenic legislation that came about in 1924. And it's still occupying spaces in the parameters of our policymaking today. So we are partnering with a number of universities in,
Wilmer Leon (01:02:35):
Well, wait a minute, A minute, just So in 24, you had the Eugenic Sterilization Act, you had the Racial Integrity Act, and you had And Immigration Go ahead.
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:45):
And the Immigration Act.
Wilmer Leon (01:02:47):
Okay,
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:02:47):
So those three and two of the three came out of Virginia right up here where we are. So one just basically limited the number of immigrants that can come into the country. The second one said that anyone within a state that's considered to be socially inept and or mentally inept through those IQ tests and measurements can be sterilized for the better of the country. And then the third, the Race Purity, race Integrity Act basically said, once again, there are only two races. We aren't going to do Mongolo and Caucasoid and all of that. There are only two races, white and non-white. So even that praxis understanding that today when someone says black people are 20 times more likely to have X, Y, and Z, they aren't necessarily talking about black this way. They're talking about non-white. And so you really have to get to a point where you learn how to read these studies if you're going to repeat the information in them.
(01:03:44)Alright, so the goal, the universities, the goal is to get all of these wonderful students from around the globe into one space, along with working scholars and the public to sit down and talk about the tentacles of eugenics and how it's become a sprinkler system. And it's still very much alive. It's still very healthy, it's robust, and it's right in front of us, but we don't necessarily recognize it. So we want to give a platform to scholars, to students, and to the public, the general public to come in, learn a little bit, share information, and go away with workable tools to combat this when and where we see it.
Wilmer Leon (01:04:23):
And for those who want to get more information, where do they go
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:28):
To the website? www.theacumengroup.org. You can visit us on all of the social medias, either as Dr. Chantel or as the Acumen Group.
Wilmer Leon (01:04:40):
An Acumen is A-C-U-M-N-E-N?
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:45):
Yes.
Wilmer Leon (01:04:46):
E-N-H-C-U-M. Hey, don't say I'm feeble-minded, please. I just can't spell. Don't do it. I went to Catholic school so I can do math.
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:04:57):
Don't do it.
Wilmer Leon (01:04:59):
Oh wow. Doctor Cantella Sherman, as always, you bring it. You brought it as you always do. Dr. Chantel Sherman, I have to thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr Shantella Sherman (01:05:12):
Thank you. Always a pleasure. Anytime
Wilmer Leon (01:05:15):
Folks. Thank you all. So much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, review, share the show. You can follow us on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. Please go to that Patreon link and make a contribution so all the assistance that you can provide will be greatly, greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or you would like to suggest show topics, please make those suggestions as you communicate with us through the links below with your comments to the show. Remember folks, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you allall next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out
Announcer (01:06:22):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.