In this week's episode, we discuss the current uprising and history-making moment we are living through. We have lost too many of our black brothers and sisters due to police brutality, have seen communities disrupted by systemic oppression, and have felt the effects of race-driven rhetoric that continues to perpetuate a crippling narrative. Join us as we discuss solutions and hear how we are contributing our energy and efforts to change in our communities and how we are supporting the liberation of ourselves.
In this week's episode, we discuss the current uprising and history-making moment we are living through. We have lost too many of our black brothers and sisters due to police brutality, have seen communities disrupted by systemic oppression, and have felt the effects of race-driven rhetoric that continues to perpetuate a crippling narrative. Join us as we discuss solutions and hear how we are contributing our energy and efforts to change in our communities and how we are supporting the liberation of ourselves.
You are now listening to the No Visuals Podcast, an unedited take on life.
Speaker 2:What's going on, everyone. Welcome to the no visuals podcast and an edited take on life. I'm your host for today's episode Jean,
Speaker 1:And I'm your host Shanique and welcome to our very first episode.
Speaker 2:Very, very first episode, the debut.
Speaker 1:I know I'm very excited. This has been something that's been an idea for us for a really long time. And our hope with the no visuals podcast is to ultimately build a community and to share our experiences. I think everyone has a unique story to tell and a unique lens that they see the world through. So I hope this resonates with whoever's listening. I hope that we're able to build community here and just like be real open, honest, and you know,
Speaker 2:Just get it going exactly. That's what it is really like, what you said, a community and just having a voice, being able to be heard. Cause it's not just us speaking as well. You guys can also tune in and like comments areas and just let us know how you guys feel or what you guys thought about it. Or even things that you guys want us to talk about. And we can connect from there. And just,
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So on this week's episode, we're going to talk about something a little bit heavier. We had ideas about what we wanted our first episode to be, but given the climate and everything that's going on in our country and our world, there was nothing more appropriate to talk about then George Floyd and the uprising surrounding police brutality and also the systemic faults in our government, in our policing, in our institutions. So we wanted to take this opportunity to just kind of converse about how we've been feeling and what we think that we can do to kind of drive the change and just keep the momentum going.
Speaker 2:[inaudible], that's what it really is. Keeping the momentum going. It's just not a day or whatever you may call it like a week or a month. Like this is been a problem within the country for over hundreds of years. And it's going to take a while. It's going to take a long time. It's not going to be easy fix, unfortunately, but as long as we're willing to, you know, put that step forward, I can get there as a collective group.
Speaker 1:And I think that, you know, for a couple of weeks, like my energy, like, it just weighed so hard on me. I wasn't able to watch the video, but seeing like still like clips of the video and seeing, like still images, it broke heart because it's the same story over and over and over and over again. And there's never any like resolution, like it's very disheartening because this is our lived experience as black people in this country every single day. Like it's frightening because it's like, it can happen to anybody. So the past couple of weeks for me definitely have been a little bit challenging to get through like mentally. And I think for the whole black community in general, it's just, it's traumatizing. It's very traumatized. It's everywhere. Like your jobs are talking about it now. So you just have no like escape zone, which is healthy. We kind of need to disconnect in a sense yeah. To just keep our head straight and not just like intake negative things, 24 seven, exactly. Like it's trauma, like you said, like this past week. And I had to like take like a couple apps off my phone just because it was like, every time I would go on those apps, like I would go down a rabbit hole of just all the negativity going on and it's just like, no escape. So it's like, I want to be informed because it's like Twitter and Instagram are giving us more accurate reports, the actual news. So it's like, I need to know what's going on. But at the same time, I'm absolutely drained in terrified at the state of things and where things are going. So it takes a toll on you. It does. So that I'll agree on for sure. So we've just been, trying to feel are inspiration from this and trying to figure out, okay, where can we channel our energy? So we've sat and we talked a little bit about different reform and different revolutionary standpoints that we would like to see happen. We don't want these protests to go in vain. We don't want things to just remained the same. You know, like some things have just been so silly to me and I don't want to get like, too, like caught up in it. But I think this is a time of having heightened discernment. Like there's like so much foolishness happening on too distracting away from like the actual movement. And you know, I just want us to like remain focused. We have to like, one of the things that I saw, I think this past week was like the Democrats, they were in some meeting and they all had like kente cloth on. I did see that was that like Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, and yeah, it's pandering. And it's very like, what is the point? Like instead of you like taking some action to actually introduce some legislation to like dismantle, right?
Speaker 2:I hear you on that. What's going on. We need legislations. We need actual change. We need to have action steps being taken, not just like putting on a dress and saying, yeah, I know the culture, like, like his representation of our culture. Like that's not what we're looking for. Anything that's like pandering right now. Like I have zero tolerance for like also all the companies popping up out of the woodworks talking about, we have one black person on our board. We suck. This is in that again, there's only so much that we can take, keep your trash brand to yourself and like off our feeds. So like that has been very annoying. And then people painting this street, it's just like talking about brains. What happened with the Gucci situation? I forgot who it was. It was one of them. Ladies you told me about, I think Tori got on live with her. She was like crying over riots in the Gucci store. And it was just like, lady, have you protested? And then she was crying and it was just like a whole theatrical performance. But I say all this to say is that this is a matter of life. You know, this is not something to be taken lightly. And it's just becoming very difficult to filter through all the foolishness. So that's why I took my break from social media. Like I just really couldn't take it anymore. I could not see one more black lives matter way or a black lives matter painted on the street. And it got washed up the next day. I mentally cannot handle it. So I'm channeling my energy into something a little bit more productive, all these things that are happening until I feel like a kind of just like what you mentioned earlier, earlier, little distractions guys. I think gosh, street named AF we're not applauding that I'm not applauding that. Okay. We got a street named after black lives matter. Okay. That's how I'm looking at it. Oh, okay. Amar, because listen, a killing like judge Floyd. This is not the first time that's happened. Yeah. This has been happening for years, decades and generations. If you choose to acknowledge it now, because social media caught it, this is not the only merit of that or police brutality that social media has caught. So why is it that we choose now all these companies choosing now to try and implement certain things that go, wait, wait, BLM. You know why it's because it's trendy because now that's, what's trending. So you have no choice. But to put out a statement saying, Oh, we do this, or you're trying to do something where it's like, yo guys is painted street. Exactly. It's got become commodified. It's become trendy. Every company is hopping on the bandwagon. And we that's, again, going back to discernment, we need to like filter through what is authentic and what's authentic because some
Speaker 1:Things are truly just, we're saying something just to say something, there's no authenticity behind it. There's no, I'm waiting to see what the implementation is going to look like and what the longterm plans are. But I know for a fact they are few and far,
Speaker 2:Far between it's been completely commodified. I think I've seen a few States implement. I think it was New York was one of them where like the choke hole is banned now. And then you hear, which is a step
Speaker 1:It's a step. Yeah. But then they also show their ass. Like, did you see that mashup on like Instagram of like the NYP D literally be impeded down and then the officer's like, we're being treated as thugs. And it's just like, bro, what alternate universe? Or alternate reality are you living in? Right. Like literally he's like, you guys are treating us like thugs. And then you just see people that you just see, it goes to a clip of people like them. Bye. And then went to Baton and it's like, what? And he's like, my badge is still got some shine on it. And it's like, dude, do you like take a step back and look at what is going on.
Speaker 2:He can't even do that. He can't do that. So he can't even do that. But it's insane with no further ado. I think we should. Yeah, let's get started. Let's get started. We talked a lot about like, what's going on, but from like a change standpoint, I think, again, I'm just speaking for myself. Right. And we all have opinions on how we can bring change, but I just wanted to share a few things that I thought would be important for our community to hear, because it's sad because it's really the simple things that are neglected kind of, you know what I mean? Like one of the main things we should all be focused on is exercising our voting rights. You know what I mean? That's critical. That's like, whether you think you don't have a voice or your voice is too small for such a big topic. And it really is a big topic because this not only affects the United States, it's around the whole world. I think the little things make the biggest difference and that is voting. That's your voice. That is your voice right there. So whether you think you're not being heard, go vote. Cause that counts, we all should be voting. We all need to vote. So yeah, voting in every election. And I don't want to only say like vote within the presidential election, right? Because I think that's, what's broadcasted 24 seven.
Speaker 1:Well, that's like the national election. So that's what our eyes are drawn to. But we also all live in cities and towns. We all live in States
Speaker 2:Were these police brutality actions in injustices are taking place. So we need to make change within our own community within our own cities that have our police departments in that fund are the police departments from these local corporations that are within that city. We needed speak with our mayors or our whomever elected officials in demand change. So that's why I think it's important. Not only to just focus on a presidential election, but to really hone in and bring in your community and get involved in all the elections, not just presidential elections.
Speaker 1:I think it's also important that we have to, okay. Hold our elected officials accountable on implementing progressive policies. So we have police, but there's a systemic problem within the police that is police brutality, right? And then that trickles down into the prison systems that trickles down into our schools, being policed with so-called school resource officers, we have terrible housing. We have terrible education, horrific health care that was literally put on display when COVID happened, how bad our healthcare system is. And we don't have people making living wages. So it's like, again, it's a systemic.
Speaker 2:That's what we really need people to understand is that this is systematically done. Cause a lot of people won't walk to the situation. They are really confused as to why the state of our communities are like this
Speaker 1:Black people are systematically targeted in this system, right? There's two different things, right? Where either there's a system in place that is breaking down black communities, black families that is being uncovered right now. But many of us are subject to its affects and we've seen the effects play out in our families. But then the system is failing everyone. The system does not work for anyone. So those are the two different things, but black people are targeted literally by every re like every legislation, literally black people are disadvantaged by it. Of course. So it's just like, you know, where do we even start? But like vote y'all,
Speaker 2:You know, it's so funny. Cause he was talking about, um, systemic and systematic. Like I was scrolling through my IgE feed recently. And then I seen like this little video where it was explaining like just oppression for the, um, systematic oppression on the black community, but in minority communities and the way they played it out, literally it was made. So like there was no way you couldn't understand it. It was like one of those videos where it was like, I don't even know how to explain it. That's how, like they literally colored it out, colored it out. It was based on cartoon characters just to get the viewer to really understand. So it wasn't something that was like, I mean, that is where we're at. We need to figure this thing out was some people still are not getting some people aren't getting it. And it was like literally this cartoon video that they had to make for some people have difficulty understanding this so that they can understand it. I'm like, yo, if you's don't understand after this, then it's like, wow, the system is failing us. Y'all and it's the root that is bad. You ever seen like a hurricane and we have that Parkway near our house. And after every big storm, all the old trees are just rooted and out in the trash. That is literally what's happened to the system right now. It is so old. And so rotten that literally every rotten piece of it is being exposed and being opened up. That's what needs to happen. So that's what this year is about. What is it? 2020? You told me this, the age of Aquarius, literally like everything is coming to light. You also, a lot of people don't really subscribe to that too. Well, look it up. Put your seatbelt on because it's just getting started honestly. But to get back to the top was bringing it back a little bit. Like we said, volt guys, volt, volt, volt, reach out to your elected officials. Or even when voting times coming up, these are people that you guys within your community, right? These are people that you guys can have access to. Like it's not like Donald Trump where, or like, it's not, it's not like it's not governors. It's not, it's really not farfetched. Like these people during their campaigns, they come door to door knocking, like actually share. Do they have like forums? They have all of that. They're on Facebook. A lot of them will send letters to your house. So you actually can write them a letter. I just started getting letters because I think another voting season is like state reps and all that. It's coming up soon and don't just throw your vote to anybody before you vote. Actually do a little bit of research, right? Look, I'm pretty sure you probably already know what changes needed within your community. So come up with a list of action items. And when you come knocking on your door, present them, say, Hey, if you want my vote, cause trust me, they really do want your vote. These are the things that you're going to have to address. And if you can't then Hey, I'm vote in or I'm going to check the next person home. Exactly. And there's a lot of people currently like in positions in the government that have gotten to where they are through a lot of lip service. Like they talked, they talked a good talk facts. They had the platform that everyone wanted, but now it is time for those people to go honestly, 100%. So another way I think that we can also kind of have our own voice in the change is being active in supporting our local owned black businesses.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My friend[inaudible] she started sending me like on Instagram, black on haircare, black owned makeup clothing, like everything. I haven't seen black owned, cleaning products, everything. So
Speaker 2:It is, listen. It is so much deeper than just because when you say support your local black, not even local, just support black owned businesses. The reason why we say that is because systemic oppression, right? We got to look at it from all angles and corporations play one of the biggest roles in it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it was like the prison industrial complex, where we have the highest incarceration rates, which we're not going to get into on this episode. Let us know if you would like us to delve into why that is so problematic on another episode. But they're over here being firefighters. They're making stuff for cool, like odd corporations, clothing that we wear, like all of this runs so deep and it's just, it's in every single route. Literally
Speaker 2:Listen, if we had, Oh, has to be dug up. If some of these large corporations that in a sense do kind of like influence society and cause they really do when you really look at it. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We need to divest. Literally someone said that it's just like divesting our resources from all these big corporations. And when you look at it too, like, this is, I was telling you this earlier, like generations and generations of black people have either been in poverty, been enslaved. So this, the problem with that is all of these corporations. They had the opportunity to build up their community. They had the opportunity to start these businesses to make sure that their kids' kids' kids are all set up and don't have to worry about anything. We have been literally shot in the ankle at every point that every time we try to pick up on something and we get close to like actual like self-empowerment and our liberation, ultimately again, it's burned down. Look at what happened in Tulsa like black wall street literally burned down to the ground, a massacre of black lives and loss
Speaker 2:Because they don't want us to have a seat at the table. That's what it is. They don't want us to have. That's what it really comes down to. We do not have a seat at the table. Therefore we cannot implement the change that we want. And that's why it's very important to support your local black businesses because we want to grow them to get to that point.
Speaker 1:So now we're going to get into what I like to call the revolution side of what's going on. Gene talked about a lot of good reform points and I definitely agree that change needs to come. In a reform standpoint, we have systems and those systems currently exist. So we need to be actively working to change those systems. But back to my tree analogy, things are so rotten that at a certain point, things are going to start coming crumbling down. And there's a current idea that as Tony Morrison puts so eloquently, they meaning police or whoever see justice as vengeance.
Speaker 2:No, let's, let's define they so they understand what we're speaking about. It's not really hard to understand, but they as in police government and in general oppressors. Exactly.
Speaker 1:So that is just a such an important piece to get because it's not someone was saying that like, people should really be happy that it's just equality we're looking for. But at the same time, all of our humanity is coupled together. I don't think people see that we're all connected. We all share one space. I don't know of another earth if y'all know of one that we can go to, but we're here. So it's like, how do we exist when there's so much hurt? There's so much evil that was done to a community and it's worldwide because we now see all of these protests barking up in Ireland, in the UK, in Brazil, in coaster, like all or the world
Speaker 2:We deal with this it's
Speaker 1:People have darker skin tones are treated unfairly everywhere. It's not just a us phenomenon. And it was really highlighted in the U S because of slavery, but there was slavery in other points in other regions as well. So it's like right now, it's like a global humanitarian fight for liberations of black lives.
Speaker 2:It's so crazy how it's like, you mentioned like time of the age of Aquarius and it's so evident. So that's, what's happening. It's all over the world. Literally people are waking up. Those who are asleep are actually trying to wake up those who didn't pay attention to art at they're at least trying to understand, like people are waking up information is being spread, like things that were hidden are being put to light.
Speaker 1:And there's many people that I listened to who describe it as an Ascension timeline, meaning that a lot of the like quote on quote, matrix principles that we have been taught to follow where as we're sitting in the house, as we're seeing human life have a zero there's zero regard for black human life. We're seeing that play out in real time. I think what's happening is that everything is happening at an accelerated pace because these things are always there. There's no denying that. But now with our phones, with technology, with the spread rapid fire spread of social media, there's no hiding it. There's no running from it. These are issues that we have to deal with as a society. And it's like, where do you stand? What side are you on? Are you on the side of a government that is blatantly devious?[inaudible] encourages a police state against its own citizen. Or are you on the side? I know liberation for black people, that's it everyone's existence is all contingent upon each other. There's no, like I said, there's no other earth that we can run to. Everyone's existence is dependent on another. So therefore, if my black brothers and sisters are hurting, that means that everyone is hurting. This is not a hard point to get. So we have a lot of inner work to do, and I hope that people are ready to do that in work, because it's going to take a lot of unlearning. If you are an ally, performative allyship is done, thank you for your black square, but it's now time to teach your aunt, uncle and your friends, how or what it means to be. Anti-racist. A lot of people take advantage of that black square, that blackout Tuesday, that was just another commodified distraction. That's what that was. It was so many things coupled into one. And I fell into, I fell into it too. And I was like, damn, but you know what back? And analyze and see, and be like, yo, you see what's happening. If you're not woke, you fall into these things. And that's when I was like, yo, we need a new heightened level of discernment because it's like, I don't even want to get into that. I participated in, I am ashamed, but you know what? I lived this black experience and I am a black woman at that. I am forgiven God forgives me for my black square and for my hastiness to participate in something. But thank you for your black squares to our allies, to non-black people of color and to any white allies. What are you doing after that? Black squid? Cause it lasted a day. Exactly. There's so many movies being shared. So many books articles. There are so many forums happening, encourage each and every person that you think needs to hear, not needs to hear. Everyone needs to hear this information. So encourage those people to listen and to really try to internalize what is going on and how we unlearn this toxic programming. I was trying to find the word for it. But at the end of the day, it's programming because it started with it started from time. Okay. Another thing that we have to do is now I'm, I'm talking to the black community. I was explaining it to Eugene, that my chest was just hurting me. And that was actually dealing with that trauma. Exactly. And I think collectively, we felt the pain of what happened to George Floyd. And we felt the grief for his life being literally taken away from him by this guy who just showed zero emotion on his face. I, again, I have not watched the video, but seeing the clip, he had zero emotion for the life that he was taking. It was just like, I don't even know. It was just like comfortably. Did it like cans in his pockets? Yes. And the other officers had their hands in their pockets. They didn't stop their fellow officer and say, you know what, you're taking it too far. So these are things that we have been seeing. I remember I'm all over the place, but I remember like in college when a situation like this happened and we did like a silent protest and we were just like in front of the student union, there was like some app at the time where people were like, you can yak. You remember that last damn that came and went. Yup. So they were on Yik yak and they were like, Oh, there's like a sludge on the floor in front of the union. So it's like, I'm not surprised that comments like that though. I'm not either because I already know how deep this racism runs. It's in the roots of every it's everywhere. So it's going to take a lot of getting in tune with what you're feeling, what you're thinking and how you're taking care of yourself. Energetically, because we can't show up for the fight. If we're not in tune energetically, God is assisting us in this fight. We are not alone. And you know, at the end of the day, good must win. So that's really all I had just take care of yourselves. That's literally the only thing that I can stress. We really have to take care, be conscious of like what you said earlier, what you're digesting, what you're allowing to just come into your mental space because that's extremely important. And when you start to heal yourself, you're healing the collective body too. And that's an important part to get because once you liberate yourself from this idea, because some of these ideas are in our subconscious mind, we don't even know that they're there, but we have to take the time to unlearn them. And once you liberate your mind, you can then start being showing up in whatever way, whatever role you have in this God all called us to be here at this time for a specific reason. So it's now time okay. To take up that cross and to be like, okay, use me. What am I here to do? Right. So that's really all I had. That's all we had
Speaker 2:For today's episode. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Make sure you leave a comment and rate this episode, please share with us how you're feeling. And also what are you doing to channel that feeling? What are you, what actions are you taking? Because we would love to hear, we would love to be inspired by those as well. Yep. I agree.
Speaker 2:So like Shanique mentioned, we're always open to what you guys have to say. Cause it's a community at the end of the day. So yeah. Thank you all for listening. We can't stress how appreciative we are of you guys just being here and being part of this community. Yeah. That's, that's pretty much it. We hope that you guys tune in with us for the next episode that we have coming next week. That's what we're going to be doing, throwing out episodes on a weekly basis. So
Speaker 1:Now we're going to keep the conversation going. There's too many important things to talk about. So,
Speaker 2:So many important things, but society tends to only throw out what they want to throw out.
Speaker 1:We're not letting this. Yeah. And we're not letting this dissipate, this is this isn't, it's extremely important. So again, thank you guys. We appreciate it. And we hope to have you guys again, thank you for listening to the no visuals podcast. Don't forget to rate this podcast and leave us a comment on what you thought of this week's episode. Also be sure to subscribe to the no visuals podcast for a weekly unedited take on life wherever you listen to podcasts until next Tuesday. Peace
Speaker 3:[inaudible][inaudible].