 Welcome to In The Studio. I am your guest, David Greenwald. And today, we are going to be talking about the March for Justice, which is going to take place on October the 7th, Friday at 8 AM. And people are going to be marching from Central Park in Davis all the way to the Capitol. So I have in the studio the Reverend Tim Malone. I have Sean Raycraft and Diane Evans. Welcome, guys. Thank you. Thanks, David. So Reverend Malone, can you tell us a bit about the March and what inspired it? Well, what inspired it really are the current events, the major killing that's been happening in Chicago, the Black Lives Matter movement, all of these shootings by police officers, and even the shootings of the people who shot the police. And of course, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, especially Donald Trump and anti-immigration. There's so many issues out there. And the fact that Donald Trump is able to head up the Republican Party ticket is quite frightening. So it's saying that this March is saying, we're marching for justice. We want a better world. And we just can't take a break. Because if you take a break, you might have Donald Trump as president of the United States. So what is this going to look like then on the 7th? As you can plan something, but you really don't know. But there's three points I want to make. First of all is that we assemble at 8 o'clock in Central Park. We're going to meet at the Mahatma Gandhi statue. And some people will ride their bikes. Some people will walk. Some people will march from there all the way to the state capitol. However, the emphasis is to be on the west steps of the state capitol on Friday, October 7th, at 12 noon. And so we have one stop there, one stop marching point from the West Sacramento City Council. And then, of course, the last one is 12 noon at the west steps of the state capitol. We have various people. Someone from Native American speaking on Native American issues. Someone will be speaking on labor issues. Someone will be speaking on, hopefully, world issues like Palestinian conflict and what's going on in Aleppo and Syria. And economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice, they're all for. Economic justice, racial justice, social justice, and environmental justice. Those are four main areas we're going to talk about. Had you come up with the idea of actually marching from Davis to Sacramento? You know, Gandhi march, you know, King march. Everyone that does something that they feel is significant means you have to take action. March really symbolizes, this is important enough for me that I want people to know about. So we're going to literally march through the streets and carry signs and let people know, hey, this is important. Get registered, vote, get involved. So let's bring Diane and Sean into this conversation too. What do you guys see getting out of this? Start with Sean. Well, for me, it's about being a productive citizen society. I think that people who have an understanding of these issues have a duty to get involved. And as a shop steward, as a trade unionist, I see institutional racism in this country. I see environmental degradation. I see income inequality. I see all these things negatively impacting the people of my community and students, older folks, people like me who work in class. And we have to do something. And I got involved because I think it is everybody's duty, like I said, to be involved and try and make positive change in the world. And these issues need to be addressed. Yes, David, what's exciting about this event for me is we also intend to pass the baton. We're inviting a lot of UC Davis students so they can actually connect with people who have, I was in the Martin Luther King march on Washington. I was in the one the year before, which was the practice march. And I know from the inside out, the value of marching and gaining public attention on injustices. We also want people to realize that by coming together with all of our issues, we can create a louder voice to change and make differences for all the small people who are affected by the injustices. So we say uniting voices to create peace and equality. That is our goal. So what types of groups are actually being united for this event? There are several groups. We have trade unionists. We have Native Americans that are being involved in this. We have hopefully ACLU. We were expecting to have someone from the NAACP to come and be with us. And so there's several groups because all of the issues going on, Standing Rock, the Sioux, is one of the largest uprisings of Native Americans in the country. Actually, they're nations. They're the original people, they're nations. And they're talking about this pipeline that goes underneath a water. They're worried about it coming across their land and polluting the water that they live off of on their reservation. On the land, of course, it was all theirs originally. So there are many, many groups. I'd just like to bring some attention to the Davis-Phoenix Coalition, which is giving a tremendous amount of leadership to this human rights network. So... Yeah, we're calling it the human rights network because it's a coalition of organizations. It seems like such a broad array of different issues. Are you afraid that the message is gonna get lost and all that? Well, that's always, that can always be a challenge. But I think the most important thing is that we want to emphasize voter education and voter registration. We want people involved. They want them to know what's going on. For an example, this election alone in California, there are 17 different propositions, 17. And people need to know what's going on. There's more than just the political elections, but we have the proposition. So being educated, knowing what you're voting on, knowing what's going on, knowing what you're voting on is very important. So we want people to get involved because if you don't get involved, again, we might have somebody like Donald Trump as president of the United States. I wanna go to the Black Lives Matter issue. So there have been two police shootings in the last few days, one in Oklahoma and one in Charlotte. And the reaction in Charlotte has been mass protests, some burning and looting. One person was critically injured when a shot was fired. How can you bring attention to something that already appears to be so massive an issue? Well, it sees you. I think what you do is you have to focus on what's going on because what's going on in Chicago, what's going on in North Carolina, what's going on in cities all across the country have been happening for a long, long time. Not only officers shooting African-Americans, which is quite common, but Chicago, you have a lot of African-Americans killing African-Americans. So when you say Black Lives Matter, you even have to include international Africans in Africa who are suffering under oppression. And sometimes at the hands of other African groups, you have a dominant majority of oppressing a dominant minority, but they're both Africans. So when you say Black Lives Matter, it has to be total. And I like to say, when you say Black Lives Matter, you're really talking about oppressed people. Oppressed people are considered black. For example, we use a Skittle example that they use. The Skittles, remember the Donald Trump Jr. son talked about Skittles as three of them were poisoned? Would you take a handful of them? Well, I think the Skittle Company, our people trying to get the Skittle Company get three Black Skittles, or Black Skittles so they could pick those three out and throw them away. But Black Lives Matter meaning oppressed groups, their people are a little down upon. And so when we're talking about Black Lives Matter, when I'm talking about it, I'm not only talking about African-Americans, I'm talking about Africans, I'm talking about Palestinians, I'm talking about Native Americans, I'm talking about a disabled, I'm talking about any group anywhere on the planet who's oppressed. So that is Black Lives Matter. And I'd like to add to that, that as we look at it, we now see it's a system. The police officer kills the individual, that person goes to court and they're acquitted. And they get to go on vacation while they're waiting for this process to occur with pay. There is nothing that says that it is not right to do it. There is a police officer, a white police officer who decided he was not going to kill the Black man, told the Black man he wasn't going to kill him. And two other police officers came and while he was getting him to give up, they shot the man dead. So, and now this police officer will go on trial himself or violating some law that would protect other police officers. So there's something built into many areas of our culture that allowed the type of oppression that you've mentioned to happen. And we have to deal with it at all of those levels. I'm glad you brought that up, but that's a very important point she made because this particular police officer had training and he knew it was a suicide by cop situation. This African-American man that was shot and wanting the police to kill him, he knew that that's what he wanted to do. So he said, I'm not going to shoot you. The other officers, they were all white and he was white too, arrived on scene, immediately shot this Black man, killed him. They found out later that the gun he had, it was not even loaded. And the officer who was correct, it was off suicide by cop who did the right thing. He was fired because he didn't shoot him and kill him right away. That shows you something's wrong in the training for law enforcement. And that shows you that Black lives don't matter and that too many police officers, there's some good police officers too, but too many police officers are trigger happy, particularly when they address African-American and African-American males. But coming back, I think more locally, it seems like you're trying to bite off such a huge overwhelming issue as she said, Diane, it's a systemic issue. Are you trying to bite off too much here? Well, it happens here, David. It happens in Sacramento that over the last few months there have been several officer related shootings that were they've killed unarmed Black men in Sacramento. So when you say it's something that happens far away, that's just not true. It happens here in our communities and we have an obligation to try and do something about it. And I want you to understand that we're building a big voice. The voice is the bomb. We know that all the people have to come together to deal with such a strong, entrenched kind of oppression. We've been doing it for over 100 years now in our small little groups. We now have to unite those voices and that's one of the things that's gonna happen at our march. All the little people will have an opportunity to express what it means to not have equal or sufficient income. What it means if you're an immigrant and you still don't have healthcare. What it means to not have food that is good for you. Whatever the issue is, it reflects oppression and the voices you hear from the people, not the leaders, but from the people will express how it destroys their life and it will inspire us to take actions uniting our voice. Does that make any sense to you? Absolutely, so I guess my question is, if you have one outcome from this, what is that? For me, it's voter education, voter registration, it's getting people involved, people who care, and waking them up. Like I said, when you fall asleep, you let some monster like Donald Trump be ahead of the Democrat that makes racism, sexism, and all the other negative isms, okay. And you put that person in a leadership position so we have to wake up. This is scary. It's scary that he is actually the leader of the Republican party, the head of the ticket, and that he's a heartbeat away from becoming president of the United States of America. Now, Sean is gonna have to help me with this one, but we just met on Tuesday and he brought a man with him and we're now talking about gathering throughout Yolo County to support each other's events. And if you could tell him more about the structure of this unity of one voice looks like. Definitely. Well, all these issues that we've been talking about, Black Lives Matter, income inequality, environmental degradation, they're all related, okay. And I've noticed as I've been an activist for a few years now that there's all these different groups of people that are all working on these different issues and they do not work together. And that's sad. So what we're trying to do, like what the fight for 15 is trying to do, which has become more than just about a wage. It's become about systematic racism, sexism, and inequality. It's trying to unite all these voices into one movement. And that's what this is about for me. And we're gonna be trying to put all these voices together in the same room where we can all work together and collaborate to build a broader progressive movement. And one of the things I was struck by was the fact that they said those who have more experience with changing the system and with marching and all the other tools will be there to assist any group, any issue, to become strong to present their issue to the public. And so by working together, there's going to be education, there's going to be louder voices, and they're gonna be smarter changes. So we only have two minutes left. Reverend Malone, can you tell us kind of the take away message you would like people to get out of this? The most important thing really is to register to vote and vote, to get involved, be informed, to be educated, to take a friend to the polling booth, to read up on the issues so you know about economic justice, social justice, racial justice, environmental justice. And so we work together, united as a group of people that really wanna make this world a better place for all. That's the key. We wanna lift people up to a higher level. And we wanna reach down and bring people from the bottom up and higher and push them even above where we've ever been. It's like Dr. Martin Luther King. You know, yeah, I have a dream speech. The one day my four little children will live in a nation that would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. It's all about character. Thank you. So the March for Justice Friday, October 7th, starts at 8 a.m. and people will travel from Central Park in Davis all the way to the Capitol in Sacramento. This has been In the Studio and I was your host, David Greenwald. Thank you.