Joel Brennan Discusses Gubernatorial Race and Key Issues

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Welcome to Community Voice. I'm your host Keith Parris. I want to thank everybody for joining us on this the last day of July, July 31st. What up, DJ? Good morning. What's happening? Clark Kent, what's up? Who you with? Hey, man. Apostle. Bishop, chairman of the board, superintendent. I was impressed with DJ yesterday. Yeah, he handled himself well. Yeah, because you threw him a curve ball. I didn't.

What a curb So anyway as you all know If you don't know you living under a rock We're in the middle of a gubernatorial primary We have our fourth candidate Mr. Joel Brennan. Good morning. Morning. How are you? I'm doing great. Welcome, man You still

I'm still here. Nothing's changed in the last 24 hours for me. Yeah. When, uh, when Kelda was here, I said, uh, you don't have these scandals or anything. She said, if I do, I'll break up with them. You know what I mean? This has been, and I have some questions I'm asking the same questions, but we're asking the same questions that we asked the other candidates. But when you got it, it had you, you, there's no way you could afford C. Of course not. No. And, and actually.

Here's the frustration is that for I got in this race on December 11th. My mother's birthday would and and I've been in ever since never wavered on that But there was so little attention paid to this for a long time and then in the last couple of weeks It's been like one whipsaw after another. I mean it really has gotten to be

It's unfortunate that more of the news has been about what's going on inside the race than the issues we really care about. But this is the nature of things. The things change very quickly in these races. So first question. What experiences in your personal, professional, and public service backgrounds have best prepared you to serve as governor? And what distinguishes you from the other Democratic candidates that are still in the race?

Well, hang on cuz we could change but yeah the distinction that I bring I think to this race is over the course of the last 20 years I've had nothing but executive leadership experience. I was the CEO at Discovery World Largest science museum in Wisconsin for 11 years. Yeah, let me just say my wife was just down there yesterday would

Program they work with she said it was incredible. It's great And they are doing they're doing better than than they were than I when I was there and we navigate our way through lots of challenges You know you know this we're here at 20th and capital there are kids in this neighborhood who never get to see the lake and you know and so

being able to be part of having thousands of kids get engaged in STEM education and what we do for summer camps, working with the boys and girls clubs and other partners. Like that was one of the great things in my career, but I left that and went to work for Governor Evers as the secretary of administration. So I did that for three years and did that. The secretary of administration in Wisconsin is really the top appointee in the cabinet.

And the job is to run the executive branch. And so, you know, I was able to do that after eight years of Scott Walker and a right wing legislature and kind of rebuilding Wisconsin that we had to do. And then COVID hit and government had to work in ways that it hadn't for 100 years. So making sure we got money out to renters and homeowners and small businesses and trying to do things that had some longer term benefit to communities because of all that had happened during COVID. And if government, you know, government doesn't solve everything, but it's

Government didn't work during that time.

people were going to suffer and some people were going to die. And that, to me, being able to navigate during that time of crisis, that that is a distinction between me and other candidates, all of whom are my friends and all of whom, you know, if I don't win this, I expect to support whoever will be the nominee. I don't expect to. I will. And we've got to get to a place where we can beat Tom Tiffany and beat back Donald Trump this fall. But like those are things I think that are different. I have been about solving problems and getting things done.

More than I've ever been about getting even like that's been who I've been throughout my career. I just a follow-up with that You've been with the current administration With the Brennan potential administration, I like the sound of that. Yeah, would would there be Any overlap with the the Evers administration and Brennan or could you expound on some differences that sure?

Sure. You know, and I would tell you what I think is the great gift that Tony Evers is leaving to Wisconsin is a legislature that looks much more like Wisconsin than the one that he inherited. You know, for for many years, and this is when I was in the early years when I worked in his administration, there was almost a super majority in the legislature in the state Senate and the state assembly. And so Governor Evers' role really was to play defense and to stop some of the bad things that were happening. And then we had the opportunity during COVID to be able to spend

resources exclusively because all those resources went to the executive branch. But here's how it'll be dramatically different is that we have the ability to go on the offensive rather than defending things around the cuts that were happening in state government, the lack of investment in public education, the investment that stopped in technical ed and higher ed. Those are the areas where we can make very big differences now because we can start to invest. There's an issue

that people in Milwaukee know vividly is around childcare. It is one of the biggest K-12 education and workforce issues in the state. There's a billion dollars every year that sits on the sidelines in productivity, mainly from women, because they can't find affordable, accessible, or quality childcare. And that system's been broken. We've been propping it up with federal money. And what little state money we put into it went away on June 30th.

You've got a quarter of daycares around the state that are in danger of closing. Everyone that's operating, their waiting lists are going up, costs are going up. My wife and I have two kids. We started...

those kids at Neighborhood House on the near west side 20 years ago and I've been involved with Neighborhood House ever since you know you start as a parent you get on the board and all of a sudden you're chair of the board like I've been doing this stuff for a long time and I have seen just how we have you know one the impact you have when you've got really good high quality early childhood education.

95 percent of brain development happens in zero to three like all the issues we deal with In k-12 education everything else we do it starts by the fact that we treat that as an afterthought so often And so we should be investing in that but but you had a situation where

Robin Voss the leader of the legislature like he said well, you know and when Families have kids mom should be staying home with it like that's not the world we live in anymore This isn't June Cleaver is not coming out from the kitchen to do this and and we've got to be in a position where we can meet people where they are and so like Those are the types of things we can be on the offensive on that we haven't had had the chance to be for a generation

you know, this political labeling is what we do, right? And if your opponent can paint you a certain way or use terms that are, for some people, pejorative or negative, it can, well, it impacts the campaign. So how would you describe yourself in terms of your place in a democratic party? Would you characterize yourself as a progressive, a liberal, moderate,

Democratic Socialist, how would you label yourself? I call myself a pragmatic progressive like I am I hope I'm cut from the progressive Wisconsin tradition where we care deeply about individual liberties We make sure that people have the ability to be who they are We invest in the important things but I think and this is what I've learned going around the state over much of the last year is that people

Voters on an individual basis care less about those labels than they do about who's gonna get something done So like I am somebody who whether it was working in nonprofits whether it's been working in business with the work I had to do in government It was about getting things done more than it was ever about like getting even or Revenging avenging grievances and things like that like I think that's what people want and I think that's what people deserve and so you know, yeah people paint you all along the ideological spectrum and

There are lots of ways in which the candidates who are running for this office on the Democratic side agree.

what we disagree with is, you know, what Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump have done and the the harm that they're causing by pulling the rug out from people when it comes to food share benefits and, uh, and SNAP benefits in Wisconsin, when it comes to, you know, taking Medicaid away from thousands of people, like those are the areas where I think we all will stand against. And what people in Wisconsin have wanted, no matter where I have gone is somebody who's going to be interested in getting something done, because there are big problems that they have in health.

care and housing and public education and they want to see somebody who can fix those things. You are a native of Milwaukee. Yep. So you understand our sewer socialism here. How do how when people hear that term democratic socialist and they're going to try to paint whomever under that brush do you can you share with people how

America benefits from its socialism to sure. I mean we we lived it here. I mean it's a there that that part of

Wisconsin and Milwaukee history where it was truly about investing in public infrastructure investing in the right kind of things like there is a Wisconsin's progressive traditions go back to you know some of the socialists, but you know again I it's less about those ideological labels I think then that was a time when it was demonstrated that government could get things done in Milwaukee You know, yeah, it was around public infrastructure. It was around the public parks that we ended up with you know and and things that now

have some challenges with them, but it still are things that set Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, the city of Milwaukee apart from other places. And so, you know, I think that that is government. Some of those things are the vestiges of government serving its residents well. And I think that's what we always want of government. How do you operate efficiently? How do you operate effectively? How do you actually solve problems for people? And I think that's

at its core, that's what I've been every time, whether in a career that's taken me in inside government and the nonprofit world, working with businesses, all in different areas. When I've checked back into government and when I've worked in government, it has always been about how do you get things done? During COVID, it was how do you deal with all the huge problems that people are facing, the fact that the harm from COVID wasn't being distributed equally. There were people who are still doing real well, people who are real challenged, how do you get those

resources, the people who are getting hurt. That's been what government has been for me. And what I think it is, no matter where you are. And let me before let me shout out to good folks at new pits, more to worry. Good morning. Good morning. I just saw Pastor Lovelace go back. All right, I gotta do that. So you stated in the debate that Wisconsin is losing in economic growth compared to our Midwestern counterparts. So

Can you explain how Wisconsin can get back on the winning path? Sure, you know, and we're losing in different ways. So, so there is a, you know, one of the areas that we all measure ourselves around is housing in Wisconsin is short.

70 80,000 entry level homes around the state, some here in Milwaukee and some elsewhere. And other states have that same challenge. We've all been challenged that way in the Midwest, but like states like Ohio and Michigan, they've been narrowing that gap in the last few years where Wisconsin's continued to build. Like we are not meeting the needs for young families here, given people an opportunity, you know, the average age for a first time home buyer in Wisconsin now is 40 years old. We're telling young families that

There is no pathway here in Milwaukee. You've got Wall Street firms that own and have bought up multifamily housing. And so, you know, your rents are jacked up and you're not finding ways for people to even, you know, think that they could ever get to that. So what I, one of the things that I have laid out is like they, in Michigan, the governor put down a stake and said, I think, I think she said 75,000, they were going to build 75,000 new entry level homes. And they did that. And then they kept kind of building on that. We need to do that in Wisconsin.

What I would say is, I've said we'll do 100,000 homes in my first four years, meaning that would be about double what we have done. It can't be the only thing. We need to make sure.

that we're doing homebuyer counseling, that we're doing down payment a system that acts housing that operates here in Milwaukee. And there are others that do some really great work in getting people into homes and that knits communities back together. You know, this world of division and chaos that we live in, like there are things about rebuilding neighborhoods, some of them right around here where we are, that there are private sector efforts involved, nonprofits that are doing it, government just kind of needs to be alongside there.

and be part of that solution. And I think that's what we can do in Wisconsin.

I spent the first year of my time in the Evers administration working on the Foxconn deal. People remember that. You know, it was supposed to be, you know, Wisconsin had $3 billion potentially of exposure in that. And it was supposed to like magically land in Racine County and 20 million square feet and 13,000 jobs were going to be created. And we found out pretty quickly that Foxconn was better at putting out press releases than they were ever going to be at putting out plasmas, flat screens.

And we needed to make sure that we were investing in the right things. And I think that's the difference. We can use those things that Scott Walker and Donald Trump called the eighth wonder of the world. Well, it didn't turn out that way for us. Or we can invest in our own, invest in infrastructure here, invest in education, start to do things that invest in childcare, start to do things that are gonna have long-term benefit and where you're kind of doing the building blocks of how you're gonna actually get things done.

And just kind of in vain of this idea of what you're going to do fiscally. Question right now is public education. How do we adequately finance? Well, one, does the state have a role in making sure that regardless of the municipality that public education is fully funded?

And then two, what are some of the things, you know, we talked about the 400 year tax. So where are you in terms of that? And now with the expansion of choice throughout the state.

Talk about how that impacts public education sure let lot in that question I'll try to get to it if I don't answer keep asking me but but one when it comes to funding public education in Wisconsin and you see this You've seen it in Milwaukee, but you've seen it all around the state where we're pitting property taxpayers against kids in community after community and the reason I say that like this spring

When we went to vote there were 72 school districts that went to referendum 60 of those for operations meeting like just to keep the lights on and do the basics wasn't to build a new Science classroom or a middle school It was just to keep the lights on and that in in and of itself is like that's what's wrong with Madison and what's wrong with what we're doing around public education because we are not We're forcing local communities to decide whether they're gonna raise their property taxes or meet the basic needs for kids and so

The first thing that I would do is scrap the 33-year-old school funding formula that we had that was never built to last. It doesn't meet the needs. It's actually under a lawsuit right now because there's a group of parents, teachers, administrators that want it declared unconstitutional. And it may well, as it works its way through the courts, it may get to that. But that'll be three years from now. And our kids don't have another three years to wait. So the first thing I would do is scrap that, build a funding formula that is kids-

that says, no matter where you live, what your address is, you have a value. And then you add on for special needs, you add on for English language learners, for urban poverty, for rural poverty, for transportation. That's the way that most other states have gone to.

And that's how we start to meet the needs better in the classroom. The state also, yes, we have an obligation. We're only meeting about half. We're paying for about half of the cost of education in Wisconsin. If we went up to the two thirds, if the state picked up that two thirds, immediately you're going to bring down property taxes for places around the state and stop this pitting of kids and property taxpayers against each other. So like, those are the types of things. But ultimately, it's also got to be around outcomes. You may have seen this.

talked about it but you know recently there was a measurement for 38 states of how how states were doing in the recovery from COVID and out of those 38 states in math Wisconsin finished 33rd.

the 35 states that measured how we were doing on reading Wisconsin finished 30th like that's not the was that's not good enough for Wisconsin and we need to also say that those outcomes are not tolerable for us so like that's got to be who we are and we were talking a little bit about the choice program and vouchers before we came on the air and

I have heard much more about that outstate than you do in Milwaukee. Milwaukee's got a 36 year old mature system. And while there are challenges with it that we absolutely need to deal with, it comes up much more in other areas around the state. The fact that the largest recipient of vouchers in the state to the tune of like $44 million is a virtual school without a lot of classrooms. And I have no problem with people doing that. Should we be paying for all of that?

a level of transparency that's necessary in the city of Green Bay. They have every voucher, everybody who gets a bill, you see what the city, the county, the school districts, and then what's going to pay for vouchers. That level of transparency around the state is probably a good thing and would be welcome. Should, real quickly, should the program be expanded?

I don't want to expand it statewide and I and it hasn't expanded in the city of Milwaukee It's been kind of in a place where it has I think matured and stayed pretty stable for the for the for the regular or for over the last several years and and I think that that's okay. I think more than Than anything it should be about how are we holding ourselves accountable for better outcomes here and in Milwaukee like that is the case for public schools. It's the case for charter schools. It's

case for private schools. How are we getting to a place where they're all performing better for our kids? Yes or no? Should it be phased out in Milwaukee? No. I said this the other night and you can talk to some of the people like my representatives where I live in Brewer's Hill.

I don't think there are, you know, districts in the Milwaukee area for legislators where more than half of the kids or about half the kids are in the public schools and half are in charter or private schools to ask them to say, you're going to disrupt the half the kids who live in your district that like that's not going to happen. It's not even a realistic thing to have happen. And so, you know, that's what I think we've got to be dealing with is how do we get to a point where we are, my kids attended the Milwaukee public schools from K three.

through eighth grade and they are doing great. They're now in college. I want that for every kid who goes to Milwaukee public schools. I want to lift those kids up. I want to make sure we're doing right. We got to do right by every kid in Milwaukee.

uh has been uh a real hot button topic lately obviously there are some pros and cons to there so how would your administration manage innovation and then also accountability yeah well and i think that like ai is a big deal and we're talking we had just uh this week we had a whole meeting and a whole

forum around data centers, because that's been one of the big issues. And we could talk about that. But I'll tell you, AI is something that causes lots of anxiety. We were at an event last weekend where we were talking about how older Wisconsinites are being preyed upon by very sophisticated AI efforts that try to get money away from them and try to ruin them. We've got to make sure we are doing everything we can to stand up against that.

But by the same token, there's ways that technology can make us work more efficiently, more effectively. Like the tools that we have in government ought to be, we ought to create whatever we can to be against the really sophisticated technology that is trying to do harm to people. So it is complicated. There are ways for us to do that. The fundamentals for me are when we're dealing with technology, there are ultimate rights that people have to their privacy, to their civil rights, to their human rights.

We need to make sure whatever we're doing doesn't get us to a point where we are compromising that. What's been happening around the state and in some places here around flocked cameras, there are things around people's individual privacy and their individual rights that those are compromised. Government can't be in any way making sure we're abetting those or making sure we're helping that. We need to be in a place where we're going to ensure that, yes, people are being kept safe, but we're not doing it at the expense of their own civil rights.

Data centers data centers, you know I have called for a pause on the construction of new data centers until we can come up with some Four or five basic guardrails that the state never put in and to me that wouldn't take a year that would take 90 days because there are there's legislation about Making sure that nobody pays for these aside from the companies that are putting them together that there's real environmental

regulations and teeth around that, ensuring that if they're going to get built in Wisconsin, it's by Wisconsin Union Labor, and then four, making sure that there's a vehicle for local government and local citizens to have a place in that conversation, like that we never have these nondisclosure agreements again, where these things come and they're 98% bake before anybody in the community knows about them.

Should local municipalities be responsible for the ancillary supports ie the sewerage the roads those type of I think whoever is building it ought to be Responsible for as much of that as possible and in addition they ought to be responsible for a little bit more like The companies that are building the data centers if we can have them also be responsible for Upgrading the grid making it more efficient. It'll bring down costs of people for what they pay for their utilities, but also

you know, allow us to have a better system for the longer term. Like we still are going to need a very strong electrical grid and we're going to need that. And they ought to be paying for some of that upgrade. And the side benefit of that is it can continue to put people to work here for a long time in Milwaukee and elsewhere. We have a few minutes left. Wisconsin is a purple state.

So let me ask this question as relates you obviously we will be dealing probably again with divided government in if we do elect the democratic governor. Is compromise a bad word when it comes to politics? No, no.

I mean, I think compromise is a bad word when you're compromising values. You know, if you're compromising integrity, compromise when it comes to legislation, compromise when it comes to, you know, how do you get to a point where you're actually making progress for people? Nothing wrong with that. And in fact, I have lived my life in places and in jobs where I had to work in that middle. You know, when you're working, when you're raising money for a nonprofit, you better leave your ego, you better leave your ideology at the door.

sometimes if it's if you can find people who maybe think a little differently when they go into the ballot box but they still support kids and STEM education and opportunity for everybody like that's a place where you can find common ground so you know we may talk about compromise I also think that the other side of that coin is we can find common ground on some of these things because there are really ways that government needs to step in to be able to help people about two minutes left

OK, so then let me ask you this question. You already kind of addressed it in terms of what happens on August the 12th. So my final question. Why should people vote for Joe Brennan, for governor?

Yeah, well, I think they should vote for me because over the course of the last 20 years, I have been responsible for complex organizations, for profit and loss, for hiring and firing, for standing up to extremism. And I've done that in leadership positions. And I haven't always gotten, you know, haven't always been the loudest person in the room, but I have been somebody who's been about rolling up my sleeves and getting something done. And I think that's what people deserve in leaders. They, you know, it's nice to be able to turn a phrase you want

people who can stand up and people who will fight. But if the fighting is the only thing, and if it's not about getting something done, then we're going to lose. And so I think I'm the candidate who is best equipped to beat Tom Tiffany in the fall to hit the ground running in January, because we can't wait. We've got to be in a position where we're solving challenges that people have around the cost of health care and prescription drugs, the, you know, what we're seeing in education around the state, the lack of housing that we have, the real

Crisis that we have in childcare like those are the things that I have worked on throughout my life and and that's who I am So I think that's a distinction that I would make about me and any other candidate Democrat or Republican in the race Appreciate you Nice to meet you. Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks for having me here today. It was Joel Brendan. He is running for governor

On the democratic side in the great state. Well, he's running for the nomination of the democratic party out for the great state of wisconsin man. I appreciate you. Thank you for coming in man. Yeah, thanks a lot and you know and and winter loose after certainly love to have you come back. We will I will I live in this community and you know, I I'm not going anywhere

Maple Bluff, maybe where the executive residence is, but I'll still be back in this community. I will never, never not have roots in my hometown. Appreciate you. You're listening to Community Voice. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

All right, welcome back. And we have Willis joining us via our video link from Wisconsin Pastor Marcus Allen and the great Mount Zion Baptist Church there. And how you doing, man? I'm doing well. How you doing? Good morning. Good morning. Really, really, really, really well, man. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for making yourself available. We wanted to have a discussion with everything going on politically.

you know, we still have this issue of Corey Ruiz. Can you just kind of bring us up to kind of get us to how we're at this point right now where we're having this discussion about this particular case? Yeah, just last week, Wednesday, police got a call that a young man was opening car doors, opening car doors. And so they were called to the scene. And I guess they tried to apprehend them, but he got away from them.

And then he fell off his bike. Three officers tried to pin him to the ground. They say he had a knife. One officer comes in and shoots a taser. But they said it was ineffective and no more than, I want to say, three seconds later, officer asks the young man, Cory is on the ground, takes out his weapon and shoots him in the face. It looks like about three times.

And so that sparked a lot of protests, a lot of people gathering at the site right now. They have created pretty much an encampment at the same site on Williamson Street in Baldwin, where individuals are now just camped out there to hold that spot and looking at it as a sacred area.

with the young man's blood on the ground. So that's where we are. People are still there, people are still protesting, people are still trying to figure out ways to implement change from this situation. What is heartbreaking, that is the third police shooting on that same street in the last 12 to 13 years here in Madison.

Pretty sure you all are familiar with Tony Robinson who was also murdered by the police that happened on that same street. So now it looks at something that is systemic that is happening three different times in the same location. And so that's what we're challenged by that. Does city leadership reach out to you for you to be part of that initial press conference? Yes.

So, you know, you talk about that, I mean, I just remember the Robinson case. So how would you describe then the relationship of the Madison police, particularly when it comes to communities of color there in Madison? You know, Madison is different, way different from Milwaukee and we only, I wouldn't have had from. So I grew up in Milwaukee with the school and Milwaukee Tech graduated, went to the Army.

So when I came back to pasta in Madison, I thought it was similar to Milwaukee. But it's a different place. It's only 6% of African Americans in the city of Madison. However, we make up 40% of the prison population. One of my members is a public defender. He said, hey, if you go to the courts and sit in the courts and see who's being tried,

You would see, you would think that Madison is predominantly Black City and it's not. If you look at some of the reports you'll see the African Americans, I pulled over more and go to jail or ticket it more than our white counterparts. I go to the juvenile detention center every second and fourth Sunday to talk to and mentor and trying to provide a different direction for those kids there.

If there are 10 kids, there are eight of them are black males. And so the systemic things that it just, it's prevalent as it is in most places, but it's very prevalent here when it comes to policing, that of course we're going to get more prison, mean more jail time, more arrest and more attention than others.

the So right now I'm trying to you know, you you were there at the press conference How how is the and I'm putting this in quotations the black church Responding to this issue there in Madison. Yeah, so yeah, the press conference No doubt I was invited there and

We already have a pretty strong presence here. No, it's not it's not many like it's not We have about 20 25 black churches in the city of Madison. And so what we were done we respond definitely first with prayer Our intention is first we need to get God involved get God's attention what's going on? But we also very intentional of galvanizing our community to come together to make sure that that we're getting

um, results, number one, holding accountability, um, to the, um, um, to the police officer, uh, to the city and the police department. Um, and then we are, um, partnering with other organizations, other groups, um, leadership, uh, organizations around the city, um, that's demanding, um, those things to be happened. So the black church, initially, um, so we did a prayer meeting.

At my church on that Friday night and then on that Sunday of last week we went to To the site on the site and we stood out there with all the protesters We we even had a tent where individuals wanted prayer We'll pray with them because a lot of people out there morning a lot of people are hurting a lot of people are discouraged a lot of people are upset

And so we pray with them and we pray with some of some parents or family members who have had to deal with this issue of being murdered by a police officer. And so we prayed over those family members that are there, but then also we are standing in the street. We're sending in complaints trying to get the accountability as much as possible with our city.

One of the things that was striking to me was how the community reacted or responded to this shooting. You know, I know you're familiar, what is it, the Jacob Blake's case down in Kenosha, our guy here where we had, why is it such a difference in how people respond to a situation like that in Madison and other cities?

What you mean? Well, you know that there was violence in Kenosha's violence here in Milwaukee Sherman Park I'm not aware that there was violence there in Madison. Why was Madison so different than these other situations? Well, it shouldn't be violence. I'm not one for violence and I'm glad that it's not I'm one that we are we can get our voices heard without burning buildings without

throwing glasses and burning stuff up. That's something that I'm not for, but I think, you know, Madison is a different city. It's a different city than Milwaukee is different than Kenosha. We've been out front trying to help people navigate that anger and that rage in different ways. You know, saying that voice, making that voice is louder rather than.

burning businesses and, you know, and tearing stuff up. So I'm glad it's not that way. But to the reason why, I really can't tell you, you know, just different people in different cities. In terms of, do you think body cams would have made a difference in this situation? No, I don't think so.

We're pushing for training. We're pushing for police oversight committee, community oversight committee. We pushed for independent monitoring for our police department. I think it all comes down to the character of that individual. No matter what, they can have all the right training. They can have all the cameras around. But if that character of that individual is not

one to attempt to bring justice even in hostile conditions and intentionally trying to de-escalate and not escalate the situation. It all boils down to the character of that individual who was having the interaction with someone. So do I think body cameras should be necessary? I really do think they're necessary. Do I think they changed the outcome? No, I don't.

So you talked about that so you you think it's a issue of training Is it is it also still an institutional attitude the police might have in terms of how they police certain communities? That's how I feel It's all on that individual because you can have all the training in the world But if you feel attacked or you feel belittled or you feel Disrespected in that moment you're gonna react how you do it so that

I encourage the training. I encourage body cam. I encourage more sessions on cultural awareness. I encourage all of that. But if your character still is not that you're one that be intentional about de-escalating the situation rather than escalating it, it really won't change much. Again, I serve in the United States Army and I've seen individuals that are trying to attack.

us in uniform get treated better than African-Americans in the streets of America by our own police officers. Obviously there has always been mixed discussions on police relationships when it comes to them and a particular community.

Prior to this unfortunate incident, have you observed any positive interactions between the police department and the community that could potentially help stem the tide moving forward? Yeah, so at our church, we have neighborhood police officers who are.

Listen to our neighborhoods. I think all the neighborhoods in Madison have a police neighborhood police officers who walk the walk the streets who out there who are very visible. And we also have a in our food pantry. We have a room just for that person to be able to come in and do their reports and they interact with us. It's. Like I said, it all boils down to that individual. We we've we've had positive interaction with police.

until this point, from me being here, I've been in Madison nine years now, right before Tony Robinson, at least right after Tony Robinson got murdered. But I haven't seen anything far as our police department since then. And so, yes, that's positive interactions where we see, I see police officers on the basketball court, playing basketball with the kids, being out there. And I think they,

They've tried to do a good job of that. But again, it boils down to one individual. So going forward, first of all, do you have confidence in the investigation? Not really, I'm going to be honest. I'm pretty sure you, your listeners, everyone understand that this is a normal play, how things go.

They hold out on the investigation for as long as they can. They attempt to wait until the protest is over and people stop screaming and yelling. And then they put out what happened and what they seen happen and how they perceived it happening. And it's always gonna be in the favor of the city because they gotta protect themselves.

When George Floyd died, I was served on the, not died, was murdered. I served on a task force to improve policing in Wisconsin. I think Voss was over that. I'm pretty sure you are a member of the time where it was trying to come up with some policing. But no, the Republicans, they would gavel in and gavel out after.

the governor were called into session. And so in order to know appease what was going on, they have this task force form. And I said on there and I told her initially, I said, hey, I want to do it because I think it's going to be a dog and pony show. And there wouldn't be no actual results to come out from this. So we serve for weeks, months, bringing in individuals who had interactions with police and was unfavorable for those persons, even those who were struggling from mental health issues.

Um, and from that, nothing, um, and nothing came because, um, you know, it's the system and you got to protect the system. And so, um, confidence level is not that high, um, but my hope is in the people, um, the people who continue to, um, bag and plead and, and desire fair and equitable treatment, um, for all individuals, no matter what.

that no one should lose their lives when they come into contact with police officers for what they're doing. And the goal is to de-escalate and not take it up to a level where you shoot someone in the face multiple times. Pastor Marcus Allen, Mount Zion Baptist Church there in Madison. Thank you, man. I appreciate you, man. All right. Thank you all for.

Trying to get us involved and see what's going on like you said with different city Madison is a peaceful place and oftentimes know And but it's just this is a challenging thing to see a family For a young man Corey his family suffering. I don't know if you all saw the The press conference with Ben Crumb and his daughter said hey, you know Everybody called my my dad a criminal called him all different types of things

but he still was my dad. And so that that was real painful and heartbreaking to see. And so we're just here trying to help as much as we can, trying to be the church in the midst of all of this, to be intentional about putting Jesus out front. That's what we do. But we also want to hold people accountable for the things that they have done and continue to live our micro six and eight. What the Lord tells us to do with the Lord has required of us to

to do justice, to walk humbly with our God, and to do this work that God has placed in front of us. So thank you for giving us this platform. And thank you, man, for making yourself available. My good friend, Pastor Victor Mann, to facilitate this, man. So I appreciate you. Thank you. You provided a lot of insight into the differences in Madison and just the work that you're doing. So I really do appreciate you taking this call.

Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Thank you all so much. Yep. You're listening to Community Voice. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. Call it before I get to you. Let me do the perspective. So just be a little patient with us. TJ. The Democratic primary for the state of Wisconsin has garnered national attention. The start of this process was very chaotic. And as we wind down to determine a Democratic nominee,

the feeling of a chaotic race still remains. Just in the past few weeks, we've had multiple alleged scandals, multiple candidates drop out of the race. One candidate dropped back in the race and an endorsement by the current governor, not to mention he said that he wouldn't endorse anyone during a primary. And his endorsement is for an individual who is not a former Lieutenant Governor nor

member of his very own cabinet. In addition to everything mentioned, the state just observed the candidates debate each other in the beginning of this very week. With every bit of seriousness, this definitely reminds me of March Madness, only in July. Politics, just like sports and religion, invokes much emotion. With only one full week left,

until Election Day. I'm sure the ending of this primary showdown will keep us all at the edges of our seats. Although a particular candidate has led in almost every poll, including the two most recent ones, the undecided voters still lead the pack by a significant margin. I too am a part of that group who are undecided. If I had to take a guess,

My decision won't be made until Election Day. In this time, I will be reviewing policy stances, reviewing the most recent debate, and engage in productive conversations about each candidate that is remaining with those who I'm close with. Political maturity has taught me that there is no perfect candidate.

No one will align 100% with my views and opinions. Understanding that is political maturity as it relates to me personally. Many have sparked discussions about the establishment's ability to manipulate the race, while others are intrigued of another candidate who has received pushback from both sides of this very race. Surely,

This democratic primary has been a roller coaster, but brace yourself because the ride is not over yet. Appreciate you. The key word there is Democrat democracy and democracy can be messy. And we know that one little cleanup actually undecided is number two.

It's number two now Francesca is number one and undecided and I'm talking like still like 35% of the people obviously There are a lot of people out there. I have not returned my ballot yet. So I want to make sure whoever I vote for still still running Welcome to the program Good morning there. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call Wow, that was excellent as usual. Thank you that perspective

And it makes you kind of slow down and think about things about what's going on. And I was quick to say who I definitely was going to be voting for. And I based it on who's really ready and know what it feels like to have a huge budget responsible for a community

a county, people reporting to them. I think it's Brennan is the only other person that on a smaller scale has had that experience. And this front runner, I have a lot of questions about what has she been involved in? Who has she helped? What has been her?

interest in helping other people. And moving on from that, and now I just want to go on to what's happening in Madison. But when I called the other day and talked about David Crawley, I did not know that Mandela was on Keith's show saying that Crawley was in the race to disturb it.

Why why would he say that when it was seven of them or however many it was? Were they there for that same reason to or came back to do the same thing? I think that was very small of him But look at what happens when you do ugly things ugly things come back to you real quickly, don't they? That was excellent

And it gave a perspective of a community, maybe that has not had as much hurt as some other community. But at the same token, what we observed was disturbing. And I don't care how long they take, when you sit back and you look at what happened, even though

you don't have an insight of what they're saying and where did that night come from and no one has ever said yet this day. Did that officer go to the hospital to get stitches? We don't know anything about that and when they showed the knife, it's like a brand new knife. No blood on it. Nothing. At what point

with three officers all over you, that you have an opportunity to reach in your pocket or somewhere to pull out a knife. So we have to use our intelligence. But another thing that's happened up there in Madison, those businesses have been helping the protesters out. Have you noticed that? Yeah. I think that's the question I asked. I think the reaction helping them with

Liars and posters, that is unusual. Well, he said that Madison is different. It's capital cities, a university town. It is probably the most liberal city in the state. And like I said, the response has been very different than even what it was in Minneapolis, what it was in Atlanta. I mean, we think about all these places where people have

The the response was was was very different. So I agree I agree with that in terms of what people are doing But and I'm not it's more than a lot of questions and that's why I asked Pastor Allen that he have confidence in the investigation Because I think the person who is the monitor is a black woman from Baltimore who monitors the police department there. So appreciate you Caller welcome to the program. Good morning. You're an air model

Good morning. I wanted to make a couple of points. One was the DJ whose presentation we see that all the calls was a masterpiece. Thank you. I want to give Dr. Reverend Dr. Harris. I think he, the DJ had

Mentorship from P.T. Paris or did he? Did you? Say that again. Did you get Joe? Did DJ get in a mentorship from you? I ain't seen this dude until he walked in here today. I don't have no clue to who he even is. I've been on DJ before he was DJ. If DJ was without you, I'd steal a masterpiece. There's even more credit.

And another observation I wanted to make was a certain person whose name I was not deal but who recently dropped out I Just say he dropped out Yeah, this I agree. I this has been the

one of the most craziest, maybe COVID, what we're gonna do when we're gonna vote in that spring election. How are we gonna vote? How are we gonna vote? I mean, but this has just been where, have you ever seen anybody get out the race, then get back in the race? You know, the fear that the Democratic

establishment mainstream has in terms of that was the question I was asking about labeling that that whole democratic socialism where people hear socialism they equate socialism to communism and and boom there you go so those but they're not the same oh of course they're not the same and then the crazy thing is that America runs this dual system it's a capitalistic socialistic system if we didn't have socialism we've had anarchy

Part of what we response that whole progressive movement had everything to do in the early 1900s in terms of disparities in terms of the very very rich and then everybody else And then you know you come back from World War one veterans are Basically, there was a promise made to veterans those whole bonuses that they never got Communism communism not socialism communism is now

getting the foothold in America because people want to address the inequities and I just kind of see when you have a rise of so-called democratic socialism that that's usually in response to the glaring disparities that people experience in the system in spite of what the dude is saying who's currently in the White House America is in trouble economically we're in trouble

This war is not helping. It was already coming off of COVID, that high inflation, all those things, and the recovery was coming and such. And it was moving along. There was recovery. So I think when Joe Biden took over, it was something like 7% inflation. He had gotten it down to 3%. But then all these other things, because everything in the world impacts everything else in the world. And I think we're beginning to understand that.

And that's what happens. And let me be Malcolm for a moment. That's when chickens come home to roost, you know, that people who voted for the current president based on either his his whole position. I think a lot of people was race because the people who probably was voting for him for the most part felt like, well, we're secure. He's not talking about us. He's talking about them.

But then you come to find out it takes a fool to learn that love don't love nobody and the very people who supported him or some of the people were being most victimized by the policies.

of this administration and of this Republican-controlled Congress. I say it all the time. People cut off their nose, the spark they face. Yeah, I mean, people pimp your feelings, man. And so if you're a racist and somehow you want to feel like the reason why you're not getting ahead is because of some brown immigrant, that resonates with you. And then the reality hits. How many people who supported this president were beneficiaries

of the expansion of those those uh what were they called the subsidies right for health care i mean you know it we get to even i mean even with the with the costs or uh the the deductions and the changes that that it will be coming up with social security and things you know dude dude is taking away at

They were very income for a lot of the baby boomers, right? But they still support them. I mean, we want to be spoon-fed information. And what you're spoon-fed is what you just take for truth. But that's not the case.

you know, you have to do your own research. And the fact that a lot of people don't do their own research is the reason why a lot of people cut off the nose despite their face. Even when we talked about this primary where, you know, it was some people going like, well, why do you have two black people? You know, they taken well.

When you look at the percentage and again in the demo on the Democratic side black people are more apt to vote in that primary But there was a lot and a lot of a lot of it was Our perception of that person things that may or may not have to do with how that person would govern You know so and I understand that just goes as part of the equation that goes into

That goes into politics But and in some ways I'm smiling because I think it's I like to see democracy. This is democracy in action and democracy like I said, it's not always pretty and you know, I spoke about political maturity and You know, I've had to grow in my political knowledge and not be so emotional on some points

Politics is still emotional and and I will continue to be emotional when it comes to politics but To understand that the primary is just a primary and you and you alluded to that as well as dr. Myers alluded to that or this is the time to Figure out what everybody's got going on. This is the time to if you really

If you really support an individual and they may not be as high in the polls to continue to support that individual, because it's just the primary. When we move forward into the general election, you know, the stakes are even higher. And, you know, one of my biggest pet peeves is that every election cycle, we always say that the stakes

are the most existential election ever. Right. You know, that's one of my biggest pet peeves. But, you know, in the general election, that is definitely the case because we are a purple state, because we are changing new new new leadership, you know, and that could have various consequences, depending on your

background. And the cool thing is for me anyway, um, because they're competing for my vote too. And, and to be able to have that one on one or two on one, um, when you have that conversation, it gives people, because when you're doing a debate, you know, you only get X amount of time. I think that I've been impressed with every, the four that I've had the opportunity. I've been impressed with all of them.

they were enormously talented people. And so to be able to get, and I wanted people to be able to hear that outside of all that background noise, then you can make up your mind, because look, if you already set who your candidate is, that's good. Ain't nothing wrong with that, right? But people get a chance to hear other folks. Like even then, you know, you look at this roller coaster, you know,

If candidates flip flop, that causes the voters to flip flop because if I think that Keith is dropped out of the race, now I'm like, oh man, I got to spoil my ballot. And then all of a sudden he comes back into the race and I was like, oh, I'm good. Or what if? I've never seen that before. And I've been on this planet for a minute. I've never.

You know, then you knew something was up where the second person or the first person they have to drop off because I mean Finances you can't write this right and and but then I'm just speaking to the point of You know, what if I voted early and now my candidate has dropped out of the race? You know, we all want our votes to be counted Now it leaves you in a bit of a conundrum as far as you know

What's next? Another thing is people are paying more attention, right? Because of all the national attention. Carla, welcome to the program. Good morning, your honor. Hey, let me just be here. DJ. Yes, sir. It's OK to be emotional. This election is supposed to be emotional. And what bothers me sometimes these days when I call.

Because I get emotional. I think it upsets people But if we don't take this stuff of anything that we should be taking period is our elections in our vote So if you just are melancholy about that in you know, oh well that that's what bothers me That's why I think that you should get emotional when it comes to voting Something that really bothered me Last week and I've been trying to get in all week to say this

And all the candidates that Keith has come on the show, he's absolutely correct. I like them all. I think all of their answers were good from the little time that they had. I think Keith was a good interviewer when he interviewed them. But you know what I love about him? At the end of the day, when Keith asked a question, he said, not the one before he said, why should we vote for you the other one? What's going to happen on August 12?

And each of them gave the same answer. We're going to stand and support each other because we cannot get Tom Tillis in there. And that made me feel so good because what bothered me last week, and this sounds like an older guy, that he said that if Mandela Barnes is the one that comes out, he's staying at home and keeps it. You know, if you stay at home, that's a vote for Tom Tillis. And he said,

Tiffany, I'm sorry guys. Thank you, Keith. He said he's staying at home and that bothered me so much in my core. It's like, okay, we went through this already with Johnson and in Mandela. This is serious. So if we think it's bad now, do you know how much worse it's gonna get if they get in there? And here's something I wanted to

say to you, I think, I don't know if that was last week, Friday. Of course, you know, DJ, they have to, candidates have to do everything in their power to get our votes. But then where does our responsibility fall from doing our homework? Chief has a saying that he says, low voter IQ. I think I'm a little bit above the low voter IQ. I might not be the brightest.

but I know what I need to know. No, no, no. Low voter, low information voter. Oh, I'm sorry. Low information. Thank you, Keith, for correcting me. Low information voter. So where is our responsibility of doing what we need to do? Oh, Hillary didn't come here. So I'm not voting for her. How crazy is that when you know the stakes in the outcome of what's going to happen?

We have to take our voting more seriously, do our homework, what we need to do. This is not the time if our candidate does not get through to stay at home and keep them, Michelle, always say something. And then I'm surprised they'd be like, be careful what we say over the airways, right? About our people, right? But then on the other radio station, I'd get a chance that we put all this stuff out about the Democrats and about Mandela Bards.

How negative that might affect each other now the Republicans this time Or might they might be saying some negative things about one another because they know that Donald Trump is I'm sorry. Can I get a pass? Yeah Break That's the first pass I ever gave y'all

But DJ did it last Friday. DJ ain't true to the game. Well, we all mess up every now and then. But I do get your point. We all fail sometimes. And DJ did it last week. And he didn't even realize he had said it. That's true. And so we all fail sometimes. We get caught up. But I guess the bottom line is the skies. And if you're listening,

We cannot afford to stay home. So I hope the guy that said that other voters, we can't afford to stay home guys. So if you haven't done your own early voting or your mail in ballots, and I stopped doing to the polls on Tuesday because you never know what might happen at that. You could get sick or anything. It's all decided. I'm going to start doing it when I get the opportunity because sometimes you say, well, I'm going to get up and go do it on Tuesday. And then something happens.

And now you didn't get a chance to vote. I mean, if you want to be old school, that's cool. But get out there and vote, guys. And God bless you all and y'all have a good weekend. Me too.

I appreciate you. You're listening to Community Voice. The phone line's open 414-4445-250-414-4445-250. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. And welcome back and you can join us today at 11 a.m. for our 11th annual community resource fair at the Clinton Rose Senior Center, 3045 North Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Drive. There will be tons of resources, money giveaways, every hour state fair tickets, the MPD,

ice cream truck. I said it right. Vercity mobile unit, giving blood, mobile survivor live house, book bag giveaway, a demo drive of a Tesla and fund for the kids. Again, that's the WNLV 11th annual WNLV resource fair that starts at 11 this morning at the Clinton Rose Senior Center 3045 North Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Caller, welcome to the program. Good morning, your honor. Good morning.

Good morning. Yeah, Keith. I think yesterday he was asking Michelle was that uh, law and anger in the background at the fault she uh, yeah, it was. Okay. I thought it was her. I didn't have a clue. I just remembered them announcing that was her, you know, or were they just making a comment that like what type of I could just imagine what type of story, you know, she had.

And I was with a person, yes, they really believed it wasn't COVID. Now they're explaining to them that was really public. And you know, I said that man helped him with the age, you know, medication. That man has performed, you know, no hope for no crack and all that. Thank God he was there. Thank God he was there because I can only imagine

Had dude had his personal pick in there All the science and that was the whole piece around that people died and there's people believe that people died who didn't have never died before that that too So well, you know, Trump said it wasn't no nothing going on. Remember he hit it from the people Why you leave man? My bad we're gonna have to we're gonna have to let you go one we gave one we can't do we give yelling gave one go man

I ain't gonna, I'm not gonna do it. Go on, bro. What did I do? Play somewhere? You said a name. Oh, you know, you know, I hate to even mention his name. I apologize for that. Yeah. So you gotta describe him without using his name. I hate to hear his voice. Yeah. Describe him without using this name. Oops, my bad. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. You can finish. Are you left? Okay.

Now, you know, great minds think alike. And boy, oh boy, people, people, I know Dave, Dave Chappelle is just loving it. Wasn't it when I was sitting up here and I watched Fawcett and he, you know, man, I was doing like one, two, three, four. Then he had to sign up, spell if I am. And this is why, like, you know, I'm never really a big fan of politics or whatever.

Because it's you know, it's a problem when you do it, but it's cool if I do it the boy did that too The dude is in office. Oh, yeah, he did that too. Yeah, you know I'm saying but They weren't tripping when he was doing it. See that's why when when he threatens to sue People said that's fine because then we get to depose you right and when you I'm the oath

Now so they in the first time remember they wouldn't let him go and sit for deposition. No, they wouldn't cuz they knew he'd lie, you know, so Yeah crazy

God, I was crying. Man, that's all I kept thinking, like, Dave Chappelle. Dave Chappelle. So wait a minute. So my question is, because I was seeing a post on Facebook of people saying, so for the people that got vaccinated, how do you feel about what's going on? I never wanted to get vaccinated, but in order for me to keep my job, I had to. So. I had to do it. So. So do you think they.

forced you to do something. Definitely. I was definitely forced to get that. I mean, that's not even a that's not even a debate. Well, no, because see, I was I was only saying because now I didn't see I mean, some people who was traveling, you know, it was wild. But some people was traveling during that time. You couldn't travel without being vaccinated. You know what I mean? So it was a it was a lot of things put in place to where you had to be vaccinated.

So do you feel like it was a life or death choice? Not for me. For some people it was, because there were people who chose not to get the vaccine, end up dying. But there were some people that chose to get it in, ended up dying. Very, very rarely. No, no, no, no, no. It was rare. No, sir, that's not true. Statistically, no, that is true. No, that's not true. I missed it. That's not true. No, because you talk about because of the vaccine? What is not the people saying?

It goes back to, I said, do you feel like it was a life of death choice that you was forced to get it? And he said for some it was because some people that didn't get it, they died. And I said, well, I know plenty people that got it and died from it that caused blood clots, that claws, this stuff to happen. And they weren't having issues with blood clots until they got the science. Yeah, it goes both ways. Exactly. No, I've been pushing back on, we gotta go into science. Yes, some people could die.

The question becomes if you give out 98 million vaccines, I'm just pulling the number, you give out 98 million vaccines and 15 people die. That is statistically that that because you always going to have exceptions to rules. Overall, most people who had the vaccine had better outcomes than the people who did not.

Man, listen, I've never seen an NBA that you have these basketball players getting blood clots the way they was getting after these shots. Never seen it in life of watching basketball. Well, I mean, but I'm saying that. But I mean, but maybe we also don't know what they were doing outside of, you know, playing basketball, you know, because a lot of a lot of them do a lot of extracurricular activities. I would just say that prior to prior to them even taking the shots, they was doing extra activities.

I could tell you that I was very fortunate maybe not because I didn't get COVID until 22 And I had the vaccine. I didn't know I had COVID DJ had the flu Right. Yeah, and you know did the first thought of thought it was COVID but it was the flu So I'm just saying man if you look at where was around multiple people that had COVID

and I never got it, which was, you know, when you around, you know, I want to attribute it to back in the 90s and the 80s when y'all had the HIV scare, when you around somebody coughing and, you know, somebody say they had the Rona, yo, yo antennas perk up. So I'm like, oh man, I need to go. And I always came back negative. But that day that I had got the,

The the flu and that was the first time I ever got the flu a day in my life. It was in the midst of the the whole corona Epidemic and I was like whoa if this is the flu, I definitely don't But what we discovered was younger people People in relatively good health would get it, but they wouldn't die for it from it people who died from it

had comorbidities, right? They were diabetics. They were people with high blood pressure. No, that is true. But no, because my God, Marcus died from it, and he won none of that. He didn't have none of that. How do you know? Because I've been knowing him for years. I was waiting for years. You don't, the virus, what the virus did would break down your ability to be able to fight off other infections.

right? That's what it did. So it's like even with HIV. HIV, what it did was it so compromised your T cells that your body couldn't fight infections that the body normally would fight. So my buddy, we're gonna be splitting a lot of hairs. No, no, no, because it's not splitting hairs. My buddy who died, he was in the hospital with COVID. Okay.

COVID had so depleted him when he got an infection, he ended up dying from the infection because there was nothing they could do. The body couldn't fight it, they couldn't get anything for it. That's what it did. And so as we became, and then- And our knowledge, our knowledge- Exactly. And then herd immunity. Yeah, our knowledge on the whole thing was totally different. And it was ignorant.

just because we just didn't know. I will give this example all the time. I remember back in 2012, I was in college in Chicago and we were in training camp and we were outside and we were a part of our training camp. We had to do bear crawls outside. I was on the basketball team in college and one of the guys, my teammates, his name was Smoke from Florida, he was sitting out.

And I'm like, smoke, what you doing, man? Everybody hated Bear Cross. And so he was like, no, I got the flu. And I was like, oh, man. And I was like, oh, you lucky then. And he said, yeah, I had got the shot. And I said, well, if you got the shot, you ain't supposed to get the flu. He said, no, the flu is in the shot. Mind you, this is my very first time hearing this ever. And so I'm like, what? He was like, yeah, so it's a little.

bit of the virus in you, you know, but he ended up being, so I was, I went on this whole rant on like, man, I never take a flu shot. You know what I'm saying? Well, that don't even make sense. Trans translate that to when we took the COVID vaccine and around COVID, everybody had that same ideology of if I take this vaccine, I'm not supposed to get it. They didn't do it.

They didn't use that. They went into something else's RMD. But still, it didn't eliminate you from getting... But vaccines, what vaccines will do is... And that's my point. My point is... It doesn't stop you from getting it. It's how you've been able to experience it. What we thought, what we think is that...

Oh, if I take this right from right because that's not they did say that when they was pitching the Johnson Johnson and all of these other they said, but at these vaccinations would keep you from getting the virus. I heard it myself. No, that was misinformation. I get it. But again, I think I did. Why would I take the shot?

I heard it myself. Yeah, but why would I take the shot and you giving me kovat? I don't have kovat. Why would I want you to get to me? The kovat vaccine was different than the influenza vaccine. Influenza vaccine does take dead influenza to do it. That is not they used a whole totally different technology. Hold on. They did use a different technology. They didn't they didn't put you can Google it right now and it tells you that

that the covid shot that is particles is proteins of covid that's in the shot that they give you. So, yo, google it. It's right there. Mind you. Mind you, we were we were receiving we were receiving this new information in real time. Imagine all of the information that we have now on the flu, you know, on the Ebola virus on pneumonia. You look at all of these different infections

It took a long time for us to have a real good amount of data on it in order to prescribe, you know, remedies to it. We're still only six years removed from COVID. So it's still going to be a lot of questions and things that are left unanswered just because when we had this epidemic, you know, it just took us by storm.

The COVID vaccines were made using synthetically-manufactured genetic codes or lab-grown proteins designed to mimic the spike protein found on the outside of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, rather than using the live virus itself. So what they did was they used the technology to go and reclimate what was on, but they did not use that. They do use flu.

to go in then to create flu vaccines. But COVID was different. And that's where I heard a doctor say this. He said, I don't believe in God. He said, but if there's ever a miracle, he said the COVID vaccine was a miracle. 414-445-250, the phone lines are open and I just want to give a shout out. I know it's late. I just want to give a shout out to everybody on Facebook Live and YouTube. Thank you for joining the conversation. Caller.

Thank you for your patience. You're on there. Hey, hey, we're moving to you. You know what I mean? First of all, we gotta realize something. If you look at this, if you- You gotta speak up, Meach, I can barely hear you. Or you gotta start speaking. Is that better, right? You're all, man, that's perfect. Okay, okay, listen. The deal is this right here, man, okay? When you look at this COVID-19, when you look at COVID period, there's four different types of COVID.

So I mean, and then it gets to the COVID-19. So when you go there, you probably be diagnosed with a COVID, but it's not necessarily the 19 virus. When you look in the city of Milwaukee, let's look at how many people actually died. If you go to the, the Milwaukee County deal, I had the corner come on my show at that time. And a lot of that stuff was rough. Listen, only 16, one of the people, and that's too many, but they died from COVID complication about,

And 16 other people died in 2021 on COVID. Now we got a state here, we got a student of county, and this is the county now of what about 6,000 people here. And then 1,500 of those were COVID related deaths. So what it was is, man, and then you have to realize I'm about to be shot. Who actually was behind the shot? Who was orchestrating this Bill Gates, man? I know a girl right now that got pregnant three times.

Every time she get pregnant, there's nothing there. It's like a fake miscarriage. You understand what I'm saying? And so I'm gonna tell you this, and I'm not making this stuff up, man. Those dog-gone shots and all of that stuff, man, was built to, I believe, I really do believe this, that it was supplied with population control. We don't know how, what that effect is gonna have 10, 20 years from now. These people are mad scientists.

They go into these laboratories. Just look at the Milwaukee County for 2021. 2020 lower than that. But they was coming on the TV every day. The numbers are right there. Had us running around here. Meach, I'm going to say this, and I get so frustrated with it. It is the science. Once again,

You do not die. You do not die from COVID. You died because COVID gets in as a virus and your body cannot fight other infections. Why do we have it related and direct? Because people who got COVID ended up dying.

It's COVID related because of some other comorbidity. High blood pressure. The people, the people, the first four people I knew that died all had diabetes and they had died bad diabetes.

Somewhere in their fifties somewhere in their sixties The science around it is that's the important discussion and

You know in retrospect people will look at it for example There were churches who pushed back on the shutdown

Yet in the black community, everybody's gonna talk about in the white community, in the black community, preachers, bishops, church of God in Christ and in Michigan, lost, what was it, four bishops?

There was Albany Georgia, what I'm saying is that society has a responsibility to say because if people want to go on the emotions and their feelings and you're dismissing science, people die. Period. What do you think about the depth of pneumonia every year? Okay, what's your point?

More people die of that right there. Since we have been sitting long, very COVID. Look at the statistics on the money. We are not ready for that. 30,000 people die every year from flu. People still don't go get flu shots. That's right. That's right. So why was the big shutdown? The big shutdown, let me explain where the big shutdown came from. I did training through FEMA.

They talked about They just asked a question let me cuz I think I can do it the right way Bring him down bring him down You got a question the right way emergency management all throughout the world said if you ever have a pandemic

You want to stop the spread until you figure out where the spread or how it is spread. We thought it was spread on tabletops. We didn't realize it was air sauce. So when people were saying take mask on, it was all these things. This is happening in real time. But in the playbook.

Because the question they asked us, they said, if you have to shut down your operations, how will people still get their benefits? That was our tabletop planning. That was in 2008 because people were worried about this big pandemic with the bird flu. The bird flu never materialized to a pandemic, but COVID did because that strain of COVID we had never encountered before. So you shut it down because we realized that when people were in group settings, people were getting sick.

Now as you go into epidemiologists and others going to say okay, then we come in with oh, this is how this is how we stop the spread So it's all those things but in real time they shut down the whole world. It wasn't just America the whole world shut down in China Literally if you came out to your house, you could be shot That's just how stringent they were in their shutdown as as DJ said as the science became more available people had a better understanding

Then we figured out, okay, here's some of the things we did. Every now and then you walk into spaces and you can still see where we had to space ourselves. So come on, man. And I understand the impact it had, but here's the other piece of it. Let's talk about socialism for a moment. So what did the government do? First of all, the government set out $1,400 checks. The government then said, if you had an organization, you could go in and get a low interest loan that you really don't have to pay back.

in order to make sure that people would not lose income because they could not work. That was socialism. And I don't know any corporation that didn't take advantage of PPP. All of them did. All of them did. Churches did. That's socialism. I didn't get a PPP wrong, but you know that. You got the STEMI. Yeah, the STEMI. I appreciated that.

Okay, you know child support you ain't get your you ain't get your stemmy They were the only group the only group that didn't get their stemmy was the people at all child support People at all child support they don't I mean they didn't They didn't go through coffee. Yeah, yeah, but they but there was oh there was a piece of legislation

Yeah, there's piece of legislation that happened Now they still got the other two stemmy's they still got the other two stemmy's Okay, well, I don't know about all that bro. All right. Sorry about that man. What's wrong each?

Science took the fifth of me with 111 times. And you're still running. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th! Because it was a setup, Meach. Can I say? You don't got to tell me what it was. I wasn't going for it. But I understood. Listen to this here. I understood what was going to, because prior to that, I had looked at the pandemic. 202 pandemic. I still got some of the CDs around here. This was before COVID was even there.

All of the people from different states, your major players, man, was there. It was from few black people there, too. And they was trying to figure out how could they produce, how could they make the people, what's that about produce? How could they make the people believe and follow the orchestration of moving in certain ways? All right, you know what? We gotta wrap it up, but let me say this. After that, they pulled it off. When people were talking about the conspiracy with a K, I said,

Did you know who got it? Because your boy got it and your boy almost died because of it So when people kind of sit up they're trying to say it was a what they call it plannedemic. Unless they lied to us Sometimes sometimes no no we knew about COVID, but we didn't know about this strain of COVID. All right

Let me thank Mr. Joe Brennan. Let me thank Pastor Marcus Allen and DJ. Thank you. It's always a treat when players meet and again, you can meet us down at the WNRV Resource Red Rose Park Clark Kent. Thank you, sir. Hey, Apostle conspiracy theories is I is I with a K. Hey y'all the good Lord willing Creek don't rise hope

to talk to everybody on monday y'all have a safe weekend also tomorrow between 12 and 3 at uh barion park they're doing a celebration celebrate the life of mother lucille barion right there i think that's like 16th of nash so we get a chance to get over there and all the other activities we have going on this weekend all right y'all go from this place in peace

Do not reflect that of the staff and management of WNOV and W293CX106.5 FM Courier Communications Milwaukee, but are the sole comments of the host and guest of this particular show.

Welcome to Community Voice.

I'm your host Keith Parris.

I want to thank everybody for joining us on this the last day of July, July 31st.

What up, DJ?

Good morning.

What's happening?

Clark Kent, what's up?

Who you with?

Hey, man.

Apostle.

Bishop,

chairman of the

board, superintendent.

I was impressed with DJ yesterday.

Thank

you.

He handled himself well, didn't he?

Yeah, because you threw him a curve ball.

I didn't.

What a curb So anyway as you all know If you don't know you living under a rock We're in the middle of a gubernatorial primary We have our fourth candidate Mr. Joel Brennan.

Good morning.

Morning.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

Welcome, man

You still

I'm still here.

Nothing's changed in the last 24 hours for me.

Yeah.

When Kelda was here, I said, you don't have these scandals.

She said, if I do, I'll break up with them.

This has been, and I have some questions I'm asking the same questions, and we're asking the same questions that we asked the other candidates.

But when you got it, it had you, there's nowhere you could afford to see.

Of course not.

No, and actually,

Here's the frustration is that for I got in this race on December 11th.

My mother's birthday would and and I've been in ever since never wavered on that But there was so little attention paid to this for a long time and then in the last couple of weeks It's been like one whipsaw after another.

I mean it really has gotten to be

It's unfortunate that more of the news has been about what's going on inside the race than the issues we really care about.

But this is the nature of things.

The things change very quickly in these races.

So first question.

What experiences in your personal, professional, and public service backgrounds have best prepared you to serve as governor?

And what distinguishes you from the other Democratic candidates that are still in the race?

Well, hang on cuz we could change but yeah the distinction that I bring I think to this race is over the course of the last 20 years I've had nothing but executive leadership experience.

I was the CEO at Discovery World Largest science museum in Wisconsin for 11 years.

Yeah, let me just say my wife was just down there yesterday would

Program they work with she said it was incredible.

It's great And they are doing they're doing better than than they were than I when I was there and we navigate our way through lots of challenges You know you know this we're here at 20th and capital there are kids in this neighborhood who never get to see the lake and you know and so

being able to be part of having thousands of kids get engaged in STEM education and what we do for summer camps, working with the boys and girls clubs and other partners.

Like that was one of the great things in my career, but I left that and went to work for Governor Evers as the secretary of administration.

So I did that for three years and did that.

The secretary of administration in Wisconsin is really the top appointee in the cabinet.

And the job is to run the executive branch.

And so, you know, I was able to do that after eight years of Scott Walker and a right wing legislature and kind of rebuilding Wisconsin that we had to do.

And then COVID hit and government had to work in ways that it hadn't for 100 years.

So making sure we got money out to renters and homeowners and small businesses and trying to do things that had some longer term benefit to communities because of all that had happened during COVID.

And if government, you know, government doesn't solve everything, but it's

Government didn't work during that time.

people were going to suffer and some people were going to die.

And that, to me, being able to navigate during that time of crisis, that that is a distinction between me and other candidates, all of whom are my friends and all of whom, you know, if I don't win this, I expect to support whoever will be the nominee.

I don't expect to.

I will.

And we've got to get to a place where we can beat Tom Tiffany and beat back Donald Trump this fall.

But like those are things I think that are different.

I have been about solving problems and getting things done.

More than I've ever been about getting even like that's been who I've been throughout my career.

I just a follow-up with that You've been with the current administration With the Brennan potential administration, I like the sound of that.

Yeah, would would there be Any overlap with the the Evers administration and Brennan or could you expound on some differences that sure?

Sure.

You know, and I would tell you what I think is the great gift that Tony Evers is leaving to Wisconsin is a legislature that looks much more like Wisconsin than the one that he inherited.

You know, for for many years, and this is when I was in the early years when I worked in his administration, there was almost a super majority in the legislature in the state Senate and the state assembly.

And so Governor Evers' role really was to play defense and to stop some of the bad things that were happening.

And then we had the opportunity during COVID to be able to spend

resources exclusively because all those resources went to the executive branch.

But here's how it'll be dramatically different is that we have the ability to go on the offensive rather than defending things around the cuts that were happening in state government, the lack of investment in public education, the investment that stopped in technical ed and higher ed.

Those are the areas where we can make very big differences now because we can start to invest.

There's an issue

that people in Milwaukee know vividly is around childcare.

It is one of the biggest K-12 education and workforce issues in the state.

There's a billion dollars every year that sits on the sidelines in productivity, mainly from women, because they can't find affordable, accessible, or quality childcare.

And that system's been broken.

We've been propping it up with federal money.

And what little state money we put into it went away on June 30th.

You've got a quarter of daycares around the state that are in danger of closing.

Everyone that's operating, their waiting lists are going up, costs are going up.

My wife and I have two kids.

We started...

those kids at Neighborhood House on the near west side 20 years ago and I've been involved with Neighborhood House ever since you know you start as a parent you get on the board and all of a sudden you're chair of the board like I've been doing this stuff for a long time and I have seen just how we have you know one the impact you have when you've got really good high quality early childhood education.

95% of brain development happens in zero to three like all the issues we deal with In k-12 education everything else we do it starts by the fact that we treat that as an afterthought so often And so we should be investing in that but but you had a situation where

Robin Voss the leader of the legislature like he said well, you know and when Families have kids mom should be staying home with it like that's not the world we live in anymore This isn't June Cleaver is not coming out from the kitchen to do this and and we've got to be in a position where we can meet people where they are and so like Those are the types of things we can be on the offensive on that we haven't had had the chance to be for a

generation

you know, this political labeling is what we do, right?

And if your opponent can paint you a certain way or use terms that are, for some people, pejorative or negative, it can, well, it impacts the campaign.

So how would you describe yourself in terms of your place in the Democratic Party?

Would you characterize yourself as a progressive, a liberal, moderate,

Democratic Socialist, how would

you label yourself?

I call myself a pragmatic progressive like I am I hope I'm cut from the progressive Wisconsin tradition where we care deeply about individual liberties we make sure that people have the ability to be who they are we invest in the important things but I think and this is what I've learned going around the state over much of the last year is that people

Voters on an individual basis care less about those labels than they do about who's gonna get something done So like I am somebody who whether it was working in nonprofits whether it's been working in business with the work I had to do in government.

It was about

getting things done more than it was ever about like getting even or avenging, avenging grievances and things like that.

Like, I think that's what people want.

And I think that's what people deserve.

And so, you know, people paint you all along the ideological spectrum.

And there are lots of ways in which the candidates who are running for this office on the Democratic side agree.

what we disagree with is, you know, what Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump have done and the the harm that they're causing by pulling the rug out from people when it comes to food share benefits and, uh, and SNAP benefits in Wisconsin, when it comes to, you know, taking Medicaid away from thousands of people, like those are the areas where I think we all will stand against.

And what people in Wisconsin have wanted, no matter where I have gone is somebody who's going to be interested in getting something done, because there are big problems that they have in health.

care and housing and public education and they want to see somebody who can fix those things.

You are a native of Milwaukee.

Yep.

So you understand our sewer socialism here.

How do how when people hear that term democratic socialist and they're going to try to paint whomever under that brush do you can you share with people how

America benefits from its socialism

to sure.

I mean we we lived it here.

I mean it's a there that that part of

Wisconsin and Milwaukee history where it was truly about investing in public infrastructure investing in the right kind of things like there is a Wisconsin's progressive traditions go back to you know some of the socialists, but you know again I it's less about those ideological labels I think then that was a time when it was demonstrated that government could get things done in Milwaukee You know, yeah, it was around public infrastructure.

It was around the public parks that we ended up with that, you know and and things that now

have some challenges with them, but it still are things that set Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, the city of Milwaukee apart from other places.

And so, you know, I think that that is government.

Some of those things are the vestiges of government serving its residents well.

And I think that's what we always want of government.

How do you operate efficiently?

How do you operate effectively?

How do you actually solve problems for people?

And I think that's

at its core, that's what I've been every time, whether in a career that's taken me in inside government and the nonprofit world, working with businesses, all in different areas.

When I've checked back into government and when I've worked in government, it has always been about how do you get things done?

During COVID, it was how do you deal with all the huge problems that people are facing, the fact that the harm from COVID wasn't being distributed equally.

There were people who are still doing real well, people who are real challenged, how do you get those

resources, the people who are getting hurt.

That's been what government has been for me.

And what I think it is, no matter where you are.

And let me before let me shout out to good folks at New Pits Mortuary.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I just saw Pastor Lovelace go back.

All

right, go America.

So you stated in the debate that Wisconsin is losing in economic growth compared to our Midwestern counterparts.

So

Can you explain how Wisconsin can get back

on the winning

path?

Sure.

And we're losing in different ways.

So there is one of the areas that we all measure ourselves around is housing.

And Wisconsin is short.

70 80,000 entry level homes around the state, some here in Milwaukee and some elsewhere.

And other states have that same challenge.

We've all been challenged that way in the Midwest, but like states like Ohio and Michigan, they've been narrowing that gap in the last few years where Wisconsin's continued to build.

Like we are not meeting the needs for young families here, given people an opportunity, you know, the average age for a first time home buyer in Wisconsin now is 40 years old.

We're telling young families that

There is no pathway here in Milwaukee.

You've got Wall Street firms that own and have bought up a multifamily housing.

And so, you know, your rents are jacked up and you're not finding ways for people to even, you know, think that they could ever get to that.

So what I, one of the things that I have laid out is like they, in Michigan, the governor put down a stake and said, I think, I think she said 75,000, they were going to build 75,000 new entry level homes.

And they did that.

And then they kept kind of building on that.

We need to do that in Wisconsin.

What I would say is, I've said we'll do 100,000 homes in my first four years, meaning that would be about double what we have done.

It can't be the only thing.

We need to make sure.

that we're doing homebuyer counseling, that we're doing down payment a system that acts housing that operates here in Milwaukee.

And there are others that do some really great work in getting people into homes and that knits communities back together.

You know, this world of division and chaos that we live in, like there are things about rebuilding neighborhoods, some of them right around here where we are, that there are private sector efforts involved, nonprofits that are doing it, government just kind of needs to be alongside there.

and be part of that solution.

And I think that's what we can do in Wisconsin.

I spent the first year of my time in the Evers administration working on the Foxconn deal.

People remember that.

You know, it was supposed to be, you know, Wisconsin had $3 billion potentially of exposure in that.

And it was supposed to like magically land in Racine County and 20 million square feet and 13,000 jobs were going to be created.

And we found out pretty quickly that Foxconn was better at putting out press releases than they were ever going to be at putting out plasmas, flat screens.

And we needed to make sure that we were investing in the right things.

And I think that's the difference.

We can use those things that Scott Walker and Donald Trump called the eighth wonder of the world.

Well, it didn't turn out that way for us.

Or we can invest in our own, invest in infrastructure here, invest in education, start to do things that invest in childcare, start to do things that are gonna have long-term benefit and where you're kind of doing the building blocks of how you're gonna actually get things done.

And just kind of in vain of this idea of what you're going to do fiscally.

Question right now is public education.

How do we adequately finance?

Well, one, does the state have a role in making sure that regardless of the municipality that public education is fully funded?

And then two, what are some of the things?

We talked about the 400 year tax.

So where are you in terms of that?

And now with the expansion of choice throughout the state, talk about how that impacts.

public education.

Sure, a lot in that question.

I'll try to get to it if I don't answer, keep asking me.

But one, when it comes to funding public education in Wisconsin, and you see this, you've seen it in Milwaukee, but you've seen it all around the state where we're pitting property taxpayers against kids in community after community.

And the reason I say that, like this spring,

When we went to vote there were 72 school districts that went to referendum 60 of those for operations meeting like just to keep the lights on and do the basics wasn't to build a new Science classroom or a middle school It was just to keep the lights on and that in in and of itself is like that's what's wrong with Madison and what's wrong with what we're doing around public education because we are not We're forcing local communities to decide whether they're gonna raise their property taxes or meet the basic needs for kids and so

The first thing that I would do is scrap the 33-year-old school funding formula that we had that was never built to last.

It doesn't meet the needs.

It's actually under a lawsuit right now because there's a group of parents, teachers, administrators that want it declared unconstitutional.

And it may well, as it works its way through the courts, it may get to that.

But that'll be three years from now.

And our kids don't have another three years to wait.

So the first thing I would do is scrap that, build a funding formula that is kids-

that says, no matter where you live, what your address is, you have a value.

And then you add on for special needs, you add on for English language learners, for urban poverty, for rural poverty, for transportation.

That's the way that most other states have gone to.

And that's how we start to meet the needs better in the classroom.

The state also, yes, we have an obligation.

We're only meeting about half.

We're paying for about half of the cost of education in Wisconsin.

If we went up to the two thirds, if the state picked up that two thirds, immediately you're going to bring down property taxes for places around the state and stop this pitting of kids and property taxpayers against each other.

So like, those are the types of things.

But ultimately, it's also got to be around outcomes.

You may have seen this.

talked about it but you know recently there was a measurement for 38 states of how how states were doing in the recovery from COVID and out of those 38 states in math Wisconsin finished 33rd.

the 35 states that measured how we were doing on reading Wisconsin finished 30th like that's not the was that's not good enough for Wisconsin and we need to also say that those outcomes are not tolerable for us so like that's got to be who we are and we were talking a little bit about the choice program and vouchers before we came on the air and

I have heard much more about that outstate than you do in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee's got a 36 year old mature system.

And while there are challenges with it that we absolutely need to deal with, it comes up much more in other areas around the state.

The fact that the largest recipient of vouchers in the state to the tune of like $44 million is a virtual school without a lot of classrooms.

And I have no problem with people doing that.

Should we be paying for all of that?

a level of transparency that's necessary in the city of Green Bay.

They have every voucher, everybody who gets a bill, you see what the city, the county, the school districts, and then what's going to pay for vouchers.

That level of transparency around the state is probably a good thing and would be welcome.

Should, real quickly, should the program be expanded?

I don't want to expand it statewide and I and it hasn't expanded in the city of Milwaukee It's been kind of in a place where it has I think matured and stayed pretty stable for the for the for the regular or for over the last several years and and I think that that's okay.

I think more than Than anything it should be about how are we holding ourselves accountable for better outcomes here and in Milwaukee like that is the case for public schools.

It's the case for charter schools.

It's

case for private schools.

How are we getting to a place where they're all performing better for our kids?

Yes or no?

Should it be phased out in Milwaukee?

No.

I said this the other night and you can talk to some of the people like my representatives where I live in Brewer's Hill.

I don't think there are, you know, districts in the Milwaukee area for legislators where more than half of the kids are about half the kids are in the public schools and half are in charter or private schools to ask them to say, you're going to disrupt the half the kids who live in your district that like that's not going to happen.

It's not even a realistic thing to have happen.

And so, you know, that's what I think we've got to be dealing with is how do we get to a point where we are, my kids attended the Milwaukee public schools from K three.

through eighth grade and they are doing great.

They're now in college.

I want that for every kid who goes to Milwaukee public schools.

I want to lift those kids up.

I want to make sure we're doing right.

We got to do right by every kid in

Milwaukee.

uh has been uh a real hot button topic lately obviously there are some pros and cons to there so how would your administration manage innovation and then also accountability

yeah well and i think that like ai is a big deal and we're talking we had just uh this week we had a whole meeting and a whole

forum around data centers, because that's been one of the big issues.

And we could talk about that.

But I'll tell you, AI is something that causes lots of anxiety.

We were at an event last weekend where we were talking about how older Wisconsinites are being preyed upon by very sophisticated AI efforts that try to get money away from them and try to ruin them.

We've got to make sure we are doing everything we can to stand up against that.

But by the same token, there's ways that technology can make us work more efficiently, more effectively.

Like the tools that we have in government ought to be, we ought to create whatever we can to be against the really sophisticated technology that is trying to do harm to people.

So it is complicated.

There are ways for us to do that.

The fundamentals for me are when we're dealing with technology, there are ultimate rights that people have to their privacy, to their civil rights, to their human rights.

We need to make sure whatever we're doing doesn't get us to a point where we are compromising that.

What's been happening around the state and in some places here around flocked cameras, there are things around people's individual privacy and their individual rights that those are compromised.

Government can't be in any way making sure we're abetting those or making sure we're helping that.

We need to be in a place where we're going to ensure that, yes, people are being kept safe, but we're not doing it at the expense of their own civil rights.

Data centers

data centers, you know I have called for a pause on the construction of new data centers until we can come up with some Four or five basic guardrails that the state never put in and to me that wouldn't take a year that would take 90 days because there are there's legislation about Making sure that nobody pays for these aside from the companies that are putting them together that there's real environmental

regulations and teeth around that, ensuring that if they're going to get built in Wisconsin, it's by Wisconsin Union Labor, and then four, making sure that there's a vehicle for local government and local citizens to have a place in that conversation, like that we never have these nondisclosure agreements again, where these things come and they're 98% bake before anybody in the community knows about

them.

Should local municipalities be responsible for the ancillary supports ie the sewerage the roads those type

of I think whoever is building it ought to be Responsible for as much of that as possible and in addition they ought to be responsible for a little bit more like The companies that are building the data centers if we can have them also be responsible for Upgrading the grid making it more efficient.

It'll bring down costs of people for what they pay for their utilities, but also

you know, allow us to have a better system for the longer term.

Like we still are going to need a very strong electrical grid and we're going to need that.

And they ought to be paying for some of that upgrade.

And the side benefit of that is it can continue to put people to work here for a long time in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

We have a few minutes left.

Wisconsin is a purple state.

So let me ask this question as relates you obviously we will be dealing probably again with divided government in if we do elect the democratic governor.

Is compromise a bad word when it comes to politics?

No, no.

I mean, I think compromise is a bad word when you're compromising values.

You know, if you're compromising integrity, compromise when it comes to legislation, compromise when it comes to, you know, how do you get to a point where you're actually making progress for people?

Nothing wrong with that.

And in fact, I have lived my life in places and in jobs where I had to work in that middle.

You know, when you're working, when you're raising money for a nonprofit, you better leave your ego, you better leave your ideology at the door.

sometimes if it's if you can find people who maybe think a little differently when they go into the ballot box but they still support kids and STEM education and opportunity for everybody like that's a place where you can find common ground so you know we may talk about compromise I also think that the other side of that coin is we can find common ground on some of these things because there are really ways that government needs to step in to be able to help people

about two minutes left

So then let me ask you this question.

You already kind of addressed it in terms of what happens on August the 12th.

So my final question.

Why should people vote for Joe Brennan, for governor?

Yeah, well, I think they should vote for me because over the course of the last 20 years, I have been responsible for complex organizations, for profit and loss, for hiring and firing, for standing up to extremism.

And I've done that in leadership positions.

And I haven't always gotten, you know, haven't always been the loudest person in the room, but I have been somebody who's been about rolling up my sleeves and getting something done.

And I think that's what people deserve in leaders.

They, you know, it's nice to be able to turn a phrase you want

people who can stand up and people who will fight.

But if the fighting is the only thing, and if it's not about getting something done, then we're going to lose.

And so I think I'm the candidate who is best equipped to beat Tom Tiffany in the fall to hit the ground running in January, because we can't wait.

We've got to be in a position where we're solving challenges that people have around the cost of health care and prescription drugs, the, you know, what we're seeing in education around the state, the lack of housing that we have, the real

Crisis that we have in childcare like those are the things that I have worked on throughout my life And and that's who I am so I think that's a distinction that I would make about me and any other candidate Democrat or Republican in the race

Appreciate you

Nice to meet you.

Yeah, thank you guys.

Thanks for having me here today.

It was Joel Brendan.

He is running for governor

on the democratic side in the great state.

Well, he's running for the nomination of the democratic party out for the great state of Wisconsin.

Man, I appreciate you.

Thank you for coming in, man.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

And, you know, and, and winter loose after certainly love to have you come back.

We will.

I will.

I live in this community and, you know, I'm not going anywhere.

Maple Bluff, maybe where the executive residence is, but I'll still be back in this community.

I will never, never not have roots in my hometown.

Appreciate you.

You're listening to Community Voice.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

All right, welcome back.

And we have Willis joining us via our video link from Wisconsin Pastor Marcus Allen and the great Mount Zion Baptist Church there.

And how you doing, man?

I'm doing well.

How you doing?

Good morning.

Good morning.

Really, really, really, really well, man.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Thank you for making yourself available.

We wanted to have a discussion with everything going on politically.

you know, we still have this issue of Corey Ruiz.

Can you just kind of bring us up to kind of get us to how we're at this point right now where we're having this discussion about this particular case?

Yeah, just last week, Wednesday, police got a call that a young man was opening car doors, opening car doors.

And so they were called to the scene.

And I guess they tried to apprehend them, but he got away from them.

And then he fell off his bike.

Three officers tried to pin him to the ground.

They say he had a knife.

One officer comes in and shoots a taser.

But they said it was ineffective and no more than, I want to say, three seconds later, officer asks the young man, Cory is on the ground, takes out his weapon and shoots him in the face.

It looks like about three times.

And so that sparked a lot of protests, a lot of people gathering at the site right now.

They have created pretty much an encampment at the same site on Williamson Street in Baldwin, where individuals are now just camped out there to hold that spot looking as a sacred area.

with the young man's blood on the ground.

So that's where we are.

People are still there, people are still protesting, people are still trying to figure out ways to implement change from this situation.

What is heartbreaking, that is the third police shooting on that same street in the last 12 to 13 years here in Madison.

Pretty sure you all are familiar with Tony Robinson who was also murdered by the police that happened on that same street.

So now it looks at something that is systemic that is happening three different times in the same location.

And so that's what we're challenged by that.

Does city leadership reach out to you for you to be part of that initial press conference?

Yes.

So, you know, you talk about that, I mean, I just remember the Robinson case.

So how would you describe then the relationship of the Madison police, particularly when it comes to communities of color there in Madison?

You know, Madison is different, way different from Milwaukee and we only, I wouldn't have had from.

So I grew up in Milwaukee with the school and Milwaukee Tech graduated, went to the Army.

So when I came back to pasta in Madison, I thought it was similar to Milwaukee.

But it's a different place.

It's only 6% of African Americans in the city of Madison.

However, we make up 40% of the prison population.

One of my members is a public defender.

He said, hey, if you go to the courts and sit in the courts and see who's being tried,

You would see, you would think that Madison is predominantly Black City and it's not.

If you look at some of the reports you'll see the African Americans, I pulled over more and go to jail or ticket it more than our white counterparts.

I go to the juvenile detention center every second and fourth Sunday to talk to and mentor and trying to provide a different direction for those kids there.

If there are 10 kids, there are eight of them are black males.

And so the systemic things that it just, it's prevalent as it is in most places, but it's very prevalent here when it comes to policing, that of course we're going to get more prison, mean more jail time, more arrest and more attention than others.

the So right now I'm trying to you know, you you were there at the press conference How how is the and I'm putting this in quotations the black church Responding to this issue there in Madison.

Yeah, so yeah, the press conference Know that I was invited there and

We already have a pretty strong presence here.

No, it's not it's not many like it's not We have about 20 25 black churches in the city of Madison.

And so what we were done we respond definitely first with prayer Our intention is first we need to get God involved get God's attention what's going on?

But we also very intentional of galvanizing our community to come together to make sure that that we're getting

um, results, number one, holding accountability, um, to the, um, um, to the police officer, uh, to the city and the police department.

Um, and then we are, um, partnering with other organizations, other groups, um, leadership, uh, organizations around the city, um, that's demanding, um, those things to be happened.

So the black church, initially, um, so we did a prayer meeting.

At my church on that Friday night and then on that Sunday of last week we went to To the site on the site and we stood out there with all the protesters We we even had a tent where individuals wanted prayer We'll pray with them because a lot of people out there morning a lot of people are hurting a lot of people are discouraged a lot of people are upset

And so we pray with them and we pray with some of some parents or family members who have had to deal with this issue of being murdered by a police officer.

And so we prayed over those family members that are there, but then also we are standing in the street.

We're sending in complaints trying to get the accountability as much as possible with our city.

One of the things that was striking to me was how the community reacted or responded to this shooting.

You know, I know you're familiar, what is it, the Jacob Blake's case down in Kenosha, our guy here where we had, why is it such a difference in how people respond to a situation like that in

Madison

and other cities?

What you mean?

Well, you know that there was violence in Kenosha's violence here in Milwaukee Sherman Park I'm not aware that there was violence there in Madison.

Why was Madison so different than these other situations?

Well, it shouldn't be violence.

I'm not one for violence and I'm glad that it's not I'm one that we are we can get our voices heard without burning buildings without

throwing glasses and burning stuff up.

That's something that I'm not for.

But I think, you know, Madison is a different city.

It's a different city than Milwaukee is different than Kenosha.

We've been out front trying to help people navigate that anger and that rage in different ways.

You know, saying that voice, making that voice is louder rather than

burning businesses and, you know, and tearing stuff up.

So I'm glad it's not that way.

But to the reason why, I really can't tell you, you know, just different people in different

cities.

In terms of, do you think body cams would have made a difference in this situation?

No, I don't think so.

We're pushing for training.

We're pushing for police oversight committee, community oversight committee.

We pushed for independent monitoring for our police department.

I think it all comes down to the character of that individual.

No matter what, they can have all the right training.

They can have all the cameras around.

But if that character of that individual is not

one to attempt to bring justice even in hostile conditions and intentionally trying to de-escalate and not escalate the situation.

It all boils down to the character of that individual who was having the interaction with someone.

So do I think body cameras should be necessary?

I really do think they're necessary.

Do I think they changed the outcome?

No, I don't.

So you talked about that so you you think it's a issue of training Is it is it also still an institutional attitude the police might have in terms of how they police certain communities?

That's how I feel It's all on that individual because you can have all the training in the world But if you feel attacked or you feel belittled or you feel Disrespected in that moment you're gonna react how you do it so that

I encourage the training.

I encourage body cam.

I encourage more sessions on cultural awareness.

I encourage all of that.

But if your character still is not that you're one that be intentional about de-escalating the situation rather than escalating it, it really won't change much.

Again, I serve in the United States Army and I've seen individuals that are trying to attack.

us in uniform get treated better than African-Americans in the streets of America by our own police officers.

Obviously there has always been mixed discussions on police relationships when it comes to them and a particular community.

Prior to this unfortunate incident, have you observed any positive interactions between the police department and the community that could potentially help stem the tide moving forward?

Yeah, so at our church, we have neighborhood police officers who are.

Listen to our neighborhoods.

I think all the neighborhoods in Madison have a police neighborhood police officers who walk the walk the streets who out there who are very visible.

And we also have a in our food pantry.

We have a room just for that person to be able to come in and do their reports and they interact with us.

It's.

Like I said, it all boils down to that individual.

We we've we've had positive interaction with police.

until this point, from me being here, I've been in Madison nine years now, right before Tony Robinson, at least right after Tony Robinson got murdered.

But I haven't seen anything far as our police department since then.

And so, yes, that's positive interactions where we see, I see police officers on the basketball court, playing basketball with the kids, being out there.

And I think they,

They've tried to do a good job of that.

But again, it boils down to one individual.

So going forward, first of all, do you have confidence in the investigation?

Not really, I'm going to be honest.

I'm pretty sure you, your listeners, everyone understand that this is a normal play, how things go.

They hold out on the investigation for as long as they can.

They attempt to wait until the protest is over and people stop screaming and yelling.

And then they put out what happened and what they seen happen and how they perceived it happening.

And it's always gonna be in the favor of the city because they gotta protect themselves.

When George Floyd died, I was served on the, not died, was murdered.

I served on a task force to improve policing in Wisconsin.

I think Voss was over that.

I'm pretty sure you are a member of the time where it was trying to come up with some policing.

But no, the Republicans, they would gavel in and gavel out after.

the governor were called into session.

And so in order to know appease what was going on, they have this task force form.

And I said on there and I told her initially, I said, hey, I want to do it because I think it's going to be a dog and pony show.

And there wouldn't be no actual results to come out from this.

So we serve for weeks, months, bringing in individuals who had interactions with police and was unfavorable for those persons, even those who were struggling from mental health issues.

Um, and from that, nothing, um, and nothing came because, um, you know, it's the system and you got to protect the system.

And so, um, confidence level is not that high, um, but my hope is in the people, um, the people who continue to, um, bag and plead and, and desire fair and equitable treatment, um, for all individuals, no matter what.

that no one should lose their lives when they come into contact with police officers for what they're doing.

And the goal is to de-escalate and not take it up to a level where you shoot someone in the face multiple times.

Pastor Marcus Allen, Mount Zion Baptist Church there in Madison.

Thank you, man.

I appreciate you, man.

All right.

Thank you all for.

Trying to get us involved and see what's going on like you said with different city Madison is a peaceful place and oftentimes no And but it's just this is a challenging thing to see a family For a young man Corey his family suffering.

I don't know if you all saw the The press conference with Ben Crumb and his daughter said hey, you know Everybody called my my dad a criminal called him all different types of things

but he still was my dad.

And so that that was real painful and heartbreaking to see.

And so we're just here trying to help as much as we can, trying to be the church in the midst of all of this, to be intentional about putting Jesus out front.

That's what we do.

But we also want to hold people accountable for the things that they have done and continue to live our micro six and eight.

What the Lord tells us to do with the Lord has required of us to

to do justice, to walk humbly with our God, and to do this work that God has placed in front of us.

So thank you for giving us this platform.

And thank you, man, for making yourself available.

My good friend, Pastor Victor Mann, to facilitate this, man.

So I appreciate you.

Thank you.

You provided a lot of insight into the differences in Madison and just the work that you're doing.

So I really do appreciate you taking this call.

Thank you, man.

Appreciate it.

Thank you all so much.

Yep.

You're listening to Community Voice.

We're going to take a break and we'll be right back.

Call it before I get to you.

Let me do the perspective.

So just be a little patient with us.

TJ.

The Democratic primary for the state of Wisconsin has garnered national attention.

The start of this process was very chaotic.

And as we wind down to determine a Democratic nominee,

the feeling of a chaotic race still remains.

Just in the past few weeks, we've had multiple alleged scandals, multiple candidates drop out of the race.

One candidate dropped back in the race and an endorsement by the current governor, not to mention he said that he wouldn't endorse anyone during a primary.

And his endorsement is for an individual who is not a former Lieutenant Governor nor

member of his very own cabinet.

In addition to everything mentioned, the state just observed the candidates debate each other in the beginning of this very week.

With every bit of seriousness, this definitely reminds me of March Madness, only in July.

Politics, just like sports and religion, invokes much emotion.

With only one full week left,

until Election Day.

I'm sure the ending of this primary showdown will keep us all at the edges of our seats.

Although a particular candidate has led in almost every poll, including the two most recent ones, the undecided voters still lead the pack by a significant margin.

I too am a part of that group who are undecided.

If I had to take a guess,

My decision won't be made until Election Day.

In this time, I will be reviewing policy stances, reviewing the most recent debate, and engage in productive conversations about each candidate that is remaining with those who I'm close with.

Political maturity has taught me that there is no perfect candidate.

No one will align 100% with my views and opinions.

Understanding that is political maturity as it relates to me personally.

Many have sparked discussions about the establishment's ability to manipulate the race, while others are intrigued of another candidate who has received pushback from both sides of this very race.

Surely,

This democratic primary has been a roller coaster, but brace yourself because the ride is not over yet.

Appreciate you.

The key word there is Democrat democracy and democracy can be messy.

And we

know that

one little cleanup actually undecided is number two.

It's number two now Francesca is number one and undecided and I'm talking like still like 35% of the people obviously There are a lot of people out there.

I have not returned my ballot yet.

So I want to make sure whoever I vote for still still running Welcome to the program Good

morning.

You're there.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you for taking my call Wow, that was excellent as usual.

Thank

you

that perspective

And it makes you kind of slow down and think about things about what's going on.

And I was quick to say who I definitely was going to be voting for.

And I based it on who's really ready and know what it feels like to have a huge budget responsible for a community

a county, people reporting to them.

I think it's Brennan is the only other person that on a smaller scale has had that experience.

And this front runner, I have a lot of questions about what has she been involved in?

Who has she helped?

What has been her?

interest in helping other people.

And moving on from that, and now I just want to go on to what's happening in Madison.

But when I called the other day and talked about David Crawley, I did not know that Mandela was on Keith's show saying that Crawley was in the race to disturb it.

Why why would he say that when it was seven of them or however many it was?

Were they there for that same reason to a came back to do the same thing?

I think that was very small of him But look at what happens when you do ugly things ugly things come back to you real quickly, don't they?

That was excellent

And it gave a perspective of a community, maybe that has not had as much hurt as some other community.

But at the same token, what we observed was disturbing.

And I don't care how long they take, when you sit back and you look at what happened, even though

you don't have an insight of what they're saying and where did that night come from and no one has ever said yet this day.

Did that officer go to the hospital to get stitches?

We don't know anything about that and when they showed the knife, it's like a brand new knife.

No blood on it.

Nothing.

At what point

with three officers all over you, that you have an opportunity to reach in your pocket or somewhere to pull out a knife.

So we have to use our intelligence.

But another thing that's happened up there in Madison, those businesses have been helping the protesters out.

Have you noticed that?

Yeah.

I think that's the question I asked.

I think the

reaction helping them with

Liars and posters, that is unusual.

Well, he said that Madison is different.

It's capital cities, a university town.

It is probably the most liberal city in the state.

And like I said, the response has been very different than even what it was in Minneapolis, what it was in Atlanta.

I mean, we think about all these places where people have

The the response was was was very different.

So I agree I agree with that in terms of what people are doing But and I'm not it's more than a lot of questions and that's why I asked Pastor Allen that he have confidence in the investigation Because I think the person who is the monitor is a black woman from Baltimore who monitors the police department there.

So appreciate you Caller welcome to the program.

Good morning, your honor

Good morning.

I wanted to make a couple of points.

One was the DJ whose presentation we see that all the calls was a masterpiece.

Thank you.

I want to give Dr. Reverend Dr. Harris.

I think he, the DJ had

Mentorship from P.T.

Paris or did he?

Did you?

Say that again.

Did you get Joe?

Did DJ get in a mentorship from you?

I ain't seen this dude until he walked in here today.

I don't have no clue to who he even is.

I've been on DJ before he was DJ.

If he did it without you, I'd steal a masterpiece.

There's even more credit.

And another observation I wanted to make was a certain person whose name I was not, but who recently dropped out.

I'll just say he dropped out.

And y'all have a good one.

Yeah, this I

agree.

This has been the

one of the most craziest, maybe COVID, what we're gonna do when we're gonna vote in that spring

election.

How are we gonna vote?

How are we

gonna vote?

I mean, but this has just been where, have you ever seen anybody get out the race, then get back in the race?

You know, the fear that the Democratic

establishment mainstream has in terms of that was the question I was asking about labeling that that whole democratic socialism where people hear socialism they equate socialism to communism and and boom there you go so those

but they're

not

the

same oh of course they're not the same and then the crazy thing is that America runs this dual system it's a capitalistic socialistic system if we didn't have socialism we've had anarchy

Part of what we response that whole progressive movement had everything to do in the early 1900s in terms of disparities in terms of the very very rich and then everybody else And then you know you come back from World War one veterans are Basically, there was a promise made to veterans those whole bonuses that they never got Communism communism not socialism communism is now

getting the foothold in America because people want to address the inequities and I just kind of see when you have a rise of so-called democratic socialism that that's usually in response to the glaring disparities that people experience in the system in spite of what the dude is saying who's currently in the White House America is in trouble economically we're in trouble

This war is not helping.

It was already coming off of COVID, that high inflation, all those things, and the recovery was coming and such.

And it was moving along.

There was recovery.

So I think when Joe Biden took over, it was something like 7% inflation.

He had gotten it down to 3%.

But then all these other things, because everything in the world impacts everything else in the world.

And I think we're beginning to understand that.

And that's what happens.

And let me be Malcolm for a moment.

That's when chickens come home to roost, you know, that people who voted for the current president based on either his his whole position.

I think a lot of people was race because the people who probably was voting for him for the most part felt like, well, we're secure.

He's not talking about us.

He's talking about them.

But then you come to find out it takes a fool to learn that love don't love nobody and the very people who supported him or some of the people were being most victimized by the policies.

of this administration and of this Republican-controlled Congress.

I say it all the time.

People cut off their nose, the spark they face.

Yeah, I mean, people pimp your feelings, man.

And so if you're a racist and somehow you want to feel like the reason why you're not getting ahead is because of some brown immigrant, that resonates with you.

And then the reality hits.

How many people who supported this president were beneficiaries

of the expansion of those those uh what were they called the subsidies right for health care i mean you know it we we get to

even i mean even with the with the costs or uh the the deductions and the changes that that will be coming up with social security and things you know dude dude is taking away at

They were very income for a lot of the baby boomers, right?

But they still support them.

I mean, we want to be spoon-fed information.

And what you're spoon-fed is what you just take for truth.

But that's not the case.

you know, you have to do your own research.

And the fact that a lot of people don't do their own research is the reason why a lot of people cut off the nose despite their face.

Even

when we talked about this primary where, you know, it was some people going like, well, why do you have two black people?

You know, they taken well.

When you look at the percentage and again in the demo on the Democratic side black people are more apt to vote in that primary But there was a lot and a lot of a lot of it was Our perception of that person things that may or may not have to do with how that person would govern You know so and I understand that just goes that's part of the equation that goes into

That goes into politics But and in some ways I'm smiling because I think it's I like to see democracy.

This is democracy in action and democracy like I said, it's not always pretty

and you know, I spoke about political maturity and You know, I've had to grow in my political knowledge and not be so emotional on some points

Politics is still emotional and and I will continue to be emotional when it comes to politics but To understand that the primary is just a primary and you and you alluded to that as well as dr. Myers alluded to that or this is the time to Figure out what everybody's got going on.

This is the time to if you really

If you really support an individual and they may not be as high in the polls to continue to support that individual, because it's just the primary.

When we move forward

into the general election,

you know, the stakes are even higher.

And, you know, one of my biggest pet peeves is that every election cycle, we always say that the stakes

are the most existential election ever.

Right.

You know, that's one of my biggest pet peeves.

But, you know, in the general election, that is definitely the case because we are a purple state, because we are changing new new new leadership, you know, and that could have various consequences, depending on your

background.

And the cool thing is for me anyway, um, because they're competing for my vote too.

And, and to be able to have that one on one or two on one, um, when you have that conversation, it gives people, because when you're doing a debate, you know, you only get X amount of time.

I think that I've been impressed with every, the four that I've had the opportunity.

I've been impressed with all of them.

they were enormously talented people.

And so to be able to get, and I wanted people to be able to hear that outside of all that background noise, then you can make up your mind because look, if you already set who your candidate is, that's good.

Ain't nothing wrong with that, right?

But people get a chance

to hear other folks.

Like even then, you know, you look at this roller coaster, you know,

If candidates flip flop, that causes the voters to flip flop because if I think that Keith is dropped out of the race, now I'm like, oh man, I got to spoil my ballot.

And then all of a sudden he comes back into the race and I was like, oh, I'm good.

Or

what

if?

I've never seen that before.

And I've been

on this planet for a minute.

You know, then you knew something was up where the second person or the first person they have to drop off because I mean Finances you can't

write this right and and but then I'm just speaking to the point of You know, what if I voted early and now my candidate has dropped out of the race?

You know, we all want our votes to be counted Now it leaves you in a bit of a conundrum as far as you know

What's next?

Another thing is people are paying more

attention, right?

Because of all the national attention.

Carla, welcome to the program.

Good morning, your honor.

Hey, let me just be here.

DJ.

Yes, sir.

It's OK to be emotional.

This election is supposed to be emotional.

And what bothers me sometimes these days when I call.

Because I get emotional.

I think it upsets people But if we don't take this stuff of anything that we should be taking period is our elections in our vote So if you just are melancholy about that in you know, oh well that that's what bothers me That's why I think that you should get emotional when it comes to voting Something that really bothered me Last week and I've been trying to get in all week to say this

And all the candidates that Keith has come on the show, he's absolutely correct.

I like them all.

I think all of their answers were good from the little time that they had.

I think Keith was a good interviewer when he interviewed them.

But you know what I love about him?

At the end of the day, when Keith asked a question, he said, not the one before he said, why should we vote for you the other one?

What's going to happen on August 12?

And each of them gave the same answer.

We're going to stand and support each other because we cannot get Tom Tillis in there.

And that made me feel so good because what bothered me last week, and this sounds like an older guy, that he said that if Mandela Barnes is the one that comes out, he's staying at home and keeps it.

You know, if you stay at home, that's a vote for Tom Tillis.

And he said,

Tiffany, I'm sorry guys.

Thank you, Keith.

He said he's staying at home and that bothered me so much in my core.

It's like, okay, we went through this already with Johnson and in Mandela.

This is serious.

So if we think it's bad now, do you know how much worse it's going to get if they get in there and here's something I wanted this.

say to you, I think, I don't know if that was last week, Friday.

Of course, you know, DJ, they have to, candidates have to do everything in their power to get our votes.

But then where does our responsibility fall from doing our homework?

Chief has a saying that he says, low voter IQ.

I think I'm a little bit above the low voter IQ.

I might not be the brightest.

but I know what I need

to know.

No, no, no.