August 14, 2023 • 40 mins
Robert and Prop talk about the big Montgomery dock brawl, and what the Internet has made of an averted racist beat down.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast that
is being recorded far too early in the morning with
me to help me stay conscious. Is my friend and
coffee entrepreneur prop Aksa, Jason Petty Prop. How are you doing,
buddy man?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm wonderful on this fine day. I almost did an
AKA song forgetting which show I was. I was like,
oh wait, that's a zeigeys bit.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Happens to me all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, so which bit for which show am I supposed
to do?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Here's what we were talking about before the show, which
is that we're both exhausted despite sleeping normally this week.
I feel like this may be something to do with
these aliens. Everybody's talking about something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's yeah, aliens or just this like kind of week
long sort of holiday festival. I've been a part of that.
Apparently all of Black America has been participating in.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We're all experiencing a level of bliss I don't think
we've had in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That is that is our subject of today, which is uh.
I think the term generally being used for it is
the Montgomery riverboat brawl that seems to be what we've
all settled on.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, so the fade in the water. I mean there's
new there's new spirituals and hymns.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
The Ballad of Black Aquaman. Yes, I love that kid.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
But we should before we get into all this, we
should talk about what actually happened, because I'm gonna guess, uh,
there's at least a chunk of people listening who are like,
what the fuck are you guys talking about?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
The short of it is.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
A couple of days ago, video dropped two different clips
I think are mainly what's what people are watching? Of
a fight at a riverboat dock in Montgomery, Alabama. And
basically what happens is you had this this river boat
and it's you know, Montgomery, Alabama's got a lot of tourism.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It's one of these big boats.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It holds about two hundred and seventy people, I think,
takes them up and down the river. You know, you
go up and down the river, you look at the
pretty things. I assume there's there's beer or something. You know,
it's all sorts of cities do this. So this boat
is heading back into dock and they've got all these
people who want to get off the boat. Because they've
been on for a while and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They have enough people to get back in a lot
of people to get the next one.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know they have a set
spot that is their spot, and no one else is
to park their boat at the dock, as is usual
for a large business like this, and some dudes with
a pontoon boat have taken it up.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
They've parked there.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So the captain gets on the pa for quite a
while and is like, hey, guys, move your pontoon. Hey guys,
you got to get that pontoon out of here. Hey, y'all,
if you don't get that pontoon out of here, I'm
going to call the cops. And if you have open containers,
the cops are going to fuck you. You don't want that,
so why don't you just move? And these guys get
like shitty at him and start like yelling at him
(03:07):
and cursing at him, flipping him the bird, So he
sends over his co captain and the captain of the
boat from the videos of scene appears to be a
white dude. The co captain is a middle aged black man.
He gets off the boat and he goes over to
just like move the pontoon boat, right, which is a
thing that boat people do when situations like this occur.
(03:28):
It is not like an unheard of situation. And while
he's doing it all, a whole bunch of the presumably
the dudes who own this pontoon boat boat who are
all white, surround him and start attacking him. And at
one point that looks like five or six people trying
to and he's for the record, he's holding his own
(03:48):
He's doing easy as long as you can. Yeah, And
then a number of nearby people start running to his aid,
including at least one of the kids on the riverboat.
Uh hops out or like pops into the water, and like, yeah,
you were talking about the rest of this.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a hood politics episode we recorded where
I try to do like initial reactions and try to
add some some like color to this, which will come
out a little later. This will come out before that,
but there's Yeah, So you're watching the video, you can't
it's all inaudible, so you can't really hear except for
the people recording. You hear them talking to them talking, right,
(04:30):
But judging from there's so many context clues to understand
what's happening, right, so as the co captain, the black
dude's getting off the boat to come talk to these
white boys right the way that you can just you
know when someone's like and unfortunately for white people, y'all
can't when you're drunk. Just your skin shows it, Yo,
(04:51):
saying like yea, so you could just see, Okay, this
dude's like, your skin's very flush with color right now.
So you're you're clearly drunk, you know what I'm saying.
And it's hot as hell because it's Montgomery, Alabama, right,
it's also Montgomery, Alabama. So you just from seeing the
interaction and the body language of both people in this conversation,
(05:15):
you're like, Okay, this conversation is getting intense. And then
and then once once the uh the the white gentleman
decides he's gonna put hands on on his black dude,
the black dude throws his hat up into the air.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He shared do es he shares us.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
As a universe. Now, Robert, is that not a universal
bating signal?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I would go so far as to say, it's like,
that's damn near like a mortal combat opener, right, like
say it is universal?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Its hair? Yes, it's like all right, we got to
throw hands right, so good, it's so good. So at
that point, that's when like clearly, like clearly, either these
white boys are are very very inebriated or have grossly
underestimated the feeling of collective identity black people have, because
(06:07):
when they decided to jump this man, you're in front
of hundreds of black people, oh yeah, who are all
waiting in line to get on this boat, right, who
are already pissed at you because you're not moving right.
So so when he does that, as you can see,
there are people running, you know, black men running as
fast as they can to kind of help you know this, uh, this,
(06:28):
this co captain who by this point is being stomped
because he's he's overpowered by five people. And then you
see this young man swimming to the shore, which is
like he's a yeah, I mean, that guy's a national treasure.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So I don't know that guy, but I can tell
that we can tell a couple of things about him.
One of them is that he reacts quickly in a crisis, yes, yeah, yeah.
And the other is that pretty good swimmer and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, he must be a teenager because gonna have the
energy to swim there and then still start doing work.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Well and then pull yourself up onto a dock when yeah,
clothing's all soaked, very impressive feet.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah. So anyway, so as that happens, people finally catch up.
The boat finally gets a chance to dock. Now these
other people who were on the boat and watched all
this happen are like, now it's our turn. So they
get off the boat, go to the pontoon. Shirts off again,
another universal signal. If I've taken my T shirt off,
(07:32):
we're we're here, We're gonna throw down. So they start
throwing down. I mean, it's women getting involved. And then
now now now it becomes this entire brawl, right so,
and if you've ever been in situations where brawls break out,
they kind of move and shift as different people decide
they want a part of it, and other people get tired,
(07:52):
and somebody's finally you know' his nosebleeding whatever. And while
this is happening, there's a few clips where you can
see whether they're secure, the officers or police, they're kind
of just watching, kind of like, I don't know if
we need to do anything about this just yet. Now
finally the brawl gets around the corner and a brave
(08:15):
old man, old head who sees his opportunity.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Wow, who is who has brought? Who has brought that?
He's got the soul of a sniper. This man is
like watching and waiting to act.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yes, yes, so at this point, uh, there are some
security officers involved who have finally been like, all right, man,
maybe we just maybe we should stop this. And it's
almost like again you can't hear it, but judging by
their body language, the cops are kind of like, I
don't know, man, and white boys kind of asked for it,
like and you don't say so, they just kind of
(08:52):
watch it like, hey man, you ask for it, man,
And this is what happens. You should have moved your boat,
should have been talking ship like like like Kat Williams says,
shouldn't have been talking shit, you know. So so anyway
they do this and this this hero of a man
(09:13):
grabs a white folding chair and just whacks a dude
over the head with it who was attempting to attack
some other people. Now, clearly again, if you've been in
a brawl, maybe adding color that's not on the video,
but like, if you've been in a brawl, you understand,
at some point you kind of black out and you
(09:33):
just you just get punched drunk. So while he's hitting
a guy with a folding chair, there's this other white
lady who's attempting to intervene with an interaction that one
of the security or cop guys is having with turns
out which with probably one of her compadres.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And this is, by the way, a mixed gender brawl.
There's there's like, yeah, this is not not just dudes
throwing hands.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, y this yeah, it's it's it's it's girls on girls,
it's girls on dudes. It's dudes on girls. It's a brawl,
you know. So the officer, like officers do when you
try to intervene with them having interactions with with somebody
pushes the lady away. Now, now the lady's in river
broke crocs, right, so her feet just fall right through
(10:19):
the crocs, right. She gets pushed down and just happens
to be in the eyesight of this of this sixty
old man with a folded chair. And while she's down,
he just turns and just whax her over the head
with this chair.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh he sure does. He gives you the w W
E special, I mean, just New World Order suck.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It just smacks her with a folding chair, and at
that point, you it's almost like and again it's all
in audible, but you just see the officers go like, shit.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Man, yep, now we got to do something.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Now we got like fuck man, now we got to
arrest you, dude. Right. So yeah, so the cops finally
go like what the fuck man, They take the chair
from the guy, and the dude his body language is
so like like he doesn't even know what's happening, like
I'm just swinging, you know. So when the officer finally
takes the chair and they like, they're like, dude, you
hit the lady. You hit the lady, you hit the lady.
(11:22):
We got we yeah, we gotta do something. We got
to arrest you now, right And which, of course, the
internet watching it, and even the person holding even the
person shooting the video, we all like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Nah, but he's definitely going to jail.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That guy going to jail. Everybody else yeah might be fine,
He's going to jail. Yeah, And uh, and that's pretty
much where where the video stops.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, so it has, uh, it has obviously gone everywhere
since then, there's a lot of writing about like, yeah,
why this has like taken off uh so much and
and uh been seen us so inspirational to people. I
think it's because it seems we've all seen like too
many videos that are just kind of the first part
of this where like, yeah, there's like a bunch of
(12:11):
racist white pean and by the way, there's at least
you can't hear it on the video, but people have
said that like these folks when that co captain came down,
were like shouting the inward adhaim and stuff. Yeah, so
we've all seen the variants of this that are just like, yeah,
some black men or black woman getting abused by a
bunch of racists, and this one starts looking like that
(12:33):
and then turns into like a beautiful come uppance, Like
these people picked a fight against a man they thought
was like alone and kind of heavy set and older
and that they could like wail on and just wound
up getting absolutely housed. Based on at least what I'm
(12:54):
looking at here, looks like three of the white folks
involved in this have been charged with crime. The police
are talking to the chair guy. It's unclear yet like
what exactly charges he's gonna catch.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He was on a he was on a radio show,
a morning show in Alabama, whare with just Uh, sort
of an internet personality that like in the black community,
we're all very familiar with. And so they asked her.
They asked him like, the lady asked him like okay, okay,
you had the chair and the lady was already down,
(13:30):
like what what what happened? He said, It feels like
it's like we wrote the script where he goes man
I blacked out, and he said, I just thought about
Rosa Parks and that lady that wouldn't give the seat
to her. I was like, I'll give her a chair.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
But you know, fights are ugly things, but also in
some ways beautiful things. It's a there's a lot going
on in this video. I'm not surprised that it's it's
(14:13):
been taken by so many people. There's some lessons I
think bystanders can take from this. From one thing, if
like fifty people are having a giant brawl, might want
to get out of there.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Just leave, Yeah, just bounce. You should know to leave.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, yeah, not a good thing to get in the
middle of. But second, if you're parked in someone else's
boat spot, maybe instead of shouting racial slurs, get your
fucking boat moved.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's not. It was like, yeah, I think what it's
It speaks to so much because this was such an
avoidable situation, you guess, is completely avoidable, bro, just slide
over a little bit. I feel like if you've like,
if you've driven a car on a highway, then you've
seen a semi truck. And when the semi truck just
(15:01):
get out his what like, why is you picking this fight? Man?
Just he can't. It's a big old at wheelerd. Just
this is courtesy. That's a bigger So I'm just saying, like,
that's a bigger boat than you. You're more nimble, you
can move, and clearly it's a line of people waiting
to get off. I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
That's one of the things I think that's involved here
that's interesting to me is that there's this This is
not just I mean, like, obviously the fact that these
guys were biggots is a factor here, but there's also
just this increasingly common freedom that the most selfish people
in our society feel to be like aggressive about the
(15:43):
fact that they don't owe anyone else, like basic like politeness, right,
like the very basic. Though two hundred and seventy people
are being inconvenienced because I parked by shit in the
wrong space.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I should bounce, you know, I should probably at least say,
oh sorry, I fucked up.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Oh yeah, like no, we're gonna make this a thing
because like we get to park wherever the fuck we
want and fuck you like that. That kind of attitude
is like it's so frustrating, like I can't even get
myself into the head of someone who would do what
these guys did and not like feel like they were
(16:22):
an asshole. Like I had to do the thing every
now and then I think most of us do where
like I park my car in like a a like
a red zone or something because it's like I got
to be It's like there's no spaces. I'm thirty students, right, yeah,
And you get out and someone seeing you like in
the fucking red and they're like, yes, you know, like
I know will at one point, man, I'm sorry, Like yeah, dude,
(16:44):
I'm so sorry, bro, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Look I'm gone, I'm gone, my bad, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And to have the the fucking HUTSBA to just like
look at a boat of two hundred and seventy people
be like, fuck all of you, Like I want to
keep my stupid ass bart doing here for some reason.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, and then the willingness to be like, what the
fuck you're gonna do about it? Well, we'll jump you
if you get that mad, and just and whether it's
whether you're adding to either the lack of like situational
awareness or just that that overall hutzvah like you said
of just like whatever, I'll take all of you, like
(17:20):
really you really really like Yeah, I think that there's
a there's a lot to color here too, with the
fact that, first of all, this is take where it's
taking place. I mean we're still in Montgomery, Alabama here
and which and on a dock that was obviously and
(17:43):
verifiably a dock where slaves were dropped off at you
know what I'm saying. So you have that history, right,
you have the history of the Montgomery bus boycotts. You
know what I'm saying, Like, this is this is the
city where Rosa Parks did the thing. You know what
I'm saying, Like, this is where it happens. There's so
much history in the city and on top of that,
(18:03):
like I mean there's high schools in Alabama named Robert E. Lee,
like Robert E. Lee High School, Like we're talking about
we're talking about a place that I mean what it
was in the news in the odds that, Like I mean,
there was a high school that just desegregated, like in
the year twenty something.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Like they got there.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, yeah, they just desegregated high school. Right. It made
the news in twenty ten because they finally had a
desegregated prom. But that was just the prom. And it's
just that the prom white school invited the black They
can't go to school together. They could just do a
dance with this. This is where. This is the state
(18:43):
that this happened in. So you're like, you're in this
like and I hate to like otherise them, but I'm
an otherise them in the sense that this is some
like multiverse bizarro world where you what desegregation is recent,
(19:05):
you know what I'm saying. So when you have that
type of thing, first of all, you have to have
you have to remember, like both of those things are
sitting in sort of the collective consciousness of that community,
whether especially for the black people who are like this,
this is the world we live in. But we've also
proven that if you push us far enough, you know
(19:25):
what I'm saying, like, we're not gonna stand for it.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
You know, we pick up a folded chair, We'll pick
up a folding chair, which has become something of a
symbol in the last new open carry Yeah. I saw
at least one TikTok video that was just it was like,
there's like a couple of people watching as this young
black guy in a Walmart like was holding up and
like testing it like the way that you would like
(19:49):
a gun at the gun store.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He's like, yeah, man, the memes have been glorious. I've
seen folding chair earrings, I've seen dot but the one
is this that I said, uh, I said Robert a
video of the folding chair getting interviewed. Yeah. Oh, he's
one of the first of all. That's one of the
(20:11):
funniest accounts you could ever follow. But he was just
like you, I was just sitting there and then we
started doing charity work.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And which account is that?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh? Yeah, Ace Vance a ce b A n CE.
He does just the most incredible voiceovers. Yeah, with the
chair was just like, who's heading out charities. I was
doing charity work, yes, freely given ass whoopings like have
a seat, might step up, have a seat anyway, So good.
(20:44):
But I I I think that that like is important.
I think another thing that I think is interesting specifically
for like that it can happen here audience, which I
one thing I love about the show is like you
give y'all give so much his oracle context to whatever
we're looking at. You know what I'm saying, as as
almost like proof of concept that not only can it
(21:06):
happen here, it is happening here, you know what I'm saying.
And I think for this one, there was this interesting moment.
This is another good follow for you guys. Got named consciously.
His name is the Conscious Lee. He was like like
world renown like debater, a master debater. I'm just kidding, uh,
(21:31):
but he was a world renowned debater. He was one
of the first like like him and his partner was
like the first black like co champions in like professional
debate or college level debate anyway. So he's a brilliant,
brilliant thinker. He's like you know, YouTube, earthy year styles whatever,
right anyway, content creator anyway, he brought up this this
(21:52):
point among sort of the the black community that what
came out of this too was this hashtag of like, yo,
we are not our ancestors, you know which, as I
understand the sentiment, it also shows sort of a lack
(22:13):
of historical knowledge of like really how our ancestors handled slavery.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Like yeah, like the amount of resistance.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
The amount of resistance we actually had, you know what
I'm saying. And and even just like I would even
courage just like a simple Google search of the amount
of rebellions, you know, you just whether you're talking about
the famous ones like the Haitian rebellion, which we did
a bastard's pot about. You know what I'm saying, We're
like these fool these fools threw off their their oppressors.
(22:40):
You have Nah Turner, you know what I'm saying, which
I talk about more on on on the politics. But
like I my seventh grade like historical figure report was
on that Turner and I was busted like a suburban
like middle school for a little bit. So I'm walking
into the suburban middle school with my NAT Turner paper.
(23:05):
My poor English teacher she hadn't been thinking, oh what
she was thinking but anyway, Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
you have like there was one, there was there were
one in New York. There was the one during the
Thirteen Colonies. Like we have such a history of like
rebellion and resistance, Like don't think not to mention slave
ships that were overtaken, you know what I'm saying by
(23:26):
their captors, Like you know what I'm saying, So like
these things have there is a rich history of us
of us rebelling, so like it's almost a point a
point of lesson, a point of learning for the black
community too.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, I think that's like a really useful teachable moment.
While everyone's kind of amped up about this thing to
talk about it. I've heard it described as like left
handed power, uh, kind of in some books that would
talk about not just you know what we've been chatting about,
what you are these kind of big moments of insurrection
among enslaved people, but like the everyday acts of resistance
(24:02):
by people who were enslaved, like while they are you know,
on the plantation stuff, different ways of like pulling autonomy
of like you know, teaching their kids how to read
or you know, taking you know, getting things like money
or extra resources, you know, out of the out of
the people who are attempting to uh yeah, to own them,
(24:22):
like methods of escape and resistance, you know, all these
methods of like preserving traditional art and religion while you know,
in chains, like all that kind of stuff is also.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yeah, I hope it.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I hope it like spurs some of that, you know,
the the folding chair can be added to a rich
history of resistance.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, yes, and uh yeah, I'm also curious around like
obviously you and I on this on that are currently
being recorded, plus a lot of the community that that
both of us represent, Like, yeah, we're not pacifists like
(25:05):
you at all, you know what I'm saying. And I
find that discourse to be interesting too, and especially around
you know, if you're you're and I'm like, you know,
neither is the broader racist community like y'are not pacifist either.
(25:27):
Like you ask for the smoke, you got the smoke. Yeah,
Like what is more American than this?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
It's I think a more optimistic chapter, especially like as
we head into twenty twenty four, as we deal with
like kind of these continuing efforts to disenfranchise particularly black
voters across large chunks of the South. I'm glad that
we've got this, uh what will hopefully continue to be
(26:08):
a powerful image for people to kind of rally behind.
This is a this is a nice thing to have.
It's a I don't know, and it's interesting, like people,
things are said in a video like this that is
just kind of like chaotic brawling, but it speaks to
people in a way that you know, a history textbook,
uh maybe isn't going to reach them, because there's just
(26:31):
something so kinetic and powerful about like watching watching a
large group of people realize that an injustice is going
down and then be like, well, I guess we've got
to throw throw hands to stop this shit.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's a microcosm of like a century and a
half or so of or a couple of centuries of history.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Whether it's yeah, whether it's a absolutely the couple of
centuries of history. And then you're like at at least
ten years of witnessing, you know, black bodies being brutalized
when no one, when no one was there to help,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Just seeing the video just watch.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, and and then seeing no recourse like okay, well
there's well there's never. I mean, are we gonna wait
for the justice system? You know, the best thing we've
gotten so far is like no no knock warrants. I mean, thanks,
you know what I'm saying, Like, you know, at a
state you know, like so so and a lot of
(27:35):
promises of police reform, you know what I'm saying. So
you just you don't. I mean, like during Trump's presidency,
there was I mean, there was an uptick in lynching,
Like you know what I'm saying, Like these fools are
getting old school, you know. So it is without hearing
any video, without knowing anything, that those men were actually saying,
(27:57):
whether they were just running the mill pricks or just
ra pricks, whatever it was, it is a Again, if
you're a if you're a black person in Alabama, it
is completely reasonable to believe that if we wasn't there
to help, that man would have been on the bottom
(28:19):
of that river. Yeah, that man would have been strung
up in a tree in the woods and we'd never
seen him again.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I mean just the the the sheer like rapidity with
which he was surrounded and put on the ground by
a large number of men did not suggest that they
were that the uh that the additional dudes who had
arrived to wail on him were in a mood to
like de escalate the situation.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah yeah, and that's like I mean, I feel like
that's like a reality that uh you know, you this
it's almost like for the rest of the country, it's
like this if you understand, like this is the reality
we need you to understand when we say I could die,
(29:05):
you know what I'm saying, Like when you talk about
racism and not thing, it's just some people are stupid.
There's fucking bigots everywhere. Like no, when we say it's
life or death, like you're that's what you're witnessing, Like
he could have died that moment, you know what I'm saying.
And I think at a at a and whether it's
front of mine or back of mine, that is something
that as a person of color, like you just kind
(29:26):
of know that like this, this would this if it
would have just been a fight, you know what I'm saying.
Then I think if it was just just been a brawl,
like most people would have just stayed out of it,
Like if them to just if.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
They just prescribe the guys swinging on each other smart play.
If it's just two guys swinging on each other.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Just yeah, you take your phone on, you watch You're
just like, all right, man, hey, get your licks in.
You know, you cheer for your boy. But like, but
when somebody jumps in, it's like, Okay, I'm gonna help
the homie. But you jump in helping the homie in Montgomery, Alabama.
But it's like, all right, yeah this he might die,
so we don't. It's different.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Yeah, anything else to get to on this?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Man? I think I might be I think one more thing,
I think to add color to this, and I might
be like aggrandizing, but I think it's also important because
what I'm what I'm really interested in is just the collective,
cathartic sort of feeling this has had. Is because there's
(30:37):
so much built up tension. You have to talk about
the Florida of it all, you know what I'm saying,
and being aware of the idea that like you're right
in front of our face, like you're trying to erase history,
(30:58):
you know what I'm saying. Like, And and I just
five minutes ago watched that prager you video for kids
about about Christopher Columbus and slavery, and it was just like, well,
you know, and this is approved, approved, approved content for children,
Like well, you know, at least we didn't kill them, yeah,
(31:20):
you know what I'm saying, And like, well, you know,
you know in Europe, we don't we draw the line
at like cannibalism and these people that weird enslaving like
they practice it, you know. So I guess it's kind
of you know, maybe slavery's not bad and slavery, I
mean it's all over the world. They've always had slavery,
you know what I'm saying, So like they learned useful skills. Yeah,
(31:43):
I mean, you know, okay, so the skills in Africa,
Like so you're trying to tell me this this civilation's
civilization that is the bedrock of civilizations where all the
humanity come from. You know what I'm saying, We didn't
know how to do nothing right.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, I don't know, like if you're yeah, it's it's
it's so frustrating because it's it's what you could. I
think they're trying to like draw a line between I
don't know. The way slavery was often practiced in like
the Mediterranean, where there was a lot of manumission people
were often freed, and when they were freed, there was
not like ongoing stigma against having been a former slave.
(32:20):
With like a racial slavery system in the Americas that
was completely different, where manumission very rarely happened, and when
it did, you were still subject to heinous restrictions on
your personal liberty. Like it's just not a comparison.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, trying to use the lack of awareness of just
even the term slavery and what you mean by that,
you know what I'm saying, using it to your advantage.
It's like, well, anyone you know who's read a book
or two can be like, ah, what you did was different,
you know what I'm saying you and you know and
you know it. You know it's different, you know what
(32:55):
I'm saying. Yeah, like serfdom, you know, involuntary servitude, debt, slavery.
Any whenever, if there was ever two tribes and a
tribe got raided by another one, there was slavery, Like
I know, like that it exists since the dawn of time.
Not what you talking about though, you know what I'm
saying you and you know it. You know, so you're
(33:17):
playing on that. So I just think, like collectively us
just like keep hearing this shit and keep having to like,
you know, keep your cool and try to fight it
in the ballots and just and just the the just
the mind fuck of like these folks, y'all, really you're
(33:43):
gonna you're gonna vote for a dude that's out on bail,
that's a felon like this Sniggs face in seventy years
and y'all really finna, y'all really finna you really trying
to put this man in office again? Like just it's
such a mind fuck that you're like, man, I just
(34:05):
need to hit I just need to hit a white
lady with a chair, Like I don't. I just I'm
just gonna hit a white lady to the chair.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And we you know something I've I've brought up many
times on the politics is understanding sort of like the
collective sort of Black American psyche is we just processed
trauma through humor, like we when we make a joke
out of everything, and it's really so we're just not
like pushing random white people in the moving traffic, you know,
(34:36):
just because if not, you'd being like what's his name?
James Baldwin says that he was like, to be black
in America is to I'm butchering the quote, but to
be constantly under the surface at a rage level that
you're constantly trying to push down, you know what I'm saying.
So I feel like the humor, why why we got
(34:59):
so many about like nah, chare chair homie going to jail,
like here go your bail money? But that it was
amazing because like you just good job, you know, I'm saying,
an aquaman coming out the water, Like why why we
make jokes about it? Is like well, yeah, I mean
this is it's funny and if not, we'd be enraged
all the time.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Mm hmm, well, prop amen, I do feel like this
is a good lead in for the fact that we
are we are actively well preparing to do our Robert E.
Lee episodes, which have taken a lot of reading. But
I think you're gonna enjoy.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I can't wait. Yeah, because again I just like I'm
already locking and loading the jokes like I can't.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, he's he's such a baby, I think you Like
that was the thing that surprised me, Like I expected, like, okay, well,
this guy's you know, a bad person for obvious reasons
being the military leader of the Confederacy, But like the
degree to which this dude is a fucking baby is,
uh yeah, we're.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Gonna have a good time with this one.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I also, I also, as a thought experiment, my question
would be, Okay, Robert Evans, if you were in Montgomery
at that moment, I just how would you handle that.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I mean, if I see a bunch of people wailing
on a single dude, even outside of a situation where
it's clearly racist, I'm going to try to stop that
because I don't want to watch someone get beaten to
death in the street. Yeah, like, unless they have it coming.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
If it's like a guy with a swastika armband and
people are kicking him on the ground.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I might not intervene.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
I don't know, and that I might in that case,
I might just to try to stop people from catching
a fucking murder charge. But like, yeah, I feel like
now at the point at which there's like sixty people
fighting on the dock, I don't know that I'm I'm
running into that. Like, for one thing, it seems like
enough people are there. But yeah, you see, you see
a bunch of people like kicking the shit out of
a man trying to do his job.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
You should try to in.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, yeah, like those fucking security should have gotten in
there faster. But like, yes, I would hope that I
would run in at that point an attempt to stop
this what was happening. Yeah, absolutely, that's good. And I
would have had the presence of mind to pick up
that chair though the.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Chair is yeah, no, I just I would hope that,
like it would be I just wonder, like because again,
once you black out and get punch drunk, it's like
I would hope that, like they that the black people
around would have the wherewithal to be like, no, no, no, no,
he's with us.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah yeah, we'll say, yeah, that dude's with us.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
No no, no, no, he's with us. He's good, he's good,
he's good.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I think that's that's part of why you don't roll
in when there's like sixty people fighting.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It's also at that point, yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It's hard to tell how do you how do you help?
And if you've got like five people beating a man
on the ground, it's easy to know how to help.
You try to get that guy up and away from them.
You try to get them off of him. If you've
got what are effectively like two or three three dozen
fights going on on a doc, it's like, well, do
you just like start throwing hands like yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody wants somebody. Yeah, just like you know,
you just grab like find children and just kind of
like let me just move y'all out the way, y'all
back up?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you should.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I think when you're anytime you're in encountering a situation
like this, like your first is like what.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Can I do that will help?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
You?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Know, again, it's easy if you if there's a guy
getting beaten, or if there's someone seriously injured that needs
medical care, if it's at a point where it's like,
well this is just fucking chaos, then maybe you just watch.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah yeah, get y yeah, get it, get it, get
a higher vantage point. Just make sure you can watch
the watch where it's going. You don't want to get
sucked in, you know, because you might get trampled. You
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah, keep your fucking don't don't fall into your
phone because ship like that spreads.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, so true. Yeah, well that's a
usable piece of information. Yeah, for this otherwise just jokes
full podcast. Yep, yeah, well we all had a good
time today.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Prop.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Where can the people find you if they if they
would like to do that?
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Man, please, I am on the same network you are.
I'm on the Hood Politics Pod. My socials are all
the they're all prop hip hop. Like you said, I
am a coffee business owner. It's terraform cold brew. You
could use promo code hood and get fifteen percent off
your cold brew needs. Please help me sell, Please buy
(39:32):
his coffee. Good Lord, I suck a lot of money
into this shit. Please buy the coffee. But yeah, man,
prop hip Hop and Yeah and Yeah and Hood Politics Pod.
I'm on the network man, and please check out the show.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, check out Hood Politics, check out Props Delightful Coffee
and Yeah. You can find us right here tomorrow unless
it's a weekend, in which case you can find us
here when the weekend ends the next weekday.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We're here every weekday. We never stop. It could happen
here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
or Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
for it could happen here. Updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot
(40:27):
com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to it could happen here a podcast that
is being recorded far too early in the morning with
me to help me stay conscious. Is my friend and
coffee entrepreneur prop Aksa, Jason Petty Prop. How are you doing,
buddy man?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm wonderful on this fine day. I almost did an
AKA song forgetting which show I was. I was like,
oh wait, that's a zeigeys bit.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Happens to me all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, so which bit for which show am I supposed
to do?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Right now?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Here's what we were talking about before the show, which
is that we're both exhausted despite sleeping normally this week.
I feel like this may be something to do with
these aliens. Everybody's talking about something's going on here.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's yeah, aliens or just this like kind of week
long sort of holiday festival. I've been a part of that.
Apparently all of Black America has been participating in.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
We're all experiencing a level of bliss I don't think
we've had in a long time.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That is that is our subject of today, which is uh.
I think the term generally being used for it is
the Montgomery riverboat brawl that seems to be what we've
all settled on.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, so the fade in the water. I mean there's
new there's new spirituals and hymns.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
The Ballad of Black Aquaman. Yes, I love that kid.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
But we should before we get into all this, we
should talk about what actually happened, because I'm gonna guess, uh,
there's at least a chunk of people listening who are like,
what the fuck are you guys talking about?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
The short of it is.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
A couple of days ago, video dropped two different clips
I think are mainly what's what people are watching? Of
a fight at a riverboat dock in Montgomery, Alabama. And
basically what happens is you had this this river boat
and it's you know, Montgomery, Alabama's got a lot of tourism.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It's one of these big boats.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It holds about two hundred and seventy people, I think,
takes them up and down the river. You know, you
go up and down the river, you look at the
pretty things. I assume there's there's beer or something. You know,
it's all sorts of cities do this. So this boat
is heading back into dock and they've got all these
people who want to get off the boat. Because they've
been on for a while and.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They have enough people to get back in a lot
of people to get the next one.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know they have a set
spot that is their spot, and no one else is
to park their boat at the dock, as is usual
for a large business like this, and some dudes with
a pontoon boat have taken it up.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
They've parked there.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
So the captain gets on the pa for quite a
while and is like, hey, guys, move your pontoon. Hey guys,
you got to get that pontoon out of here. Hey, y'all,
if you don't get that pontoon out of here, I'm
going to call the cops. And if you have open containers,
the cops are going to fuck you. You don't want that,
so why don't you just move? And these guys get
like shitty at him and start like yelling at him
(03:07):
and cursing at him, flipping him the bird, So he
sends over his co captain and the captain of the
boat from the videos of scene appears to be a
white dude. The co captain is a middle aged black man.
He gets off the boat and he goes over to
just like move the pontoon boat, right, which is a
thing that boat people do when situations like this occur.
(03:28):
It is not like an unheard of situation. And while
he's doing it all, a whole bunch of the presumably
the dudes who own this pontoon boat boat who are
all white, surround him and start attacking him. And at
one point that looks like five or six people trying
to and he's for the record, he's holding his own
(03:48):
He's doing easy as long as you can. Yeah, And
then a number of nearby people start running to his aid,
including at least one of the kids on the riverboat.
Uh hops out or like pops into the water, and like, yeah,
you were talking about the rest of this.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a hood politics episode we recorded where
I try to do like initial reactions and try to
add some some like color to this, which will come
out a little later. This will come out before that,
but there's Yeah, So you're watching the video, you can't
it's all inaudible, so you can't really hear except for
the people recording. You hear them talking to them talking, right,
(04:30):
But judging from there's so many context clues to understand
what's happening, right, so as the co captain, the black
dude's getting off the boat to come talk to these
white boys right the way that you can just you
know when someone's like and unfortunately for white people, y'all
can't when you're drunk. Just your skin shows it, Yo,
(04:51):
saying like yea, so you could just see, Okay, this
dude's like, your skin's very flush with color right now.
So you're you're clearly drunk, you know what I'm saying.
And it's hot as hell because it's Montgomery, Alabama, right,
it's also Montgomery, Alabama. So you just from seeing the
interaction and the body language of both people in this conversation,
(05:15):
you're like, Okay, this conversation is getting intense. And then
and then once once the uh the the white gentleman
decides he's gonna put hands on on his black dude,
the black dude throws his hat up into the air.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He shared do es he shares us.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
As a universe. Now, Robert, is that not a universal
bating signal?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I would go so far as to say, it's like,
that's damn near like a mortal combat opener, right, like
say it is universal?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Its hair? Yes, it's like all right, we got to
throw hands right, so good, it's so good. So at
that point, that's when like clearly, like clearly, either these
white boys are are very very inebriated or have grossly
underestimated the feeling of collective identity black people have, because
(06:07):
when they decided to jump this man, you're in front
of hundreds of black people, oh yeah, who are all
waiting in line to get on this boat, right, who
are already pissed at you because you're not moving right.
So so when he does that, as you can see,
there are people running, you know, black men running as
fast as they can to kind of help you know this, uh, this,
(06:28):
this co captain who by this point is being stomped
because he's he's overpowered by five people. And then you
see this young man swimming to the shore, which is
like he's a yeah, I mean, that guy's a national treasure.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So I don't know that guy, but I can tell
that we can tell a couple of things about him.
One of them is that he reacts quickly in a crisis, yes, yeah, yeah.
And the other is that pretty good swimmer and.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, he must be a teenager because gonna have the
energy to swim there and then still start doing work.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Well and then pull yourself up onto a dock when yeah,
clothing's all soaked, very impressive feet.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah. So anyway, so as that happens, people finally catch up.
The boat finally gets a chance to dock. Now these
other people who were on the boat and watched all
this happen are like, now it's our turn. So they
get off the boat, go to the pontoon. Shirts off again,
another universal signal. If I've taken my T shirt off,
(07:32):
we're we're here, We're gonna throw down. So they start
throwing down. I mean, it's women getting involved. And then
now now now it becomes this entire brawl, right so,
and if you've ever been in situations where brawls break out,
they kind of move and shift as different people decide
they want a part of it, and other people get tired,
(07:52):
and somebody's finally you know' his nosebleeding whatever. And while
this is happening, there's a few clips where you can
see whether they're secure, the officers or police, they're kind
of just watching, kind of like, I don't know if
we need to do anything about this just yet. Now
finally the brawl gets around the corner and a brave
(08:15):
old man, old head who sees his opportunity.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Wow, who is who has brought? Who has brought that?
He's got the soul of a sniper. This man is
like watching and waiting to act.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yes, yes, so at this point, uh, there are some
security officers involved who have finally been like, all right, man,
maybe we just maybe we should stop this. And it's
almost like again you can't hear it, but judging by
their body language, the cops are kind of like, I
don't know, man, and white boys kind of asked for it,
like and you don't say so, they just kind of
(08:52):
watch it like, hey man, you ask for it, man,
And this is what happens. You should have moved your boat,
should have been talking ship like like like Kat Williams says,
shouldn't have been talking shit, you know. So so anyway
they do this and this this hero of a man
(09:13):
grabs a white folding chair and just whacks a dude
over the head with it who was attempting to attack
some other people. Now, clearly again, if you've been in
a brawl, maybe adding color that's not on the video,
but like, if you've been in a brawl, you understand,
at some point you kind of black out and you
(09:33):
just you just get punched drunk. So while he's hitting
a guy with a folding chair, there's this other white
lady who's attempting to intervene with an interaction that one
of the security or cop guys is having with turns
out which with probably one of her compadres.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And this is, by the way, a mixed gender brawl.
There's there's like, yeah, this is not not just dudes
throwing hands.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, y this yeah, it's it's it's it's girls on girls,
it's girls on dudes. It's dudes on girls. It's a brawl,
you know. So the officer, like officers do when you
try to intervene with them having interactions with with somebody
pushes the lady away. Now, now the lady's in river
broke crocs, right, so her feet just fall right through
(10:19):
the crocs, right. She gets pushed down and just happens
to be in the eyesight of this of this sixty
old man with a folded chair. And while she's down,
he just turns and just whax her over the head
with this chair.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Oh he sure does. He gives you the w W
E special, I mean, just New World Order suck.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It just smacks her with a folding chair, and at
that point, you it's almost like and again it's all
in audible, but you just see the officers go like, shit.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Man, yep, now we got to do something.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Now we got like fuck man, now we got to
arrest you, dude. Right. So yeah, so the cops finally
go like what the fuck man, They take the chair
from the guy, and the dude his body language is
so like like he doesn't even know what's happening, like
I'm just swinging, you know. So when the officer finally
takes the chair and they like, they're like, dude, you
hit the lady. You hit the lady, you hit the lady.
(11:22):
We got we yeah, we gotta do something. We got
to arrest you now, right And which, of course, the
internet watching it, and even the person holding even the
person shooting the video, we all like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Nah, but he's definitely going to jail.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That guy going to jail. Everybody else yeah might be fine,
He's going to jail. Yeah, And uh, and that's pretty
much where where the video stops.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, so it has, uh, it has obviously gone everywhere
since then, there's a lot of writing about like, yeah,
why this has like taken off uh so much and
and uh been seen us so inspirational to people. I
think it's because it seems we've all seen like too
many videos that are just kind of the first part
of this where like, yeah, there's like a bunch of
(12:11):
racist white pean and by the way, there's at least
you can't hear it on the video, but people have
said that like these folks when that co captain came down,
were like shouting the inward adhaim and stuff. Yeah, so
we've all seen the variants of this that are just like, yeah,
some black men or black woman getting abused by a
bunch of racists, and this one starts looking like that
(12:33):
and then turns into like a beautiful come uppance, Like
these people picked a fight against a man they thought
was like alone and kind of heavy set and older
and that they could like wail on and just wound
up getting absolutely housed. Based on at least what I'm
(12:54):
looking at here, looks like three of the white folks
involved in this have been charged with crime. The police
are talking to the chair guy. It's unclear yet like
what exactly charges he's gonna catch.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
He was on a he was on a radio show,
a morning show in Alabama, whare with just Uh, sort
of an internet personality that like in the black community,
we're all very familiar with. And so they asked her.
They asked him like, the lady asked him like okay, okay,
you had the chair and the lady was already down,
(13:30):
like what what what happened? He said, It feels like
it's like we wrote the script where he goes man
I blacked out, and he said, I just thought about
Rosa Parks and that lady that wouldn't give the seat
to her. I was like, I'll give her a chair.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
But you know, fights are ugly things, but also in
some ways beautiful things. It's a there's a lot going
on in this video. I'm not surprised that it's it's
(14:13):
been taken by so many people. There's some lessons I
think bystanders can take from this. From one thing, if
like fifty people are having a giant brawl, might want
to get out of there.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Just leave, Yeah, just bounce. You should know to leave.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, yeah, not a good thing to get in the
middle of. But second, if you're parked in someone else's
boat spot, maybe instead of shouting racial slurs, get your
fucking boat moved.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
It's not. It was like, yeah, I think what it's
It speaks to so much because this was such an
avoidable situation, you guess, is completely avoidable, bro, just slide
over a little bit. I feel like if you've like,
if you've driven a car on a highway, then you've
seen a semi truck. And when the semi truck just
(15:01):
get out his what like, why is you picking this fight? Man?
Just he can't. It's a big old at wheelerd. Just
this is courtesy. That's a bigger So I'm just saying, like,
that's a bigger boat than you. You're more nimble, you
can move, and clearly it's a line of people waiting
to get off. I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
That's one of the things I think that's involved here
that's interesting to me is that there's this This is
not just I mean, like, obviously the fact that these
guys were biggots is a factor here, but there's also
just this increasingly common freedom that the most selfish people
in our society feel to be like aggressive about the
(15:43):
fact that they don't owe anyone else, like basic like politeness, right,
like the very basic. Though two hundred and seventy people
are being inconvenienced because I parked by shit in the
wrong space.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I should bounce, you know, I should probably at least say,
oh sorry, I fucked up.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Oh yeah, like no, we're gonna make this a thing
because like we get to park wherever the fuck we
want and fuck you like that. That kind of attitude
is like it's so frustrating, like I can't even get
myself into the head of someone who would do what
these guys did and not like feel like they were
(16:22):
an asshole. Like I had to do the thing every
now and then I think most of us do where
like I park my car in like a a like
a red zone or something because it's like I got
to be It's like there's no spaces. I'm thirty students, right, yeah,
And you get out and someone seeing you like in
the fucking red and they're like, yes, you know, like
I know will at one point, man, I'm sorry, Like yeah, dude,
(16:44):
I'm so sorry, bro, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Look I'm gone, I'm gone, my bad, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And to have the the fucking HUTSBA to just like
look at a boat of two hundred and seventy people
be like, fuck all of you, Like I want to
keep my stupid ass bart doing here for some reason.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, and then the willingness to be like, what the
fuck you're gonna do about it? Well, we'll jump you
if you get that mad, and just and whether it's
whether you're adding to either the lack of like situational
awareness or just that that overall hutzvah like you said
of just like whatever, I'll take all of you, like
(17:20):
really you really really like Yeah, I think that there's
a there's a lot to color here too, with the
fact that, first of all, this is take where it's
taking place. I mean we're still in Montgomery, Alabama here
and which and on a dock that was obviously and
(17:43):
verifiably a dock where slaves were dropped off at you
know what I'm saying. So you have that history, right,
you have the history of the Montgomery bus boycotts. You
know what I'm saying, Like, this is this is the
city where Rosa Parks did the thing. You know what
I'm saying, Like, this is where it happens. There's so
much history in the city and on top of that,
(18:03):
like I mean there's high schools in Alabama named Robert E. Lee,
like Robert E. Lee High School, Like we're talking about
we're talking about a place that I mean what it
was in the news in the odds that, Like I mean,
there was a high school that just desegregated, like in
the year twenty something.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Like they got there.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, yeah, they just desegregated high school. Right. It made
the news in twenty ten because they finally had a
desegregated prom. But that was just the prom. And it's
just that the prom white school invited the black They
can't go to school together. They could just do a
dance with this. This is where. This is the state
(18:43):
that this happened in. So you're like, you're in this
like and I hate to like otherise them, but I'm
an otherise them in the sense that this is some
like multiverse bizarro world where you what desegregation is recent,
(19:05):
you know what I'm saying. So when you have that
type of thing, first of all, you have to have
you have to remember, like both of those things are
sitting in sort of the collective consciousness of that community,
whether especially for the black people who are like this,
this is the world we live in. But we've also
proven that if you push us far enough, you know
(19:25):
what I'm saying, like, we're not gonna stand for it.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
You know, we pick up a folded chair, We'll pick
up a folding chair, which has become something of a
symbol in the last new open carry Yeah. I saw
at least one TikTok video that was just it was like,
there's like a couple of people watching as this young
black guy in a Walmart like was holding up and
like testing it like the way that you would like
(19:49):
a gun at the gun store.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He's like, yeah, man, the memes have been glorious. I've
seen folding chair earrings, I've seen dot but the one
is this that I said, uh, I said Robert a
video of the folding chair getting interviewed. Yeah. Oh, he's
one of the first of all. That's one of the
(20:11):
funniest accounts you could ever follow. But he was just
like you, I was just sitting there and then we
started doing charity work.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And which account is that?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh? Yeah, Ace Vance a ce b A n CE.
He does just the most incredible voiceovers. Yeah, with the
chair was just like, who's heading out charities. I was
doing charity work, yes, freely given ass whoopings like have
a seat, might step up, have a seat anyway, So good.
(20:44):
But I I I think that that like is important.
I think another thing that I think is interesting specifically
for like that it can happen here audience, which I
one thing I love about the show is like you
give y'all give so much his oracle context to whatever
we're looking at. You know what I'm saying, as as
almost like proof of concept that not only can it
(21:06):
happen here, it is happening here, you know what I'm saying.
And I think for this one, there was this interesting moment.
This is another good follow for you guys. Got named consciously.
His name is the Conscious Lee. He was like like
world renown like debater, a master debater. I'm just kidding, uh,
(21:31):
but he was a world renowned debater. He was one
of the first like like him and his partner was
like the first black like co champions in like professional
debate or college level debate anyway. So he's a brilliant,
brilliant thinker. He's like you know, YouTube, earthy year styles whatever,
right anyway, content creator anyway, he brought up this this
(21:52):
point among sort of the the black community that what
came out of this too was this hashtag of like, yo,
we are not our ancestors, you know which, as I
understand the sentiment, it also shows sort of a lack
(22:13):
of historical knowledge of like really how our ancestors handled slavery.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Like yeah, like the amount of resistance.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
The amount of resistance we actually had, you know what
I'm saying. And and even just like I would even
courage just like a simple Google search of the amount
of rebellions, you know, you just whether you're talking about
the famous ones like the Haitian rebellion, which we did
a bastard's pot about. You know what I'm saying, We're
like these fool these fools threw off their their oppressors.
(22:40):
You have Nah Turner, you know what I'm saying, which
I talk about more on on on the politics. But
like I my seventh grade like historical figure report was
on that Turner and I was busted like a suburban
like middle school for a little bit. So I'm walking
into the suburban middle school with my NAT Turner paper.
(23:05):
My poor English teacher she hadn't been thinking, oh what
she was thinking but anyway, Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
you have like there was one, there was there were
one in New York. There was the one during the
Thirteen Colonies. Like we have such a history of like
rebellion and resistance, Like don't think not to mention slave
ships that were overtaken, you know what I'm saying by
(23:26):
their captors, Like you know what I'm saying, So like
these things have there is a rich history of us
of us rebelling, so like it's almost a point a
point of lesson, a point of learning for the black
community too.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Yeah, I think that's like a really useful teachable moment.
While everyone's kind of amped up about this thing to
talk about it. I've heard it described as like left
handed power, uh, kind of in some books that would
talk about not just you know what we've been chatting about,
what you are these kind of big moments of insurrection
among enslaved people, but like the everyday acts of resistance
(24:02):
by people who were enslaved, like while they are you know,
on the plantation stuff, different ways of like pulling autonomy
of like you know, teaching their kids how to read
or you know, taking you know, getting things like money
or extra resources, you know, out of the out of
the people who are attempting to uh yeah, to own them,
(24:22):
like methods of escape and resistance, you know, all these
methods of like preserving traditional art and religion while you know,
in chains, like all that kind of stuff is also.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yeah, I hope it.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
I hope it like spurs some of that, you know,
the the folding chair can be added to a rich
history of resistance.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yes, yes, and uh yeah, I'm also curious around like
obviously you and I on this on that are currently
being recorded, plus a lot of the community that that
both of us represent, Like, yeah, we're not pacifists like
(25:05):
you at all, you know what I'm saying. And I
find that discourse to be interesting too, and especially around
you know, if you're you're and I'm like, you know,
neither is the broader racist community like y'are not pacifist either.
(25:27):
Like you ask for the smoke, you got the smoke. Yeah,
Like what is more American than this?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
It's I think a more optimistic chapter, especially like as
we head into twenty twenty four, as we deal with
like kind of these continuing efforts to disenfranchise particularly black
voters across large chunks of the South. I'm glad that
we've got this, uh what will hopefully continue to be
(26:08):
a powerful image for people to kind of rally behind.
This is a this is a nice thing to have.
It's a I don't know, and it's interesting, like people,
things are said in a video like this that is
just kind of like chaotic brawling, but it speaks to
people in a way that you know, a history textbook,
uh maybe isn't going to reach them, because there's just
(26:31):
something so kinetic and powerful about like watching watching a
large group of people realize that an injustice is going
down and then be like, well, I guess we've got
to throw throw hands to stop this shit.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, it's a microcosm of like a century and a
half or so of or a couple of centuries of history.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Whether it's yeah, whether it's a absolutely the couple of
centuries of history. And then you're like at at least
ten years of witnessing, you know, black bodies being brutalized
when no one, when no one was there to help,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Just seeing the video just watch.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, and and then seeing no recourse like okay, well
there's well there's never. I mean, are we gonna wait
for the justice system? You know, the best thing we've
gotten so far is like no no knock warrants. I mean, thanks,
you know what I'm saying, Like, you know, at a
state you know, like so so and a lot of
(27:35):
promises of police reform, you know what I'm saying. So
you just you don't. I mean, like during Trump's presidency,
there was I mean, there was an uptick in lynching,
Like you know what I'm saying, Like these fools are
getting old school, you know. So it is without hearing
any video, without knowing anything, that those men were actually saying,
(27:57):
whether they were just running the mill pricks or just
ra pricks, whatever it was, it is a Again, if
you're a if you're a black person in Alabama, it
is completely reasonable to believe that if we wasn't there
to help, that man would have been on the bottom
(28:19):
of that river. Yeah, that man would have been strung
up in a tree in the woods and we'd never
seen him again.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
I mean just the the the sheer like rapidity with
which he was surrounded and put on the ground by
a large number of men did not suggest that they
were that the uh that the additional dudes who had
arrived to wail on him were in a mood to
like de escalate the situation.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah yeah, and that's like I mean, I feel like
that's like a reality that uh you know, you this
it's almost like for the rest of the country, it's
like this if you understand, like this is the reality
we need you to understand when we say I could die,
(29:05):
you know what I'm saying, Like when you talk about
racism and not thing, it's just some people are stupid.
There's fucking bigots everywhere. Like no, when we say it's
life or death, like you're that's what you're witnessing, Like
he could have died that moment, you know what I'm saying.
And I think at a at a and whether it's
front of mine or back of mine, that is something
that as a person of color, like you just kind
(29:26):
of know that like this, this would this if it
would have just been a fight, you know what I'm saying.
Then I think if it was just just been a brawl,
like most people would have just stayed out of it,
Like if them to just if.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
They just prescribe the guys swinging on each other smart play.
If it's just two guys swinging on each other.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Just yeah, you take your phone on, you watch You're
just like, all right, man, hey, get your licks in.
You know, you cheer for your boy. But like, but
when somebody jumps in, it's like, Okay, I'm gonna help
the homie. But you jump in helping the homie in Montgomery, Alabama.
But it's like, all right, yeah this he might die,
so we don't. It's different.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Yeah, anything else to get to on this?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Man? I think I might be I think one more thing,
I think to add color to this, and I might
be like aggrandizing, but I think it's also important because
what I'm what I'm really interested in is just the collective,
cathartic sort of feeling this has had. Is because there's
(30:37):
so much built up tension. You have to talk about
the Florida of it all, you know what I'm saying,
and being aware of the idea that like you're right
in front of our face, like you're trying to erase history,
(30:58):
you know what I'm saying. Like, And and I just
five minutes ago watched that prager you video for kids
about about Christopher Columbus and slavery, and it was just like, well,
you know, and this is approved, approved, approved content for children,
Like well, you know, at least we didn't kill them, yeah,
(31:20):
you know what I'm saying, And like, well, you know,
you know in Europe, we don't we draw the line
at like cannibalism and these people that weird enslaving like
they practice it, you know. So I guess it's kind
of you know, maybe slavery's not bad and slavery, I
mean it's all over the world. They've always had slavery,
you know what I'm saying, So like they learned useful skills. Yeah,
(31:43):
I mean, you know, okay, so the skills in Africa,
Like so you're trying to tell me this this civilation's
civilization that is the bedrock of civilizations where all the
humanity come from. You know what I'm saying, We didn't
know how to do nothing right.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, I don't know, like if you're yeah, it's it's
it's so frustrating because it's it's what you could. I
think they're trying to like draw a line between I
don't know. The way slavery was often practiced in like
the Mediterranean, where there was a lot of manumission people
were often freed, and when they were freed, there was
not like ongoing stigma against having been a former slave.
(32:20):
With like a racial slavery system in the Americas that
was completely different, where manumission very rarely happened, and when
it did, you were still subject to heinous restrictions on
your personal liberty. Like it's just not a comparison.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, trying to use the lack of awareness of just
even the term slavery and what you mean by that,
you know what I'm saying, using it to your advantage.
It's like, well, anyone you know who's read a book
or two can be like, ah, what you did was different,
you know what I'm saying you and you know and
you know it. You know it's different, you know what
(32:55):
I'm saying. Yeah, like serfdom, you know, involuntary servitude, debt, slavery.
Any whenever, if there was ever two tribes and a
tribe got raided by another one, there was slavery, Like
I know, like that it exists since the dawn of time.
Not what you talking about though, you know what I'm
saying you and you know it. You know, so you're
(33:17):
playing on that. So I just think, like collectively us
just like keep hearing this shit and keep having to like,
you know, keep your cool and try to fight it
in the ballots and just and just the the just
the mind fuck of like these folks, y'all, really you're
(33:43):
gonna you're gonna vote for a dude that's out on bail,
that's a felon like this Sniggs face in seventy years
and y'all really finna, y'all really finna you really trying
to put this man in office again? Like just it's
such a mind fuck that you're like, man, I just
(34:05):
need to hit I just need to hit a white
lady with a chair, Like I don't. I just I'm
just gonna hit a white lady to the chair.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And we you know something I've I've brought up many
times on the politics is understanding sort of like the
collective sort of Black American psyche is we just processed
trauma through humor, like we when we make a joke
out of everything, and it's really so we're just not
like pushing random white people in the moving traffic, you know,
(34:36):
just because if not, you'd being like what's his name?
James Baldwin says that he was like, to be black
in America is to I'm butchering the quote, but to
be constantly under the surface at a rage level that
you're constantly trying to push down, you know what I'm saying.
So I feel like the humor, why why we got
(34:59):
so many about like nah, chare chair homie going to jail,
like here go your bail money? But that it was
amazing because like you just good job, you know, I'm saying,
an aquaman coming out the water, Like why why we
make jokes about it? Is like well, yeah, I mean
this is it's funny and if not, we'd be enraged
all the time.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Mm hmm, well, prop amen, I do feel like this
is a good lead in for the fact that we
are we are actively well preparing to do our Robert E.
Lee episodes, which have taken a lot of reading. But
I think you're gonna enjoy.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
I can't wait. Yeah, because again I just like I'm
already locking and loading the jokes like I can't.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, he's he's such a baby, I think you Like
that was the thing that surprised me, Like I expected, like, okay, well,
this guy's you know, a bad person for obvious reasons
being the military leader of the Confederacy, But like the
degree to which this dude is a fucking baby is,
uh yeah, we're.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Gonna have a good time with this one.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I also, I also, as a thought experiment, my question
would be, Okay, Robert Evans, if you were in Montgomery
at that moment, I just how would you handle that.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
I mean, if I see a bunch of people wailing
on a single dude, even outside of a situation where
it's clearly racist, I'm going to try to stop that
because I don't want to watch someone get beaten to
death in the street. Yeah, like, unless they have it coming.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
If it's like a guy with a swastika armband and
people are kicking him on the ground.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
I might not intervene.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
I don't know, and that I might in that case,
I might just to try to stop people from catching
a fucking murder charge. But like, yeah, I feel like
now at the point at which there's like sixty people
fighting on the dock, I don't know that I'm I'm
running into that. Like, for one thing, it seems like
enough people are there. But yeah, you see, you see
a bunch of people like kicking the shit out of
a man trying to do his job.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
You should try to in.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, yeah, like those fucking security should have gotten in
there faster. But like, yes, I would hope that I
would run in at that point an attempt to stop
this what was happening. Yeah, absolutely, that's good. And I
would have had the presence of mind to pick up
that chair though the.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Chair is yeah, no, I just I would hope that,
like it would be I just wonder, like because again,
once you black out and get punch drunk, it's like
I would hope that, like they that the black people
around would have the wherewithal to be like, no, no, no, no,
he's with us.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah yeah, we'll say, yeah, that dude's with us.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
No no, no, no, he's with us. He's good, he's good,
he's good.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I think that's that's part of why you don't roll
in when there's like sixty people fighting.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It's also at that point, yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It's hard to tell how do you how do you help?
And if you've got like five people beating a man
on the ground, it's easy to know how to help.
You try to get that guy up and away from them.
You try to get them off of him. If you've
got what are effectively like two or three three dozen
fights going on on a doc, it's like, well, do
you just like start throwing hands like yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody wants somebody. Yeah, just like you know,
you just grab like find children and just kind of
like let me just move y'all out the way, y'all
back up?
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah you should.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I think when you're anytime you're in encountering a situation
like this, like your first is like what.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Can I do that will help?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
You?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Know, again, it's easy if you if there's a guy
getting beaten, or if there's someone seriously injured that needs
medical care, if it's at a point where it's like,
well this is just fucking chaos, then maybe you just watch.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah yeah, get y yeah, get it, get it, get
a higher vantage point. Just make sure you can watch
the watch where it's going. You don't want to get
sucked in, you know, because you might get trampled. You
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah, keep your fucking don't don't fall into your
phone because ship like that spreads.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, so true. Yeah, well that's a
usable piece of information. Yeah, for this otherwise just jokes
full podcast. Yep, yeah, well we all had a good
time today.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
Prop.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Where can the people find you if they if they
would like to do that?
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Man, please, I am on the same network you are.
I'm on the Hood Politics Pod. My socials are all
the they're all prop hip hop. Like you said, I
am a coffee business owner. It's terraform cold brew. You
could use promo code hood and get fifteen percent off
your cold brew needs. Please help me sell, Please buy
(39:32):
his coffee. Good Lord, I suck a lot of money
into this shit. Please buy the coffee. But yeah, man,
prop hip Hop and Yeah and Yeah and Hood Politics Pod.
I'm on the network man, and please check out the show.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, check out Hood Politics, check out Props Delightful Coffee
and Yeah. You can find us right here tomorrow unless
it's a weekend, in which case you can find us
here when the weekend ends the next weekday.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We're here every weekday. We never stop. It could happen
here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
or Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
for it could happen here. Updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot
(40:27):
com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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