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Transcript-Black Power Week 2 Week 2 | Politics, Solidarity and The Myths of Coalition Have a question? Email us at [email protected] and share about your experience using the hashtag #BLACKPOWER and tagging @svplosangeles on Twitter and Instagram. All materials and resources can be found on our Hub: svpla.org/blackpower-hub Alli Simon: The texts that you wanna pick up so I'll drop in the chat, if it hasn't already been dropped in there the hub link that Yolonda has so lovingly created. And yeah, I think we'll go ahead and get started so that we can have full time this time. So I'll go ahead and hand it over to Dr. Abdullah to lead us through week two. Dr. Melina Abdullah Thank you, Alli. And thank you to everybody for joining today. I hope to have a really robust conversation. We've changed the format just a little bit to make it a regular Zoom rather than a webinar so we can engage more fully. And for those of you watching on YouTube we'd love to have you oer a comments or questions in the chat function there and we'll be sure to address them as we can. But what we're gonna be talking about today is this idea of solidarity. And we're gonna talk about what solidarity means and why solidarity is essential to how we get free. And so we're gonna be going over some ideas. A lot of this conversation is gonna be guided by the rst six chapters of "Black Power" again, which is serving as a guide for the rst portion of this class. I hope everyone's picked it up by Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton. Black Power | Week 2 | Page 1 Again, we wanna encourage you to pick it up at a Black-owned bookstore. Please don't buy on Amazon, but if you're in Los Angeles please go to places like Eso Won Books, Malik Books and purchase and support from small Black-owned businesses Black-owned bookstores especially. So I just wanted to get us started the way that we have been doing, or one of the things we're committed to doing in this class is making sure that we start with the correct energy, and so we're gonna start every class with a land labor and life acknowledgement. And I'm gonna ask someone, asks for a volunteer, to read this rst slide and begin by leading us in taking a deep breath in and out before you start reading. So if someone could volunteer, that would be great. Yolanda Enoch: And if you want to participate just go ahead and start your camera and unmute yourself. Dr. Abdullah: Do we have anybody willing to read this rst slide? Yes, Chasity, Chasity. Are you able to unmute? Okay, so I think they need permission to unmute Yolanda. Yolanda: They have permission. Dr. Abdullah: Okay, thank you. Chasity Nunez: Thank you. So we'll start with a deep breath. So a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. "This land that we inhabit is physically situated "in the original ancestral homelands of the Tongva people. "We pay respect to the Tongva "and all the Indigenous people - past, present, and future "and their continuing presence in the homeland "and throughout their historical diaspora." Dr. Abdullah: Thank you, can someone read the next slide? Consuelo Alegria: I could. Dr. Abdullah: Great. Consuelo: Okay. If we could just take a breath in and release the breath out. "We pay homage to those who were stolen from Africa, "placed in bondage, falsely named as chattel "and forced into labor who were called 'slaves,' "but never submitted as such. "who have always been fully human "with an unbroken connection to the Divine "and to each other. "We honor our African ancestors and these still unpaid labor "which built what is now the Americas." Dr. Abdullah: Thank you, and one more, we need one more volunteer to lead us through this last slide. Nicole Taylor: I'm happy to do it. Dr. Abdullah: Great. Black Power | Week 2 | Page 2 Nicole: Let's take a deep breath in and a deep breath out. "To both our Indigenous and African forebears, "we commit to the continued struggle for liberation "and reparations, "for it is only through freedom and justice "that we truly give honor." AHO! ASHE!" Dr. Abdullah: Thank you. I needed that, I feel dierent now. So thank you for everybody who shared and was willing to volunteer. We're gonna ask that you consider doing this each class. So think about when it's your turn to volunteer 'cause it won't be a surprise that it'll come up at the beginning of class next week as well. We didn't do introductions in the class and there are a lot of folks so I don't wanna spend up the class time going around but what I would like is as we engage because this is the way that we're things now as a regular Zoom, I hope that we'll have lots of engagement as we engage I'd love if you would share your name, your pronoun, your organization, if you're with an organization and why you decided to take this class. So as people come in to engage, we're gonna ask you to cover those four things, okay? All right, another thing I wanted to start incorporating into the class is we've been talking about we have a chance in Black Lives Matter but also in the Union Movement that when we ght, we win. And a lot of times, as we engage in righteous struggle it can become exhausting, right? We can become overwhelmed. We can become depleted and a lot of that has to do with not celebrating our victories. And I think it's really important that we celebrate our victories. Last class, we had an opportunity to celebrate a victory that was one with the conviction of Derek Chauvin. So wait, did we know he was convicted? We did know. Okay. Okay, okay, good. I'm going, wait what's today? Yes, we knew it Tuesday, that's right, okay. All the days are running together. So we talked about the conviction of Derek Chauvin. We talked about the role of Black community, especially our young warrior Darnella Frazier and how she helped to summon in that victory. We have to take a moment to appreciate our labor to appreciate our energy and to appreciate the victories that are sure to come when we ght. That's what it means when we say, when we ght, we win. So what I'll do with the beginning of each class is just talk about the victories that I know about, and then invite you to oer other victories that need to be acknowledged in the space. So I have four for us. The rst is on Sunday, we had a massive defund the police rally and march in the name of George Floyd. At least 500 of us gathered in Pan Pacic Park and then marched to 3rd & Fairfax. We were joined by young people. We were joined by families of those killed including the family of Dijon Kizzee, John Horton and Black Power | Week 2 | Page 3 Wakiesha Wilson. We had music, we had dance. We've decided we're gonna make our rst Black Lives Matter music video 'cause the dancing in the intersection with such a good time and you can go to our Instagram page to watch it happened live. We have a phenomenal dance instructor/choreographer. Who's a member of Black Lives Matter named Kareena. And she led us in a great dance. And so we wanna uplift that that took work and it also shifted things a bit. Even if you don't feel it in the media it shifted things a bit. And the families that were there absolutely felt that shift as did all of us. Second victory I wanna lift up is the City Council for Los Angeles and the mayor been trying to appropriate our language using terms like re-imagining. They try to present the budget dierently this year, the budget proposal dierently this year, pretending like an increase to LAPD funds is really a decrease. And we held their feet to the re and participated in a kind of listening session which we weren't sure if we were gonna be included on but we decided to do a mini presentation of the People's Budget on Monday evening where we talked about what the people of Los Angeles actually want their dollars to go to. So we're counting that as a victory, especially because we were also able to get them to agree, to participate in a full presentation of the People's Budget. That's coming up next Thursday, May 6th. The big one that I'm celebrating today is we got Senate Bill 2 out of the Senate Judiciary. Senate Bill 2 was called the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertication Bill. Many of you know that California is one of only four states in the country that doesn't have a mechanism to remove the guns and badges of police when they kill people. Kenneth Ross Jr. was killed in 2018 in Gardena, California. The cop, Michael Robbins, who murdered him had already shot three other people in a dierent, when he worked for an Orange County Law Enforcement Unit.
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