BAIL Yourself Out

Championing Black Excellence

• Kandice Whitaker • Season 3 • Episode 8

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Kandice, Ingrid, and Van discussed strategies for personal and professional growth through resilience, the Georgia Black Expo, and the importance of believing in oneself. They also addressed the significant wealth gap between black and white families in the US, with a focus on homeownership and political engagement. Ingrid and Speaker 1 emphasized the significance of local politics and community engagement in addressing social issues, and encouraged listeners to join their organization and participate in events to make a difference. Overall, the conversation highlighted the importance of collective action and civic engagement in promoting equality and addressing systemic inequality.

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Kandice, welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour Podcast, where each week we'll help you navigate the corporate jungle. Here's your host, Kandice Whitaker, no, it's happy hour. Welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour pod, friends. Here we focus on personal growth, career growth and entrepreneurship. Our crew is dedicated to providing you with the tools and insights necessary to turn your dreams into reality and get your money up. In each episode, we'll explore strategies rooted in the bail method of resilience, guiding you to conquer challenges and thrive in everything you do. I'm your host, Kandice Whitaker, and at the age of 21 I was a determined young mother who wanted to ensure my best possible life and defy the odds. So I took steps towards achieving the life I desired. I got my master's degree. Then I was a sought after consultant, which led me to starting my own company. I have a passion for guiding people into the life they envision through resilience, using the bail yourself out approach. So I'm happy you're here. Kick off your shoes and relax your feet, fill up your favorite drink, because the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast is about to start now. You're listening to Kandice with a, k, and together, we'll learn how to bail yourself out. B, believe that you can a accept change as a natural part of any process. I inventory your strengths and the strengths available to you and your network. L learn from your experience and the experience of others. Hey, y'all Hey, welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast, and today, my guest co host in the lounges, my girl, dr, Ingrid, Paris. I didn't ask you how you want to be introduced, so going into other people about you. Well, I'm Ingrid, and I don't think there's a whole lot to tell, but I am the CEO of the Georgia black Expo, amongst a few other things, but CEO is the chief excellence officer, because excellence is my brand and something I'm very passionate about. But I don't know what else do we want to know about me? Oh, okay, so Ingrid's being very modest. The reason we rolled Ingrid up today, yes, she does, Georgia black Expo. That is true. Among other things, Ingrid is an amazing person with amazing background. Y'all, I'ma just talk to the people who are listening. Multi business owner, probably one of the most positive, inspirational people that I know, and that's important too. We've known each other, oh, goodness, a little bit over a decade at this point, and when I tell you, she is always doing something amazing, and you're like, oh, and she just talks about, like, this regular people. This is the friend where you go to her house, and you talk to somebody who was, I don't know, sitting next to you with the pool, and then you're like, wait a minute, that person's in Congress. This is that person so low key, so humble. Like, wait what you mean? Like, Denise, that I was talking to all night, she's in Congress. Oh, word, ah, you are hilarious, aside from the fact your dad's a platter, right? That's not even you. That's your dad, though, right? Yeah. So, okay, so I didn't even know that, Ingrid, Did I ever tell you this story? We didn't know that we knew each other like, 10 years and I did not know that y'all so Ingrid invites me to a birthday party, right? Her dad sings, and so we all spent the night, and the next morning, I'm going to the airport. Her dad was like, looking for a phone book. I'm not lying to get a cab to go to the airport. I was like, sir, I'm going to the airport. You can ride with me like you can ride shotgun is cool, right? So we're in the car, we're talking, and he's like, oh yeah. He said something about traveling somewhere Brazil. I was like, oh cool, yeah. I don't know, I was gonna say Argentina, But, see, I was off, and I was like, I'm so cool. Do you go there a lot for work? He goes, Yeah, I'm a platter. I was like, oh, as in. I was like, whoa, okay. So like, where do you go from there? You just start talking about something else. How about the weather? But anyway, that was your dad. But this is the type of person that Ingrid is always around greatness, and she's just so inspiring. And so I thought she would be an amazing person to talk to us. And so Georgia black Expo is an organization that I'm a part of. How'd you come up with the idea for Georgia black Expo? Well, that's a great question. I it came from a few things. So one was, I am a. Originally from Missouri, St Louis. Yes, I am from the so many state and I was a part of quite a few organizations while there. But one of the boards that I sat on was for the Missouri black Expo, which at the time, was the second largest Expo black Expo in the country, second to the Indianapolis, which was the largest and, you know, around that time, and they were in operation for about 25 years, but averaged about, you know, 50,000 guests every year. And it was just a great memory, not just the involvement from the, you know, back end, from the board, but also before I was involved at that level. It was just a part of my background. When you think of pivotal things that happened, or things that you went to, that that occurred, and the Missouri black Expo was always in the background, right? That's where you, you know, we met this person. Or, you know, your significant other, oh, yeah, you met yours too, at the black Expo. Or, in particular, if you were working with a company, some kind of way of a deal was struck, or you met the person that moved it to the next level. There, the entertainment was always amazing. And then even when I worked in other spaces, just the involvement with the community, with that organization and other things, there were just so many pivotal moments, right? And so when I moved to Georgia, which was, oh goodness, it's been seven years now, I believe, and I wanted to kind of recreate where I had been, not just physically, but more from a community standpoint. What was I involved in? What did I do? Because prior to moving to Georgia, I was on projects across the country, right? I work in some other spaces, and one of them is kind of where we met, right? But working within the healthcare, IT management, space and project management and training, and so I literally was in a different city every 18 months for these assignments. And so I was there, but I really wasn't engaged. And so when I moved to Georgia, I was very intentional about what space I wanted to occupy. I didn't just want to move to Georgia. I wanted to live in Georgia. And living to me is, you know, I wanted to be a part of the framework there, the fabric there. I wanted to be engaged. I wanted to contribute. And so I started looking for, okay, all the things that I was doing back when I was more active, before I really had gotten on the road and doing more of that type of consulting. And so NAACP and ncnw and the different organizations politically that I was involved in, and just started, you know, getting back into those spaces. And then I said, oh my goodness, where's the Georgia black Expo? So I can help them, you know, I figured I would, you know, volunteer or, you know, see if they needed some support on the board, whatever was needed. And I was looking around, and it wasn't one. Oh, how's that possible? And, you know, live in the Atlanta metro, Atlanta, right, Atlanta, right, and that is like the citadel of excellence for black people. What's going on here? And so I started to research and found that there were some events that were put on under a name, or a couple of names that utilized Georgia black expos, but there was not a entity that was active, and me, being the mentally deficient person that I am, decided that, well, I guess that means I need to do it well, I definitely believe that your gift will make room for you. But also, who would have known when you started this? You know, a couple of years ago at this point, how timely it would be. You know, it seems like as a society, as American society, we have gone back to basics, with open hostility towards black people and people of color, not just black people. And you know, I remember growing up, many of my fond memories were also associated with organizations not like black Expo, but you know, NAACP church functions that also would kind of function in a similar space to what a Georgia black expo or an act a black Expo would be. Kudos to you that. You saw an opportunity that, hey, we need this. This would be great. And you went and started it, so many people would be like, Whoa. We should have something like this. And then that's the end of the conversation. That is just so many people with this, so many people, so many people. So let me ask you this, the Georgia black Expo aims to be a globally recognized organization of its sort, right? So what specific strategies did you implement to achieve this ambitious goal? Like this is a big thing, certainly, and I'm back up just a little bit because we talked about, you know, the Georgia black Expo as this event, right? But as I started getting more into what it looked like, I said, Yeah, an event, of course. But there, there seemed to be a need for more. And so it is also an organization. And so aside from having an event that happens to be an expo there, it's a full event. And so as we, as you mentioned, we do aim to be a globally recognized entity and the largest, most comprehensive exposition of its kind, and with programming that supports that. And so outside of the expo itself, as an event, which is September 7 and eighth, I forget, but outside of that event, we operate year round, and we have seven pillars which are the foundation of the organization, right? And so with those pillars, there's things that we do inside the community. We collaborate with other organizations and entities, and we are working on several other pieces to help really grow that engagement and that grass root, well, engagement within the community, and, you know, with the event. So to answer the question, what are we doing to become this putting in a lot of hard work? We're blessed with amazing people, our team. I, I don't know how I get so lucky sometimes, to just be surrounded by brilliant, brilliant black people. And, you know, case in point, ma'am, you appreciate, you know, the things that you do and and just a team of people that are not just at an event and, you know, putting on an expo, but that are engaged in every part of the mission, and so that's how we will become that globally recognized entity, by putting in the work to do what our community needs. And our community, even though it's based out of Georgia. Our community is a global one, and people from outside of Georgia and outside of the country have interests that will be satisfied by being a part of our community and coming to our events. And so yeah, that's what we're doing, really, to make sure that we become what we seek to be really quickly. When you started, you mentioned the seven pillars of the Georgia black Expo organization. Can you tell the folks listening what those are? And don't ask me what they are, because I don't know. I know we go over them at the I don't know. I know some of them. So I even going to sit up here and lie, okay, I don't know what, or you may not know them in the head, right, but you do know them by heart, because they're all things. It's right here. It's all a part of your core, and thus the foundation of the organization. But those seven pillars, and I came up with that based upon areas that were just things that I was passionate about and had interest in contributing to the community. In that way, business is one of the pillars so we support our small business community. We had a Business and Technology Summit last October, and within the expo this year we'll have a business summit. And there's just so much, one so much to celebrate about the business theme here in Georgia. But there's also, there are areas that there's still gaps, and so we work to help to close the gaps. What are the pain points for the businesses in our community? Those are the pieces and the areas that we, you know, do things to assist with. So business is one of them, wealth and wealth and fine. Finance is another part. As African Americans, again, we're in a state where we are doing better from a wealth perspective than lots of other states African Americans across the country. However, as well as we're doing, the flip side is our disparities here are also deeper than those that you see across the country. And so working on promoting that education, education, education and learning is at the forefront of everything that we do, whatever the pillar is, whatever the engagement is we are always looking at what are ways that we can educate. Our social media is used, of course, you gotta put out things that are interesting so that somebody click on something. However, our focus is very education based. We want to make sure that we can share whatever knowledge comes into our sphere with the community. So education and learning, political and civic engagement, that's another big one I worked with in the political sphere for quite a bit throughout my path. I actually started one of my first internships was when I was an undergrad at the University of Minnesota, and it was at the House of Representatives Information Office, and that turned into one of, you know, early job after the internship ended. I worked there for a while, but that and some things that happened during that time to me personally, where I lost my voice and found that how you can gain your voice is by having knowledge of the political process and structures. And that's something that I've been passionate about since I was, again, a young person, and it has to be a part of the engagement. We almost there. Well, you know what? We can take a break, and then when we get back, what do you want to talk about? You have a show ID drop Kandice alive. At bail yourself out. Pod.com Do you want me to speak at your next event? Hit me up at bail yourself out. Pod.com now back to the show. Hey, welcome back to the bail yourself out. Happy Hour lounge, friends. I'm talking to my girl, Dr Ingrid parish. She's our co host today, and we're talking about the Georgia black Expo. We talked about where the idea came from, back in her days in St Louis, and we got to three of the seven pillars. So go ahead and finish them. I think we left off at political and civic engagement. And so yeah, but that one was very close to my heart, and I also within that political and civic engagement. I mentioned a couple of the organizations that I was active with, but was always very even from high school, was always extremely active in the community, with community and civic groups. And so from a political standpoint, also engaged in a lot of political groups with, you know, I was executive director of the Legislative Black Caucus, and actually managed several large statewide, regional, national campaigns, both cause and candidate. I mean, from gubernatorial congressional candidate down to initiatives as diverse as for the state of Colorado, I ran an initiative for a smarter Colorado, which had to do with the environment, and in a different state, I did life saving cures, which was the early part of stem cell research when people still consider that, they're like, oh, that that utilizes technology that sounds like an abortion. And so those things, again, things that I was passionate about into this. And so then there's the art side of me, multi dimensional. So arts and entertainment is another one of the pillars. And how can you celebrate Georgia out celebrating the arts and everything that has come out of that? And it's become the Hollywood of the South. It is the, you know, music, mega community. And so there's just so much abundance within that space for things to celebrate and to showcase. And so that was a given. And also, like you, we have that music background and love for the arts, so that had to be a part of it. And. Yeah, we are our technology and innovation. How can we not? You know, we work in a space that is technology driven, but also being in a place where there's so much technological movement, but within our communities, we are still behind the eight ball, we are still not where we need to be as it relates to the our knowledge base of technology, nor our utilization of it, and we're that outpacing right now is more significant than it ever was, and the implications of it are more significant because a lot of jobs that anybody could take at some time before they're not available to us anymore, because technology has where, oh, that can be done. We went to a restaurant, and the robot was busting the tables. And, you know, as a writer, I started school in journalism, and I still get irritated with some of the stuff that I see, but people can write a whole article using artificial intelligence. That's not what put out, but it still it makes the playing ground a lot different than it was. And so technology is definitely another foundational piece. And last but not least, health, you know, health and wellness. I could really go on and on and on, way too long about that, but that has to be a space of importance for us in our community. So those are the seven pillars of the Georgia black Expo. Well, you've said so much, and as you were talking, I was taking notes, because I wanted to go back and talk about a couple of things. You know, the first word that comes to mind here is wealth or finance, right? Because everything that you mentioned, with maybe the exceptions of art, right? They're all connected to wealth and access to funds in some way, right? And I said, All right, let me quickly, because we know there's a stark racial divide in the United States in terms of wealth, right? And you know, we always talk about the racial gap between whites, the wealth gap, rather between whites and blacks. But, you know, Asians are top. Whites are not top So, and when you talk about Asians, we're talking about Indians, not just, you know, maybe what we would call, like Chinese or Korean, not that Asian. But you know, Indians, because they come over here and they work in tech, and those are the jobs with big money, and their wealth, according to NBC News, is like 1.8 million, right? And this is as of 2022 where blacks was like at 211,000 right? And the biggest contributing factor to that is home ownership. And, you know, part of it is, I think I'll say it until I die, is, I think in our community, we care too much about what other people think, and so we do things connected to that. Stop selling grandma's house. That's number one, right? Home ownership is your number one way to wealth, even if you don't have money today, at least it is an asset from which you can borrow. And then, like, let's talk about the fact that Hispanic community is now also ahead of us in that regard as well, and no better, no worse, right? It's just that we gotta do better. You gotta call a thing a thing. When you started talking about technology and us being left behind in regard to and I say us because I'm black, that's what identify as right, being left behind in regard to technology and not being savvy. First thing I thought was black. Twitter is a thing black Tiktok is a thing. We know technology, but we just know what we do, and we know how to use it to be funny, I mean, and with funny, and we cute and we fly and all like that, but at the same time, posting on fake book ain't helping you. And then when Tiktok decide to not for real. And then, when Tiktok gives you a million viewers, but then turn around and don't pay you the money they owe you, what you going to do? Just egg was exactly on point from a Tiktok perspective, though, the one thing I can say was really, really pleased to see the sister that when they opened up the Tiktok marketplace and live. The first person on there was a sister with a oils brand, and she was the first person also to make a million dollars in a one hour segment for her live. And so she utilized it in a way. Think that we need to look at more again, not flossing, but getting, you know, a cure in that bag, but yet you make that bread, make that bread, and across the board, just looking at wealth in general, and you know, I'm speaking from, you know, Georgia specifically, but where we go, others are typically behind, right? And so the median household wealth for black families in Georgia is $24,000 that's the median household wealth compared to $142,000 in Georgia for white families. So just that we even call that wealth, that's the money you have. If it's$124,000 bro, what? Well, you can't even afford to live 24,000 so not income, but wealth. Yeah, they're 24,000 wealth. So that means, for those who are listening, right, everything you have that is an asset, right? So your home, your business, maybe whatever stocks, bonds, whatever you have that can make you money, right? Minus everything that is a depreciating asset, your car and your everyday bills, credit card, revolving debt and all like that. Now I'm not a finance person, but 24,000 out of balance. So we're already not at a piece of a deficit 124,000 compared to 142,000 but some of the things that you mentioned are also we have to get back to that education. And part of that education is about our cultural competency, our culture that, and there's reasons right that we may allocate a little bit more or a lot more than others do for to flop, because historically, you know, we didn't have certain things. And Juneteenth, we're just coming off of Juneteenth yesterday, a part of the Juneteenth Celebration lies in the fact that, and one of the reasons that people you know, when you're going to traditional Juneteenth engagements, you come dressed in your finery, because it's going back to where in Texas the the slave masters were giving their finest, not their finest, but we're giving fancier Clothes for the slaves and or past lives, you know, the whole Juneteenth and the how and why, that's a whole another piece, right? But they were able to wear finer clothes, which was not a part of the everyday, and even the emphasis that we put on it now is disproportionate to other races and other communities, but it all goes back to one place. It all goes back to slavery and and then, you know, some of the Jim Crow impact, but we're at a place now, when we talk about from an education standpoint, we need to educate our community about how this is impacting us, and what are we trying to prove and why are we trying to prove it, and to whom? But yeah, the that gap, the home ownership gap so families in Georgia, home ownership rate is 44% and that's hot, but that's compared to 72% for white families in Georgia, right? So again, we're off there. And to compound that with the homeownership and something that is specific to it's happening across the country, but it's really, really, really off based here in Georgia, and particularly in the Atlanta metro, where there are issues with properties being purchased at such a high rate by investors, investors that aren't even a part of the community the state And in some aspects the country, are buying up all of this real estate and pricing out, pricing us out of properties. And even if you're trying to purchase a property at the same price as an investor is, most of us aren't coming in with cash. So there's a, you know, a bias towards the as a seller, hey, you got cash in hand. This is going to be a quick closing. I'm not going to lose anything. The finance is not going to fall through. As opposed to, you know, you and I, I don't know your life like that, but I know that I can't walk in and purchase. Just my home cash only, right? So that's not a part of everybody's reality. That's not just Atlanta, right? So that is a thing that is going on all over the United States, and I literally was just talking to somebody else on this pod about that. I said, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm a thinker, and I think, how are we as US citizens after free market? Let's think about this letting people who don't live here because the company that's buying the most real estate as an investor is not us based and then they are price fixing. So not only can you not afford to buy a home, you can't afford to rent then, either, exactly. But you know what? When I say all of this is tied together, every single piece of it you mentioned arts, that's not an outlier, either. But let's take all this back to our political and civic engagement. Well, first what you're doing right now, which is the education portion, because people need to know in order to grow right and gotta pay attention. Yeah, that education is out there. But the other part that political and civic engagement. So Tuesday was an election day here in Georgia, and we had some really for me, they were big races for the average person. And I say the average person because I recognize that I've been very intimately involved in the political space, right? And so I consider my knowledge base to, you know, correlate to that. However, Lord getting people to come out. Because, one, you know, everybody knows that there's a presidential election coming up, but all the stuff in between a big deal, and then we've already had this race. So this was a runoff in Georgia, of a candidate doesn't secure 50% plus one of the vote, then they automatically go into a runoff with the top two candidates. And so there are all these runoff races, most people have political campaign fatigue, and so by the time all this happens, they are tuning out all of this messaging that comes out, all these texts that you're getting, all these emails, all of these especially when you have the orange idiot out on social media every day. But the flip side of that, the flip side of that, is that is one person with one position that does not actually have as much to do with your day to day as these other pieces do. And that's the biggest lie that we have ingested, the biggest lie. So the problem is he has the biggest voice. You're right? Yes, we have to continue with messaging and education because, and just from a physiological standpoint, our ears can hear at a greater rate than anybody can talk. We also have a choice of where we give both our physical, you know, our auditory energy, as well as our mental focus and energy. Another education standpoint, if we can not, if we we need to continue to get the message out that one, a single individual, has only the power that we give them, and we've chosen, for whatever reason, to give them, social, physical, mental, emotional, political, whatever power that I can name we, and I say we, collectively and individually, more than is even warranted. And so part of that is a shift in paradigm that we have to do within our communities is, hey, block this noise. Here's what you need to be looking at these little races that y'all aren't the there was, I think, 16 people that showed up one day for early voting at this polling site, 16 people. But these races were about judges. So I don't know about ones who put y'all kids in jail. Pay attention. Y'all the DA your judges. Those are an important races, and they, every day, directly affect you. And the case in point, a friend of within our organization has a daughter, actually. That works, you know, within our organization, and her father got pulled over and got taken into jail. And this is a person with means, you know, was pulled over driving a an expensive sports car. Lives in the wealthiest community in our county, which is the wealthiest black County, next to Prince George's County, second black wealthiest County. So means wasn't the issue, however, that did not keep him from spending a night in jail, and the implications of that are felonious ex president who's running again in. Felonious is the proper term, because he is, you know, within 434, felony counts. So he is felonious, but his ability to affect that outcome, he don't have it. It's the local politics. It's who is the sheriff, who are the judges involved? What is a policy within that county that give those officers the discretion to they made the decision? Hey, this is a speeding ticket for that. My discretion as Officer. Blue eyes. At my discretion, I can arrest you. I'm a policy girl, okay? I'm type A anal retentive. I need to see it in black and white. What is the policy? What is the procedure? I need a process, because your discretion, to me, could be based off of how you woke up this morning, how you feel subjective, right? It's too subjective for my history and my people's history. So from a policy perspective, that don't work for me. However, in order to impact those policies, you need to engage in impacting those policies. In order to have the right people in place that will consider proper policies that reflect the community needs, you need to vote them in and out. So anyway, wealth goes back to policy, political, civic engagement, education, they're all intimately one without you, period, we'll be back in our virtual happy hour. The party never stops. Join your bail yourself out virtual coworkers on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Now back to the show. So we are back with my very passionate Dr Ingrid Paris, we've been talking about a lot of things, but we did her passion, point of civic engagement and community wealth. But you know what? I'm passionate about that as well, because I want to see black people doing good. That is why we're here, and that's why we do what we do here. So you know, I was thinking about the person who shall remain nameless, right? But the flip side for me, just hear me out on this. The silver lining is that if you could be considered as leader of the free world with multiple felonies admit it on tape, then that should free up some opportunities for other folks. Good, because you mean to tell me you can't operate a damn chainsaw for somebody's, I don't know construction company you can't put up drywall with a felony, but you got the new codes that part. But how? How does that change? It does not change through osmosis, and it does not change through, you know, posting memes about it on social media. You have to have a plan and put policies in place to change it. My Facebook activists, I love y'all. My Instagram activists, I love y'all. But what can we do in the age of social media? Right? Because we've seen people use social media. We've seen it leveraged. When people were fighting that pipeline. Remember out west a couple of years ago, showed solidarity there. You know, when it was going crazy in Ferguson and stuff, people were using it as a means to communicate, right? So communicating via social media and organizing in that way, we have seen positive results of that, right? How can we continue to engage in that level and less rump shaker? I don't mind a little because, you know, don't mind a little twerk. Matter of fact, you can't really see because, you know, it's limited on that little twerk in your spirit. How and ever we have opportunities to expand our reach. And what you just said, Yes, we have leveraged those platforms positively, and there's definitely ways to do so. However, one of the things that we intentionality is what comes up for me. So if I am sharing information, I see something education is that's again, at the top of the list, right? We have to educate each other, and so as a social media activist, that is a part of it. But there's a. So another couple of steps that have to be a part of that one before we educate we need to educate ourselves. So every cute meme and piece of information that comes across our path we, you know, just arbitrarily retweeting it as gospel. I think if we want to take responsibility for being in spaces of leadership, which I believe everybody is a leader at different moments of the day. You have to be you can't run a family and you're not, but you have to know you are. There's so many people who are disenfranchised, and even within that space, we still have to make decisions for ourselves, for our colleagues, in some respects, for our families, for our children, for our siblings. So whether we are leading by default, leading in ignorance, and I'm not saying it's an ignorant individual, but with ignorance to the fact that we're still leading, we are and so part of our responsibility with that needs to be some reconciliation of the of information that we see educating ourselves beyond the means, right? How can I get a little broader depth of knowledge when people tell me stuff? Well, I read, I just saw it, such and such, and I get on people's nerves all day long. Again, going back to that journalism background, who is the WHO that you're referring to? What is the what fight your source? People say, Well, you know, they said, Who is the they and the they is an authority of what that means nothing to me. Somebody said, who is somebody, and I don't know what somebody's background, credentials, knowledge base, I don't I don't worry about somebody. And so anything again, going back to that type A personality, if I cannot quantify, I can't justify it, I can't afford to have more nonsense in this limited brain that is already there, and so we need to be much more intentional with one validating source of the information before moving forward. And then with that knowing, what do I want to happen? So yes, I want to share this, and that's a step, but what do I want to happen? So that information was shared with me, I'm sharing it with somebody else, but if everybody does exactly what I'm doing, what changes? What can I do if this is something that's important to me? Now, if it's not, you know, that's a whole another story. But if this is something that is important to you and or affects you, then we actually have more of a duty to participate in some other way. Because, again, me sharing it, this information without any other action, just pushes information so and maybe it could be something as simple as a click. Maybe it's a poll and someone needs to quantify. Hey, how do you feel about this particular policy that is manifesting in this way and it's harming people that look like you, an organization or entity may need that information to quantify how it affects the community, and that it is actually something that the community cares about. So that's actionable, or it could be, to my point, I'm very selfish in this respect, someone who has an organization that has lots of areas of actionable items. There are areas that you can participate and be a part of a solution, one solution at a time, or if you have a broader you know broader interest, multiple at a time, but do something. And if you're anyone that's in your audience, I already know they would have to be intelligent. They're already engaged in their community, and they're concerned, and so I already know that they are not unwilling leaders in whatever spaces they are occupying. And so my ask or suggestion would just be to collaborate with others that are beyond just sharing information, are engaging and plan and actionable items to affect change. Okay, so speaking of actionable items, and speaking of actionable items that affect the community, have you heard what they're talking about with Project 2025 in relation to journalists specifically, do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, no. So project 2020 Five is essentially conservative Republican manifesto of things that they want to see happen, starting with the strategic plan in 2025 so this is the actionable items the strategic plan. So one of the things is, and this actually made the BBC, so we're out here globally looking like a bunch of nuts, nuts they're talking about. There's a whole bunch of things go out there and go look at it. But this is directly related to our life and our livelihood. But one of the things is being able to prosecute journalists, but nationwide ban on abortion, we've already seen women, you know, very sick or dying because of these restrictions, and doctors afraid that they're going to lose their license. These are just some key high level things that are a part of this psychotic manifesto that they have coming our way, and it's like guys with that plan. I thought there was something specific that was a journalist specific plan that you were talking about. Oh no. Well, one of the points is just being able to prosecute journalists. It's been big news where I live in the DC area because of the provision that can get rid of the federal workers and replace them with party loyalists, uh huh, so they're straight up playing in your face. You've opened up just an abundance. Oh, I know in the like five minutes we have left so but from specifically the journalist portion of that which we're already in a challenging space as it relates to information and disinformation just unprecedented, with access for everybody to become everybody has access to Social media, and so they can report out information that, again, coming from old school. You know, there was actually a process. And one of the things that I used to get frustrated with was that you had to after you finished doing all your research, and you got your sources, and then you wrote your content. Then there was still another step. It had to go to the editor. And the editor wasn't just to fix your punctuation, because by that point, you really needed to know how to write, you know, adhere to the King's English standards. However, it was all of the information was verified, validated, and if there was something even a sliver out of alignment, the story could get cut. At the very least, it would get reworked, though, to make sure that facts were being shared, and then it wasn't an editorial piece, unless you're an editorialist. But now the whole world editorializes Their new stations that are centered around editorializing on all sides, you know, from conservative to, you know, more liberal news, it's a lot of pontificating and sharing thoughts and ideas, but the facts are already in jeopardy, and so taking that a whole step further, yeah, I'm not a fan. Current State concerns me. So a future state that involved literally taking that beyond to making it where who would want to be a journalist if somebody could potentially have you incarcerated? Because, well, I think you're fake news. That's not where we want to be. If there ever was a time to get involved now is the time. It sounds cliche, but we are literally fighting for this democracy. We are but some of us are fighting and some of us are unaware. All right, so this has been a great interview. Tell people where they can get up with you and the Georgia black Expo. Friend, yes, certainly, please, please, please, please. Whether you are in Georgia or you are in Georgetown, it does not matter where you are. You can participate with our organization. And we invite you to our event, September 7 and eighth gas South Convention Center in Duluth, Georgia, which is outside of the Atlanta metro. But you can find us on your favorite social media platform. You could go to www dot Georgia, black expo.com, and get all kinds of information. So we are. Very acceptable, and I will be looking forward to seeing you join our community as always, friends, thank you for listening. I love you, and I mean it peace. Wasn't that a great interview? Hold up before you grab your hat and head out, make sure you make your way to facebook and join the bail yourself out pod Facebook group. That's where you'll find your virtual coworkers luxuriating and chatting. Thank you so much for listening, and if you enjoy the show, please leave a review. That's how we keep the lights on. If you're on social media, follow your girl, Kandice with the K Whitaker. And you know what I'd love to hear from you with that I love you. And I mean it because there are people who hate in the world for no reason. I choose to love for no reason. I believe that the great Martin Luther King Jr said hate is too great a burden to bear, so I choose to love peace. Y'all. You.

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