BLACK Leadership Summit | State of the People | Native Land Pod

This EPIC summit is a showcase of Black leadership and excellence. In the face of oppression and fascism, it is time to forge our own path forward. Hosted by Angela Rye and Roy Wood Jr., and co-created by Joy Reid, this is the three-hour primetime event of a 24 hour (!) livestream dubbed The State of the People that aired Tuesday March 4th.

You’ll hear from members of congress such as Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crockett, Ayanna Pressley, Maxwell Frost, Yvette Clarke, Lisa Blunt Rochester, and more.

Activists such as Brittany Packnett Cunningham, LaTosha Brown, Bishop Leah Daughtry, Dr. Wes Bellamy, and Quentin James.

And so many others–Gary Chambers, Pastor Jamal Bryant, Tamika Mallory, Governor Wes Moore–you gotta see it to believe it. The greatest BLACK minds, organizers, and elected officials are gathered HERE!

Welcome home y’all!

We want to hear from you! Send us a video @nativelandpod and we may feature you on the podcast.

Subscribe and listen to new episodes of Native Land Pod every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts:

Thank you to the Native Land Pod team:

Angela Rye as host, executive producer, and cofounder of Reasoned Choice Media; Tiffany Cross as host and producer, Andrew Gillum as host and producer, and Gabrielle Collins as executive producer; Loren Mychael and Jabari Davis are our research producers, and Nikolas Harter is our editor and producer. Thank you to Mark Cantin and Dylan Unger of the iHeart Video team and producing engineer Abu Zafar. A special thanks as well to Chris Morrow and Lenard McKelvey, co-founders of Reasoned Choice Media.

[TyroneNorwood]

Thank you, Angela, Joy Reid, Lolo, Holli and everyone who participated in what was the most Amazing 24 hours

[NoBlindSpot]

Thank you ya’ll!!! We needed this. All of us

[Donna-rz]

Wes Moore for President 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[carmensimmonds]

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Thank you Angela, Joy Reid & to all who made this possible! The amount of information & encouragement is awesome!

[Dee-up]

I appreciate hearing my governor so much. Thank you. 5:15

[ej]

I love what I'm hearing and want more of what can I do for this movement.

[dorothyreed]

It was so so Great Thank you Angela for your Brilliant young minds on this great podcast..

[TinkerBell]

There are simply no words for how much I thoroughly enjoyed State of the People 24 hour marathon. My heart is STILL full. I watched more than 15 hours of the 24 hour (yelp, even while I was at work. I had my earbuds in and dared someone to say something to me). Being impressed is an understatement. The black race in these United States is nothing short of phenomenal. We are the prayers of our ancestors y’all and I know they are proud! All I need is more and more of this. I am a huge fan of Urban View on SIRIUS XM but I know everyone can’t afford SIRIUS. We need more 24/7 black media platforms. Congratulations to everyone involved and sincere Thank you for your expertise, professionalism and commitment to our people.

[deidreturner]

Thank you Angela. And all of you who have participated in this zoom call

[terrymoore]

This was awesome. I'm actually at a lost for words but thank God for Maxine Waters the Queen....

[RaReBreedSweetLand]

I'm in South Africa right now on vacation, and the racism is LOUD here. I visited the Apartheid Museum, and it was very educational. With what we dealing with in the current political crisis in the USA now, I see a civil war in horizon. Us black people can't seem to get a break. I visited Soweto, Winnie Mandela's Squatter Camp😔Broke my heart. I HATE THE COLONIZERS. I HATE WHAT WE GOING THROUGH SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME. I HATE TRUMP. I JUST PHUCKN HATE THIS SHIIITTTT....IM MAD

[andreadarby]

Thank you all for this marathon. It truly was needed, and I'm glad I could opt into this instead of whatever that $hyte show. This fed my soul. 🙏🏽

Thank you. We needed this and we understand the assignments!

[beechannel]

This was so uplifting and entertaining. I would love to see more content from yall like this! God bless yall😊❤

[gwynnellcallahan]

Yes trump brought us in this let’s stand up a few can stand strong together . As it works then see who else will join us

[stephaniemerck]

Push back . push back .. push back .. organize .. organize .. organize around what. It is just sounding more and more like we don't know what we should be doing.

[lakerlife]

We celebrate MLK and Malcolm but on a certain percentage of people stood with them at the time that they was riding!!!!

[bqueen]

if you all really care what ever happen to GOING TO THE WHITE HOUSE AND GET THE CHECK

[siriuslyspeaking]

Woods asked Gov. Moore about engaging Republican voters, but thinking of just centrist voters or independents, might be more helpful - a one step at a time approach. if you will. The idea of meeting your opposition halfway, is what we are ultimately faced with, for now. Centrist as less extreme in their positions, and so gains may be more easily gotten, going their first.

There is much talk on our side, about resilience, but it seems just rhetoric, compared with the persistence, that the Right has shown. So much focus was put on Project 2025, but it was just this Presidential election cycle's updated version, of an action plan, that Conservatives have been putting together, every for years for decades. Has any revisions ever been done to the Green New Deal?

Have the priorities of Liberals/Democrats changed over recent years? Do woke Abolitionists Black intellectuals and activists, expect the "Prison Industrial Complex' to be replaced by a mental health one? Wouldn't it be more expensive than the 'PIC', since who couldn't use some mental-health care, in the society/world we - humankind have made?

Where is the money going to come from? Is there significant waste in government? Isn't that a fair question, given the nature of people? Is there still considerable waste and fraud, in the area of military contracts? Wasn't that an issue at one time? Why wouldn't Democrats want the government to run as efficiently as possible? Why would anyone not want that? Why then does it seem, for Democrats to expect/demand financial efficiency, it is akin to a treasonous act/a crime?

The state of Maryland has to rebuild a bridge, with help from the federal government, because of an act of negligence, but scores of bridges and other forms of infrastructure, across the country, must also be rebuilt or repaired. Then there is the need to rebuild from the destruction of storms, and other natural disasters, which are more frequent and destructive. Again, where is the funding going to come from for all that, especially if the military budget is to continue to absorb, the greatest percentage of the budget? This is an insane situation for beings, who claim to not only be highly intelligent, but also creatures born from, and in the image of, a beneficent and merciful all-powerful supreme-being, or evolved beings, who are also highly intelligent and moral beings.

Many have been asking how do we fight back. Some have been saying we must fight fire with fire. They say the advice of M. Obama that we go high, when they go low, will never work, but have we ever really tried to go high? Have we on the Left ever expected more of the people, other than to listen to the rhetoric of our intellectual, politicians, and activists, and vote for our politicians? How many Democrats have channeled the spirit of JFK, and ask us - the public, what can we do for our country, community, or even to help ourselves?

Obama asked us to do better, in our personal behavior and aptitude, but many castigated him for doing so. Surprisingly many call being respectful of oneself and other's - engaging in "respectability politics." What is political about having regard for the basic norms of society? They thus condone behavior from others, who they themselves were taught, is wrong, and they teach their children, it is wrong, also. Why would anyone, of sound mind and body, not be expected to conduct themselves, in this manner? What leader of any kind, anywhere, doesn't value respect and discipline? So, a fundamental question is - what are we being lead by?

The woke have a set of words, that are always used in their conversations. Community is one and reimagine is another. The word community is applied to any kind of association a group of individuals may have. For me, that practice cheapens the word of community, for the sheer reason that the physical communities I have lived in, have grown less communal, as I have aged. I grew up as many of us have, in a very violent community, during the late 60's and into the 70's, and that community is even more violent today.

There is much talk today about DEI, but the real test of DEI, is by people of various backgrounds, living in the same neighborhood, even people of various income levels. In that specific area, that may be the greatest test. The neighborhood I grew up in was diverse in income levels. There were many laborers, and also many skilled/ professional people, and also some who got public assistance. We were different in culture, lifestyles, and values, but the vast majority - I'd say 99% plus, of us, were Black. It often made for contentious living.

It wasn't until I was in my early teens that I discovered that there was a neighborhood not very far away, that was very much mixed between Black and White. It was working class also, but it showed the same signs of deterioration, that my neighborhood had started to show. Less up-kept homes, and other signs associated with poverty.

Can people of various backgrounds especially income levels, live in the same neighborhood? The government policy called mixed income housing, was an experiment in that, I would think. It has been said, it was an adjustment of the older practice of breaking up large pockets of poverty, by giving low income people housing vouchers that relocated them in new communities, that didn't have conditions of poverty. They were placed in number to high and all together, in new communities, and the conditions of poverty reappeared, in the new communities.

The newer form called mixed income housing, theorized that concentrating them was a mistake, and that maybe they needed to be scattered out, and into even more effluent communities, that have better schools and other amenities, than those they originally were relocated to. It was hoped that the culture in these better communities, would have an influence on them, and that they would adopt the ways of doing things and values, of these better functioning communities.

Wouldn't true leaders what to know, how this policy has faired? It may be more than two decades old now. We not only have a crisis of dysfunctional communities, but our leadership is also dysfunctional. It is a symbiotic relationship . One feeds off the other, in a positive or negative way. We may be a situation of which comes first - the proverbial chicken or the egg question? What ever is the case we must figure it out - get it right.

That can't happen without being honest with ourselves and each other. Leadership that does not interact properly, with those they represent, and likely, cannot negotiate effectively, with the opposition. It certainly doesn't have much power, if the people they lead, are not very effective, in their day to day living. We must return to basics and common sense. Both sadly are non-existent on the Left. The Right has the basics in tact among their constituency, and so they can act a fool, because it is all an act, a strategy, while we engage in performance, it seems, just because it is entertaining. Whatever is is we surely don't have much to show for it.

[sunshinerising]

I love that the black leadership summit came together, however, all I heard was a small room of people regurgitating what former black leaders and pioneers in the struggle echoed. I need to hear an original thought, and stop saying things you read about by our colonizers and black history classes. Do the work. The work is strategic. Do you not understand the matrix of a "chain reaction"? Which links wealth, poverty, class distinctions and wage oppression and systemic racism all together. If we solve the main one the rest will fall in order. Do we know what the main one is? Let's circle the wagons and figure that out first, then our community will be able to breathe freely and uniformly. Then and only then will we be a stronger nation of people. ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽