May 16, 2025 • 12 mins
During a tour stop in Newark, NJ, Dr. Vanessa Tyler has a conversation with participants of The State of the People POWER Tour- a movement that unites community leaders, activists, influencers and the public to help strengthen Black communities nationwide. The Tour is traveling to Black communities throughout the country spotlighting local leadership, and helping to shape a national Black agenda, leading up to Juneteenth 2025.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look at your neighbor as they neighbor. Aren't you fortunate
that you're getting to sit next to me this morning?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
All right, give them a.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
High five and get ready for the kickoff to our
New Jersey stop here for the State of the People Tour.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
There is a tour taking on America, not a music tour,
but the sound of the People.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
This is for us to love on us, to educate us,
to collaborate with us, to support us so that we
can move through these next new normal.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's the State of the People power Tour and we're
on it in black Land.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And now as a brown person, you just feels so invisible.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Where we're from. Brothers and sisters. I welcome you to
this joy from.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Day and we celebrate freedom where we are.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I know someone's heard something.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And where we're going. We the People means all the people.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
We were not going to sit by and just have
zooms and conversations and text messages with one another about
the crisis that we find ourselves in as it relates
to Black folks in America, but instead that we would.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Go see about our people going to see about the
people is what this tour is about. This is the
stop in Newark, New Jersey. Activist Tamika Mallory is a
voice you will hear on the tour. She's always been
on the fight for our people. Her organization Until Freedom
was on the front line for justice for Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
I've never met Brianna Taylor, but I fought so hard
for her and have been in relationship with her family
until it feels like she's my own sister.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
A sister to us all and to Tamika for black
people to make it like ancestors in the past, healing
and help starts with us.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Thus the tour, and so Angela Rye, who we love dearly,
has been the captain leader who's kept us all in
check and on track every single day. And I am very,
very humbled and honored by the opportunity. It's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Work, necessary work, especially in this political climate with the
black people impacted by the Trump administration policies and the
words of the President himself.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
We've entered the tyranny of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government, and indeed
the private sector and our military.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Wokeness is trouble.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Wokeness is bad. It's gone. It's gone, and we feel
so much better for it, don't we don't we feel better?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
We don't have a full accounting of the cost of
people losing their jobs, even some who have been reinstated,
and so in this moment, rather, I think it's really
important for us to do two things. Want us to
reclaim our own power. So much of what we are
learning in this moment where so many of us are
getting a Civics lesson, is that the government has been
helpful for some in feeling incredibly important gaps. But we
(03:20):
all know that we have everything we need in order
to do what our community needs. The second thing is
to hold elected officials accountable. This is why it's important
for us to vote in every election, not just presidential.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Doctor David Johns is also on the tour.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
This is a community powered tour, and we've done everything
possible to make sure that we are plugging into the
work that community leaders have already been doing.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Doctor Johns has been collecting research and where black people stand.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The Black Paper Project is a reflection of our collective brilliance.
The fact that there is nothing that exists in the
world that didn't originate from the brilliant and brawn and
contributions made by and descendants. And we have worked with
over one hundred activists, advocates, leaders, direct service providers, intellectuals,
(04:09):
researchers to produce a series of Black Papers, Black because
we are Black and we're powering this and the papers
once we're done with this project, they're being released throughout
the tour. Once we're done with the tour, we will
have nearly thirty policy papers on a range of topics,
all impacting our beautifully diverse community. We've started with the
(04:30):
first five policy issues that we know are most important
to black people. That includes healthcare and the economy of
public safety. We have more than four papers that have
been authored by a range of folks on a number
of issues connected to public safety, including gun violence. And
my hope is that everyone will find at least a
paper that responds to an issue that is important to you.
(04:51):
There are six papers available right now at State of
THEEPEOPLEPPL dot com slash Black Papers.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's just an honor to be a part of this word
for to say, the People's Tour with Tamika Doctor Johns
Angela and the entire coalition of folks that's a part
of this.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The State of the People Power Tour will tackle the
biggest problem in Black communities, gun violence. That's where Dorian
Murray Thomas comes in. She founded the organization she Wins, Inc.
And she mentors girls who lost a loved one to
gun violence, just like she did.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
My father who came to this country from Guyana, and
he raising with my mom, who grew up in Elizabeth,
not too far from Nork. When I was seven years
old and he was on his way to go pay
my school tuition at the Chat School, which is all
black small school in Newark at the time, he was
robbed and killed two blocks from her house. And so I,
(05:48):
you know, went from being a kid who had really
good grades in school to ending up being the principal's office.
A little bit more.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
The gun violence trauma of young black people isn't the
only issue shadowing at all. The politics now forces everyone
to discuss, to engage to act.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
Donald Trump and his administration. His co president Elon Musk
came in and said, DEI is out and it's divisive,
and you know, have criminalized people in many ways who
are sticking to their diversity, equity and inclusion commitments. And
there are some people who stood tall, and there are
(06:25):
other people who have folded, you know. And one of
the questions that I asked an executive from Target, because
as you know, we are actively engaged in a Target boycott,
and when I was speaking with the executive, you know,
they were saying to me, well, the environment that we're in,
(06:46):
changes have to be made and we're just trying to
figure out how to do much of the work. But
still because of this environment, we need to be careful.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
Told damn, when I'm getting ready to tell you, he
ain't going back in there.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The Target boycott organizers like Pastor Jamal Bryant emphasized our
buying power in one of his recent messages from the
pulpit of New Birth, his Atlanta church.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Look at the person besides and tell them we ain't
going in now.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We ain't going Pastor Bryant says, so far, Target has
meant only one of several demands.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
Target has agreed that five July the thirty first, they
will complete the pledge of two billion dollars for black business.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
That's not good enough, Tamika Mallory says, that is the
line Black people are drawing in the sand.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
You either choose to stand with our communities or you don't.
And guess what the target boycott is not something that
a few of us, whether that be Pastor Jamal Bran
or Nina Turner or Senator Nina Turner or others, have
just created on our own. This came from the people.
The people decided that, you know what, we called you
(08:03):
tar jay. We walked around the stores for four or
five hours. We bought stuff we didn't even need. And
since you've decided that you're not going to stand down
with us and say that DEI is not just something
you're going to continue to do, but that diversity, equity,
and inclusion is a part of the fabric of who
you are and therefore you cannot separate yourself from it.
(08:27):
Then you're not going to be neutral, but you're going
to make a very very clear commitment to our communities.
People said I'm done, I'm walking out. Not that we
don't even have to be angry, we really don't. We
can just simply say, kindly, with a smile on our face,
we have one point eight trillion dollars and we will
hold it and spend it where we feel our communities
(08:50):
are respected.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The state of the people powered toward shows hope and
the resilience of black people. Adrian, whose father was killed
when she was seven, grew up to be the youngest
elected official ever in New Jersey on the school board,
and now she is an Essex County commissioner.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
In Newark. We passed an ordinance last year that gave
young people the right to vote in their school of
elections as early as sixteen years old, one of the
earliest and first cities in the country to do this,
the second large to do it outside of Oakland.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
She says. Young people are ready, want to be engaged.
It is their future.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
And so at this moment, while there are so many
alarms being wrong, my hope is that we avoid doing
the thing that fascists want us to do, and that's
to retreat, is to isolate ourselves, is to trip over ourselves,
to capitulate before we have to. In terms of the
edicts that are being expoused by the current occupant of
the Oval Office, we don't have to do any of that.
(09:49):
What we should be doing is loving on and leading
into community.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I'm excited about what's going to come from this when
it comes to young people, because I've got a sense
that at this rally, at these intergeneration and interfaith and
all these different efforts that we're going to have happening
next week at State of the People Tour in York,
We're going to have our next mayors, next council people,
next school board members, next county commissioners, next, David Johns, next,
(10:14):
Tamika Mallory's of the next generation being poured into in
the room, in the spaces that we're creating, because that's
just how powerful it is, and that's how powerful what
we're doing is going to create for our tomorrow. I'm
certain of that.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
And so they have found ways to take care of
one another. And when you ask what are we learning
across the country, it is that it is simply meeting
organizations like she Wins and other groups that are coming
to us saying if we have the right resources and
the type of awareness necessary, we can scale up and
(10:50):
help more people in our communities. And I think that
for those of us like doctor Johns, Angela Rye and
a Joanne Reed and a pastor, Mike McBride and Gary Chambers,
and the list goes on of folks who are engaged
in this tour. We don't have a million or hundreds
of thousands of followers just for us to post nice
(11:12):
selfies and cute pictures of ourselves and the work and
whatever we want to show the world about our lives.
Our purpose is to use what we've gained and the
resources that we've been able to pull together to support
our brothers and sisters on the ground. Ladies John, please
put your hands together.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Let's thank this amazing panel, this wisdom, this.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Insight, Doctor David Johns, A'dorian Murray-Thomas of She Wins Inc.
And Tamika Mallory are on all social media platforms. Tamika's
new book, I Live to Tell It, her page turning memoir,
is out now. Go to Tamika Mallory dot com. And
to find out if the State of the People Power
(11:56):
Tours headed to a city near you, go to State
of the ppl dot com. I'm Vanessa Tyler on black Land.
A new episode drops every week.
Look at your neighbor as they neighbor. Aren't you fortunate
that you're getting to sit next to me this morning?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
All right, give them a.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
High five and get ready for the kickoff to our
New Jersey stop here for the State of the People Tour.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
There is a tour taking on America, not a music tour,
but the sound of the People.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
This is for us to love on us, to educate us,
to collaborate with us, to support us so that we
can move through these next new normal.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
It's the State of the People power Tour and we're
on it in black Land.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And now as a brown person, you just feels so invisible.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Where we're from. Brothers and sisters. I welcome you to
this joy from.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Day and we celebrate freedom where we are.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I know someone's heard something.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
And where we're going. We the People means all the people.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your host Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
We were not going to sit by and just have
zooms and conversations and text messages with one another about
the crisis that we find ourselves in as it relates
to Black folks in America, but instead that we would.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Go see about our people going to see about the
people is what this tour is about. This is the
stop in Newark, New Jersey. Activist Tamika Mallory is a
voice you will hear on the tour. She's always been
on the fight for our people. Her organization Until Freedom
was on the front line for justice for Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
I've never met Brianna Taylor, but I fought so hard
for her and have been in relationship with her family
until it feels like she's my own sister.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
A sister to us all and to Tamika for black
people to make it like ancestors in the past, healing
and help starts with us.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
Thus the tour, and so Angela Rye, who we love dearly,
has been the captain leader who's kept us all in
check and on track every single day. And I am very,
very humbled and honored by the opportunity. It's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Work, necessary work, especially in this political climate with the
black people impacted by the Trump administration policies and the
words of the President himself.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
We've entered the tyranny of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government, and indeed
the private sector and our military.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Wokeness is trouble.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Wokeness is bad. It's gone. It's gone, and we feel
so much better for it, don't we don't we feel better?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
We don't have a full accounting of the cost of
people losing their jobs, even some who have been reinstated,
and so in this moment, rather, I think it's really
important for us to do two things. Want us to
reclaim our own power. So much of what we are
learning in this moment where so many of us are
getting a Civics lesson, is that the government has been
helpful for some in feeling incredibly important gaps. But we
(03:20):
all know that we have everything we need in order
to do what our community needs. The second thing is
to hold elected officials accountable. This is why it's important
for us to vote in every election, not just presidential.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Doctor David Johns is also on the tour.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
This is a community powered tour, and we've done everything
possible to make sure that we are plugging into the
work that community leaders have already been doing.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Doctor Johns has been collecting research and where black people stand.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The Black Paper Project is a reflection of our collective brilliance.
The fact that there is nothing that exists in the
world that didn't originate from the brilliant and brawn and
contributions made by and descendants. And we have worked with
over one hundred activists, advocates, leaders, direct service providers, intellectuals,
(04:09):
researchers to produce a series of Black Papers, Black because
we are Black and we're powering this and the papers
once we're done with this project, they're being released throughout
the tour. Once we're done with the tour, we will
have nearly thirty policy papers on a range of topics,
all impacting our beautifully diverse community. We've started with the
(04:30):
first five policy issues that we know are most important
to black people. That includes healthcare and the economy of
public safety. We have more than four papers that have
been authored by a range of folks on a number
of issues connected to public safety, including gun violence. And
my hope is that everyone will find at least a
paper that responds to an issue that is important to you.
(04:51):
There are six papers available right now at State of
THEEPEOPLEPPL dot com slash Black Papers.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's just an honor to be a part of this word
for to say, the People's Tour with Tamika Doctor Johns
Angela and the entire coalition of folks that's a part
of this.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The State of the People Power Tour will tackle the
biggest problem in Black communities, gun violence. That's where Dorian
Murray Thomas comes in. She founded the organization she Wins, Inc.
And she mentors girls who lost a loved one to
gun violence, just like she did.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
My father who came to this country from Guyana, and
he raising with my mom, who grew up in Elizabeth,
not too far from Nork. When I was seven years
old and he was on his way to go pay
my school tuition at the Chat School, which is all
black small school in Newark at the time, he was
robbed and killed two blocks from her house. And so I,
(05:48):
you know, went from being a kid who had really
good grades in school to ending up being the principal's office.
A little bit more.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
The gun violence trauma of young black people isn't the
only issue shadowing at all. The politics now forces everyone
to discuss, to engage to act.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
Donald Trump and his administration. His co president Elon Musk
came in and said, DEI is out and it's divisive,
and you know, have criminalized people in many ways who
are sticking to their diversity, equity and inclusion commitments. And
there are some people who stood tall, and there are
(06:25):
other people who have folded, you know. And one of
the questions that I asked an executive from Target, because
as you know, we are actively engaged in a Target boycott,
and when I was speaking with the executive, you know,
they were saying to me, well, the environment that we're in,
(06:46):
changes have to be made and we're just trying to
figure out how to do much of the work. But
still because of this environment, we need to be careful.
Speaker 7 (06:56):
Told damn, when I'm getting ready to tell you, he
ain't going back in there.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The Target boycott organizers like Pastor Jamal Bryant emphasized our
buying power in one of his recent messages from the
pulpit of New Birth, his Atlanta church.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Look at the person besides and tell them we ain't
going in now.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
We ain't going Pastor Bryant says, so far, Target has
meant only one of several demands.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
Target has agreed that five July the thirty first, they
will complete the pledge of two billion dollars for black business.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
That's not good enough, Tamika Mallory says, that is the
line Black people are drawing in the sand.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
You either choose to stand with our communities or you don't.
And guess what the target boycott is not something that
a few of us, whether that be Pastor Jamal Bran
or Nina Turner or Senator Nina Turner or others, have
just created on our own. This came from the people.
The people decided that, you know what, we called you
(08:03):
tar jay. We walked around the stores for four or
five hours. We bought stuff we didn't even need. And
since you've decided that you're not going to stand down
with us and say that DEI is not just something
you're going to continue to do, but that diversity, equity,
and inclusion is a part of the fabric of who
you are and therefore you cannot separate yourself from it.
(08:27):
Then you're not going to be neutral, but you're going
to make a very very clear commitment to our communities.
People said I'm done, I'm walking out. Not that we
don't even have to be angry, we really don't. We
can just simply say, kindly, with a smile on our face,
we have one point eight trillion dollars and we will
hold it and spend it where we feel our communities
(08:50):
are respected.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The state of the people powered toward shows hope and
the resilience of black people. Adrian, whose father was killed
when she was seven, grew up to be the youngest
elected official ever in New Jersey on the school board,
and now she is an Essex County commissioner.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
In Newark. We passed an ordinance last year that gave
young people the right to vote in their school of
elections as early as sixteen years old, one of the
earliest and first cities in the country to do this,
the second large to do it outside of Oakland.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
She says. Young people are ready, want to be engaged.
It is their future.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
And so at this moment, while there are so many
alarms being wrong, my hope is that we avoid doing
the thing that fascists want us to do, and that's
to retreat, is to isolate ourselves, is to trip over ourselves,
to capitulate before we have to. In terms of the
edicts that are being expoused by the current occupant of
the Oval Office, we don't have to do any of that.
(09:49):
What we should be doing is loving on and leading
into community.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I'm excited about what's going to come from this when
it comes to young people, because I've got a sense
that at this rally, at these intergeneration and interfaith and
all these different efforts that we're going to have happening
next week at State of the People Tour in York,
We're going to have our next mayors, next council people,
next school board members, next county commissioners, next, David Johns, next,
(10:14):
Tamika Mallory's of the next generation being poured into in
the room, in the spaces that we're creating, because that's
just how powerful it is, and that's how powerful what
we're doing is going to create for our tomorrow. I'm
certain of that.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
And so they have found ways to take care of
one another. And when you ask what are we learning
across the country, it is that it is simply meeting
organizations like she Wins and other groups that are coming
to us saying if we have the right resources and
the type of awareness necessary, we can scale up and
(10:50):
help more people in our communities. And I think that
for those of us like doctor Johns, Angela Rye and
a Joanne Reed and a pastor, Mike McBride and Gary Chambers,
and the list goes on of folks who are engaged
in this tour. We don't have a million or hundreds
of thousands of followers just for us to post nice
(11:12):
selfies and cute pictures of ourselves and the work and
whatever we want to show the world about our lives.
Our purpose is to use what we've gained and the
resources that we've been able to pull together to support
our brothers and sisters on the ground. Ladies John, please
put your hands together.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Let's thank this amazing panel, this wisdom, this.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Insight, Doctor David Johns, A'dorian Murray-Thomas of She Wins Inc.
And Tamika Mallory are on all social media platforms. Tamika's
new book, I Live to Tell It, her page turning memoir,
is out now. Go to Tamika Mallory dot com. And
to find out if the State of the People Power
(11:56):
Tours headed to a city near you, go to State
of the ppl dot com. I'm Vanessa Tyler on black Land.
A new episode drops every week.
Host
Vanessa Tyler
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