ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT SHOULD BE THE BLACK COMMUNITY'S #1 PRIORITY

Rashad Bilal (0:00)

I mean, Nolan Wells.

A grand jury said that there was no grounds for legal prosecution of anybody connected to the case. So obviously, we don't have inside information of what the autopsy or what the grand jury saw. But this is a-

Troy Millings (0:21)

Blunt force trauma to the back of the head.

Rashad Bilal (0:23)

This is an important part. You know how we need financial literacy? Obviously, that's something that we brought to the forefront, right?

Troy Millings (0:29)

Yeah.

Rashad Bilal (0:29)

And we think that financial literacy should be taught in every school because kids should learn about financial literacy.

Troy Millings (0:34)

Yeah.

Rashad Bilal (0:36)

Was also as pointed, maybe it's equally important is civic literacy. We need to teach the average American does not have any civic literacy as far as voting, who does what? What is the difference between a congressperson and a senator, your local elections, mayors, school board, a grand jury?

So important. So many people don't even know what a grand jury is. Right? And this is part of the legal system that doesn't get talked about a lot.

Troy Millings (1:14)

Yeah.

Rashad Bilal (1:14)

Right? Where literally a grand jury has the power to actually bring a case forward or not.

Troy Millings (1:23)

Yeah.

Rashad Bilal (1:23)

So who's on a grand jury? Nobody's ever asked this question. Right? Like nobody really asks this question. Like, where does this grand jury come from? Who is a grand jury? How do you get on a grand jury? Is this like, so many different things happen. We just hear a grand jury. Like every once in a while, we just hear about a grand jury. But I will say this.

Obviously, I don't know what happened, right?

Troy Millings (1:50)

But we know blunt force trauma to the back of the head happened, and when the autopsy was done, they removed his throat. Blunt force trauma.

Rashad Bilal (1:58)

They removed his throat, you said?

Troy Millings (2:00)

That's the reported.

Rashad Bilal (2:02)

Who removed his throat? The coroner, allegedly?

I'll tell you this, some very disturbing things have been happening or has happened for 56 years, longer than that, in the state of Mississippi. The whole entire state needs to have a federal investigation. You got people hanging from trees.

Mississippi, the state of Mississippi, their whole structure needs to be gutted. Because this shit, it keeps happening. It just keeps happening. And like I said, you can say, okay, one time, but this is...

Troy Millings (2:46)

Historically, it's been happening for a hundred something years.

It's heartbreaking. Prayers to the family. I can't give my real thoughts about what should happen next. But at some point, as a community, we're going to have to take some other actions to get some of this resolved. You got to have some pushback. And then you see they posted the picture with their new black friend on IG today.

Rashad Bilal (3:16)

The kids? Yeah.

Troy Millings (3:22)

So to all of my parents, keep your kids safe.

Pray over your children and watch over your children.

Be careful. I pray none of us tonight ever have to go through a situation like this. Because I know some of us will throw our lives away. This happened, including me. God rest that boy's soul. But something has to be done. As far as Mississippi, though, nothing's going to change. If anything, they got away with it. They're going to double down on it.

Rashad Bilal (3:57)

What can be done? What can we, how can we? So Angela Rye and watch the latest episode of Native Land Podcast, myself and Troy. We got asked this question and I think it's a three-part process. I'll give you the abbreviated version. If you want the long version, watch the episode. We need to have economic empowerment as a community at a very high level. Then we got to have organizational empowerment.

The problem is that we train so much to just, we don't trust each other.

So whenever something comes out, look at Black Lives Matter, how they just tore that apart.

Troy Millings (4:43)

Well, that's a layer conversation too, because why did they get tore apart?

Rashad Bilal (4:47)

No, but what I'm saying is that we don't trust anything. So we don't have any organization that we really can look forward.

Troy Millings (4:57)

But Morgan talked about this on Breakfast Club, that there's a cohort that is paying to tear down any institution.

And I'm not just saying because our involvement in it, but when it's like, okay, attack on InvestFest, then it's attack on Afro Tech, any positive Black institution, it's even in the response to Umar, like I know he was misguided. But a constant attack on every brand that's trying to do anything for anybody Black, that's not by design. It's too much money and the talking points are the same across all of the Internet internationally to think that that's a coincidence. So I agree that we may not trust a lot, but it's a lot of media and PR put into not trusting us.