therealnews--2020-06-08--Protests Are Layered—Follow the Money

Protests Are Layered—Follow the Money

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors .
It will be updated .
Mark Steiner : Welcome to The Real News , this is Mark Steiner .
We ’ re about to hear a take on what ’ s happening in America today from Davey D. Davey D is a hip hop historian , journalist , DJ , community activist .
He ’ s been in the scene since 1977 .
He ’ s been a community organizer and a worker and Davey D maintains his website called daveyd.com , Davey D ’ s Hip-Hop Corner , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hosts of Hard Knock Radio .
And here ’ s Davey D ’ s take on what America is going through now .
Davey D : Well , we ’ re at several intersections .
First , we ’ re coming out of… Well , first , we ’ re still in a pandemic and we ’ ve had three months of people not working , not having any income , many families having to decide , do they pay for food or rent , $ 1,200 stimulus check only if you paid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your back thing .
If you didn ’ t do that , you didn ’ t get any stimulus .
And no sense of normalcy , right ?
In the sense of being able to get up , have a routine that you could tap into .
The people advocating for the shelter-in-place are usually folks sitting on TV who make half a million dollars a year who don ’ t know that there are thousands of families that live in one or two bedroom dwellings , have young adults or teenagers living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a rainy weekend , but when you ’ re talking about three months , it becomes a whole other ball of wax .
And so the inequality that ’ s been exposed is something that I don ’ t think we really have accounted for , which says that people are angry , people are traumatized , people are sad .
People are appended economically , emotionally .
And we have this push to have people go out and make money for folks who caused this thing in the first place with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make sure that there was infrastructure in place for people to get healed or get help if they caught this virus or even to acknowledge it .
So that ’ s going to be with us for a long time , this appending economically .
And it ’ s exasperated now in many communities with the brutality of police who we are now seeing over and over again on camera to the point that I don ’ t think it ’ s accidental , but it ’ s very deliberate .
And it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and confusion into a community and it is being done with impunity because it feels like people are saying , “ I ’ m not going to get caught.
” So you have that sort of situation that is developed .
That ’ s made people even angrier , but they ’ re kind of stuck because up until maybe this weekend , a lot of people could… What are you going to do ?
You can ’ t go out , you can ’ t demonstrate , you can ’ t really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all that has exasperated the situation over and over again .
Then you ’ re contrasting that with selective or unequal reaction to people coming together .
So we almost have forgotten that two or three weeks ago we saw thousands of people showing up at capitals all over the United States , carrying shotguns and talking about , they want the economy to reopen and that they want to get a haircut and all this sort of stuff .
And what was coming across was an undercurrent of racism .
By that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that these folks that were protesting weren ’ t fighting to go back to work .
They were fighting to open up their jobs so I can go work and unsafe conditions .
And so I think that was kind of crazy .
Plus , the optics of seeing people threatened to shoot a governor in Michigan or hang in effigy of a governor in Kentucky , or walk around with the mega hats on and storm a beach in Southern California .
All these things that people saw and saying , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we protested last year or the year before.
” And all that really came to a head with the killing of George Floyd , right ?
There had been other killings and other acts of brutality .
Brianna Taylor comes to mind , situations in New York where you saw the selective enforcement of who wears a mask and who doesn ’ t , police pummeling people in Brooklyn , handing out masks to people in the village , in New York and all that sort of stuff .
But the George Floyd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are marching to a police station , demanding justice for something that was pretty egregious and pretty obvious .
The thing that we ’ re dealing with is watching this inequality where folks who came out to protest the murder on tape , on film of George Floyd were being repelled with tear gas and rifles… I mean , rubber bullets and the whole nine , whereas just weeks before , they were storming the Capitol in St. Paul , which is right up the road damn near from where George was killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ These were heroes exercising their American right to descent .
So we have a battle of have and have nots politically , have and have not economically , have and have not socially , who ’ s accepted , who isn ’ t , who is deemed worthy of listening to their petitions and their concerns , who is going to be rejected .
So all that is just made for the type of volatile situation that we ’ re seeing .
And now we come to the complications around the fires in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lootings at malls .
And that ’ s very layered .
It ’ s layered because I think that has happened before in the past , but it ’ s layered because I haven ’ t worked for three months .
I ’ ll have no money and the Best Buys getting looted , why wouldn ’ t I go in there and grab me a TV or whatever I can , because I can actually make some money by selling it .
I don ’ t think people are buying it because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also forget that people have ran up into grocery stores and probably got their first bag of groceries .
They ran into the Walmarts and the Walgreens and what have you and grabbing food and whatever they could to satisfy just immediate needs .
And where it gets layered , it ’ s like , if you ’ re out on the streets , it ain ’ t black people breaking these windows .
It ’ s white folks that have done it .
So in some parts of the country , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relationship .
“ I ’ m going to break these windows because I can , but if you all go in and do stuff , have had it.
” But in other places it ’ s designed to discredit the movement .
So you ’ re hearing the story , the Minneapolis , about white supremacists dressing up or police officers who are undercover , smashing windows and setting things into motion .
So that becomes very complicated and you have to dig deep and go , “ Okay , what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what is the relationship with political organizations , ” and what have you ?
So in the Bay where I ’ m at , I wouldn ’ t say it ’ s necessarily white supremacists coming into the Bay .
No proud boys or anybody like that coming .
I just think there ’ s folks who saw an opportunity and understood that they have an angst with capitalism and there ’ s exploitation and they ’ re going to expose that by doing what they ’ re doing .
But that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going on in a place like Milwaukee , where some of the things that are getting burned up are mom and pop businesses , black-owned businesses , all that .
You didn ’ t necessarily have that here .
The one other complication that shows up here where I ’ m at , which adds to this layering is that there are folks that are criminals for real .
So they ’ re like , “ Hey , in the middle of this , let me go rob all the weed spots.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spot it ’ s happened .
That wasn ’ t looters or anything like that .
Those were people that ’ s like , “ This is what we ’ re going to do.
” There are folks that have come in and said , “ Let me settle the score with these folks , ” and they knocked folks off or knocked off their businesses .
So you have all these different things that are going on .
All of it at the end of the day comes down to inequality and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the immediate reason why we have all this is because there was a refusal by that guy , the DA .
I forget his name .
I think it ’ s Freeman or whatever , to prosecute and demand the arrest of the four police officers in Minneapolis .
Imagine if he did that , imagine if he said , “ This was a crime , you , you and you… ” Two of those officers have lengthy records of police misconduct .
One of them is being sued right now because of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has 18 and never been disciplined .
Imagine if he said , “ You all arrested , you all being charged.
” I wouldn ’ t even be on the show .
We ’ d have a different conversation right now .
We would be talking about whether or not it ’ s safe to reopen the country .
What does normalcy look like ?
That ’ s where we would be at .
But the refusal to do that has resulted in what we ’ re seeing , which comes to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where you asked where we ’ re at .
Folks got to make a decision as to what side they ’ re on now .
Are you rolling with the police and the things that they have come to represent , the protection of property , the protection of a ruling class , the protection of a 1 % , the suppression and oppression of people who are quote unquote , the have nots ?
Are you rolling on their side ?
Because that ’ s where the contradictions are coming .
Are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Are you going to punish them ?
Are you going to lead the charge to put laws in place to make sure that anybody who behaves that wears that badge in a way that is harmful to people is severely punished ?
And we ’ re not seeing that .
We ’ re seeing mayors take a knee in San Jose or in Brentwood where I ’ m at in other parts of the country .
And we ’ re hearing mayors , every single mayor says , “ I feel your pain.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then let ’ s alleviate that pain .
And how are you alleviating it ?
Right ?
You ’ ve had all these uprisings or unrest all around the country , have those mayors huddled together and say , “ You know what ?
We need to change things .
Let ’ s reign in these police.
” No , instead what they did is they put curfews on and they ’ re coming up with laws to penalize protesters versus penalizing the cops who started this in the first place .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ an infrastructure in Minneapolis to immediately arrest four cops , which says that they were on the side of the status quo and keeping people oppressed , is why we ’ re at this moment right now .
Is why we ’ re at this moment .
So we need to know the names of those folks and the people that preceded them .
If it ’ s Amy Klobucha when she was the DA or attorney general , or what have you , why didn ’ t you step in and prosecute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not like you didn ’ t know about it .
It ’ s not like they didn ’ t have Philando Castile , it wasn ’ t like they had Jamar Clark .
It wasn ’ t like people in Minneapolis who are organized and smart and resourceful , hadn ’ t gone and petitioned and demanded some sort of justice .
You ignored it and you let the fire burn .
And here we are in the June 2020 , looking at a president who now wants to use this as an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basically enact some form of martial law and bring up laws from the 1800s , resurrection laws or whatever he ’ s talking about .
It ’ s a mess .
This is also a opportunity for a whole lot of folks to really come up in a different way .
And what I mean by that , there ’ s been some egregious situations in the past , but we never had 50 cities with unrest all at once , except during Dr. Martin Luther King ’ s assassination , right ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ running around looting malls and all that .
But let ’ s look at this because now you have Rudale Drive , you have places in Walnut Creek , City Center in Philly , all these affluent places to River Walk in San Antonio .
How does this happen at this point in time ?
Well , those malls have been closed for three weeks or three months .
People miss Mother ’ s Day , people miss graduation , people missed Easter Sunday .
All that revenue never happened .
Some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money , but they ain ’ t make their sales .
So now all of a sudden , all these malls are being looted .
All these stores are being looted .
So now you go cash out and get insurance and start anew .
And so I don ’ t put it past folks to have hired or turned a blind eye or turned off their cameras , or stood idly by , or actually participated in making sure that their stores were looted or breached or burnt , and what have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New York during the blackout , this happened in the South Bronx , this happened in London more recently where there were unrest and people were saying , “ Hey , man , some of these fires were started by people who weren ’ t doing very well in a business in the first place.
” But we don ’ t know that because there was a fire .
Even with the police station being burned .
After 9/11 , how do you breach a police station ?
How do you do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I mean , since the days of the Panther to point out a guest of mine on my show , he was like , “ People have been trying to take the police station for 50 years .
They never been able to… Couldn ’ t even light a match .
He might ’ ve spray painted , but to burn down a police station , that doesn ’ t happen by accident .
That means there ’ s some cooperation somewhere.
” And my guess , there ’ s a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to get a new police station out of this .
We ’ re going to get new equipment out of this .
Everybody ’ s going to come up off this .
So I don ’ t think it ’ s as simple as a bunch of people , anarchists or white nationalist , or quote unquote folks from the hood , just rolling up and just having their way .
Not in such a coordinated way .
Not with 50 cities all around the country or even more .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and I think we need to examine that and track the money , track the political payoff of this happening and act accordingly .
I think we ’ re in a pot of boiling water and our first line of business is to get out that pot , right ?
And then make a full commitment to move forward and never get back in the pot again .
There are people that are saying , “ Evil is evil , so if you ’ re voting for the lesser of two evils , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like to pull out the quote from Malcolm X , “ If I put a knife in your back and it ’ s six inches and I pull it out halfway , is that good ?
” Et cetera , et cetera .
Well , yeah , actually it is if you pull it out .
It means maybe if one was hitting the artery and now it isn ’ t , or was close to the artery , I have a better chance of surviving .
So I think right now people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s like a video game .
I have a video game here , right ?
Where it ’ s a street fighter and me and my son sometimes play .
Guess what ?
We ’ re going to pick somebody who we ’ re going to fight .
You ’ re going to fight , but do I want to fight the character that has all the weapons ?
Do I want to fight the character that is good with their hands ?
Do I want to fight the character that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gun ?
Who do you want to fight ?
Do you want to fight the authoritarian who is now talking about bringing the military in and crushing dissent ?
Or do you want to fight the guy who ’ s a do-nothinger , who might take his time meandering around before he puts in some of the very same policies this guy wants to put into place ?
And I think you got to figure out what you ’ re most equipped to .
I would argue that there were a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Trump in office because it would show people the raw ugliness of America and we would organize .
Well , we ’ re for you then .
There ’ s no third party that is ready to do the job .
Obviously the pandemic showed us that we we ’ re still reliant on food chains and all these other systems , right ?
We don ’ t have like community gardens to feed entire communities .
We don ’ t have any of that infrastructure .
Stuff that organizers said in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do these things , well , you had Trump in office and it ain ’ t been done .
So I don ’ t trust another four years to see it get done because like it or not , this dude is smart enough to know that he ’ s going to crush everything .
He ’ s like , take no prisoners .
So you better go with the guy who ’ s meandering around , who is sitting down and saying , “ It might take me two days to put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one guy who ’ s smashing and grabbing and wants to put it in right now .
So we ’ re going to fight , the question is who do you want to fight ?
What landscape do you want to fight on ?
And for those who say , “ Well , it doesn ’ t matter , ” I say , “ Then you are actually coming from a point of privilege at this point.
” Because right now , even what I ’ m seeing with the demonstrations , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death .
They ’ re not talking about the 12 to 15 shootings that took place over the weekend with police shooting people in the eyes with rubber bullets , right ?
14 year olds , 15 year olds .
Yesterday , we had 20,000 people , downtown Oakland , young people , high school , put it together .
They were shooting tear gas 20 minutes before curfew , right ?
You would think that the mayor would say , “ Wow , these high school kids put together a rally and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s supposedly getting national attention , but you have police lined up and shooting tear gas at them .
So we know where we ’ re at right now .
And we ’ re going to have to find the path of least resistance .
And right now that path of least resistance looks like the neoliberal meandering , Joe Biden , more than a Trump who is empowering a lot .
He ’ s making us have to do a lot of fights that we shouldn ’ t have to fight right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to need all our energy and resources and intelligence to really move out of this inequality that we ’ re existing in right now .
And I ’ d rather go up the mountain than swim through the crocodile-infested swamp , or the piranha-infested swamp .
I ’ ll take my chances in the fores and deal with mountain lions and tigers and all that , because I know how to shoot a rifle .
I know how to shoot a gun .
I can deal with them better .
I don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m not going that way .
So I ’ ll take the mountain .

Professor and hip hop historian Davey D analyzes why some protesters get called heroes and some get shot with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Mark Steiner: Welcome to The Real News, this is Mark Steiner. We’re about to hear a take on what’s happening in America today from Davey D. Davey D is a hip hop historian, journalist, DJ, community activist. He’s been in the scene since 1977. He’s been a community organizer and a worker and Davey D maintains his website called daveyd.com, Davey D’s Hip-Hop Corner, and he’s also one of the hosts of Hard Knock Radio. And here’s Davey D’s take on what America is going through now.
Davey D: Well, we’re at several intersections. First, we’re coming out of… Well, first, we’re still in a pandemic and we’ve had three months of people not working, not having any income, many families having to decide, do they pay for food or rent, $1,200 stimulus check only if you paid all your taxes and took care of your back thing. If you didn’t do that, you didn’t get any stimulus. And no sense of normalcy, right? In the sense of being able to get up, have a routine that you could tap into. The people advocating for the shelter-in-place are usually folks sitting on TV who make half a million dollars a year who don’t know that there are thousands of families that live in one or two bedroom dwellings, have young adults or teenagers living there. And it’s okay for a rainy weekend, but when you’re talking about three months, it becomes a whole other ball of wax.
And so the inequality that’s been exposed is something that I don’t think we really have accounted for, which says that people are angry, people are traumatized, people are sad. People are appended economically, emotionally. And we have this push to have people go out and make money for folks who caused this thing in the first place with their willful ignorance and refusal, to make sure that there was infrastructure in place for people to get healed or get help if they caught this virus or even to acknowledge it.
So that’s going to be with us for a long time, this appending economically. And it’s exasperated now in many communities with the brutality of police who we are now seeing over and over again on camera to the point that I don’t think it’s accidental, but it’s very deliberate. And it’s designed to add more terror and confusion into a community and it is being done with impunity because it feels like people are saying, “I’m not going to get caught.” So you have that sort of situation that is developed. That’s made people even angrier, but they’re kind of stuck because up until maybe this weekend, a lot of people could… What are you going to do? You can’t go out, you can’t demonstrate, you can’t really be in community with folks. So all that has exasperated the situation over and over again.
Then you’re contrasting that with selective or unequal reaction to people coming together. So we almost have forgotten that two or three weeks ago we saw thousands of people showing up at capitals all over the United States, carrying shotguns and talking about, they want the economy to reopen and that they want to get a haircut and all this sort of stuff. And what was coming across was an undercurrent of racism. By that I mean, it was quite obvious that these folks that were protesting weren’t fighting to go back to work. They were fighting to open up their jobs so I can go work and unsafe conditions.
And so I think that was kind of crazy. Plus, the optics of seeing people threatened to shoot a governor in Michigan or hang in effigy of a governor in Kentucky, or walk around with the mega hats on and storm a beach in Southern California. All these things that people saw and saying, “Wow, we got tear gassed when we protested last year or the year before.” And all that really came to a head with the killing of George Floyd, right? There had been other killings and other acts of brutality. Brianna Taylor comes to mind, situations in New York where you saw the selective enforcement of who wears a mask and who doesn’t, police pummeling people in Brooklyn, handing out masks to people in the village, in New York and all that sort of stuff.
But the George Floyd thing brought people out and here they are marching to a police station, demanding justice for something that was pretty egregious and pretty obvious. The thing that we’re dealing with is watching this inequality where folks who came out to protest the murder on tape, on film of George Floyd were being repelled with tear gas and rifles… I mean, rubber bullets and the whole nine, whereas just weeks before, they were storming the Capitol in St. Paul, which is right up the road damn near from where George was killed and nothing was done. Right? These were heroes exercising their American right to descent.
So we have a battle of have and have nots politically, have and have not economically, have and have not socially, who’s accepted, who isn’t, who is deemed worthy of listening to their petitions and their concerns, who is going to be rejected. So all that is just made for the type of volatile situation that we’re seeing. And now we come to the complications around the fires in the streets and the quote unquote, lootings at malls. And that’s very layered. It’s layered because I think that has happened before in the past, but it’s layered because I haven’t worked for three months. I’ll have no money and the Best Buys getting looted, why wouldn’t I go in there and grab me a TV or whatever I can, because I can actually make some money by selling it. I don’t think people are buying it because they can’t. But we also forget that people have ran up into grocery stores and probably got their first bag of groceries. They ran into the Walmarts and the Walgreens and what have you and grabbing food and whatever they could to satisfy just immediate needs.
And where it gets layered, it’s like, if you’re out on the streets, it ain’t black people breaking these windows. It’s white folks that have done it. So in some parts of the country, there’s kind of like a friendly relationship. “I’m going to break these windows because I can, but if you all go in and do stuff, have had it.” But in other places it’s designed to discredit the movement. So you’re hearing the story, the Minneapolis, about white supremacists dressing up or police officers who are undercover, smashing windows and setting things into motion. So that becomes very complicated and you have to dig deep and go, “Okay, what’s going on in this city? And what is the relationship with political organizations,” and what have you?
So in the Bay where I’m at, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily white supremacists coming into the Bay. No proud boys or anybody like that coming. I just think there’s folks who saw an opportunity and understood that they have an angst with capitalism and there’s exploitation and they’re going to expose that by doing what they’re doing. But that’s very different than what’s going on in a place like Milwaukee, where some of the things that are getting burned up are mom and pop businesses, black-owned businesses, all that. You didn’t necessarily have that here.
The one other complication that shows up here where I’m at, which adds to this layering is that there are folks that are criminals for real. So they’re like, “Hey, in the middle of this, let me go rob all the weed spots.” Which has happened. Every single weed spot it’s happened. That wasn’t looters or anything like that. Those were people that’s like, “This is what we’re going to do.” There are folks that have come in and said, “Let me settle the score with these folks,” and they knocked folks off or knocked off their businesses.
So you have all these different things that are going on. All of it at the end of the day comes down to inequality and the immediate reaction to all this, the immediate reason why we have all this is because there was a refusal by that guy, the DA. I forget his name. I think it’s Freeman or whatever, to prosecute and demand the arrest of the four police officers in Minneapolis. Imagine if he did that, imagine if he said, “This was a crime, you, you and you…” Two of those officers have lengthy records of police misconduct. One of them is being sued right now because of his egregious behavior. The other one has 18 and never been disciplined. Imagine if he said, “You all arrested, you all being charged.” I wouldn’t even be on the show. We’d have a different conversation right now. We would be talking about whether or not it’s safe to reopen the country. What does normalcy look like? That’s where we would be at.
But the refusal to do that has resulted in what we’re seeing, which comes to the last point and it’s intersection where you asked where we’re at. Folks got to make a decision as to what side they’re on now. Are you rolling with the police and the things that they have come to represent, the protection of property, the protection of a ruling class, the protection of a 1%, the suppression and oppression of people who are quote unquote, the have nots? Are you rolling on their side? Because that’s where the contradictions are coming. Are you going to reign them in? Are you going to punish them? Are you going to lead the charge to put laws in place to make sure that anybody who behaves that wears that badge in a way that is harmful to people is severely punished?
And we’re not seeing that. We’re seeing mayors take a knee in San Jose or in Brentwood where I’m at in other parts of the country. And we’re hearing mayors, every single mayor says, “I feel your pain.” You feel my pain. Okay, then let’s alleviate that pain. And how are you alleviating it? Right? You’ve had all these uprisings or unrest all around the country, have those mayors huddled together and say, “You know what? We need to change things. Let’s reign in these police.” No, instead what they did is they put curfews on and they’re coming up with laws to penalize protesters versus penalizing the cops who started this in the first place.
So the unwillingness of a DA and an infrastructure in Minneapolis to immediately arrest four cops, which says that they were on the side of the status quo and keeping people oppressed, is why we’re at this moment right now. Is why we’re at this moment. So we need to know the names of those folks and the people that preceded them. If it’s Amy Klobucha when she was the DA or attorney general, or what have you, why didn’t you step in and prosecute these cops? Because it’s not like you didn’t know about it. It’s not like they didn’t have Philando Castile, it wasn’t like they had Jamar Clark. It wasn’t like people in Minneapolis who are organized and smart and resourceful, hadn’t gone and petitioned and demanded some sort of justice. You ignored it and you let the fire burn. And here we are in the June 2020, looking at a president who now wants to use this as an excuse to bring the military in and basically enact some form of martial law and bring up laws from the 1800s, resurrection laws or whatever he’s talking about. It’s a mess.
This is also a opportunity for a whole lot of folks to really come up in a different way. And what I mean by that, there’s been some egregious situations in the past, but we never had 50 cities with unrest all at once, except during Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, right? And even then people weren’t running around looting malls and all that. But let’s look at this because now you have Rudale Drive, you have places in Walnut Creek, City Center in Philly, all these affluent places to River Walk in San Antonio. How does this happen at this point in time? Well, those malls have been closed for three weeks or three months. People miss Mother’s Day, people miss graduation, people missed Easter Sunday. All that revenue never happened. Some of them probably got a stimulus bill or money, but they ain’t make their sales.
So now all of a sudden, all these malls are being looted. All these stores are being looted. So now you go cash out and get insurance and start anew. And so I don’t put it past folks to have hired or turned a blind eye or turned off their cameras, or stood idly by, or actually participated in making sure that their stores were looted or breached or burnt, and what have you. This happened in ’77 in New York during the blackout, this happened in the South Bronx, this happened in London more recently where there were unrest and people were saying, “Hey, man, some of these fires were started by people who weren’t doing very well in a business in the first place.” But we don’t know that because there was a fire. Even with the police station being burned. After 9/11, how do you breach a police station? How do you do that?
Here we are in Oakland, I mean, since the days of the Panther to point out a guest of mine on my show, he was like, “People have been trying to take the police station for 50 years. They never been able to… Couldn’t even light a match. He might’ve spray painted, but to burn down a police station, that doesn’t happen by accident. That means there’s some cooperation somewhere.” And my guess, there’s a little bit more to it. We are going to get a new police station out of this. We’re going to get new equipment out of this. Everybody’s going to come up off this. So I don’t think it’s as simple as a bunch of people, anarchists or white nationalist, or quote unquote folks from the hood, just rolling up and just having their way. Not in such a coordinated way. Not with 50 cities all around the country or even more. This is something else that’s going on and I think we need to examine that and track the money, track the political payoff of this happening and act accordingly.
I think we’re in a pot of boiling water and our first line of business is to get out that pot, right? And then make a full commitment to move forward and never get back in the pot again. There are people that are saying, “Evil is evil, so if you’re voting for the lesser of two evils, you still have evils.” And they like to pull out the quote from Malcolm X, “If I put a knife in your back and it’s six inches and I pull it out halfway, is that good?” Et cetera, et cetera. Well, yeah, actually it is if you pull it out. It means maybe if one was hitting the artery and now it isn’t, or was close to the artery, I have a better chance of surviving.
So I think right now people better be clear that you’re… It’s like a video game. I have a video game here, right? Where it’s a street fighter and me and my son sometimes play. Guess what? We’re going to pick somebody who we’re going to fight. You’re going to fight, but do I want to fight the character that has all the weapons? Do I want to fight the character that is good with their hands? Do I want to fight the character that has the knife or the one with the gun? Who do you want to fight? Do you want to fight the authoritarian who is now talking about bringing the military in and crushing dissent? Or do you want to fight the guy who’s a do-nothinger, who might take his time meandering around before he puts in some of the very same policies this guy wants to put into place?
And I think you got to figure out what you’re most equipped to. I would argue that there were a number of people who said that we needed a Trump in office because it would show people the raw ugliness of America and we would organize. Well, we’re for you then. There’s no third party that is ready to do the job. Obviously the pandemic showed us that we we’re still reliant on food chains and all these other systems, right? We don’t have like community gardens to feed entire communities. We don’t have any of that infrastructure. Stuff that organizers said in 2016, that we should organize and do these things, well, you had Trump in office and it ain’t been done.
So I don’t trust another four years to see it get done because like it or not, this dude is smart enough to know that he’s going to crush everything. He’s like, take no prisoners. So you better go with the guy who’s meandering around, who is sitting down and saying, “It might take me two days to put these things into place,” versus one guy who’s smashing and grabbing and wants to put it in right now. So we’re going to fight, the question is who do you want to fight? What landscape do you want to fight on? And for those who say, “Well, it doesn’t matter,” I say, “Then you are actually coming from a point of privilege at this point.”
Because right now, even what I’m seeing with the demonstrations, for example, people are talking about the death. They’re not talking about the 12 to 15 shootings that took place over the weekend with police shooting people in the eyes with rubber bullets, right? 14 year olds, 15 year olds. Yesterday, we had 20,000 people, downtown Oakland, young people, high school, put it together. They were shooting tear gas 20 minutes before curfew, right? You would think that the mayor would say, “Wow, these high school kids put together a rally and they brought all these people that’s supposedly getting national attention, but you have police lined up and shooting tear gas at them.
So we know where we’re at right now. And we’re going to have to find the path of least resistance. And right now that path of least resistance looks like the neoliberal meandering, Joe Biden, more than a Trump who is empowering a lot. He’s making us have to do a lot of fights that we shouldn’t have to fight right now. And we’re going to need all our energy and resources and intelligence to really move out of this inequality that we’re existing in right now. And I’d rather go up the mountain than swim through the crocodile-infested swamp, or the piranha-infested swamp. I’ll take my chances in the fores and deal with mountain lions and tigers and all that, because I know how to shoot a rifle. I know how to shoot a gun. I can deal with them better. I don’t know how to swim, so I’m not going that way. So I’ll take the mountain.
Studio: Cameron Granadino
Production: Cameron Granadino, Ericka Blount Danois
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therealnews--2020-06-08--Agents Provocateurs Are Still A Real Threat To Our Movements

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors .
It will be updated .
Jacqueline Luqm… : This is Jacqueline Luqman with the Real News Network .
Earlier this week , Saint Paul , Minnesota mayor Melvin Carter had to walk back his earlier claims that , quote , every single person who was arrested Friday night from protests over the killing of George Floyd was from out of state .
The state ’ s governor , Tim Walz , also had to apologize for saying that as many as 80 % of those destroying property in the cities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be foreign actors .
MSNBC ’ s host Joy-Ann Reid , repeated and expounded on the foreign influence claim on Twitter , and even Susan Rice ran with it , again raising the specter of the Russians making the blacks do bad things .
But instead of not voting or voting for Trump , apparently what they made us do last time , the Russians are making black people riot and loot .
As ridiculous as that might sound , there is some sketchy business going on at some of these protests .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ umbrellas in Minneapolis .
Mysterious , all-black-clad white women tagging businesses with Black Lives Matter and being run off by an actual black woman protestor for their trouble in another city .
Mysterious pallets of bricks , allegedly showing up on city streets .
Is it Antifa ?
Is it white supremacists ?
Is it the police ?
Whoever is behind these curious actions , the issue of agent provocateurs is real and is an ever-present challenge for organizations , movements , and protests .
But first , we have to understand what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agent provocateur is a person who commits or acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act .
And this is done to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to .
And we have to be clear .
There is a long history of agent provocateurs , interfering in movements and protests , smearing activists , and ruining peoples ’ and organizations ’ lives and reputations and worse .
This has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least a century to czarist Russia through the 60s and the 70s anti-war and black power movements and even through to Occupy Wall Street .
In the 60s , campus-based movements against the Vietnam War were a top target for agent provocateurs .
There were several at work across the country , but one well known one was called Tommy the Traveler .
He was memorable , too .
You ’ re going to have to look him up .
He concentrated on enticing impressionable young would-be revolutionaries to commit acts that would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jail .
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a prime target of agent provocateurs , or just agents , as they ’ re often called in revolutionary circles .
William O ’ Neil is one infamous one .
He was described in a Nation article as being infatuated with weapons .
He played a role in the police murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark , Black Panther Party leaders in Chicago .
Hampton had been suspicious of O ’ Neil because of his violent talk , but others didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Clark were assassinated by Chicago police , the public was convinced that the Panthers were prone to violence and shot first , which was untrue .
But that was the image that was carefully propagated by the agents in the organization ’ s midst , O ’ Neil being one of them .
And the Occupy Wall Street organizers were so focused on planning the multitude of mass demonstrations they held that they didn ’ t pay close enough attention to who they were letting into the movement .
Committed to their motto @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had an open door policy , which left them wide open to police infiltration .
And that ’ s how two undercover officers going by the names Mo and Nadia infiltrated Occupy .
The two were Chicago PD field intelligence agents on a 90-day undercover assignment to attend Occupy ’ s Chicago events to report back on any planned criminal activity .
They ultimately entrapped three members of Occupy , known as the NATO 3 , Brent Betterly , Jared Chase , and Brian Church , who were arrested in May of 2012 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the NATO Summit protests .
They were tried and found guilty of arson and mob action , but they were cleared of the terrorism charges that were trumped up against them due to the infiltration of Mo and Nadia .
They were sentenced to between five to eight years in prison each .
Just recently , it was revealed that the Trump administration has authorized unprecedented latitude for covert surveillance of protestors to the Drug Enforcement Administration .
Even DEA officials are uncomfortable with this move , and you should be wary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the history of agent provocateurs and realizing that they are very real and cause very real damage , the reports of police destroying property and blaming protestors , reports of white supremacists or those connected with right wing extremist groups committing acts of vandalism , and questions about other suspicious actors in these streets , make sense and should not be completely dismissed .
I mean , the Trump administration basically just announced that they ’ re going to direct the DEA to continue this nefarious tradition of putting agents in the midst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ admit that this is a problematic take to apply to all vandalism that arises from some of these protests .
Yes , I said vandalism , not violence , as property damage is nothing more than vandalism because it leaves no place for the expression of rage and frustration and utter hopelessness that justice will ever come among some in the oppressed communities that are struggling to be free .
The people ’ s rage is legitimate .
And I don ’ t want to take that from them by blaming all expressions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flag tactic .
Yeah , that ’ s a narrative that ’ s out there .
But I do want to be realistic and acknowledge that there are likely agents in the midst of these protests and we have to be careful that we are not duped by them .
We also want to be clear on two especially disturbing aspects of the current threat of infiltration in our protests , the maligning of Antifa and the threat of white supremacists .
The dictionary definition of Antifa is actually , quote , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affiliated by their militant opposition to fascism and other forms of extreme right wing ideology .
So yes , Trump tried to declare people who are not actually an organization , but who are opposed to fascism and right wing extremism , a terrorist group .
And he did this even though the Washington field office of the FBI said that they had no evidence that Antifa was involved in or even present at the May 31st protests in Washington , DC .
The sad thing is that a lot of people believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progressives have expressed displeasure at their tactics .
But Antifa ’ s tactics are almost always in defense of marginalized people and always , always against racists and fascists .
So it ’ s been personally exasperating to argue with so-called progressives about the need for people to be willing to literally fight for our lives against people who really do want to harm us standing by our side .
So I ’ m really not feeling the maligning of our allies in the struggle against this racist , capitalist , imperialist system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is giving them serves the political and social purposes of further maligning them in the eyes of the public .
And even they were the targets of agent tactics over the years , with fake Antifa social media accounts created where videos were posted , claiming that members were attacking peaceful white people doing nothing .
Those accounts were proven to be fake , and the videos posted to them either staged or deceptively edited , but too many progressives use that content to solidify their opposition to antifascists and double down on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legitimate response to all oppression .
And that has created a problem in this moment because there is a rising threat of violent white supremacists using these protests , not only to discredit the righteous anger of the people , but to harm those very people protesting for racial justice as well .
Minnesota officials confirmed that white supremacist organizers called their members and supporters to go to Minneapolis to use the protests as a cover to create mayhem .
Twitter has suspended the recently created @ Antifa_US account , not because it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but because it was posting content that advocated violence during the protests and was found to have been created by white nationalists .
And the most concerning of all is the groups that are targeting protests to commit acts of violence against people .
One such group is the Boogaloo Boys , but don ’ t let the funny name and the Hawaiian shirts they wear fool you into thinking that they ’ re not dangerous .
These people want a civil war , if not an all-out race war .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them inserting themselves in the ongoing protests to realize their goals .
Denver police seized weapons and tactical gear from two men who showed up to the protest there last week .
One of them , Chevy McGee , identified himself as part of the Boogaloo movement .
The Washington Post reports that a Tampa television reporter was broadcasting live from protests last weekend when two young men in Hawaiian shirts moved in front of the camera and began chanting the name of an obscure white nationalist slogan , drowning out protesters shouting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” They ’ ve been spotted , the Boogaloo movement members , at protests across the country , including Minneapolis , Salt Lake City , Dallas , Atlanta , Philadelphia , sometimes brandishing weapons , usually wearing the Hawaiian shirts that for them represent their membership in a fraternity that adheres to violence and divisiveness .
And this is in addition to the regular racist white people who ’ ve been shown to encounter protesters with baseball bats , golf clubs , and semiautomatic weapons while waving the American flag .
Antifa clearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so many black and anti-fascist progressives try to warned our compatriots since before Charlottesville .
So how do we spot these agents in our midst ?
The white supremacists in the Hawaiian shirts and assault rifles are pretty easy to spot .
Well , what about the undercover infiltrators ?
Here are some things to look for .
Groups of people who look out of place because they dress too uniformly , or they ’ re wearing some type of similar identifying garment like a colored wristband or a baseball cap .
Individual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cover their identities who are openly committing crimes , especially in broad daylight , especially if they are evasive or defensive when confronted .
If individuals come to the protest with a weapon , if they suggest committing acts of violence using weapons , or if they announce they ’ re planning to or urging others to do either , and they ’ re insistent about it .
And I would be irresponsible if I did not strongly caution against doxing or outing people you believe to be agents without thorough investigation and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can also have deadly consequences for an innocent person , such as the case of James Carr , who was Huey Newton ’ s former bodyguard and George Jackson ’ s friend in prison .
Carr was labeled an informant after documents were found after Jackson ’ s assassination implicating Carr in Jackson ’ s assassination and in informing on people in the movement for at least 10 years .
However , it was revealed in the Church Commission Hearings several years later that the documents were fake , and actual informers had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that information .
In short , be sure that you are identifying the right man or woman as an agent because being wrong could be just as deadly as the work of an actual agent .
As for us activists , organizers , and revolutionaries , we should know this history of the infiltration of movements that challenge this oppressive system that we are carrying on in our ancestors ’ names and for the freedom and liberation of future generations .
That ’ s why we do this work .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We have to be careful that we aren ’ t trying to compete for who ’ s more revolutionary , that we aren ’ t so thirsty for relevance and attention and contributions that we let any and everyone into our organizations .
We have to be unafraid to declare our organizing spaces closed to people we do not know or trust .
And we have to stick to the principles that we are organizing on to achieve our goals .
And here ’ s just a personal note .
Everything doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media .
Keep your internal disagreements internal .
Call out your comrades privately and away from the public eye .
Resolve your differences in private , and do not use public platforms to share sensitive organizational documents and information .
There is a place for strategic revolutionary actions that might not be palatable for everyone , but we need to be alert to the continued attempts by the oppressive system we are challenging and its agents to shut our movements down .
They will not stop , so neither can we .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ News Network in the belly of the beast , Washington , DC .

‘Outside agitators’ aren’t the cause of last week’s protests, but they are one of the forces that threaten to derail movements.
Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Jacqueline Luqm…: This is Jacqueline Luqman with the Real News Network.
Earlier this week, Saint Paul, Minnesota mayor Melvin Carter had to walk back his earlier claims that, quote, every single person who was arrested Friday night from protests over the killing of George Floyd was from out of state. The state’s governor, Tim Walz, also had to apologize for saying that as many as 80% of those destroying property in the cities were not locals and many also may be foreign actors. MSNBC’s host Joy-Ann Reid, repeated and expounded on the foreign influence claim on Twitter, and even Susan Rice ran with it, again raising the specter of the Russians making the blacks do bad things. But instead of not voting or voting for Trump, apparently what they made us do last time, the Russians are making black people riot and loot.
As ridiculous as that might sound, there is some sketchy business going on at some of these protests. Mysterious, all-black-clad white window smashers with umbrellas in Minneapolis. Mysterious, all-black-clad white women tagging businesses with Black Lives Matter and being run off by an actual black woman protestor for their trouble in another city. Mysterious pallets of bricks, allegedly showing up on city streets. Is it Antifa? Is it white supremacists? Is it the police? Whoever is behind these curious actions, the issue of agent provocateurs is real and is an ever-present challenge for organizations, movements, and protests.
But first, we have to understand what we’re talking about. An agent provocateur is a person who commits or acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act. And this is done to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to. And we have to be clear. There is a long history of agent provocateurs, interfering in movements and protests, smearing activists, and ruining peoples’ and organizations’ lives and reputations and worse. This has been documented as far back as at least a century to czarist Russia through the 60s and the 70s anti-war and black power movements and even through to Occupy Wall Street.
In the 60s, campus-based movements against the Vietnam War were a top target for agent provocateurs. There were several at work across the country, but one well known one was called Tommy the Traveler. He was memorable, too. You’re going to have to look him up. He concentrated on enticing impressionable young would-be revolutionaries to commit acts that would divide the movement while landing them in jail. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was a prime target of agent provocateurs, or just agents, as they’re often called in revolutionary circles.
William O’Neil is one infamous one. He was described in a Nation article as being infatuated with weapons. He played a role in the police murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Black Panther Party leaders in Chicago. Hampton had been suspicious of O’Neil because of his violent talk, but others didn’t see through him. When Hampton and Clark were assassinated by Chicago police, the public was convinced that the Panthers were prone to violence and shot first, which was untrue. But that was the image that was carefully propagated by the agents in the organization’s midst, O’Neil being one of them.
And the Occupy Wall Street organizers were so focused on planning the multitude of mass demonstrations they held that they didn’t pay close enough attention to who they were letting into the movement. Committed to their motto of representing the 99%, Occupy had an open door policy, which left them wide open to police infiltration. And that’s how two undercover officers going by the names Mo and Nadia infiltrated Occupy. The two were Chicago PD field intelligence agents on a 90-day undercover assignment to attend Occupy’s Chicago events to report back on any planned criminal activity. They ultimately entrapped three members of Occupy, known as the NATO 3, Brent Betterly, Jared Chase, and Brian Church, who were arrested in May of 2012 and charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism during the NATO Summit protests. They were tried and found guilty of arson and mob action, but they were cleared of the terrorism charges that were trumped up against them due to the infiltration of Mo and Nadia. They were sentenced to between five to eight years in prison each.
Just recently, it was revealed that the Trump administration has authorized unprecedented latitude for covert surveillance of protestors to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Even DEA officials are uncomfortable with this move, and you should be wary of it as well. So understanding the history of agent provocateurs and realizing that they are very real and cause very real damage, the reports of police destroying property and blaming protestors, reports of white supremacists or those connected with right wing extremist groups committing acts of vandalism, and questions about other suspicious actors in these streets, make sense and should not be completely dismissed. I mean, the Trump administration basically just announced that they’re going to direct the DEA to continue this nefarious tradition of putting agents in the midst of movements.
But I have to admit that this is a problematic take to apply to all vandalism that arises from some of these protests. Yes, I said vandalism, not violence, as property damage is nothing more than vandalism because it leaves no place for the expression of rage and frustration and utter hopelessness that justice will ever come among some in the oppressed communities that are struggling to be free. The people’s rage is legitimate. And I don’t want to take that from them by blaming all expressions of rage as a deep state false flag tactic. Yeah, that’s a narrative that’s out there. But I do want to be realistic and acknowledge that there are likely agents in the midst of these protests and we have to be careful that we are not duped by them.
We also want to be clear on two especially disturbing aspects of the current threat of infiltration in our protests, the maligning of Antifa and the threat of white supremacists. The dictionary definition of Antifa is actually, quote, a political protest movement, comprising autonomous groups affiliated by their militant opposition to fascism and other forms of extreme right wing ideology. So yes, Trump tried to declare people who are not actually an organization, but who are opposed to fascism and right wing extremism, a terrorist group. And he did this even though the Washington field office of the FBI said that they had no evidence that Antifa was involved in or even present at the May 31st protests in Washington, DC.
The sad thing is that a lot of people believe that Antifa are terrorists and even some progressives have expressed displeasure at their tactics. But Antifa’s tactics are almost always in defense of marginalized people and always, always against racists and fascists. So it’s been personally exasperating to argue with so-called progressives about the need for people to be willing to literally fight for our lives against people who really do want to harm us standing by our side. So I’m really not feeling the maligning of our allies in the struggle against this racist, capitalist, imperialist system, but the negative attention the president is giving them serves the political and social purposes of further maligning them in the eyes of the public.
And even they were the targets of agent tactics over the years, with fake Antifa social media accounts created where videos were posted, claiming that members were attacking peaceful white people doing nothing. Those accounts were proven to be fake, and the videos posted to them either staged or deceptively edited, but too many progressives use that content to solidify their opposition to antifascists and double down on their insistence that only nonviolence is a legitimate response to all oppression. And that has created a problem in this moment because there is a rising threat of violent white supremacists using these protests, not only to discredit the righteous anger of the people, but to harm those very people protesting for racial justice as well.
Minnesota officials confirmed that white supremacist organizers called their members and supporters to go to Minneapolis to use the protests as a cover to create mayhem. Twitter has suspended the recently created @Antifa_US account, not because it is actually representative of any Antifa ideology, but because it was posting content that advocated violence during the protests and was found to have been created by white nationalists. And the most concerning of all is the groups that are targeting protests to commit acts of violence against people.
One such group is the Boogaloo Boys, but don’t let the funny name and the Hawaiian shirts they wear fool you into thinking that they’re not dangerous. These people want a civil war, if not an all-out race war. And there have already been documented connections between them inserting themselves in the ongoing protests to realize their goals.
Denver police seized weapons and tactical gear from two men who showed up to the protest there last week. One of them, Chevy McGee, identified himself as part of the Boogaloo movement. The Washington Post reports that a Tampa television reporter was broadcasting live from protests last weekend when two young men in Hawaiian shirts moved in front of the camera and began chanting the name of an obscure white nationalist slogan, drowning out protesters shouting, “No justice, no peace.” They’ve been spotted, the Boogaloo movement members, at protests across the country, including Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, sometimes brandishing weapons, usually wearing the Hawaiian shirts that for them represent their membership in a fraternity that adheres to violence and divisiveness. And this is in addition to the regular racist white people who’ve been shown to encounter protesters with baseball bats, golf clubs, and semiautomatic weapons while waving the American flag. Antifa clearly is not the problem here, as so many black and anti-fascist progressives try to warned our compatriots since before Charlottesville.
So how do we spot these agents in our midst? The white supremacists in the Hawaiian shirts and assault rifles are pretty easy to spot. Well, what about the undercover infiltrators? Here are some things to look for. Groups of people who look out of place because they dress too uniformly, or they’re wearing some type of similar identifying garment like a colored wristband or a baseball cap. Individual people who have taken great lengths to cover their identities who are openly committing crimes, especially in broad daylight, especially if they are evasive or defensive when confronted. If individuals come to the protest with a weapon, if they suggest committing acts of violence using weapons, or if they announce they’re planning to or urging others to do either, and they’re insistent about it.
And I would be irresponsible if I did not strongly caution against doxing or outing people you believe to be agents without thorough investigation and verification because falsely labeling someone an infiltrator can also have deadly consequences for an innocent person, such as the case of James Carr, who was Huey Newton’s former bodyguard and George Jackson’s friend in prison. Carr was labeled an informant after documents were found after Jackson’s assassination implicating Carr in Jackson’s assassination and in informing on people in the movement for at least 10 years. However, it was revealed in the Church Commission Hearings several years later that the documents were fake, and actual informers had set Carr up to be killed using that information.
In short, be sure that you are identifying the right man or woman as an agent because being wrong could be just as deadly as the work of an actual agent. As for us activists, organizers, and revolutionaries, we should know this history of the infiltration of movements that challenge this oppressive system that we are carrying on in our ancestors’ names and for the freedom and liberation of future generations.
That’s why we do this work. That’s why we’re in the streets. We have to be careful that we aren’t trying to compete for who’s more revolutionary, that we aren’t so thirsty for relevance and attention and contributions that we let any and everyone into our organizations.
We have to be unafraid to declare our organizing spaces closed to people we do not know or trust. And we have to stick to the principles that we are organizing on to achieve our goals.
And here’s just a personal note. Everything doesn’t have to be posted on social media. Keep your internal disagreements internal. Call out your comrades privately and away from the public eye. Resolve your differences in private, and do not use public platforms to share sensitive organizational documents and information. There is a place for strategic revolutionary actions that might not be palatable for everyone, but we need to be alert to the continued attempts by the oppressive system we are challenging and its agents to shut our movements down. They will not stop, so neither can we.
This is Jacqueline Luqman with the Real News Network in the belly of the beast, Washington, DC.
Studio: Taylor Hebden
Production: Taylor Hebden
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therealnews--2020-06-09--The Real News Launches New Show: Why You Should Give A F*ck

Genevieve Montinar and Tunde Ogunfolaju say that on their new show , “ Why You Should Give a F*ck , ” they want to keep things simple .
“ We want everyone to know what ’ s happening in this country on a day-to-day basis , ” said Ogunflaju .
He said he ’ s tired of the way political hacks and commentators seem to speak for everyone .
This show looks to circumvent all that by breaking down for viewers why they should care about what ’ s going on and by talking to everyday people .
The two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show to tackle big concepts , breaking down how these things color our everyday lives – like power ( who has it and who wants it ) , labor , and elections .
They also say they want to make it clear why the news cycle matters to an audience that is used to tuning out the noise .
“ We want to explain to people these issues that are happening in their lives , whether they are aware of it or not , and put it in terms that it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Montinar said .
Montinar and Ogunfolaju work for The Real News Network as booking producer and studio technician , respectively .
To get a better sense of what ’ s going on , watch this clip of the two hosts talking about the show .

Genevieve Montinar and Tunde Ogunfolaju say that on their new show, “Why You Should Give a F*ck,” they want to keep things simple.
“We want everyone to know what’s happening in this country on a day-to-day basis,” said Ogunflaju. He said he’s tired of the way political hacks and commentators seem to speak for everyone. This show looks to circumvent all that by breaking down for viewers why they should care about what’s going on and by talking to everyday people.
The two plan to use each episode of the show to tackle big concepts, breaking down how these things color our everyday lives – like power (who has it and who wants it), labor, and elections.
They also say they want to make it clear why the news cycle matters to an audience that is used to tuning out the noise.
“We want to explain to people these issues that are happening in their lives, whether they are aware of it or not, and put it in terms that it’s easy and accessible for everyone,” Montinar said.
The show premieres Wednesday, June 10 at 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PST.
Montinar and Ogunfolaju work for The Real News Network as booking producer and studio technician, respectively.
To get a better sense of what’s going on, watch this clip of the two hosts talking about the show.
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therealnews--2020-06-09--Stir Crazy! Episode #49: Stand Up And Make A Change

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Jaisal is currently the Democracy Initiative Manager at the Solutions Journalism Network and is a former TRNN host, producer, and reporter. He mainly grew up in the Baltimore area and studied modern history at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before joining TRNN, he contributed print, radio, and TV reports to Free Speech Radio News, Democracy Now! and The Indypendent. Jaisal's mother has taught in the Baltimore City Public School system for the past 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @jaisalnoor.