hello welcome to a very special edition of truth today very special segment my name is gloria and i'm your host and i want to thank you for inviting me in your home and when i thank you for all the people that are reaching out  all the help and support philip jackson over there you guys do an amazing job and i feel really really really grateful to be a part of both networks and so today though i wanted to if i could talk a little bit about the kind of pain and anguish that is going on in our communities and in our nation right now certainly with regard to tra martin i had no idea that i would live long enough to see that an adult could kill a child by shooting that child and taking their life and it would be considered legal bike who does that who kills children and who kills children and calls that legal and i think the president was most appropriate in asking us  some soul searching to find out who we are really because you know it's very very very sad that a grown man could harass a child could threaten the child could hurt could provoke the child could track him down and just cause this very tragic experience and walk away now i was going to say walk away scot free but any human being that would end up in this situation doesn't walk away scot free to take a child's life with a gun i would only imagine has got to be something that no life can sit with it with any kind of peace and any kind of stability in any kind of emotional tranquility like  i just don't think it can happen i could be wrong in mr zimmerman could prove me wrong but i doubt it i mean we all remember here from san francisco the case of dan white killed the mayor of san francisco george moscone and supervisor harvey milk and he went to prison for short time and eventually came home and then eventually because his life was so mangled and broken hearted that eventually he took his own life and you know life for life like it's senseless it's tragic and all of that death didn't bring back but it's that kind of sadness and that kind of injury that i think prompted me to become a social worker and and as a social worker my friends have started calling he did warrior  one point i have a group of friends we're also sure hers and they and we were wounded healers well now we're warriors have because we're on the battlefield with with what we do with regard to be in social workers and how we try to empower men women boys and girls to live lives that they decide not lives that are dictated and determined by violence ingrid and self centeredness because no child deserves that i had a fortunate experience of attending the movie last night fruitvale station and please please please go see that movie i i live in the bay area so certainly i remember all the footage i saw all the footage i saw on the computer with regard to the death of the death of oscar grant i remember  i had people on my television show to talk about the support that was given from youth alive for young people during the protest i had a lot of first hand experience with regard to like we all did if you live in the east bay or the bay area period it was very first hand for us people from all over the bay area were participating in either speak out and speak and protested and we all shared in a very very deep deep deep hurt a deep deep deep pain and a deep deep deep shock i remember it all like it was just her day was when i went to see the movie the movie oscar grant's life was such an amazing experience it was such a such a triumphant story of how a young person can struggle and go through things and you know see the lights at the end of the tunnel have the desire to turn things around take food work towards turning things around and then i'll have a second and the twinkling of an eye be gone and be gone in a tragic tragic senseless way i don't care how many times you see the footage from that night i don't care how many times you're going to go and see the movie you're never going to say oh ok well that makes sense to me you're never going to say that because it didn't and it doesn't and that story oscar grant story can be multiplied by thousands upon thousands all across this nation young men of color are being gunned down by law enforcement law enforcement  participants and gunning down young beautiful black men and mexican minute central american men and chinese minute chinese american men and it's really really really heartbreaking painful the watching the movie was and yet i knew what the end was going to be but it was unbelievable like it was almost like because oscar grant's life was such a beautiful experience in spite of his struggles like we are have struggles does should somebody kill us because we struggled but his life was so precious and so beautiful and and his relationship with this child in the girlfriend  family his mother all of those very human elements that are part of all of us his story is all of our stories and to think that somebody would end up in a position where they believe they were right to take a gun and take our life is so so so hurtful it's so tragic the movie is so profound and so powerful that when it went off i just couldn't move and my i went with a coworker and we sat there and there was another some people in front of us we all sat there we were the last ones to leave the theater for that showing because we just couldn't move there was a a even though i knew what the end was going to be i sat there and shock and disbelief and i'm still in shock and disbelief that i actually was a person who knows the story and who followed the story and yet there were so much that i didn't know and there so much pain and anguish still that such a beautiful young man like all beautiful young men like young people  beautiful young people are very very beautiful i see pictures of myself and i see pictures of my children and my grandchildren because they're getting older i see pictures of friends and family members when we were all young pictures of my parents when they were young it's tragic that violence can be the a lemonade or of our lives when we're young and stand to such a large degree when i was a social worker at san francisco general an emergency room i distinctly remember i was the first pm social worker in the emergency room and i worked with another coworker i work three thirty to midnight every well five nights a week and i remember that first month i was a social worker in the emergency room i went to my supervisor at the time and i said you know what the young men in the city are being killed and she was alive and i said young men in the city are being killed they're being killed like they're dyin and nobody's saying anything and nobody's doing anything and and i said that because through the course of that month i had a large number of young been from like sick in the youngest thirteen and as old as you know twenty five thirty died of gunshot wounds and stab wounds or in some kind of shape fashion or form at san francisco general hospital as a result of the violence that's alive and well and this surely i did i thought you know this kid is what's wrong with them they're killing each other all these kids but then i realize that is not the kids it's adults who make the decision to flood the streets with guns and ammunition it's adults who make the decision to flood the streets with drugs and to snatch away employment opportunities and to not pay taxes and to not poor back into our society as a whole as most people try to do like that well i don't know who all in the one percent is directly related to all of this however i know the one percent that makes all that money and don't pay any taxes is like bizarre like you know i pay taxes after write a check every month these things that are robbing us of happiness and joy and love and laughter today could be so easily eliminated like it's easy because it would be easy for the massive distribution of growth drugs guns and ammunition to stop right this minute it would be easy and the fact that that doesn't happen is very heartbreaking and it's very very sad  it would be easy for children to be taught in preschool that human beings are all of us and that we all are beautiful and we all belong or we wouldn't been born and that there's room enough for all of us like children can be taught that and children will grow and children who were taught that grow up to be leaders that do think about the whole and not just their one group and their one community and to be a person who's watched it because you know i've been alive for a little while i've seen a lot i've seen the damage in the tora mall and the hatred that goes on not just against people of different races and religions and creeds and colors and lack thereof but against each other and families and against each other in same communities and against each other as members of the same sexual group you know like min and women like i thing hateful hate spirited rage and anger being flicked inflicted on other human beings and i've watched it for sixty years and i've seen their produce nothing but tragedy i've seen it produce nothing but self hatred and i've seen it produced nothing but wounds and injuries and fractures in our spirits and our souls that don't work and i haven't seen it all my life and having had my own experience with it and now working with people and trying to have a prayer to empower people and direct people in a way that they can establish their own futures and their own paths and conquer their own dreams  being in that position i get to see just how broken spirit and broken hearted and just hopeless people can end up you know they don't we all start out there we start off rich and we're little babies reaching for somebody to pick us up and love us that's all we're reaching for it's little babies and those of us who experience her pain and anguish along the way you know sometimes we don't a from it we don't recover from it and so i'm here today to say that it's tragic and i'm with the president man who are we w really and where where are we headed if adults think that gazans and teachers go together guns are killing people left and right and for people to think that that makes sense you know if it's way bigger than me is way bigger than me you know but i know historically it all it all started someplace you know the massive theft of this very soil i'm standing on and the massive death of human beings from other countries here especially in and from africa to here  the massive death of other human being it's an other nations is not was not the way to go and i get that there were groups of people traveling the world you know they were they were  was in school they called them explorers but really they were just pirates fed they were just shipping around the world still and up everything and everybody they saw well just think of those ships instead of having pirates who were called explorers and disk you know people who discovered just think if they were accurately described as who they are they were pirates and they were still and just think of what might have become of the world if the truth had been told and think of how many people would not want to be referred to as a pirate in a that and a thief i know i would and just think if instead of those ships traveling the to steal up everything they could just think if they travelled in love and in care and compassion and had a desire to know that we could all fit that we all fit we all belong like what could we have accomplished by viewing each other as valuable as book viewing each other as incredible as viewing each other as a complement to the planet versus you know a person that you could just  kill rape maim and destroy like you know i don't care how you word it and what you do with the words it's never going to work it's never going to work and that's what we we are coming to some real terms with the ways of the world have not worked and they have not worked for human beings and they have not worked for the planet at large and the change that scummy is change that we all need we all need to find out how we can all be whatever ones we have and whatever injuries we have how we can heal ourselves for from our own and then how we can pour out that healing in that love and that care and that compassion and every human being we need no matter whether they're black white blue green straight gay have h i v have cancer have hep c whether they have chicken pox mom whether they have cystic fibrosis asthma whether they can walk they can talk and matters not what condition a human being's bodies in would matter is this how much love we can pour into one another and what will make this world a better place and a more exciting place is how masterful we get it that you know there are other countries on the move that don't have that software self centered position and they're making great strides and they're making great strides because they start their mornings off and relationship with god they start their morning off asking how can i perform in my world and in my community and in my home as a better human being how can i pour out more love and receive more love how can i make this world a better place there are countries all over this world that start their days off like that and as a result they're grown you know they're there are no they're there talking to the creator and they're making plans with the creator and they're having a good time and they're they're leading other countries in the same way you know for human beings to tell themselves that god told them to kill off people who were on this land when they came and still this land and then go to another country and still other people for people to lie and say that god told them that or to lie to themselves and tell themselves that god told them that is  so unfortunate but it's a dated lie it's old it's old decrepit it didn't work then and it sure ain't working now and so what we are witnessing is the second coming if you will of what love looks like what love can do what love will do should she have her way i miss love i miss her urgency i miss her ability to laugh when things aren't funny and miss her fear of her pain and how she might run from it but eventually she faces it and how she did chilli heals and how she shows up to love some more i miss her her joy her laughter her ability to spread beyond where my eyes can see i'm miss love and i gotta feel and dad ya'll might miss love too especially those of us who took a long time to learn what real love looks like and what if feels like and what it acts like and and those of us who learned how to settle for many things when we were young and call when it really wasn't those of us who were committed to make in what we believed was love when it really wasn't our commitment to making that work anyway like i really and miss how love allows us to learn more and learn better and do more and do better and the better the more we learn the better we do the more we learn the more we do in the better we do and i miss her laughter her childlike laughter at our shortcomings and how those shortcomings eventually become very very special skill sets that allow us to live a purpose that we would not be able to live had not we had that injury or that wound i love that about love i love how love will take the very like i've been married three times and three times a didn't work and now anybody my think that i would just be like a basket case or that i would be broken hearted and disrupted and disruptive and all that and the reality is that i'm in a more love with life than i've ever been and i'm more in love with love than i've ever been and i'm excited to learn more about love what love has to offer but that's because i learned how to love myself and my husband's taught me how little love i have for myself what love really looks like what it didn't look me how broken and wounded i was and how much work i had to do for myself and i'm grateful that when i did the work and i showed up as a more well rounded woman that they found  me attractive they found me funny they found me witty and they found me somebody they didn't that they didn't want to not be friends with you know they're very dear friends to me today and demand their girlfriends i'm excited that i am friends with them and i'm excited that i learned so much and a lot of the ones that i have as a wounded warrior i learned my marriages and my relationships and so now today that's where the i've had the most healing and that's where i do the most in giving back i work with young women struggling like i struggled and i don't tell them lies that i was told i don't tell them untruths that i was told and i don't tell them things that i was told that that the women told me i realized that at that time that was the best the woman could do and so i don't live in those times anymore i live in another time i'm responsible for telling women coming by me a higher level of care a more profound level of care and i am responsible for sure what that looks like so that women don't have to live so broken hearted because they have gotten themselves in situations that don't work and that men don't have to live so broken hearted because they've gotten themselves in situations that don't work and neither person has the strength or wants to be has the strength the sake of buy or as gladys knight would say neither one of us wants to be the first to say goodbye i'm very excited that that not my story today and used to be but it's not today and i'm very happy that i don't have to pass on the wounds that made me a wounded warrior i don't have to pass those wounds on i can still a young man or young woman from experience this is the outcome of that particular behavior this is what it will cost to this is the potential of damages this is the level of damage you will potentially experience however if you have to go for commie commie if it don't  comedy if it works really because i want to know what you did that i didn't do but call me when it don't work and call me when when you're at your lowest point your most broken hearted place in life and you're crying out and you can't cry anymore and everybody is tirelessly that you cry call me because i will let you know you know what i've been there i've lived there first quite a while i became friends with that place and one day i was able to heal from that place and one day i moved that place not to another burner like i had to throw it out the kitchen to package it up in a dumpster and a garbage bag and throw it in the dumpster because it's no longer me it's not who i am it's not who i have to be it's not who i'm going to pass on so i really love you i really hope you have a great weekend remember wounded warriors hang in there we're going to make it take care