0:02 Welcome to Advance the Dream, our weekly community chat, where we celebrate legacy makers and family heroes who are actively advancing the dream in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We talk about health, challenges, highlights and heroes in an intergenerational fashion in hopes that his legacy of hope and equality continue to live on. This weekly series, powered by the Force for Health Network, is aired live on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn at 8 a.m. Pacific Time, 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
0:32 Then shared afterwards at AdvanceTheDream.com. Now, let's meet our hosts, Force for Health Network co-founders, Dr. Robert Giglio and Lucy Howell, alongside our National Director, Joshua Williams Jr. as we dive into this week's topic. Good morning, everybody. Today is Saturday, May 11, 2024. I am your co-host, Lucy Howell, based out of Tucson, Arizona, one of the co-founders of the Force for Health Network, joined by my partner out of State College, Pennsylvania, Dr. Robert Gillio. And our national co-host of Advance the Dream, Joshua Williams, probably coming out of Gadsden, Florida, which is the upper panhandle of Florida, right outside Tallahassee, right?
1:22 Yes, ma'am. All righty. So... This is our 15th episode, you guys. It's been interesting to kind of take a look at the weekly guests and the comments and the key takeaways and the highlights from... 15 episodes so far, but in case you're new here, we are a weekly interactive chat. So if you are watching on Facebook or YouTube or LinkedIn, feel free to join in on the comments. We will be reviewing those and monitoring those, but our mission is simple. We're simply trying to extend the legacy of Dr.
2:06 Martin Luther King as it relates to health and wealth inequities for all. We've been working with Josh for the last five years. We've done some pilot programs and we are taking this live. So we've got an exciting summer coming up, you guys. Again, Advance the Dream is really looking at all types of health and wealth disparities for everybody. This is not just a black thing. It's not just a white thing. If you look at our faces right here, you got to you know, half Filipino. And I have white person over here.
2:39 You got Dr. Rob over in rural Pennsylvania. And then you got Josh. He's just been really at the forefront. And when I say forefront, I mean, you look at the picture in all of our backgrounds, the MLK Memorial Memorial. in D.C., and he was probably 18, 19 years old, you know, just a young pup when he was mentored in with some of the senior leaders of the alphas to actually make that whole thing happen. And so I love how this whole legacy really ties to everything, right, what we're trying to do.
3:13 So I'm opening up the show. I always start with my executive thoughts. I'm going to pass the baton to Josh this time and open it up. How was your week? What do you bring to the show this week? What are some of your top reflections? Lucy, every week there is an exciting episode happening. This past week I had an opportunity to speak to a ninth grade class. at one of the local high schools and actually was talking for the entire ninth grade, which was probably about 172 students, but talked about the importance of our history and legacy.
3:59 And Florida is one of those schools where the board of education has decided that African-American history is not that important. So let's try to do without it in the curriculums. So what we talked about basically was having to now come up with our own history and teach ourselves the importance of our history and why we ended up like we have ended up, how we got there, what we're doing, and what we're gonna do to continue to advance our people as it relates to education, technology, sciences, et cetera.
4:36 Very astute group of young men and women that actually had their head on pretty good, I must say, with questions and, well, why don't we pull together more to do this? Why can't we all get together to do this? Why we can't do a program specifically for our parents? could actually participate with us, which was very exciting because then I got an opportunity to brag a little bit about what we do. So we kind of just went directly right into that. And like I said, it's a continuing process where we must continue to educate our people, ourselves, and everybody else around us about the importance of, of course, our health, our education, our existence.
5:26 And that's just my reflections this morning. I have so many talking points off that I'm going to filter myself and not go there and save it for later, right? But excellent. And so Rob. Let's just, I will go off of that. Okay, yeah. I was going to talk about one motherhood tomorrow on May 12th. What history could those young children learn from their mothers? or from their mother's mothers. And so can they take the time perhaps to honor their mothers or grandmothers or mother equivalent, the people that helped raise them and learn from their experience, their wisdom, and ask them some questions and start building on their history, build on that legacy.
6:20 Maybe someday, you know, we might talk about that legacy book project you guys are doing can be done with those kids. But Mother's Day came to mind. But the thing I was going to bring up was also a school issue. On the news yesterday, I'm watching as Mountain View High School in Shenandoah County, Virginia, decides to change its name back to Stonewall Jackson High School. And whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not of the opinion of really getting into that. Um, but I'm of the opinion that I'd like to see it become a means of dialogue, whatever that school board decides or whatever situation people are stuck in.
7:04 It really opens up nicely the concept of not mandating enforcing history or the lack of history, um, onto a population, but rather, uh, the dialogue about what that history was. I think, um, it really may backfire on the people that want to celebrate the history of, say, the Civil War legacy, as that naming will cause more conversations to teach more people, young and old, about what really was happening in those slavery days and the Civil War days. And it kind of reminds me that people, like the kids in the high school you're talking to, like the kids in that Mountain View High School, they're dealing with these issues right now.
7:51 Um, and they have to have to learn how to discuss them as opposed to just having, um, that's what I, I think that's where King with his non-violence message came through is to share and converse and convince as opposed to, um, violence and, uh, destruction and mandates. Those were things in my mind. You know, so I'm going to both share with what I wanted to say but tie it to what you guys are both saying too because, again, part of our mission of Advance the Dream, and this is after speaking to so many of the folks, Josh, around the table that you've brought to the table.
8:34 These are men. men and women, shall I say, but many of the folks that were maybe call it 65, 70 and above had this common anxiety with themselves when we asked them this question. And it was that they feared that the younger generation would not fully absorb and really realize the true historic context, all the struggles and really to pass that down generationally. It's this knowledge of transfer, transfer of knowledge play. That's what the overriding theme was that I take away. And one of the things like, so one of the things I get to brag about is I've been to every single state in the United States.
9:31 That's pretty cool. And I love, it was a two-week driving excursion. We're leaning into the summer. And so really summer is a time to kind of stop, check, explore, you know, and grow. And one of the most patriotic places that I can think of that I'm just so proud and you can just, wow, what is this place? And this is so cool. It's Mount Rushmore. You sit at the base of four presidents that were sculpted into this mountain. And the first pass, that first layer is just like, wow, this is incredible.
10:03 But when you kind of layer off and peel off some of those layers there, there is a history. And it's not pretty. And there are some KKK ties to that. funding artistry and then the whole concept of just going in and decimating a sacred place in the spirit of kind of white nationalism and I say that not to you know evict debate and to like you know cause debate but it's exactly why history needs to be told, not some version of it. If something happened, it happened. So let's just continue to share and then grow and learn and be better.
10:56 That's so true, Lucy. We can't change history. That's right. It is what it is. That was some of the questions that they had. They threw back at me from the standpoint of why people don't want to talk about the history. Why wouldn't they want to talk about this history? That's right. And, you know, I saw a video this week also that made me a little sad. And it was, you know, every generation has its example of protesting, you know, issues. And so they were interviewing some protesters. And one of them, this was a 19-year-old kid, and he was just asked about 9-11, right?
11:42 And what he knows about it. And you know what he said? I don't care. That's not me. I don't care about 9-11. It has nothing to do with what we're doing here. That is, that like almost shot me in the heart. It was so hard to hear. So again, this transfer of knowledge, this intergenerational connection. Josh, you've done such an excellent job with meeting on a regular basis on Saturday. Saturday STEAM teams. It's a you do matter. You got grandmas, aunties, you know, moms, dads, teens, and even eight and 10 year olds.
12:19 It's a family affair to come and celebrate. and use STEAM principles to be healthier, kinder, more empathetic, and to really set themselves up for success. And so that's the continuing theme that I just want to put out there is that we have to know our history. And then we have to know the gaps as to why people don't have equal opportunities. And that is the spirit of Advance the Dream to me. Our history, though, I just would like to point out, I think, is what is true and real in the facts may be very different remembrances and perspectives from different people.
13:03 As you look at the Palestinian and Israeli issues right now, both sides have very interesting long-term historical ties to certain pieces of land that maybe doesn't go back to 1948, but maybe 2,000, 3,000 years earlier. So the conversation about what someone's perception and remembrances are is also very valuable. That's the understanding of the historical perspective of that person as they share their history, not just dismissing it as, you're wrong, I'm right, or you're right, I must be a horrible person.
13:44 Right, right. The understandings of what someone was experiencing at that time I think is important. Well, thank you for bringing your thoughts and perspectives for that brief exchange. I see that our guest is in the backstage. So let's go ahead and bring him in. So this will be fun. So Larry Starks is a friend of mine out here in Tucson, Arizona. I've seen him out and about many places. He is the President and Executive Director of the Tucson Juneteenth Festival. He's also the Area President for the Tucson Omega Sci-Fis.
14:21 So Larry Sarks, without further ado, welcome to the show. All right. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on this morning. I was listening to you guys' conversation. Good conversations. Awesome. And I think this is the first time that you are meeting Joshua Williams. I've been meaning to connect you guys forever. And then, of course, Dr. Rob out of Pennsylvania. So, you know, the theme of today is really, wow, we're leaning in and it's almost halftime. I always look at June, the end of June, as first half of the year gone.
14:54 And it makes me want to sit and think and look back and say, you know, How have I been acting? What have I achieved? What am I doing for myself? And so I figured this would be a good time. It gives us four, five, six weeks before your Juneteenth Festival to kind of get ready to to kind of challenge other communities around the country. I always say, look at a community and see how they celebrate Martin Luther King Day, the beginning of the year, and how they celebrate Juneteenth. And it'll probably give you some type of indication as to how diverse, how accepting, how empathetic, how welcoming, and quite frankly, how healthy a community is, right?
15:38 And I think the first time I saw you at the Martin Luther King Day, that's January 15th. I saw you at the Black and Brown Fair that was sponsored by Pima Health Department. So we've got another video over there. But before we kind of get into this, let me just set the stage for Juneteenth. I want to play your recap video from last year. OK, and then we can kind of come back and ask you a couple of questions. But let's just set the stage here. I'm going to go ahead and play this. I took a stroll downtown this evening when I heard music echo through the night The same old songs that I heard the night before So I started running so I wouldn't be too late I didn't think that I would ever see your face again But I was wrong, yeah I was wrong When I got close, my heart was pumping to the beat that was blasting through the night.
17:18 And on the street, the crowd was jumping, singing songs and dancing through the night. can't believe I can't feel my feet so so Yeah. All righty. I just, I wanted to play that video because to me, it sets the scene for everything that you do. This isn't just a day at the park type of thing. This is an activation and really a mid-year chance to come together and do some spot checks, celebrate community, and really activate during the whole month. So welcome Larry Starks to the stage. Hold on, Larry, though.
19:18 I got to start off with... The basics, all right? I'm going to play the ignorant old northern white guy. What is Juneteenth? If someone's watching this for the first time, what is Juneteenth? Not just, you know, great celebration. I could look from the video and assume that, and I know what it is, but I didn't know what it was until about eight or ten years ago, literally. So what is Juneteenth? Someone's watching this for the first time, maybe even at Stonewall Jackson High School in Shenandoah, Virginia.
19:50 What is Juneteenth? Why should we care? And you froze. All right. This is not some sort of bias in the software, ladies and gentlemen. Yay, you're back. Okay. You froze for a minute. Help me out. What is Juneteenth? Why should we care? What are you doing with it? So like I said, I can give you a cliff note version, but with the amount of time that I have, hopefully it will engage other conversations. So everyone, well, not everyone, but the Emancipation Proclamation was written in 1863 by Lincoln. But the words read, freeing slaves in the southern states.
20:30 A lot of people don't understand that. It said it's going to free the slaves in the southern states. So in being in Texas, what their thought process is, we're not going to abide by these orders. There was a lot of southern states that said, we're not going to abide by these orders. We're going to keep these people enslaved. So after Lincoln was assassinated, it still had to happen that the emancipation had to be followed. So the troops found out that there were still people being held in southern states as slaves.
21:01 So General Gordon Granger took it upon himself and took upon about 2,000 or 3,000 soldiers, including a lot of Black soldiers, to go and free these enslaved people. Texas just happened to be the last state that they encountered. But here's the thing about going to Texas. Those last slaves were, I'm going to call them free people because they weren't slaves, they were actually free people who were being enslaved. So Galveston, Texas is on an island. What people don't know is that there were slave owners from Louisiana and some other southern states who actually tracked their slaves to Galveston to hold them there so that they would not be free.
21:39 So these troops had to travel these thousands of miles. And then when they get to Galveston, it's like, well, dang, it's on the island. How do we get there? They got to get on boats. They can't just get their horses and ride across the water. So they had to strategically get there. And what people also don't understand is there were small wars. They had to have wars to free these people. That's the important part, is that the slave owners in Texas said, you know what, we're not going to. But the United States government said, you know what, yes, you are.
22:09 We're going here and we're going to free these people because you are in violation of the law. That's when Gordon Granger got on the boat, got across to Galveston. There was over 250,000 people still being enslaved in Galveston, Texas. They had to kill, put it in short, kill some of the slave owners to say, no, you're going to free these people. And that's what happened in short notice. There's a lot of other things, like I said, I can get into. But the real thing is this. Think about it. After these people were freed, after they were freed and off this island, they got together and said, you know what?
22:44 We're going to go branch out. We're not held anymore. Some of them even stayed. You know why they offered them? The slave owners said, well, you can stay here. You don't have anywhere else to go. You can just stay here and work for free. Well, been doing that for hundreds of years. Some of them decided the same. Others left. And they said, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna branch out in a year. We're gonna come together and see where everybody's at and what you're doing. And within that year, when they came back together, They put on their best clothes.
23:14 They had on suits, ties, and they ate food. The reason why we have the big food thing is because they ate food that they couldn't normally eat. They ate the best parts of the pig, the best parts of the cow. They drank a drink that they couldn't normally drink, which we call a red Kool-Aid, but they normally just drink water. So they celebrated in things they couldn't do. The reason they ordered Sunday best clothes, they couldn't do that even sometimes at funerals. The only way they could do that is when they were going into the master's house.
23:43 So they put on their best clothes to come back to celebrate. Now, me, if I'm in if you're in prison for two years and someone say, oh, well, you shouldn't have been here with these two years. You were supposed to go. I would be mad as hell. And it was telling what I'm going to do. I'm probably not going to have a barbecue. But they came back together to celebrate. And that's why we celebrate with them that they came back and said, hey, we're free. Let's have fun. Let's enjoy it. That's the main issue of the celebration.
24:12 But again, there's so many more nuances that go into that with the government, with the troops, with the slave owners. Again, these people were tracked out, walked, were walked thousands of miles, put on boats, and taken to Galveston, Texas. They just didn't happen to be in Galveston. They were taken there. Stolen and taken there. That's the part that hurts me. It's like, man, it was so bad that y'all wanted to take these people from their homes and still keep them enslaved. Again, that's the Klisno version, and hopefully it'll garner some more stuff.
24:50 That's kind of where we started at. But it wasn't this misnomer, like people say, well, when's Juneteenth? Oh, it's the day that the last slaves found out they were free. No. That's not it. It's the data. I just learned a new version. Yes, me too. Exactly. And this is exactly why we're doing this, Larry. I'm curious. Is part of your activation of Juneteenth, does part of that include maybe a teen event where you can say that whole story, where you actually deliver the history of Juneteenth? I'm glad you said that.
25:29 So here's the thing. What I've tried to do with Juneteenth since I've been president is my motto is it's a movement, not a moment. So we can't just celebrate Juneteenth once a year. We have to educate throughout the year. And the only way we're going to educate people is to bring them in front of us. So one of our events this year, like you're seeing last year, was a making of Black America, right? Now we're calling this one the Future of Black Tucson at the Loft Theater, where we're featuring Some younger people between the ages of 16 to 20, they're talking about past, present, and future of how it looks to them.
26:01 And we're going to educate them on what Juneteenth is. So again, getting them in front of us is giving that information knowledge. Not just the teens, but older people don't know what Juneteenth is. We've been celebrating Juneteenth in Tucson for 54 years. And there are people from here that are Black that have never been to a Juneteenth festival. There are people here... that are white that don't know there's a Juneteenth festival. But it's been 54 years. One of the things that, you know, movement, not a moment, it's kind of we're trying to create a kind of a health equity movement.
26:39 And Josh with Advance the Dreams is always talking about there's a movement, not a moment. It's not just MLK type of thing. One of the things I'd like to offer to you is a couple short sessions where you tell a few more of those cliff notes, we can put that in our curricula and share it. Here in State College, we don't have Pennsylvania and Appalachia, Central Pennsylvania. We don't have a resource like you. But if someone could log in from anywhere in the world to the same little video clip in a series of ones like you just did with appropriate other images or documents or music, et cetera, We can add that to what we're doing with Advance the Dream.
27:24 I think we just discovered a new badge, right? So we have like Advance the Dream Basics badge. Listen to the speech and respond. We have a 54-mile virtual Selma badge. badge, which is using our platforms to virtually march 54 miles and learn about the history. And now I think, Larry, you know, let's foundationally go set a Juneteenth basics badge, and you can be our instructor on that and be the foundational lift on that. Because we need to think of ways to scale. Brick and mortar and in-person is beautiful.
28:00 And there's nothing that beats in-person, right? Brick and mortar type of meetings. But we want to help you scale exactly what you just said because I learned right alongside with Rob. I always said, well, you know, it was not really a date specific when they got noticed that they were free. And I literally, that's how I've always defined it. Now I feel bad that I didn't know the true history of it. Because that's the narrative that people push. And did you hear our talk earlier about this kind of fight with history and how people are deciding to teach it?
28:35 Do you have any comment on any of that? I think I forgot who said it, but someone you can't erase history. You can't. You can deny it and you can ignore it, but you can't erase it no matter what you do. So, you know, whatever I did yesterday is what I did. I may not have liked what I did. I might be embarrassed by what I did. My kids might like what I did. It might affect somebody in the future of what I did yesterday. But guess what? It happened. That's the issue. We can't erase slavery. You can't erase what happened at Juneteenth.
29:06 You can't erase millions of people coming across in ships and being killed and being thrown off of boats. You can't you can't erase where, you know, they were pirates in these seas that were that were stealing people off of ships and reselling them in here in the United States. You can't. But what we can do is learn from it. Let's learn. Let's learn the history, right? Let's see what it's about. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that. What it means is let's learn how it happened and how we are where we are today.
29:40 Because the problem with why we are where we are today is because people want to deny what happened yesterday. That's the problem. That's why racism still exists, because people don't want to accept and understand what it was. We want to Act like it didn't happen. No, it did happen. Let's learn. I have to agree with you first. I want to apologize. And I apologize publicly because we should have been met. We should have been met. You know, I was sitting there listening to you explain Juneteenth and you are absolutely correct.
30:20 It's so many people that don't even have the vanished imagination of what June 19th is all about. It has been a narrative have been pushed and we have grabbed that narrative and that's all we talk about. And I am so glad that we have someone like yourself that truly understands the emotional history that's tied to it, where it could actually be explained and challenged because the disease generation that we have now, if you don't explain it to them like it can be learned from, it's going to go right over the top of their head.
30:58 That's why I'm so glad that you mentioned communication. That is so true, man. That is so true. If we don't sit down with them and explain to them exactly, no, this happened. Because one thing that they mentioned the other day when I was in a school that was very, very important, they said, well, why don't people want to know history? You're right. Some people, just like you said, Larry, some people are afraid and ashamed of the history and they want to try to erase it. But you can't. The history is the history.
31:31 No matter what somebody did, no matter my dad and my aunties, they all worked on a plantation. They made sometimes $2.75 a day from 7 in the morning to 7. You can't erase that, no matter how bad it was. And, you know, the kids will say, well, we ain't working for 275. That is correct, but it's history. And it's at a time that three generations are all living at the same time. So it's not like this deep history. You got to go back hundreds and hundreds of years. I mean, you just said it, Josh.
32:10 You're I mean, Larry, we're all of the age where we only have to go one generation up. And if you were African-American. American, your parents had a much different experience than Rob and my parents. Right. And so you both, you both now, Josh works very, very closely with his alphas. He was a state director for Louisiana and very involved in the alpha side of the house. You are like the parallel over at the omegas, right? Sci-fi. And so you both work with Gen Z. 18, 19 year olds. What do you feel kind of the state of the union is right now?
32:47 How are they coming to you? Do you feel like, well, they're Omega, so they're almost already leaning in towards service. But how do you feel the state of the youth is right now? I teach a JTED class also at Pima College. So it's, you know, I'm an adjunct. I teach criminal law. And just that in and of itself kind of shows me where they're at. You know, like you said, with the Gen Z population, it's the whiff of what's in it for me right now. And I'm not really thinking too much about tomorrow.
33:21 I'm really not. I'm thinking about, okay, what am I going to do in the next 15 minutes? You know what I mean? It's like, if I'm learning this right now, how is it going to apply later on? So I got to get them to think of, okay, yeah, I'm teaching you criminal law today. So to help your life later on, when you have these interactions, if you plan on going in these different directions, that's why I'm trying to teach you this. You may not understand it tomorrow, but there will come a time, hopefully, where this dot of information that I'm putting in your cerebellum will come up to say, oh, I remember Mr. Starks told me that this is lawyering.
33:56 He told me- that this is robbery and not burglary, whatever it might be. But I'm trying to just put grains of information in so that they can just kind of hold it because a lot of information they're not going to. I'm going to say not. They're not going to show that they're retained. That's the thing. Even just that conversation piece, getting them to have a conversation. You know, we're taking a chance like with this one we're doing with the teens is we're going to have to have about three or four meetings with them so we can have a conversation and so that they can understand what the questions are beforehand.
34:29 Because there's no no way that I could put them in a debate forum. Why just give them something off the top or have a audience pose a question that they're going to answer on the spot? Oh, no. It could be either one. Yeah, believe me, we've had some guests on, and we've learned we have to prep them so they can come to the table. You know, and Josh and Rob, jump in here, right? And Larry, we're extending this segment, obviously, so, you know, we've got about 10 more minutes here to speak about this.
35:07 Something you said, Lucy... I'm just thinking back about the, you talk about the three or four generations and, you know, you do have the opportunity now for those teenagers to interview, let's say Josh's father. I'm a little bit ahead of the age, maybe some of you, but my mother's 99. Her ancestors came from Russia. If I go back, I'm not comparing slavery to immigration by any means. But if I look at, The indentured servitude that the freed slaves worked under. The near poverty, the horrendous conditions like Josh's father worked under on the plantation.
35:47 I go back a generation. So for me, it's four generations ago. My mother's mother came here as a seven or eight year old from Russia and worked her entire youth in the sweatshops, sewing buttons on garments for pennies a day, living in squalor in tenements in New York. My grandfather... came over from Italy from a horrible starvation and poverty to work and then die related to coal mine work at pennies a day. And so I guess what I'm getting at is even people that are not of African-American ancestry can understand the hardships and the times of their various difference.
36:30 The knowledge from their parents, grandparents or great grandparents should be gathered and captured right now. and know those stories and own those stories, because that's part of who they are, and bring that perspective. I think that perspective helps me better understand Josh's father when I picture my great grandmother or my grandmother working in a sweatshop at about the same time for similar wages, living a horrible, horrible, prejudiced life. As with part of my heritage, is of Jewish ancestry that was hidden from me until I was an adult because my parents were afraid of being enslaved or eliminated by Hitler.
37:16 So there's weird things that we've all had that you might not think of that are part of our heritage. And I think having those Gen Zs be challenged as you prep them for that being on the stage, prep them to be around the Thanksgiving table too. And you may be using Juneteenth as a time to capture the legacy interviews you got, Lucy and Josh have been working on so much. That could be a really interesting activity at the festival when people are together to have that room set aside where that teen is interviewing that senior with their memories and their understandings and their stories.
37:51 Go ahead, Larry. Not just I'm glad you missed because one of the things I'm going to do in their prep is the historians that I had last year. The first thing they're going to do is meet and speak with those historians. I call them local living legends who are here in Tucson. Willie Blake and Donna Liggins and Ron Burton and those people. They're going to sit and have a conversation with those people first to understand the knowledge that they have moving forward. Again, have that base information.
38:25 I agree with what you're saying. We have to have that. Even for me, like I said, my father, if he was still alive, he will be 102. Right now, actually, one hundred and three this year. You know what I mean? So we're not that far removed like Josh is that ninety nine. We're right there in that same thing. So my father, the reason they came here was they followed the cotton trail. I was talking to a young man yesterday from New Mexico and he said, what do you mean the cotton trail? I said a lot of blacks from the southern states, from Oklahoma, Texas.
38:53 They followed the cotton to get here to Arizona. Because in places like Casa Grande, Eloy, Coolidge, Randolph, they were big cotton farms. And if you wanted to make certain money, when he got out of the military, World War II, he couldn't find work. So they were still picking cotton. And that's how he got here. How long have you been here, Larry, in Tucson? Forever. Forever. Did you go to high school here? Yeah, I'm a native. Oh, wow. And I say I was born in Phoenix, but I came here when I was two months.
39:28 So I'm a native Tucson, period. You absolutely are. And so for those of you that aren't familiar with maybe Pima County in southern Arizona, but the state as a whole is really, you know, runs about. You know, here in Tucson, it's about 3.8. It's less than 4% African-American. The state average, I believe, is coming in slightly higher, but it really is still a 4%, 5% African-American population demographic. How do you feel Tucson is as an Advance the Dream town? If we could look at a town or a city or region and give a platinum, gold, bronze, silver type of score to it, with your experience, how would you score Tucson with an Advance the Dream award?
40:16 I would give it probably a bronze score. from being completely honest. Third place? Third place. We'll get a participation trophy. I want to dig into that a little bit. Why do you say that? What are some of the things that make you do that? Here's what you said. I'm sure Josh, maybe you can understand that too. Josh, give me some props. The reason a lot of what I do is my brother was an alpha. My older brother who passed away was an alpha. I know there's something about you that was good. However, I did learn better, so I'm an Omega.
41:00 But so the reason I say that is this. If you go around, Lucy, and I'm sure you see this as being around town, you see the same people out there working. You don't usually see different people doing the work. And that's the problem is here, and I tell people, it's real easy in Tucson to hide if you're Black. Right. You can go to Marana, you can go to Sarita, you can come out to Vail, and you never have to see another Black person if you don't want to. Because again, we're 4%. So you have to really seek out and find where Black people are if you want to.
41:36 If you don't want to, you can stay where you're at. So then it does leave the work to those who are out in the community to do the work. That's why I say a participation trophy, because we still have people, as I say, living legends who are still working, who are still doing the work, not because they want to, because they believe they have to, because they don't believe we have someone to hand this legacy down to and hand over to who's going to responsibly take this torch and run with it. So, you know, I talk about Donna Ligon.
42:07 She already has a whole center named after herself, but she's still out here working, doing this work. Willie Blake, He has a whole park named after himself, but he's still out here doing this work. So we have to figure out a way to capture that generation and say, hey, you know what? You have to take this torch. You need to take this. How can I help you? So I can rest. I'm almost 60 years old. I want to be able to rest and watch and see the legacy that we've created. That's why I give it a participation trophy.
42:38 It's exactly what most, like, I did interview Willie Blake, right, from the MLK Memorial Day. And then also Charisse over from NAACP. And that was the call to action is to get involved, get involved, get involved. And that's interesting. I would score it, you know... I would say a silver from my perspective and the reason why I would bump it to a silver is because I do believe like the leadership and generally speaking we are a culturally empathetic community that is more accepting of differences than perhaps other communities that I've been to.
43:30 So that's just my play at that. And I was curious to get your opinion on that. But you're absolutely right. I mean, and that's exactly what we were saying earlier on. The anxiety that the older folks feel that the younger folks aren't as involved because freedom is not free. There is a path to the torch. There is additional work to be done Last week, we had the opportunity to actually interview David Dennis, if I'm looking at you right. David Dennis, because it's two first names, so I have to think in my head.
44:09 And he was an original freedom writer. Yeah. I mean, he was supposed to be on a trip with the three people that got murdered. Two of them were the white kids. And it's just like, it's crazy how close to history we really all are. So when we do talk to the 16, 18, 22, 23-year-olds, that whole kind of generation, there is just such this pull to say, step up. The other common denominator that came from all of the leaders in these past interviews was this concept of servant leadership, right? And two of them even said the same thing.
44:52 It goes beyond servant leadership. If you're truly fighting the fight, it's like a sacrificial type of servant leadership that they brought to the table. Any comments on those in terms of service with regards to advancing the dream? If I could, Lucy, I would add to a comment that you guys just finished talking about. And that was the fact of the different populations. I moved back to Gaston, which is actually Gaston is the pretty much one of those small country towns in Florida that pretty much is more populated by African-Americans than any other county in the state of Florida.
45:34 You're the opposite of Tucson. Yes, yes, yes. But I bring it up to say, because agreeing with Larry, I'm bringing it up to say from the standpoint, even though we are the majority and the number of black, I have to grade us as a minority as it relates to a level of standing because of our areas of communication and how we understand, how we interpret what history is and what we did. Everybody here grew up on a farm. pretty much, working for the owner. So how do we change that? That population and that mindset is something that's so hard to change.
46:18 That you have to continue to work at it, to work at it, to work at it. It's not as easy as coming back and saying, hey, guess what? A light bulb just went off. This is how you make $1,000? No, it's not. It's a lot deeper than that. And you're right, Larry. This is a sacrificial type of leadership here that we're talking about because you have to be grounded into this process in order to really begin to see the difference. Yeah. And it makes, and I don't mean to cut, but, but Josh said goes into something else, which is there's no secret that in every state in the United States, blacks are overrepresented in prison populations, no matter where you go.
47:02 I did a study. There's a place in Alabama that is less than 1% African-American less than 1%. You know what their crime rate is for African-Americans in that County. Five percent. I'm like, how do you get a five percent? Then you're populated with less than one percent. Yes, it's my design. And as long as even like you said, in our community, we have to understand the design. And if we don't understand and accept design. the design, it will continue to be that way. If we don't know and understand, because I retired from corrections, so I know and understand how it works and what it does, right?
47:44 So, but if we don't understand that it is a design from slavery, the 13th Amendment, certain things that followed, why it is still that way today. We have to think about that in our community. That's right, that's right. I think I knew it would not be difficult to fill 15 to 30 minutes with this conversation at all. We're already leaning into the last 10 minutes of the hour. So I just wanted to bring up a couple, you know, graphics and, you know, just to remind everybody June 15th, if you're in and around Pima County, if you want to come on down from out of state, it doesn't matter.
48:21 It is a fabulous, fabulous event. But, you know, it's more than just this one event. So for more information, you know, you can go to TucsonJune19th.org. Larry, I went ahead and actually I'll do that later. There are some really cool things coming up during June. We're working with the Red Cross. Your logo is not coming in correctly there, but I did go ahead and put this out. So June 5th. you're hosting a health and wealth type of seminar at the Dunbar region. It's a Dunbar at the Dunbar center, right?
49:02 As one part of what I don't have on here is your, um, loft event, which would be great to include, uh, June 7th, next couple of days. We'll, we'll be back American red cross sickle cell foundation back at the Dunbar talking about sickle cell. And of course we all know sickle cell has a, uh, prevalence within the African-American community. And so we'll be doing a roundtable there from two to four. June 15th, of course, is your Juneteenth Festival at Keno Sports Park. June 21st, Working very closely with American Red Cross, there is a need for blood donations from minorities, Hispanic and African American, but particularly during the summertime.
49:52 So if you can do one thing to advance the dream, donate blood. Get out there, donate blood, and if you can't donate blood, find somebody who can and take credit for it. There's probably several others, but the one that we are looking at supporting is June 21st. That's being led by Team Lizzie Bell at the Miranda Chamber. And then at the end, June 29th, we actually have... I didn't bring it up. The Sickle Cell Foundation will be hosting a two-day conference. And actually, shameless plugs, if you don't mind.
50:34 Yeah, of course. Not shameless, but they're beneficial. So the advancing with Juneteenth again, where it's a movement, we're doing things the whole month. So we're going to, we have our kickoff at the Dunbar. And then on June 8th, We're dancing in the streets, Tucson, to host the first ever Black Ballet. Cinderella and the Prince, a Black Ballet at the Tucson Music of Art. On June the 9th is our annual Gospel Jubilee. What we have are, we just put together a Juneteenth Mass Choir. So that's on June 9th at Pima College Presidium Theater.
51:10 I'll send you our link for everything. And then, of course, we have the Loft event. And then another good thing we're doing is a lot of people don't know there's a black art gallery here in Tucson, the Blue Lotus Art Gallery. So we're going to highlight them also to have a sip and see at the art gallery. We're going to have a silent auction, you know, have someone, the artist who's there, his name is Monat. And he plays the drums. He's from Africa. He's going to be playing his drums and talking about his art at the art gallery.
51:39 So that's going to be on the 12th. And then, of course, the 15th. And we're going to have on the 19th at the drawing studio, Randicia Fletcher is a master drawing artist. So she's going to work with the community, specifically with Black females and other females talking about trauma and how you can deal with art as it relates to trauma. So trying to put ourselves and our community in different places that we don't normally get into, which is the ballet, the art gallery, the drawing. you know we we understand the festival I think everybody understands the festival and the jubilee but we need to put ourselves in places or spaces that we don't normally get into so that was that was my focus this year was highlighting those other things that we do I love that I saw that flyer on your site I should have grabbed it and pulled it in um the and I will will when on our broadcast, I will go ahead and highlight that.
52:33 So Larry, as we lean in, I just wanna remind the audience, the Force for Health, is a mixed media type of platform. So yes, we're here talking about it. Broadcast live, interactive community chat is one thing, but if you're really interested, you know, connect with us. You can download the app. If you're really interested, right, and you really want to move, learn, serve, and earn, and just get connected, download the app and come join the Advance the Dream community. It's free, right, to join.
53:06 The Advance the Dream platform Program is powered by the force for health We're partnering with Josh you do matter as a national kind of lead in this So that we can develop it and then help grow it. I Love this. I love this quote from dr. Martin Luther King faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase, you know, and we really are taking this in two phases and when you are working in an advance the dream type of project with us on your own, or maybe you join up with a team, the first phase is really focus on me.
53:50 You can't be a servant leader if you are sick and not too well. So you really have to focus inward, serve yourself and own your health. That's why the summer is such an awesome time to just, Stop and assess. I mean, we've got free HRAs and we've got a more customizable personalized HRA with our ambassador product, which is only a dollar a week. It's $49 for the whole year. It actually benefits nonprofits out here. Make a pledge, connect with resources, use technology to track, set goals, and move, learn, and earn.
54:26 That's me. Yeah. But when we look at we, once we check ourselves, then we can look out to how we can better serve people. And we do have a national call to action right now. We are forming national health communities and local. Now, of course, I mean, we were doing this when COVID was around because that was super important. African-Americans really took... a brunt of the spear more so than others around COVID, which was so sad. But when we're looking at servicing and out, seeking health justice for all, what type of ideas can impact barriers to health?
55:07 Team up for greater outcomes, using mentoring to data, going ahead and helping fundraise if you'd like, and then compete for awards and prizes. So I just bring that because we're trying to make this big competition, right? Healthy Leagues Award, Reality Health Games, and let's see if we can get some friendly competition up at the table. So just wanted to remind everybody that we are more than just a broadcast. We've got a platform that if you really do want to lean in, grab your phone, connect the app, and start earning points.
55:45 Move, learn, serve, and earn. Final thoughts. Let's go around the table. I'll start with you, Josh. Oh. Well, number one, glad Larry, you could join us. It was a pleasure meeting you, Doc. I have some ideas that I would like to bounce off you as well about trying to do more on the educational side with Juneteenth in this small section of the state of Florida. If we could, I think it's warrant. You hear about Juneteenth here, but all you do is just hear about it. That's all, literally. You just hear about it.
56:19 But we want to do something more. So looking at what you guys are doing, we may not be able to step up that high yet, but we can at least get the informational component of what you're talking about out to our people so they can better understand. Because I think that communication is the key to moving anyone forward in these days. And that will be my final thought. I love the whole concept of working with Larry and establishing a national Juneteenth badge. And so they are the bare minimum points of knowledge that we want people to go learn either on their own or then even earn more points because they're coming to a seminar or something live in the community.
56:58 But Rob, go ahead. Two badges for themselves, but also how would you rate your community? What does a community Juneteenth badge look like? I challenge Lucy and Larry to come up with that and create that as well. But my end thought really is when I listen to this and just sit here thinking about it is with Mother's Day, take the time, talk to your mom, talk to your neighbor's mom, and learn a history, their history, but learn your neighbor's history. That's what this Juneteenth conversation is too.
57:34 Your history is my history, Larry, and vice versa. So you can understand where I've been raised and where I'm coming from or where my kids might be coming from. So let's encourage everyone to really take the time to learn their history and their history is everyone's history. And I leave final thoughts to you, Larry. Oh, man, it's been a blessing to be here with you guys. I really didn't know what to expect, but it is great. I knew I couldn't speak candidly for 10 minutes. Well, Larry, you know, we invite you right now on the spot in public to join our national advisory group with Advance the Dream and lean in and really bring the issues to the table so that we can scale what you guys feel needs to be done.
58:27 I think that that would be great. And ultimately, to set up and advance the Dream Leagues, So you literally have this competition of My Healthy Arizona versus My Healthy Pennsylvania. What are the collective Juneteenth scores? The Alphas versus the Omegas. I mean, just starting with the Divine Nine League would be perfect. Divine Nine. Divine Nine League. Let's go. Let's start with that. That's the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. You're absolutely right. I'm going to contact you about that, Larry.
59:02 That's all right. I'm going to get your information from Lucy. I love that concept. The beginning and the end. The alphas and the megas to really put the ends on and let's get this Divine Nine League going. Where the book is to the Divine Nine. That is wonderful. Thank you for listening. Larry, thank you so much. I knew that this would be a great conversation and I appreciate you carving out a part of your Saturday morning to take place. Again, lean in and wherever you are, See if your community has a Juneteenth festival and then lean in and get involved.
59:38 And you know what? Know the leaders. The leaders can connect you to anybody that you may seek and need help from.
Transcript is auto-generated from the broadcast captions and lightly cleaned; timestamps jump to the moment on YouTube.
Advance the Dream · Episode Recap ·