house family by family we're focusing on business creation business development economic development and culture it's a wonderful conversation a robust conversation one of the conversations my brother takes on a musical journey freedom fighter as a leader par excellence a gentleman who has dedicated life and limb to the struggle for freedom for black people i say for humanity spike must be good morning man good to see you well i want to have this conversation with you and we're going to introduce brother thomas barker in a minute or two just to put it in context of the things going on right now in north minneapolis  clark that protesters lasted maybe twenty days or fifteen days as a barricaded encampment at the occupation at the fourth precinct that was removed and dismantled this morning  and so i want to get a review of what has happened from the observing a community elder your view is particularly important because the fourth precinct sits on the site of the way that space was and is at some level still a sacred space for our community so sort of lifelong struggle for me to witness i thought police police brutality cases for fifty four years first saw what was wrong at fifteen i was clear eyed sixteen seventeen i could actually respond to it but the one thing i learned in minneapolis there was nothing we could do about it except take the abuse and take the murders there was no one to go to there was no office and there was no one who would stop it and so those murders went on all those years and i can remember those beatings went on all those years that i could remember and minnesota was in charge of the media and they made sure that the rest of the world never knew we were ferguson before ferguson because they didn't allow anything to leave here about the condition of our people so when this last shouldn't happen the organization black like matter across america was bringing it to the public right into the eyes and by technology like phones and videotapes you now can show what they used to lie about we didn't have that equipment we'd say what happened we had no credibility and they would move on and we would swallow another murder this equipment allows us to show that i was always right we were  telling the truth it shows that is been gnawing on and going on across america and the only way you can bring attention to it is to protest you have to publicly sacrifice yourselves in a country that won't respect you  citizen or respect your rights in terms of freedom justice and equality you have to make it happen they will do right mr stanek who is our sheriff said two years ago there is no accountability and no punishment for many of his police departments so they'll never be in order because there's no accountability and there's no consequences for their actions so i think that was what he and you don't normally hear your share said about a police department two different jurisdictions with the same community  you felt they were out of control ok and because they're out of control what you see happening would happen so as the sheriff he said out of his mouth no consequences nor countability this is going to happen until you have that he also used to say they need to go into receivership no different than when i served on the mandated federal government justice department mediation they were supposed to go in receivership if they broke the contract with the mayor didn't participate the chief of police didn't participate doesn't mean you broke the contract the minneapolis police department at that point supposed to go into receivership and they did and that's the first thing we have to put back on the table receivership also the justice department when they come in here like they did for me just so people well you take a bran like the u s attorney or the u s marshal or the sheriff's department or the f b i or private entity they take total control of every day things that go on in the police department they have no more the same department under obama that went in there has to come here and they will find the same results but only worse only worse and it's been longer as a matter of fact at this present time we've got nine hundred sixty two cases one and so you lose millions of dollars every year because you lose the case because they're insulated and protected but they can't protect themselves from the bodily harm that they did to that victim so they're constantly taking tax money and paying off these lawsuits they just announced yesterday in chicago illinois that they have paid out today over five hundred million dollars and lawsuits for police brutality they announced that they had shut more than three hundred citizens the police they announced that they had over three thousand cases and only one was dealt with so as long as they are insulated it keeps going on and so you go out there you get the attention you got it but now you have to move to the next level the next level believe it or not is the state capital because the protection come from state laws you see there's a law that protects them as a matter of fact if i'm an officer and i strike you which is an assault i won't get charged with an assault but until you investigate the crime i'll get a week off with pay from your tax dollar if you do take me to court i'll get a free pay lawyer from your tax dollars and if you do win the case your tax dollars raise a lawsuit i don't have to do anything but keep beating and abusing people so you have to change the legislation that allows that also every officer has to have insurance and bonding if you get so many cases with assurance and danny you lose it make the officer buy is own if he buys his own and you lose it he loses his license to practice law on the street so you put him in that kind of situation also you make sure that a city pay sixty percent of the lawsuit and the officer pays forty he can keep his house two car garage motorcycle boats in his kids a college when he's losing his job his income you put  yes because of his actions he's put himself in a situation make him pay for that he wouldn't be so readily ready to do what he's doing if there was consequences that's the shares point there's no consequences and so for murder he needs to go to jail for murder right now while we sit here in the united states of america police department responsible for one thousand one hundred these summers that has nothing to do with how many people they shot that's just the murders and so epidemic that exists here is what they released this year about two months ago so to change this mentality in this epidemic these things out to be put in place so you can stay out in front of the precinct forever you have to move to the capitol and chance chamas challenge this legislation that allows them to get away with this and you can have two americas you can have one where all of us in this room go to jail for the law we break and law enforcement never goes to jail for the law they break over the years you said you've been conscious and active since you've been fifteen sixteen years old and i know that year in and year out in the past twenty years fifteen thirty years i've known you you've been on the front line challenging and justice and racism as often as not spike people in our community will say do while their work is protecting the wowser make you feel that it's not a fair description of what it's happening from time to time or not yes but when when a people come from two hundred fifty years of slavery and indoctrination that came from that ind mentality within our people the hell ever will not change my mind about the right for freedom justice and equality the one thing that i have an advantage is i never forgot where i came from i never forgot that it was a table like this that i was taught to understand and i witness as an older child that i was born on my grandfather's house because we couldn't cross the train track and go to the clinic for all whites only so when my sister were born here my mother and all her siblings were born here and this house on this table those are my driving forces my sister and i are the last two in my family to be raised in jim crow i understand what it is not to be allowed to go to a public school a public college go to a public park swim in a public swimming pool go to the movies show being denied all that being denied going inside a restaurant to sit down and eat going up town and looking into department store windows but not allowed to go inside and try on anything new that that's my history and to come to the north and all of a sudden i like that didn't happen and i don't keer is too much for me i was nine years old when i was uptown on a hot day and i want to just a drink of water so i was in missouri and my mother said mom i want to drink it she said you can't have that water son as a mom i want to drink a water you can't have that my water son that's for whites only i was holding her hand and i looked up at nine years old i had enough sense to say mama one day i will drink that water it was in me then to understand we were treated differently and i never forgot that that day down town with my mother but i never forgot any of the history that i was put through all my ancestors was put through to understand our right to be treated fairly freedom justice equality i would have volunteered to be a freedom fighter over and over again of god gave me ten more lives because people shouldn't be subjected to this type of life in the land of the free i've been called political if i was in russia talking about our right to be free when they were a communist country denies should be political but why am i call political in a country where it's supposed to be freedom and i want freedom and less is political for a black man to think he should be free then i was called controversial if i talked about freedom in russia should have been controversial but how am i controversial in america a free country them our freedom and this is controversial for a black man to think he should be free so we have to be clear first i'm clear that i have a right that i am a human being that i am a man i have a right to fair treatment human justice and equality and as long as i soul and in my mind in my heart another person that doesn't know what i know will never bother me from what they say out of their mouth because their heart and their mind and their so has to be free like mine to get to my level i just try to help them get there i don't feel bad about them i feel sorry for and i try to help them get their free your mind to be a sudden not satisfaction but a sense of awareness that everything you talked about is now being revealed isolated incident is in fact a practice and a policy and the policy is a policy of oppression and the practice of the practice of discrimination marginalization of our people it gives you some satisfaction i'm sure in saying that the technology now is validating what the society in the power structure wanted to deny will from this perspective that when we stepped out to talk about the way we were treated we were we were called black militants troublemakers activists everything but freedom fighters fighting for a right to be free for god i put it on god to allow me to live long enough to all the things i fought for not being exposed all over this country is great gratification for me i'm very proud that god has allowed me to see the things that i risked my life for the things that i went to jail for to see publicly the reality of truth is stronger than all that wrong and the truth has not come to the light and folks have to look at me in a different way now and say he always knew he always told us the truth i mean i remember as a know what he's talking my does a lot of police don't do that about how we as the victims of historical trauma of slavery we will often be super critical of each other we trust wh people don't trust black people trust the master don't trust yourself right and i have seen you respond to the criticism we often will criticize white folks for the aggression against our people but we don't respond to black on black crime and that simply is not the case but make that argument because too often you hear our own people saying i wish they were shut up or are they when this nine year old in chicago got killed were they when people get shot here in minneapolis st paul and the truth is our voices and they're at the same time to talk about that you know i was deep into civil rights and human rights work when i noticed a change in the one nine hundred eighty s that black males had began to shoot one another and kill one another and i put together and rescue service and from that i built united for peace and for that i have built with several people the national peace and justice gang summits to bring peace to get them to put down the guns and stop killing i stayed on that level from the eighty's all the way to this day still begging him pleading with young men to stop fighting and killing one another it is one thing the criticize the white man when he shoots one black and saying we you shot twenty blacks and even when you look at chicago they're fighting right now  over one young man who was shot sixteen times i'll be the first and it was wrong but as the three wednesdays back when i took down the last that to sticks of chicago they had already on that women's day shot and killed four hundred forty four black people they had shot two thousand black people black people they had shot a total of two thousand six hundred thirty nine black people and so it's ridiculous to say black people shooting black people is ridiculous to say black lives matter but only want to why person shoot you either you matter or you don't murder is murder it doesn't matter if i shoot you or shoot a white man it's murder and for people to not see that it's sickens me that your children could engage in something as to render privileges as murder on one another at a rate that has never been witnessed in this nation we have killed more black people than and died in the vietnam war we have killed more black people than the klan themself have killed we have killed more black people than we lost trying to get free from slavery as a matter of fact if you go back to the  thousand and fifty and anybody digs up that number we're going to be well in the two to three hundred thousand people who lost their life at the hands of their own people now do i understand it yes they taught us to hate ourselves we do i came up as a proud african american these children call themselves the in word clan don't do it they do it they call them women these and this is we didn't do that we loved ourselves so all of this makes sense they're removed from the reality of who they are their own black history they only taught white history they remove from the removed from their culture they don't know their culture or their heritage they don't know where they came from they don't know that they have a value they don't know that they're human beings having been treated like human beings this had to come to boiling point in a did in the one nine hundred eighty s and it has been escalating ever since across this nation there is no major city where black america is not killing black america more than any police officers will ever kill us so we've got to watch our front and back at the same time which is ridiculous until we get our young people to understand the importance of put down the gun put down the gun and when you keep picking up that good and killing yourself you become so disrespectful that you're killing three year old five year old nine year old eleven year old children you become so disrespectful that you're killing our girls and women you become so disrespectful that you go to any gathering that we might have and kill our people so to me i would say to young people you need to focus on both but focus on yourself first never look in someone else's backyard before you look in yours make sure your houses in order so when we speak about racism in and justice you speak about the unjust is an unfairness you are inflicting on yourself say any time presser sees this this weakness they take advantage but for me as a man i would rather see my children with a pencil in their hand before a nine millimeter i'd rather see my children with a book bag going to bed i rather see my children in a classroom than a sale room i'd rather see my children live a successful life than a graveyard and we have to say that looking back at the top four will bring in brother conversation brother thomas barker jr rather barker you have a history of being in organized gangs and you've come out of that life and you're organizing community programs now to provide alternatives and a way out for our young people and i want to have you join me with spike most here sort of telling your story the life is sometimes alluring sometimes our children feel that the pressure of peers the pressure of what they see as potentially glamorous the pressure of an excitement of a drug dealing drug using all of that it will steer us away from what we probably know is right or some of us may not have been trained about what is right you know that ordinary people feel if our life has been a life brought up in the life that might be the only thing we know so i want to talk about what you have experienced and how you were involved in gangs talk about it in the context of what spike just talked about how many of our people are killing our people first let me give an introduction of myself for a reason to come from ohio and raise up  with you to start waking up to what's going on you know saying you start realizing you're going in the wrong direction you know sand so at that moment i decided to change and that's my story i tell you if you could change any time you get ready to change it at that very moment you decide to you can't more about lifestyle change you know santa lifestyle modification that is because certain lifestyles leads to certain places at least the protector of our children killing our children are we killing or your different ways of viewing that if you question your muslim it's always something like that it's never to see where we combined where we unite at you know say oh we've got the same problem same issues i hear you know economic issues h issues we've got too many issues to be trying to fight one another about superficial things that's what i believe is mostly superficial when negative influences are superficial on the other hand because the consequences deadly then you bring about the fact you would not have drugs in america if the white majority didn't want eighty eighty eight eighty nine percent of all drugs are here because of the white majority yes so when you lace the people who are already angry already hurt already look at the constitution they don't want to change the constitution that gives everybody the right to bear arms look what is happening to them the barren arms they're still over in europe when you do a crime blowing a whistle and the police around you and catch you then i should never body and the criminals are nice you can everybody but here all this acceptable behavior and now we've got what's called licensed gun buyers who are no more than licensed gun runners who can go any gun show and buy as many guns as they can afford and don't have to report to anyone fill out any applications do any paperwork and then drop those guns off in sale where ever they want in this country to a people who might not be qualified to handle a gun all of that is in this mix was talked about trying to pursue legislation that required liability of the gun manufacturers right when a gun or weapon was used in a capital crime or murder that's right what's the discussion what's the philosophy for that is there would be less and less gun runners if that once again they had consequences for their actions because they have as gun runner is putting that gun in the hands of a challenge a way or person is mentally disturbed anyway and so he there's no way to deal with him but if you bring him into a circle that he has to stay in and now you know that's he's gone and he goes to jail for that gun right with that killer a lot of them are going to disappear but the fact that you have no consequences he's very comfortable on the nine millimeter to a nine year old child and i'm sure here tell you now you're recruiting at ten years old and again anyway when i started trying to deal with gangs i was dealing with fifteen sixteen seventeen now you got to go down to ten years old and someone tell on the chin your old child if you shoot him you won't go to jail like me you're a child you go on your mother we don't fire that gun and then people are shot like and then want the other day that a child shows that would have done the guns are readily available in your community  one school down the street or whatever it was in henry a couple weeks ago it's because they're readily available we don't respect the children enough to not sell them a gun you were in henry and you discovered in a matter for a few minutes of there were different things from the first time i got there i discovered eleven different come along and talk to those children who is what when i was in a few years back i discovered eighteen gangs on the property and i'm sure if i had more time that day the numbers probably going to be greater because remember when i first they asked me in an interview what do you see is the biggest problem facing black america and if you remember this as gangs and the chief in there when i said i don't know what i'm told there are no gangs in minnesota and so they got real crazy on net but when i did the first gang summit in st paul in a four day period i register nine thousand seven hundred gang members that didn't exist in the twin cities then everybody has showed up but i'm saying anytime you leave anything alone like cancer it doesn't go away it spreads we let the gangs situation alone didn't feed it what it needed and it spread it now what is that unemployment you've got to get employment education had to be educated but when you live in a community like ours black youngsters you get dress take a bath go outside stand in front of a house you look to the left you look to the right and there's absolutely nowhere to go because there's nothing in the community for you to do there is no bowling alley there is no movie show there's no video place there's no roller rink you look and you see there's nothing to do but hang in the streets that's a bad combination and a bad mix the put together children with nothing to do with adults who would take advantage of them w history of lack of accountability in proper policing of our community the history of the disparities we experience in education in health in wealth in income in opportunity all of that sort of  a big story that is self sustaining and somehow i've heard you say we've got to break through what do you think right now we're vulnerable as a people as african american people young people as black people we are vulnerable because sit here and talk and we don't have to say no i can sit here and listen to him because i know he's already been through what he's telling the we don't make the mistake again but at this generates in the ok we want to step up but you  don't want to listen to nobody and then when you run into that wall you don't you don't know what to do and they and they scared and i will be frightened till they understand that you've got a list and we nobody's trying to tell you what to do  where we are with the fourth precinct protest and the community's response to the police shooting jimmer clark this morning four in the morning they dismantled the occupation at the fourth precinct and spike gave sort of an analysis of where we are in terms of that being a protest movement how do you see it i mean how he described here we're going to talk to somebody who'd been out of town for a month and they come in town and they say what an effective community should look like i don't want to face focused on the negative i think we operate out of a positive vibration out of expectation out of belief and faith and we live because we believe that freedom can be attained that that's why we work i would talk about the vision of what freedom looks like for us as mike boss al flowers and brother thomas will be back in a minute macfarlane this is conversations with a minnesota the project what about you lifestyle modification management and the elder leader spike moss brothers thank you all for being here i want to go to you first thomas you know talk more about the what you were bringing as a solution what do you want to tell you you're teaching boxing as one of the tools for lifestyle change amendment talk about that it come from four components i deal with youth mentoring i deal with boxing and i deal with you for richmond you know tutoring and college prep and then i deal with you leadership development you know how to get out here and do what we're doing energy and we ought to have the ability to go to the public treasury and say i've got a solution i'm in the middle of a problem pool right and i'm one of the people that has a solution but the solution also needs resources al flowers word how do you find resources to support your organization that's question number one and then allan spike what's been the history of resources coming to our community and i'll say it the way it really is  denying our community the resources we need to be effectively managing our development our growth and our prosperity as a community what about resources for you thomas to get you know everything so you don't have to go the first top got to be tabbed legs but that legacy institution must be empowered they know what they are doing when they don't empower our institutions they know what they do and when they split us up and  but nobody else has run the program self on the day they're given the resources we can't be afraid to say no we need the money so when we talk about the resources and the economics and we must fight for it and fight for it now  that right now we're in the pie right now with jim when you talk about the nature of that we've got to change the narrative we got a buy back when i don't care what you say about what somebody did if you want to hold up accountable today tomorrow or the next day then you can do that but you're not to stop our community from getting the resources that this brother needs to help with these ten to fifteen kids but it's got to come from an institution that institution is the one that got the power and we have the  everybody to join us this they know white against black we need you but we need to lead our own movement we don't we don't need nobody to lead this movement and fully fund legacy institutions and create the that's why ya'll are important because that's the message and we need to be tweeting it out that's what's going on i'm saying we have the people of myself thomas and we have the tail wag young people what's really going on because don't get misled the wrong way and i'll take you back a little bit now we haven't talked about this but this conversation brings us to my adult years remains out and i want to use the set of names to review the power relationship and the money relationship between the black community and white power community the names and organizations include first of all the the urban coalition how was that created names like the organizer of the minneapolis foundation i believe before it came into being he was a private kind of go to guy for corporate people prior to rusty walls emergence as a central clearinghouse for getting money to black communities there were direct relationships between organizations like the way between people like phil davis and when jones davis and the c e o of various corporations into insidious so there had been a history of the so called titans of industry being directly involved in the community more when communities started to both emerge any rucked challenging structural injustice right prior to that from our point of view the relationship between black folks and the money was that some of our people worked as drivers worked us housekeepers right work as in service type jobs both in homes and in companies but there had not been an opportunity for real broad employment development began to emerge in our community and the demand for change the demand was made and laid directly on the table of the corporate leadership they responded by bringing resources and talking about how we can change the employment picture for the things what's happened since that time well first of all is that correct first of all yes but you have to remember that there was a rebellion on the street and north minneapolis in one thousand nine hundred fifty six the fear of black people rebelling in the street brought all those heroes together to bring money in the community but that was blood money it wasn't about being good and doing right it was the make sure that the rebellion that they called a riot because remember they started calling all the rebellion america riots because a riot is something spontaneous without a direction or purpose but people were rebelling to the old pression and so they were trying to slow that down throw some problems out of the way the king used to give somebody a piece of bread and maybe they'll slow down a minute but surely following that they created people like rush limbaugh who spent almost twenty thirty years of just spreading poison across america and racism across america almost every talk talk show host like that was spread in a venom that brought about all the militias that brought about the higher numbers in the klan the nazi party the skinny as aaron race and they begin to grow stronger in their hatred the militias b b n to go into the woods and train themselves for their urban war that don't exist that people in the urban city were thinking about and protecting ourselves from those blacks and buying our guns and teaching our wives and children how to protect ourselves and everything dried up and went away are still buying guns waiting for the urban war that they're going to start we're not we're not thinking about urban war they are i was at community college in chicago dylan would black reparations and across the hall all of the chiefs of police in the united states of america were meeting at the same time so when i came out the room i said what are you all meeting about and they said urban warfare and said our you had an urban warfare meeting and there's no urban war that means you're going to start it so what you have to do  the people suffer enough to fight back to start something and then we can bring on the new tanks the new armored cars and a new guns and the new bombs and weapons and get rid of the problem and guess what that's what they did the other thing that's important that didn't bring up is years and years ago i brought up something called fair share and i had a campaign called the fair share campaign black people don't understand the importance of in every state getting your fair share it's not about begging it's not about making people do it's about giving you a fair share what you put in if you put in over four billion dollars worth of money every year over four billion and you don't even get back ten million there's something wrong and so everything that you have is suffering it was almost eight years ago that they announced that the banks in minnesota are red lining against african americans they made that clear it was just towards the end of two thousand and fourteen that they a that the banks to treat black people the worst in united states of america in minneapolis minnesota and out of those banks the one that treats us the worst as wells fargo one of your banks readline against you you can't borrow money to put together businesses to hire your own people  old something so you got social service choosing white programs to come in and give you service and get that money from you and then you got the economic money being denied you from the banks so how do you come up out of poverty you also need an education to get a better job how do you get a better education when the personal press and you is teaching your children and teaching them about everything but them so your motivation your excitement your self esteem is not raised the value of education if you got to visit a room maybe six to seven have no value you're going to be destroyed in the education system in minneapolis minnesota between seven and eight the number of our children being destroyed between seven and eight and far too great any excuse you used to expose a spin on any future use to expel them they're losing their education when they come out of school if they make it to high school they're not even qualified to pass a college exam to enter college if you live in minneapolis minnesota college which is higher learning when you get to higher learning you can get that higher income if you can't get a higher income you can't build businesses if you could build a business the banks not going to give you the money so they got you in a box of controlling poverty then you've got to look at minimum wage who makes man or woman single me twenty five twenty to twenty five dollars an hour to pay the bills that you pay today so if you look for a single bedroom apartment you're looking at a thousand dollars to twelve hundred dollars so if it's a thousand dollars what does the landlord say i want a thousand dollars down first payment a thousand dollars down last payment i want to thousand dollars down deposit what do you make in six seven eight dollars an hour by the time you get three thousand to three thousand six hundred put together that apartment is gone so if you're not making twenty to twenty five dollars an hour in two thousand and fifteen two thousand and sixteen you ain't doing nothing what that means alice i'm controlling your destiny i'm controlling you know poverty nurturing and shaping the control of your destiny and your life so that speaks to why black families average income is twenty twenty seven thousand and under and white family atmosphere income is sixty two in up because you're controlling our destiny you are guaranteed in our poverty now the outcome of that brings about the misery the misery makes you lean to cigarettes alcohol and drugs you see you know you're in the street a young person your mama can't give you shoes she can't buy you a shirt but my brother here he got a dirt bag i got to get my hands on the dough bag if i want some jordans i might not want to do wrong but i have no other outcome so the americas have more prisons in all the country little world put together and we're eighty percent of who's in those prisons and we're coming in fourteen and fifteen years old and we're coming out in twenty seven twenty nine years old america wins again america stepped to the plate hitting home runs on all these issues and then hiding their hands acting like they had nothing to do with taking away your destiny we have every right to demand our fair share of what we put in black people said in the one nine hundred fifty s we should not exist taxation without representation taxation without representation now let me say this and i'll stop that black america doesn't understand we have to declare our sovereignty to get out from under this you see the united states of america it is a corporation we have to step off from and that and step into america and become sovereign  we need to understand that the second thing we need to understand is we need to declare ourselves as a nation we might not know if we're from which which country country which bill is what we know we from africa we know that from the west home to the east coast is a suit on nation that is the oldest nation in the history of africa we're from that region we can declare we know the mors are from that region we can declare who ever we declare as a nation we can now step forward to to the united nations of the world and declare against america its crimes against our humanity you can't do it as a people you have to do it as a nation thank you so much as i promised robust conversation spike morris freedom fighter brother thomas l barker the organization is a community first