Equity Rising S1 : Episode 6

Black Love & Sustainability with Kamau Franklin; Atlanta, GA

Self-determination was one of Malcom X’s key principles, and it’s a driving force behind Atlanta-based Community Movement Builders. Episode 6 brings you into the mind of founder and board president Kamau Franklin, who’s spent the last twenty years building systems and support for youth education, sustainable urban development, and more.

“If we feed people, we’re also going to tell them why they don’t have food,” Kamau told Trae as they spoke together intimately and openly during Trae’s recent visit to Atlanta. Kamau is also an advocate of unity without uniformity, and this is an invigorating discussion for all who believe that Black people have the power to govern their own destiny, to serve themselves, and to own their communities—whatever that might look like for them. *Please note that Equity Rising will be on a short break through the holidays after this episode. We look forward to reconnecting in 2021.

This week’s Chime In features Cashayla Rodgers.

This episode was produced by Linnea Ingalls & Julia Drachman and edited by Josh Berl.

Transcript

Laura Sullivan Cassidy  00:03

If we feed people, we're also going to tell them why they don't have food, says Kamau Franklin of Atlanta's community movement builders. I'm Laura Sullivan Cassidy, one of the producers of equity rising. And on this episode, TraeAnna Holiday and Kamau and get into the ideas and practices of self determination, which is all about Black people creating the political environments that directly relate to their destiny. Taped person in Atlanta, Trae and Kamu's conversation goes from gardens to prison, from sustainable urban communities to elected officials. With Trae's Pacific Northwest vantage point to Kamau's in Atlanta, which he explains is unique within the American South. This episode brings to life another important idea, unity without uniformity.

Trae Holiday  00:56

This is another episode of equity rising with me Trae Holiday I am elated to be bringing on Kamau Franklin of community movement builders, welcome Kamau.

Kamau Franklin  01:09

Yay. Thank you for having me on.

Trae Holiday  01:12

This is so exciting for me, because again, when I was researching, you know, we're looking at you know, equity changemakers across the nation and came across community movement builders. And I tell you, I was like they are doing the work. So thank you so much.

Kamau Franklin  01:27

Thank you. We tried, we tried to do work. So we appreciate any support and help in any media, we can get to sort of make sure the folks can hear about the good work that we are trying to do. So yes, thank you again.

Trae Holiday  01:36

Absolutely. Well, I love to start off with the first things first, before we get into it. How are you taking care of yourself?

Kamau Franklin  01:43

Well, I guess you know, I have a family, I'm married, I have two young ones, even though I'm a little older, but I still have two young ones of eight year old and a five year old. So I take care of myself sort of like by taking care of them, particularly my two little ones. And so the playtime, just the exchange and all that kind of stuff is sort of revs me up to continue doing the work I do it obviously makes me physically tired. And so I need lots of naps. But that's the kind of stuff that just keeps me going for, like all the other things that I do. And I think you know, even having some small victories here and there as you do this kind of work, because work is a struggle. It sort of makes you think about if you can only reach that next step, which you can really do in terms of the work that you're trying to build out for.

Trae Holiday  02:20

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's great to hear that you have a good resume working, I found that COVID really hits us differently, right. And so when we ask that question, we get such a wide variety of answers. Because right now, so many of us that are on the front lines are in the trenches with this work, particularly equity work right now is just huge. So it's like the ask on our time is a lot. So I love hearing that you have a great regimen. People are struggling just to hold it together. I mean, we all are in certain ways, no one anticipated this kind of lifestyle for a whole year. And again, in our case, our kids were supposed to start kindergarten and third grade. And they're essentially at home, they are doing virtual learning, which really means homeschooling so it's a it's a new lifestyle. It's something that no one asks for. But I think we all have to make these adjustments. And you know, part of our work is making sure I would say that, again, this is a maybe a pandemic that couldn't necessarily have been predicted. But we do know that the government response has been crazy, outrageous. And it speaks to the positioning of our people, particularly Black people in this country. In terms of that, you know, we are the ones who are getting the most infections, we're the ones dying at higher rates, we are the frontline workers who are out there doing different things, that's another communities of color. So you know, people definitely need a way to sort of come down to relax to chill, and in some weird ways to try to take it all in stride, if it is at all possible because people have lost a lot of loved ones. But you know, hopefully at some point, we'll come out of this with some better knowledge about how we should treat ourselves and each other and maybe some closest to the family. So I'm gonna have an uplifting message of hope before you know, there we go. Absolutely. I'm an optimist myself. So I take that in wholeheartedly into the heart of this. I mean, community movement builders, you've been in this work for many, many years doing a lot of different things. Let's hear a bit about the background of you as an activist and your work and how you took that work into community movement. 

Kamau Franklin  04:18

Sure, sure. I am a longtime activist, which is a good way to say I'm old, right? So I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. In my past, I've done a lot of grassroots organizing, probably starting about 22 years old for like about 30 years. I've been organizing with grassroots organizations doing everything around police brutality, work or doing freedom schools, organizing on the block, know your rights workshops. I later did my master's degree and became a lawyer and from being a lawyer. I did police brutality, cases civil rights cases, criminal cases, a lot of that had to do with the quote unquote, movement work we were doing in New York. And when I got married and moved out of New York, I continue that work. I lived in Jackson, Mississippi for a couple of years. Did organizing around getting folks elected as campaign manager, again, organizing on the ground, and eventually led me back here to Atlanta. And I started this organization because I wanted to continue my passion for grassroots community organizing, which I think is the thing that we most need as a people to sort of pull together our folks into some organizational efforts to fight for self determination to fight for our rights and resources. And only we only us as a people can bring that forth and make that happen in a way that brings us dignity and our rights and again, self determination. So that's why we started community movement builders have been around for about four or five years. And I would divide our work up into two areas. One is grassroots organizing, where we do work around the issue of police brutality and gentrification. We sit in a neighborhood in which you've been so kind to come out to Atlanta, that's Southwest Atlanta, that neighborhood is called Pittsburgh, and is one of the last intact Black communities in the city of Atlanta. Atlanta, which is governed by Black electoral leadership, has decided that it will take that power of the Black electorial leaders and team up with white economic elites and decided to gentrify the city and move most Black people move a good portion of Black people outside the city, particularly poor working class folks. And so we fight to make this neighborhood or keep this neighborhood as Black as affordable, as welcoming as possible, then we also do work around the issue of police brutality. A few months ago, folks may already know that Rayshard Brooks' brother was killed at a Wendy's here in Atlanta, that's no more than a mile away from where this community house is. And so since that time, we've been really sort of redoubling our efforts in that space and working with people in the community. I wanted to turn to Wendy's where he was killed at all that was actually burnt down into a Peace Center and his honor, and again, to provide more resources to to the community. And then lastly, I will say that we are a sustainable development organization. What we mean by that is that recreate cooperatives, micro businesses, and I would say service programs that we think will be useful in terms of bringing resources to the community, and helping support people, particularly now during this time of COVID. And what that means for us is mutual aid work. We have a community stabilization fund that we give folks money for rent for mortgage for utility payments for community garden, and in a cooperative work. We're developing cooperatives around kale chips, See Voss security, which involves a running security march to stop police brutality and safety for the community, and a food cooperative. And so there's other things that we do to try to get it all in. So and we are volunteer, mostly a volunteer organization, right? So we do this on the strength of folks joining based on ideological and philosophical unity that we all have around how do we bring power to our community, right? How do we bring resources to our community? How do we create organizations that we control? How do we fight against institutions and organizations? Which mean does harm? Whether that is explicit anymore? Or just implied and how they do their business? How do we either push those things out, take those things over or destroy them and build new. And so those are the sort of the themes that we work under? 

Trae Holiday  08:09

Wow. I mean, this is why I was so Mind blown, I think when I first spoke with you, but before that, doing my own research, because it's not often that I find that there's an organization that understands, hey, we kind of have to have our hands in a lot of different areas in order to affect real change in our community that is going to be sustainable. So I love that you took it to that place of just sustainable development. For me, a lot of my organizing came from, you know, just being a volunteer and moving into an organization called Africa town, community land trust. And Africa town, in and of itself is like what you guys are doing, right? It's like we have an education wing, we have a, you know, a policy wing, a business wing of it, you know, like, it's like, Hey, we have to do all of this work. And we understand that we have to do this work. And then King County equity now over the summer was really birthed out of this initiative that we have. It was like build Africa town, right? What does that mean? And what does that look like? And how do we begin to showcase what that looks like? And so, exactly, so much of the same work and in alignment? How do you find because you just mentioned elected officials, I'll definitely get back to that. Because that's great. This is the second time I've heard about Keisha Lance Bottoms. And of course, from the outside. I'm like Black woman, you know. So it's great to get this inside knowledge. But in terms of, you know, you running the garden, I saw the garden is right next door, we'll make sure we post pictures of this amazing space. But you know, how has it been in terms of keeping the affordability here and keeping Black folks in their homes here in this neighborhood in Pittsburgh? Well, that's a struggle because we are a small resource organization. And one of the reasons we have to do so much is because we think that, like you said, there's so many issues and problems that we have across the board, that the whole idea that a single issue, organization is going to sort of really address the sort of multitude of issues that our people suffer form is really, you know, it's based on sort of a liberal, not for profit theory about how work should get done. But it doesn't speak to our needs as a community and as a people. So we wanted to get back to grassroots organizing efforts that came out of the 60s and 70s, in terms of fighting for Black Power, fighting for rights, fighting for ownership. And we think those things which are somewhat destroyed during that struggle, one of the things that will bring us to some more resources to do the work that we need to do. Now, the issue of this particular community is a huge one, even though it's a small community. The fighting that is here is a fight about what's happening all throughout Atlanta. And I would say all through urban spaces across this country, where Black folks who have been working class and poor and struggling, but living and keeping these communities alive, are now the victims once again, of folks who are gentrifiers, which is no accident, right? These are city policies. These are real estate agents and real estate developers who talk like, you know, this fuzzy language, and I want you to help communities and so forth. And really, their base understanding of what needs to be done is to make a profit. And how do they make a profit, they chased out poor and working class people, they up the ranks, which in turn ups property value, which in turn ups taxes, which chases people away who own homes. And again, if the rents go up, the people who are renting can no longer afford it. The commercial space is not primarily owned by Black folks. So this neighborhood is becoming one of the last places left in Atlanta proper, that has a majority of Black folks. But the infringement and encroachment is staying and happening day to day. And it's something that the city sees, and it refuses to enact any real holistic policy ideas or changes in terms of land trust, in terms of fighting to stay to make sure that his rent control, and refuses to do any of that stuff, a moratorium on rent increases anything that it could do, it refuses to do it in mass to stop the gentrification that's happening in a city. And so the elected officials, both the mayor and the City Council, over a 40 year period, have just as much blame as any white developer. In fact, it was under Black leadership, that the housing to public housing Atlanta was all destroyed, it was under Black leadership, that they decided to pay poor folks to leave the city and not come back during the Olympics. It's under Black leadership, that all the social indicators around a gap between who has money like wealth and poverty is one of the highest in the nation, right? It's under this leadership of Black folks who've become a class that has become only interested in its own survival, and what it can do with the white elite to advance their own careers, and to advance the careers of their children, quite frankly, and not to think about what's happening in working class and poor Black neighborhoods. Wow. And you know, this is something that is so indicative of so many urban cities, I think about Seattle, and under Black leadership, Mayor Norm Rice was probably the beginning like the we didn't see right where, and it was, it was like, perfected in Seattle, like in the central district where I grew up, and where I do a lot of my work very similar to this area where, you know, high Black concentration and families working class, you know, poor, but we held the community together. And as we grow up, and we realize, like when it gets gentrified, and you go back, it is not the same. So what we're doing now in Seattle is exactly that, where we're like, okay, these numbers have flipped drastically, it used to be at its height. 88% Black now, it's probably less than 10%, maybe some say, 15 I still think it's probably like 9%. But now with this new energy of Africa town community land trust, I think you just said it, because we realized right away, we have to start getting land and acquiring land and keeping it affordable, because it was going like hotcakes. I mean, Seattle, at one point was the number one city, this year, it was number two. So we haven't moved much, even in the COVID times are in this pandemic, it's still a desirable place for people to move. And I'm finding that, hey, as a Seattleite, like all of this desirability, and all of the legislation and policy that helps make sure that Amazon's paying no taxes out there, all of these things, right? have really led to you know, folks like myself and my family, not being able to afford it. And so I agree with you wholeheartedly that there is this need, again, for community voice, just step up to the plate, because those solutions are not coming from a top down perspective. Right. Well, one of the things that also struck me too about community movement builders, you have a lot of great intellect on your team. I mean, you have people that are, you know, well educated, that are coming here to really help support this movement and you have people that are outside of Georgia, right, so So tell me a little bit about that approach in terms of how you bring the as you said, volunteers on how people kind of get connected. So that This work can spread Yeah, again I feel like we are we definitely are a political organization, right? We are an organization similar to organizations throughout our history that people come to us they want to do political work, they don't want to do work that strictly around how do we feed people, like if we feed people, we also want to tell people why they don't have food, right? So if we give our resources, we'll tell people why they don't have resources, we create a program about our youth. We wouldn't tell people why our youth are targeted? Right? So it's those politics that resonate with people, which means we do get people from across the board, we get folks on the block, who are like, I was locked down for like, 10 years, 15 years. And about I went to work, and I'm going to do stuff with my people. Because I know from being inside, what's really in store for us, so I, well, what's the game now? Right? I didn't understand that before. But now that I've been locked inside, and when I look around a prison, and I see 80% of these folks are Black men, I understand that this is no accident. This is not about criminality, this is not about poverty. This is about the exploitation and targeting of Black folks, for prison industrial system. This is about targeting Black folks for social welfare system is about targeting, targeting Black folks, for low income jobs. All of this is part of the history and what America really is based on, right. So we get people who feel like we understand those politics. And so what can we do, again, with the little resources we have, but we have the resources of people power, we have the resources of like you said, great intellectual minds, we have the resource of folks who want to do hard work and know that we'll all fall down, we all make mistakes, we will have to get back up and brush ourselves off and try again, we want to have conflict. But we are true to our creed, what we want to do that we understand that even through conflict, we have to figure out we're not going to agree with everything, because we don't have unity without uniformity. But if we are here to do this place based work that we got to make sure that that's what's happening. And we could always go back and argue our ideological issues off to the side. But we need to make sure that that base of ideology that brought us together, which is about self determination for our people, sustainability, work around Black love and equity around organizing in our community, that's what's keeping us together. And so therefore, that's the basis for how we get to people that we do get to do whatever little that we can do is because folks believe in the work that we're trying to get done. It really is beautiful work. And and to be honest, you know, I just got some great confirmation that like what I'm doing is what I'm supposed to be doing. Right. And it feels so good in that regard. I think, for me, even this podcast is so much now is about the education of our people. Because I feel that, you know, again, you know, public schools didn't do it. Right. The government said nobody's doing it, right. They're teaching what they want us to know, which isn't always the truth. And so how do you take that, you know, theory of like, we need to be teaching folks we need to be you just said it, you know, we need to tell them why we're doing food program, I love that. What kind of strategies do you employ to actually spread that education throughout the community? 

Kamau Franklin  17:57

Well, we do again, various amounts of things. And it's based on the idea of how do you organize people in a community, right. And one is that, you know, a lot of our members live in this community, right? not exclusively, but we have a good portion of members who live in his community. And so we do door knocking, and even during COVID, we try to do safe social distancing. But we do door knocking when we talk to folks, but we provide services that folks need so that when we again, have these interactions with them, we're letting them know, like, hey, so this is for you, because we know that folks need this. But we also have this meeting next week that's going to talk about the larger structural issues that's happening in the community, please come out, right. Obviously, we use the online mechanism, I think we got to improve on that for social media thing. But we try to do social media thing also. So it's hands in different buckets. And it's been a slow turn, right, we for the most part, one of the reasons we chose this neighborhood was because some of the young folks that we were working with at the time lived here. And they thought this was a great place for an organization and again, maybe didn't have a lot of money didn't have, you know, people on staff at a particular time. But if we could get this house and work out of this house, whatever little we could provide, could go a long way in a neighborhood like this, which was starving for resources. So, you know, we work with the community Neighborhood Association, we work with other local community groups, anything that we can to build unity. Now it doesn't mean we don't have disputes, differences of opinions with both institutions in Pittsburgh, Southwest Atlanta, and with individuals right. But if we consider that fam then that means what do we do we talk it out, we may agree to disagree on a protest due to all based on a disagreement To be honest, but hopefully we can hold together the fabric of I don't believe this because I disagree with you, unless you've really cost a lot of course, but that that means that you don't love Black folks, right? You just may have some other theory about what's going to get us there than I had. And maybe there are things that we can still work on in between that now there can be others where there's there's no coming back, right there's like these folks have sold themselves to like either white elites white plenty. Again, career ism and so forth. And that may be just the point of no returns. But for the most part, we feel like when we work with folks in our community, we try to, again, share with them the ideas that we have, let them share with us the ideas that they have, right? the very reason we started doing gentrification work here was because we called a town hall meeting of People's Assembly. And folks gathered, and they talked about the different issues that this neighborhood was facing. And we did it again with the neighborhood association and another organization that was local to the community. But throughout the whole conversation, I think that just kept coming back was, I feel like we're being pushed out. And it doesn't matter about what I think about violence in the community, we're not having a grocery store that sells fresh fruits and vegetables. If in five years, I'm not going to be here, right. So that became at the beginning of sort of a rallying cry of like, what the work that we needed to do locally here with the support of folks in the community, to say, like, we have to make a public stance around the issues of gentrification, and then try to force that into some sort of policy directive, which we had to stop during COVID. But now we've got to pick back up so that we can say that you know, what, in five years, we have to make sure that this community is not just majority Black for Black folks own most of the property by posting in some collective way owned the resources and commercial property, they can make decisions on how the property should be used. And again, people can make mistakes, that's fine. Other folks were allowed to make mistakes, they are allowed to go bankrupt and start again, 4 5 6 7 8 times, right, we need to put our people in a position to be able to make mistakes, to fall down, get back up and say like, okay, we did it wrong. Let's try this, again, kind of thing without the fear of being demonized, or having something taken away from you. Because it didn't work the first time, 

Trae Holiday  21:41

you know, you're mentioning something and hitting a topic that's so close to home for me as a land trust in Seattle, Black owned Black lead, right? Land Trust, we're the first Black led land trust. So there's a lot of that where it's like, but can you do this? Are you guys skilled enough? Do you you need partners that have the bigger balance sheet? You need this? You need that? Because you're not right, actually. And when I look at you on paper, you don't have the expertise. So it comes down to that all the time, this class and scrutiny from the outside, whether it is people who are grantours, whether it is the city, what whoever, there's always this mechanism as a Black led organization of proving yourself. Yes. And I love that you just said it's okay to make mistakes. Because I think over there, it's like, the minute you do, it's a wrap. And everybody will because like, Oh, you got that wrong, we're not going that route again. Or Oh, yep, see, we tried it with Black folks see, doesn't work out. And there's always that, especially as being such a smaller percentage of the population, then I find that when we have to deal with that within our own community, like what you were just describing, That, to me is been some of the most mind blowing stuff for me where I'm like, when you're Black, you know, how do you move like that, when like you're, you're actually experiencing these things? Or maybe like, maybe you're not, maybe you're retired, it's okay, your life is good. But you know that others are experiencing this. So it always blows my mind. So at least great to know that we're not the model is like it's not, you know, it's happening everywhere, It's the, it's the feeling. I mean, this is one of the propaganda system of what America has done to our people, right? It's made us double taken our own folks, it's made us question our own abilities. It's made sort of whiteness, a sense of automatically, it gets a second, third, fourth, fifth chance at resources at trials and making the decisions around what impact not just them, but our population, in fact, the entire world To be honest, right? So it's placed a sense of power there. And no matter what they do, there's a second or third chance because they're not judged necessarily by their whiteness, right? They've made sure that other people get judged by their religion by their race, but they get judged as individuals. And if you just push one out, that means that was one bad apple, we can put somebody else right back in their place. Because you can't you're not allowed to judge white folks as a collective or a monolith or anything like that. But you can do that with other people in other groups, right? So we never get the opportunity the capitalists kept away from us. Time and time again, good, white, good white people nice people, like cool people, and so on. Some people are my friends, right? Who time and time again, get the opportunity to say, Hey, we got these this financing, and we want to do this project to that project there. Can you help us like so can I help you do the things that I want to do? Or that we've collected Black folks to do? And we don't are we going to own it? Oh no. Are you gonna give us any money to donate? We'll give you some money for some things, but the vast majority of money is going to stay with us. Do we need to manage it? No no no, you know what I mean? so it's this constant idea of like this They have the systems. And so they feel they know best. They have this this education. So they feel they know best. They have the resources, so they feel they know best. And so they've refused to even question, Who gave them the resources, how they got the resorces? And what gives them the right to continue to think that they know what's best for a community that's been oppressed for 400 years under the leadership of a white system of domination. Right? So this a troubling fact that we still, too many of us don't believe in our own potential and possibilities. I do think we have reached a stage again, in our history, where movements and resistance and radical thinking is coming back. Right. The question is, how far can we take that before others begin to do what they always do, which is what I call movement capture, which is sort of the liberal ring of white society. And they get to say, like, hey, let's fight this, but not fund that well, let's do this, because it's about civic engagement and voting rights. And so that keeps us tied to the Democratic Party, right. So with those things, you'll get billions and billions and billions of dollars, your grassroots organizing thing is a is dollar bill for you. And good luck, which you know, I mean, if you do it on your own, which is no problem, except for the fact that they give all these resources to somebody else, which begin to dominate the discussion for the vast majority of our people around what work we should be involved in. Right, more people think our problems will be solved. If we get the right elected official, then, as opposed to our problems will be solved only if we solve them. And that's the big problem that we still have in this country. Oh, my gosh, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And you know, I think this is why when you talk about this resurgence, right? It's here I feel it in different spots in different cities. I understand nationally, because Seattle is very radical, I realized that like coming out here, even just yesterday, I was somewhere and I was talking with a young Black woman. And she was like, Yeah, I just go to work. I you know, I go home, you know, so I was like, so how's the protest? You know, like, how is the movement out here? You know, she's like, Well, yeah, I mean, there was some stuff, you know, going on, and then I think it just kind of died down. You know, I don't really, you know, involve myself. But I hear that a lot and it's so interesting to me as a Black person in the Pacific Northwest, where we're all like, RAWR we're all you know what I mean? We're like, no, we're in the street every day, like every single day. And she's like, yeah...something. What is up with that, and that mentality here, maybe you can help me understand a little bit more, because I think it's this deep rooted understanding and ideology of the South. 

Kamau Franklin  27:34

I think it's the South. And I also think Atlanta has particular history, even within the South. And I think you're part of that history of Atlanta, which had a Black middle class, small as it was, but had one and had at some point, had reached the majority there. Again, it was an agreement made between what became a Black sort of Black elite, as soon became the Black political elite, and the white elite, that, you know, we can avoid the destruction, the rebellions that were happening across the country, if we decide to strike a deal, which is around, you have the majority, so there's gonna be Black political leadership, your role is to keep them Nigros off the street, to make sure our properties don't burn down. Our goal is to supply you with some resources to help you with your campaigns, maybe some businesses and get started up and those businesses can make some money. So for a percentage of the Black middle class, it wasn't a bad deal, right. And that Black middle class, which has sort of an undue influence in terms of where the leadership of the Black masses come from, you know, peaceful protest has always been sort of directed as that's the way to go. If you don't do anything that destroys property, then you're on their good side, if you say that, you know what, if you take this Black life, you the least of your worries, should be just property getting burnt down, then that's something that you will be sort of put into a corner, obviously labeled a radical and again, not get any resources or support, and have everybody be distinct with you and look the other way, right. And I think that's still something that happens even within our movements, which today may use some more radical language than, let's say, 10 15 20 25 years ago, harking back to the days of the 60s and 70s. But the actions are purely centered in strictly policy right, and I hit on that particular because I don't have a problem with some policy work. But I have a problem with is that it is the predominant way in which we think liberation struggle, it takes place, then we have misread all of our history, right? And so I think too many times, that's where we center ourselves, which means we feel far more comfortable having meetings and executive offices lobbying downtown with the legislature than we do walking a block without people right. So that's what I think the sort of divide is happening where a city like Atlanta, which you know, in terms of its radical roots, strayed away from it or stayed away from doing too much on the street demonstrations that were outside The entry point of what would you consider like, more radical things, obviously also being the home of Dr. King. And today's sort of moving politics, which at times, again, seems more centered and saying, we can talk to this one or we can talk to that point, right, without the sort of sustained where's the action in the street that challenges these folks and moves them to do something, and we're doing what you said that you guys are doing. We're all the grassroots organizations that we can rally around together and create the new politician that comes from our community and our politics and our organization, which doesn't guarantee that they're going to be held accountable. But it gives us a much better chance when someone is throwing money in your face to say, like, Look, you came from us, we put you up there, right? It's not your policy, it's our policy, it's not your individual decision. This isn't about your next job in some new administration, or your climb up the ladder, or from Mayor to Senator to some federal position. This is not what this is about. This is about what's good for our community. And so we need to be in a place again, we can hold folks accountable as much as possible. But we are not organized sufficiently, I would say, to make that happen. And lastly, I just need to advance and this goes across the country, our movements have become competitive instead of compatible, right. Instead of working with each other, we fight for those same resources, we snipe at each other, we talk bad about about each other. We in those private meetings with the white folks, we say who we are as a good organization, compared to those other ones, people would take credit for work that they never were participated in, but jumped up later on in. So all that stuff happens because we bought into this nonprofit industrial complex system that rewards folks who say I did it the right way. And that's who should get the money. And we're not even smart enough to say like, Hi, I'm gonna get the money, but I'm gonna hit off the one behind me, because I know you ain't gonna fund them. But I know that what they do, and do in the street needs to get done. And that's not what we set up to do. But I know some other folks who can do  that, and you give me 50 - I'm gonna hit them off with ten, you know what I mean. So we need more of that. I know a few like, I don't mention any names. But I know a few like that, but most of them, they don't see they're too blind to thinking that if they get into a room with a new president like Biden, that somehow they're gonna solve Black problems in that room. And that's just not gonna happen,

Trae Holiday  32:17

right? I mean, this is why I think the Sankofa method is so important. I mean, you were talking about the history, I don't think that any of us can really be doing this work without understanding historical movements of the past and really learning from them. I'm really excited for the new Black panther movie coming out, please, we need to learn about you know, our people and how he was taking down. I mean, obviously reading all the books, but I'm a media gal. So I love when they take it to the big screen. Because really, that's like, where people are like, Oh, I didn't know that. And they learn, right? So for me, a lot of this work. And education always goes back to like producing content, so people can get it in a way that they're already absorbing. But you know, listening to you, I realized that, so much of what you're saying is so much of what africatown community land trust really had to deal with in terms of, you know, securing the understanding that this is the work we're going to do in this community. And every time you see us, you're going to have to resonate with that, because we're going to give you that frequency. And so one of the things that I think was so substantial in our development practices was creating an equitable development initiative, and we have an equitable development framework. So the city created this EDI initiative, equitable development, and basically they're like, Look, this gentrification is too crazy here. We need to have some city funds that are going to be there for organizations like Africa town and others that are doing this work in their communities, because they want to preserve spaces, they want to preserve the culture and the history. So listening to you, I'm like, Man, what do you think it would take to bring something like equitable development initiative from a city level, right, that is now as a city department, they have employees that are making sure communities are getting funded, because this just it gets out of control at some point. And you do have to start reeling back once the city has made tons of money, whatever, because of this plan. You know, at some point, they have to be like, Okay, that's enough. Like we push too many people out. Okay, now let's do the reverse. What What do you think that Nexus is? 

Kamau Franklin  34:20

you have to push these current negros out of office. So these, our city council person, in particular by name is Joyce Shepherd. She supports gentrification, right, she'll walk the fence with her language, but all of the things that she does shows that she supports the gentrification. She supports the police's tactics on our community. Defund the police is not even a radical slogan. So I'm going to get on that in a second. But I had an opportunity to talk beyond the idea of bad apples, but oppressive force, which is basically killing our people, arresting our people jailing our people using prison labor to make other products and make other people rich. The opportunity to say something about that, in some Stark way that brings this point home was lost, because they were too busy protecting themselves in their positions. And what they see is their picture political efforts or ideas. And they don't want to make white folks too upset. They don't want to make some moderate folks what they consider to upset, too busy. Instead of trying to teach Black folks or reach Black folks to say, like, Look, we got to do something different. And I'm a political leader, I can lead the way a city council person can reach hundreds of 1000s more people than I could ever hope to reach in terms of my outreach, and so forth. But that is never used in a way that says that the way the system operates is detrimental to how our people should be living. And so therefore, we have to make drastic major changes. If I could see any city council person who would do that and implement that and be able to stand up, I would support them in a second. But unfortunately, what we have is folks who are jockeying for position, like who's going to be the president of the city council, there's gonna be the next mayor in Atlanta in particular, that type of thinking is led the city to go from approximately 60%, Black 20 or 30 years ago, to now it's barely 50% Black If that. We're the almost two times in a row, the almost independent republican leaning white mayoral candidate came within two or 300 votes literally, of winning the mayoral contest in Atlanta. Right. Keisha Lance Bottoms and the same thing for her predecessor Kasim Reed only are here, because then they turned Black on the second when they needed those Black votes. Right. So we are on the cusp of Atlanta, the so called Black Mecca that is being represented by a Black mayor, or maybe even at some point, a majority Black City Council. But the bigger question is, so what? Because it doesn't make a difference in terms of them being there. So if you lose them, hopefully, sometimes it means that people will see it for the facade it is and organize, you can always hope. But I think that the idea that at least here in Atlanta and a lot of other places that does sort of democrat liberal leadership, and I want to be clear, I'm not talking about replacing them with Republicans. And I think again, they're overt white racists compared with some of these covert white racists that these democrats are, and then the sort of sycophants that they're sort of democratic, Black companions are also, but these folks don't have the interest of the Black community here in Atlanta. And if they say they do, then they need to prove me wrong. And it can't prove me wrong based on the politics, the policies, the demographic shifts, the way poor people in the working class people have been treated in a city. 

Trae Holiday  36:37

Oh, my gosh, in Seattle, we talk about strategy. I mean, it's like a daily thing. I'm sure you guys too, right. And ultimately, so much of it is about that people pressure, you know what you were just talking about? There is a whole faction called the everyday marchers. And they're just like we're out every day doesn't matter. We have a morning march and an evening march. We're just we're out every day. And yes, there was a part where I don't know if it was them. So let me not say it was that evening marchers but where some votes were coming in? They were like, Look, we're called direct action. So it was it. Were direct action. But we are burning this up. We are destroying this. you know we're coming through with direct action? Because we're done with all that we're done with the asking, man, I want to ask you because I just feel like there's a energy in our nation right now, if we don't begin to get some things, right. I think that the way that classes been demolished in this nation, it's going to get worse for both. I mean, we're seeing this with COVID. But again, I have this idea that I'm like, wow, you know, people have been pushed so far out so far down the ladder, they've been rung through the rails, and this is hitting so many different spectrums. But I always talk about the Black community. First and foremost, again, there hasn't been anything to balance the scales on a national level since slavery. So we always go back to that, because yeah, so I want to ask, because hr 40, you know, reparations bill is going to be hitting the airwaves. You know, it's been worked on for 40 years. And there's been a lot of talk about reparations. Okay, what does it look like? And now, not only is that bill going to, of course, they have to do the research piece, which I think is you know, it's bananas. The research is there, the numbers are there. We know what happened. However, they're also going to take this into some real recommendations at a federal level. I just want to ask you about your opinion on like, okay, the impetus of this feeling right now, a lot of people ready for some answers from the federal government. I'll say two things on that one, I think you're correct that things in this country for a long gestation period, getting somewhat worse, if not totally worse. And some of that is due to if we look at again, the struggles was sort of the last upheaval time of sort of huge percentages or critical mass of people. In the 60s and 70s. You had a break, right, you had a break where Southern whites in particular move from the Democratic Party, which was the white supremacy party to the republican party because they felt too many Negroes were getting into the democratic Party. And the Republican Party used a form of what's called the southern strategy, right? to continually keep those white working class people in their party and keep themselves in some sort of power. And the democrats accepted and took the Black vote, but again, took the Black vote for advantage because it never prescribe anything that would change our actual physical conditions on the ground, right? I think this situation, and it was the case for like 30 or 40 years of our history, and then we hit the Great Recession. And you have a Black president who only got in obviously, because of the great recession, but also came a time period where the demographic shifts of the country were being laid bare, where white folks were representing a sort of a toting majority. And so they were no longer going to be the vast majority of folks. But they were going to start being upwards of like, 50 to 49, to 48, and 20 or 25 or more years, I think that demographic shift, along with seeing a Black president, moved the white community, which also was suffering from its own levels of poverty. But in general, and I mean this in a very harsh way, we're too stupid to realize that some of their problems are tied to the same problems that Black folks have, because they prefer to think that racism puts them on top of Black folks. And so therefore, they prefer to have a racist country where they felt empowered, as opposed to a country which wealth was distributed in a way where anyone can have some power over their lives. This significant white population, in fact, the majority white population, went out and started creating even more malicious, buying more guns, creating things like the tea party and being demonstratively and demonstratively racist, which led to the election of Donald Trump, right. So I think that pattern of overt racism, which has historically always been there, and it's been more prominent has now raised its head, again, where you have this pattern now of overt white racism, you have Black folks saying there's going to be a backlash, and we're buying guns, too, right. And even though we're not totally there, sort of like as radicalized as a large percentage of the white community is, because I will say something that will come into white community about is that they won't be governed by anybody else. white folks will not be enslaved by a Black population, they will not be considered to be oppressed, even if they think even if it's not true, but they think it, white folks will break off and create a new country before they'll know what they see, as Black folks really know what any other people really ruling, right. And so that demographic shift is really infecting how the country and how people interact, obviously, the policies, so called culture wars, and the rest of it and mixed in there. So I think there's a strong atmosphere for not some overt civil war, but for activities that we've already seen mass shootings, organized militias, and so forth, to really continue to play a prominent and growth of activity in the United States, particularly as COVID dies down and in all that people feel like they even more so released to be in the streets. So I would say that we're in a period of change of flux of we don't know what's next. But we better know that we as a people better get organized. Yeah, that is brings me back to reparations. I going to have a controversial answer for Reparations. I don't believe any society that spends its time, enslaving, oppressing, killing, murdering Black folks is going to give us reparations that's going to make us free or liberated. So I don't put a lot of trust in any legislation around reparations. I don't think it will ever pass. Right? Because I think the idea that white folks have to offer penance for the enslavement that they've done. for them. It's, it's mind blowing, they just can't see it. They just don't see it. Right. It could be as clear as day in your face, but they still have 1000 excuses. But two - even if it is passed, I think it will be so shallow and an allow the oppressors to say so you look there we give you reparations. And you're still complaining? Right? So I don't think my fight is to force the federal government at this particular stage in our history. To be fighting for Reparations, I think we need to be fighting for power. And power can lead to reparations. But if you don't have power, then somebody else gets to define what the agenda is. And they do what they're doing by doing another study. Another critique, like you said, John Conyers introduced this bill so long ago, that sort of repetitive yearly thing that gets introduced and it fails downstairs. So I don't think there's any sort of real hope that America is going to reform itself into a point where it's going to provide the reparations we need as a people to be free, only we are going to be able to free us. And that's not going to become do a policy and legislative mechanism that policy and legislation that happens in the United States government, for the most part is about maintaining control and Empire and dominance not only just over Black folks, but over working class folks, both here and abroad, because it keeps the resources in the hands of corporations and a particular elite. And that's the role of the government in particularly in America. That's their role that is not to find ways to make sure that the masses are taken care of, it will release, you know, resources because it thinks that those resources will calm people down. Hence is why we even got some things like some civil rights acts, why we have some eight hour working days and so forth. Because you know, at least allow some pressure to say like, wait a minute, we can't do it, the way we're doing is doing a little bit different. But the situation doesn't change, right, letting Black elites be part of the US federal government does not change the conditions for the masses of Black people. It just makes Black elites feel like they are now in a position of power to speak for Black people. And they live comfortably. And they can tell us to go Oh, but it hasn't changed to conditions for the masses of people. And the federal government knows that. And you have to be a little bit ignorant as a Black elite to not understand it. That's the dynamic that you're working in. So much truth. I'm over here liking bathed in truth. I mean, honestly, I think that so much of what you just said, is where we're not talking about the education of our life, our moves have to be so insulated to a certain degree, where we understand like the next move and the next move and what needs to happen at the next iteration. You know, wow, me just really helping me to understand and shape a lot of my understanding to of this work. I'm like, man, if we can get the reparations, that's great, like, and then what you know, and listening to the president of the National African American reparations committee, and he was so enthusiastic about this, because he's like, hey, look, now what they do is okay, talked about, they gotta do the research, but they finally are gonna give some recommendations. And again, I was like, Oh, no, you should already have the recommendations at this point. If you ask me, right. It's like 40 years of research and years of history,  who doesn't understand that we don't deserve Reparations who doesn't understand 400 years of slavery, Jim Crow, Black codes, prison industrial complex, who doesn't understand that through lynching and raping and taking away of children from Black families, the miseducation of Black folks who didn't understand that that's a condition for Reparations, right? Who wouldn't understand it? The native population, the United States deserves reparations, right? That's clearly something that is obviously deserved. But if you don't have power, if you don't have a source of power, right, when you look at the Japanese internment in the United States, one of the reasons that they were able to get reparations was because Japan was economically strong. Yeah. For Black folks. There's no Africa that's economically strong. How were the European Jewish community that took over as settler colonials as part of Palestine for Israel, able to make Germany give the reparations because they had a power base, and they wanted to punish Germany, right? There's no sense of like Black people, people of African descent having a power base that can bring some graph or do some good for the European control society did they think that it's in their interest to somehow give us something to relieve a pressure valve or that we are powerful enough to destroy or to cause great harm, that they need to do something to give us something of our own. And let us do what we want to do. They don't feel that pressure, they have enough control enough power to treat us, as an embargoed state, they can treat us like Cuba, they can treat us like Iran, they can treat us like Venezuela, they can treat us the way South Africa was treated for many years, they could do what they want to do, because they don't feel that there's going to be any recourse which is going to be imposed or impacted upon them, because we're too busy asking them for favors anyway. So there's no reason for them to make any mass changes, or give any sort of huge resources to our community. Because we all know is owed to us. There's never been a question I don't I really don't need a study, I can get a old man off the block who's not educated to tell you all the things that's been done to him in a lifetime, a sister who's like 60 years old, who's raised her kids or grandkids and so forth, who can tell you all the things that's wrong with the country and all the things that they need to survive. There's no doubt about that. The question is that there, that's not the political power to impact a racist society to do anything that would be considered moral or decent, because that's not how societies operate. Societies operate for retaining and keeping power. And that's what they do, making sure that the wealth and the elite keep their power, that most of the resources that they have, they keep and then they get even more. That's the stage that we're in. I want to also Lastly, just, you know, we look at one of the reasons why both, you know, white working class folks are so aggrieved in addition to filling a demographic changes, right? This is to for their community and our community, we've entered a stretch this long period, where real wages haven't gone up in 40 or 50 years, right? Where the income gaps between wealth and working class are the largest they've ever been in the country's history, that one point where taxation is no longer like we taxed 50 60 75% of the wealthy's income. Instead, it's more like 10 20 15% along those ranges. So there's a break with society. in that folks don't feel threatened enough to do anything to change that because they have their propaganda skills and they have the power to keep us sort of underfoot and not not do anything. They make those changes now My Word, you know, I feel that it's so true. It's so real, what is the solution we keep doing the work is it incremental in our communities, education, through generations of understanding that may be then, at some, you know, quintessential moment in time, we're educated enough have amassed enough power that what we handed and say, okay, those of us who want to break off, we're gonna be over here because we know that that system is not for us. You know, what, what does it really look like as things kind of play out in your mind?

Kamau Franklin  50:31

Oh, yeah, I think it's always a question of, for folks to be organized political education, training organizations that can do mass paced work in the community. And then there are moments in time, like the ones that we just have, where we have to be able to show folks the split, or the dilemma that's happening in society, and what needs to happen, we need to make our forces stronger, we need to work together, I need to work more with Africa town, I need to be work for more folks across the country. And the same thing here, we need to build out the organizational structures that will bring power to our community. But we too, even those of us who consider ourselves radical leftists, or nationalists, we to compete instead of work together, right. And I think that's part of the dilemma of working in America as an organizer and an activist, that we rather work in an organization of 10 people and be the leader than working in organization of 30 people and be a member, right? That's just how it works. And we refuse to figure out how to build structures. And it's not so much that I don't think the enemy those who are our history of like, cointelpro, and infiltrating and killing our movements and organizations, particularly our most radical, they're always had work, but it's hard if we do the work for them. So I think you know, our answer isn't perseverance isn't hooking up with folks. It is in building stronger organizations, not just local groups, but we need national organizations to have power. Again, we can't buy into the liberal theory that even though we do work in local communities, my struggle here is my struggle in Seattle is my struggle back where I'm from in Brooklyn, is my struggle in Texas is a national struggle. My struggle here is my struggle in Haiti is my struggle in Jamaica, my struggle there is my struggle on the continent is the struggle in the Congo is the struggle in Ethiopia, our people are international people. And again, it's not saying that we're going to all agree with everything. But if we don't start creating sort of an international national force of politic, which makes demands for people of African descent, and Africans on the continent, we are going to be in a place of being beholden to European powers, who still control the world, and not necessarily working out our own problems. And when I say make demands, I'm not necessarily talking about money demands, but demands is that you got to get out of our country, and get out of our resources, because we're going to set this marketplace that works collectively, for our folks, those things are hard. They're never easy. But there are times in history where there are breaks, right? where people get to see something new and different happening. You have things like the Russian Revolution, you have the 60s and 70s, sort of the liberation movements in Africa, you have liberation movements in South America, you have things like the Vietnam War, which caused a breaks between even young white kids here and a more older, encampment od like US power is always used for good kind of thing. So there are breaks in history. And we are going through what could be considered somewhat of a break now. And it's up to our forces who have to be smart enough collective enough. Think about how we use our resources to gain power and money to bring jobs and a sense of community, we have to be better at doing that. And until we do, we're always going to be looking for somebody else to solve our problem. So I don't have a direct answer of it's going to be this particular time and place. But I know circumstances and the organizing around circumstances are what's going to lead to us gaining power at any point in history. 

Trae Holiday  53:52

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, you're absolutely right. And this is why, for me, I'm really excited about King County equity now, because again, pulling together 70 plus Black led organizations that not only are we doing the work on the ground, but we're relationally based so many of us grew up together, whether it's this ED, that ED this BP with that for like we even known each other for years, in a lot of circumstances, a lot of ways. And I think that that plays to the dynamic of all of those orgs saying, Oh, yeah, no, we'll do this, because that happens quickly, because of the fact that those relationships are solid. But again, I agree with you, because you're talking about the competitive nature of stuff. This is why when we're in grant applications now we're like, we understand that somebody in our ecosystem, basically because we represent all these guys. So we understand that several of these guys have applied for this fund too how are you ensuring that you're doing this right as a grantor, so even just throwing it back in terms of them those who have the resources, how are you guys doing that? To make sure that a majority of this work is getting funded. I think that a lot of that goes into the ways that we get into see their power and work. And this has been phenomenal Kamau. I mean, how do people reach out to community movement builders and they want to volunteer any Atlanteans? Anybody else coming here to Atlanta? How do they find you guys so they can get connected. 

Kamau Franklin  55:19

So the best way to find this is at communitymovementbuilders.org. We have chapters here in Atlanta, and Dallas, in Detroit, in Memphis, in San Diego and in New Orleans. So folks want to get down with us, please find us on communitymovementbuilders.org, we have all the social media, the Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, communitymovementbuilders.org, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from folks, we'd love to talk to folks about supporting our work being down with our work, and figuring out how we get power vibes from community together.

Trae Holiday  55:47

Absolutely. This has been phenomenal. I'm gonna end it just because I know that I could continue on like, I know I can. And thank you for all of your work that you're doing out here. Thank you for taking this interview with me. Because this is really important to me personally, to make these kinds of connections. I think you just spoke to it there in terms of this national approach. And then the global approach is this is why what I said to my team is we have to be talking to people all over the world, because it's not just us up here doing this work. And the stronger we can make those connections, the better. We'll have that kind of pipeline, right? Everybody now will be x right? So it's like, hey, if I can talk to you, back over there in Africa, like we can start I think a lot of this work and I'm hoping that you know, equity rising can help make more connections. So thank you again,

Kamau Franklin  56:33

thank you sis I really appreciate it

Laura Sullivan Cassidy  56:39

thank you for being here for this episode of equity rising, which is a product of King County equity now. We normally release podcasts each week but We'll be on a two week hiatus for the holidays. So catch us back here in 2021. Be sure to subscribe now so you don't miss us when we return. And be sure you're following King County equity now on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You can reach out on any of those channels. If you'd like to suggest a show topic, submit a chime in statement or continue the conversation in any other way.