Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys. And in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the apparent tension between the umbrella organization for Black Lives Matter and the father of Michael Brown, who was the teenager that was slain by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri back in 2014.
And later on, we're going to weigh in on a recent study in which researchers were able to have two way communication with people while they were sleeping, like having people answer math questions, things like that, which seems to be quite a departure of how we understand sleep.
Joining me today is a man who is working on getting his left stroke to go viral. Tunde. Ogunlana Tunde, are you ready to share your humble opinions today?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Always, sir. Always.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: All right. All right.
Now we're recording this on March 7, 2021. And we wanted to discuss a story from this past week about the demand made to the Black Lives Matter Global Network foundation, which is the umbrella organization for the Black Lives matter movement, for $20 million. And it was made by Michael Brown Sr. The father of Michael Brown, which was the black teen murdered in Ferguson, Missouri by a police Officer back in 2014, and activist Tori Russell of the International Black Freedom Alliance.
Now, this demand came after disclosures that Black Lives Matter took in over $90 million last year in donations, which that had many people asking where the money was going. And honestly, they were seeking a piece of the pie.
So Tunde, what's your thought on this apparent tension between Black Lives Matter and Michael Brown Sr. The International Black Freedom alliance, and other black equality activists and organizations which seems to be about both money and the focus of the direction of where resources should be directed.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: It was very interesting to see that article. I think that's what stuck out to us with regards to.
I thought it was even more interesting that it was Michael Brown, you know, unfortunately for him losing his son and his son also being one of the main catalysts, even though BLM was founded as an organization in 2013 in response to the Trayvon Martin incident and killing.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Well, just to be clear, like the organization kind of got salience at that point and kind of the name and stuff. But this Black Lives Matter umbrella organization itself was founded in 2015. I believe so. But yeah, you're kind of the Black Lives Matter.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yeah, just talking about. Yeah, the idea. The movement founded in 2013. But then no matter what happens after that, I think we all recognize Michael Brown Jr. And his killing at the hands of the police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, outside of St. Louis, as one of the, I guess, flashpoints over the last, I'd say, two to three decades in terms of the dialogue in the United States as it relates to police, justice system stuff, police and the relation in the black community, all that kind of stuff that has been historically, every generation, there seems to be a flashpoint on this topic in our country. And I think that's what stuck out to me is that the father of Michael Brown is the one who is demanding this along with others. But that's what was notable to me. It was just an interesting. I don't want to call it an irony so much, but just an interesting development, I guess, that there's this tension within and it's coming from someone like him.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Well, I think that that actually makes sense in the sense that he's someone who is, you know, no one can really question because of the circumstances. No one can say, oh, Michael Brown Sr. Who's he? Why is he even asking for anything? And so he kind of has that cache.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what brings it out.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: I mean, it's due to unfortunate circumstances, obviously, but he has that cachet. And I mean, my thought, though, and I mean, you'll probably see this coming from a mile away just because of the way I look at these types of things, but this appears to be a natural tension.
Just as organizations grow, there's more ideas, there's more and also grow in both stature and in resources available to them. People have different ideas, people want to go different directions. And so there's always going to be a creative tension. When you have something, if it's two people and they're splitting a dollar between the two of them, there's not going to be a lot of tension because there's nothing a lot of people, meaning there's not a lot of different ideas and there's not a lot of resources to split. But if once you start having lots and lots of people involved and people that have put time, blood, sweat and tears in, you know, and pounded the pavement and so forth, they are going to feel a certain level of ownership of what's going on.
And with Black Lives Matter being kind of a almost like a leaderless type of thing where anyone can kind of be a part of it and, you know, there's no, like, you don't apply for membership and stuff like that, that type of organization lends it to everybody saying, well, hey, here's how we should be doing things. Here's how the money should be spent. And so I think it kind of is just a natural outgrowth. And this is going to test the organization from the standpoint of, okay, now you have to see if your current organization structure can serve the needs of the people you're trying to serve and also make people feel like they're bought in and they're a part of it, or if you need to change that leadership type or that type of structure and do something different.
And one other thing I'll mention, and I'll throw this back at you also, is that I don't think it's a bad thing for people to come out and ask for money or to ask the question, where's all the money going?
Like, that's the kind of transparency we want.
So whether or not I think that Black Lives Matter should write a check to Michael Brown Sr. For $20 million, I'm glad that he's asking, where's the money? Because people who are receiving that amount of money should feel like people are watching them and should feel like people are saying, hey, what are you gonna do with that? What are you gonna do with that? Because we know human beings. This isn't some Black Lives Matter. Those are still people. And so human beings are gonna have the tendency, if nobody's watching, there's gonna be temptation to do things they shouldn't be doing. So it's good that there is, as we call in Florida, the sunlight that's being shown on this.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah, Sunshine Law.
I agree on all those fronts. I mean, I was thinking of several historical movements and. Or events, you know, so we can think of, let's say, civil rights movement.
You saw that there was a tension between those who followed more of the Gandhi, Martin Luther King style versus those who were more of the early Malcolm X all the way, let's say, the Black Panther style. And both styles came from a place of, yeah, legitimacy and kind of honesty. But both were competing tensions within a group that as a whole was looking for the same outcome. Right. Equality and all that at the time in the United States. And then I thought of things like the suffrage movement, you know, the women's rights cause. That's really started in 1848 and culminated in 1920 with the Constitutional amendment that allowed women to vote in this country.
I thought of the wets versus the dries during prohibition, which started in the middle 1800s and. And culminated in the prohibition laws of the 1920s. And reason I bring those up is because all these. All. What we're talking about is a grouping of people who have a shared vision, but yet there's a lot of tension because they end up starting usually with big tents. So one of the things I thought of is kind of like an entrepreneur in business, and we see this a lot.
If you look at, let's say someone with the.
The temperament of, let's say an Elon Musk versus let's say a Tim Cook, who's a CEO of Apple now, it seems that in the infancy stage, it takes a certain personality, a person that's wired a certain way with a certain level of energy.
When a business is in the startup phase, those are the guys that don't sleep. They're kind of going fast and hard. They're pissing off everyone else around them. But people that hang in there see a vision and kind of put up with it.
But then at some point, as the business grows and is very big, investors come in and people want to see a little bit more stability, to feel comfortable and all that. And I feel like that, going back to what we're talking about here, organizations that are movement driven are the same way usually start with a lot of energy at the grassroots level. I could see all the stuff we just mentioned, the. The various groups, I'm sure in 1848, when the first papers and stuff were being written by women who wanted to see improvement in women of the suffrage movement. These were pretty radical women at the time, as compared to probably the average woman in American Society in 1848. One could probably say the same thing with blacks in the early to mid-50s, as the grassroots of the civil rights movement in the 20th century was starting to form. I mean, these were black Americans that were a little more radical and willing to push the envelope than the average black person at the time that was saying, okay, well, I guess this segregation stuff is how it is. And then we could even fast forward it today where a lot of people like you and I have not really gone in the street. We're African American guys and we care about the justice system and all this stuff going on. So it took a little bit more of a radical element than maybe moderate guys like me and you over the last decade to kind of form blm.
And so what happens, I think what we're talking about here is we're seeing a bit of that tension between, as you're saying, Michael Brown's father, who appears to be more of that grassroots type, that obviously he was in the trenches, he lost a son, he's obviously has a certain experience and feeling with all this versus now the greater the BLM as an organization that as you said took in $90 million last year and is now becoming more of a big aircraft carrier. It's more of a big organization. So it's kind of like that entrepreneurship to big corporation.
BLM itself now probably has some reflection it's got to do into what is their real mission and who are they serving. To your point, and you're right, he has a right to ask these questions.
And one thing I want to bring up that we can get into because I know you want to keep it moving, but to address this as we have our conversation is I find it interesting because there's a lot of detractors to BLM out there and I find it's interesting how when this article comes out or this kind of statement by Michael Brown's father comes out and there's a certain set of people that want to take a look at this as a way to pick apart the BLM experience or message and all that. And you know, it's interesting. I have people in my life from all walks of life and one of my good buddies who doesn't really agree at all with BLM and all that stuff. And that's fine, you know, he's entitled to his opinion. But you know, the first question was, you know, I can't believe they raised $90 million, you know, because he calls BLM a racist organization. So his thing was, you know, how much, how much did the Proud Boys and the other groups didn't raise that much. Almost like a tit for tat comparison, like kind of like, you know, I of it is kind of childish, but it was funny because then of course I don't think he did this, but I googled immediately, how much money did the Proud Boys raise? And all of a sudden you see all this disinformation about all these different militia groups and white nationalist groups having raised millions and millions of dollars last year. So it just, it struck me as this kind of moment and I'm sure that all these other organizations that we're talking about in the past, whether it was the prohibition debates, the women's suffrage debates, the civil rights movement in the 60s, it's interesting to see too those who don't like the movements or don't like it from the outside of those movements also use these tensions within these movements as a way to try and fracture them.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Well, not just use them though, cuz your friend wasn't using it per se. He just reveled in it. He just enjoyed.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Well, I would say this, someone else used it and it was correct, correct
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Someone else was like, hey, everybody, look at this. And so, yeah, I mean, that's. It's almost. I mean, like I said, I look at this as kind of just a sign of maturity. You know, like once you. As you build from the grassroots, you just start having more questions being asked. You have more resources at your disposal. You have more people that know about you and pay attention to you. And so as that happens, this is the type of thing that happens. And so you have to then chart your next course as more of a mature organization. And so. And that's. That's. That's a sign of success.
You know, there are many organizations or movements that get started, bunch of grassroots, never really get the necessary salience to keep moving, and this stuff never happens to them. So, you know, it's.
While yes, detractors might look at this and say, ha, ha, ha, you know, look at this. They're just like, they're just this and that. They wouldn't say they're just like us, but that's how I would look at it.
But because people are people, you know, organizations are going to run into these types of things, but at the same time, I think from a larger scale, putting on my Tunde hat from 30,000ft, you view this as just progress. This is okay, wow. They're advancing into kind of this next stage of maturity. So looking at just kind of the last seven, eight years, just what is your impression of Black Lives Matter as an organization and a movement? Do you think they've been effective in advancing the interests of equality from both a messaging and a result standpoint?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think, like we mentioned, right. They're not even 10 years old. So I think the long arc of time over the next probably decade or two, we can look back and see how effective they've been. I would say this. I've already seen studies published that describe basically that areas of the country over the last 24 months that have had a strong Black Lives Matter type of presence or showing have actually that statistical information is that data shows there's been a decline in, I guess, negative police interactions with the community also. Yeah. So in that sense, there's empirical evidence that they have been effective to some degree in at least changing the dynamic of what maybe once was happening between, or the relationship between law enforcement and certain communities.
That, I think, is one answer. The second way to go into this conversation is I think, more of the esoteric part. Like you're asking, do you think their messaging has been effective? Do you think I would take that more of. And maybe this is me reading your question a little bit more into the idea of kind of their marketing.
I think that probably has mixed reviews in my opinion.
I think for some people within the movement and those I'd say specifically black folks, in this sense, I think that the messaging is a little bit easier to swallow from all angles. Meaning whether you're on the front lines of the street and all that, you could be some person that's not affected at all by the police stuff and all that, but you just have a natural inclination as a black American to understand that there's some historical stuff that needs to be addressed and some systemic things that are still going on today that need to be addressed. So I think for a certain demographic, the messaging is okay and fine. I think that as we talked about with industry, kind of from an entrepreneurial startup company to then when it matures as a larger organization, some things also change too, like the way they market and the way they communicate with consumers. And I think that is something that probably needs to mature in BLM for it to have a long term survival and I'd say a more global and national credibility.
So I would think of organizations specifically like the NAACP and the Urban League as good examples of organizations that are mature and well accepted by society. If you go into most, I mean, except for, let's say, white supremacists. Right. I think most Americans, no matter what race, religion or how they feel, don't look at the Urban League and NAACP as threatening organizations. They recognize that these are organizations that have been around a long time and may not be as influential as they were once, but were needed at one point and were also part of the journey, let's say, in the 20th century of helping equality in the United States,
[00:17:14] Speaker A: they were at one point considered very radical from the norms of society, and now they're not. And some of that's just time. I would like to actually piggyback on what you're saying. I think that I'll start since you where you ended. I'll start where you ended. As far as just the messaging, I think actually that their messaging, at least from a inherent standpoint, comes from a place of weakness.
And you kind of danced around this, but I'll just come out and say it.
The issue that they'll always have, at least I've seen, and it seems like they're going to have it indefinitely, I can't see the end of it, is that the Black Lives Matter messaging requires context.
And so if you're messaging. If your slogans and how you message yourself requires people to understand some level of background facts, then you're going always going to operate at a disadvantage because there's always going to be people who don't understand that and who don't care to understand background and don't necessarily want to have a big picture. They just say, okay, well, can I get behind this or can I not? And I'm talking about not people that want to be adverse, but just people who want to hear what you have to say, but again, only on a surface level. They don't want you to give them a history lesson or whatever.
Okay, can I get behind this or not? And so saying Black Lives Matter, like you said to someone like yourself or me, it's like, okay, I understand that historically law enforcement and just private citizens in the United States have not always taken the mindset that blacks were equal or that their lives should be protected under the law and so forth. And so I understand that when you say that this is a pushback against that, but Black Lives Matter as a statement itself or as a mantra itself is more adversarial.
It's pushing back. But if you don't know what they're pushing back against, then again, you can get kind of. It's easy to get distorted. It's easy to get lost in that. And for someone who's a zero sum thinker, again, not people who are just inclined to not like it anyway, but just a zero sum thinker, if you present them with something like Black lives Matter, the mind does automatically react to saying, okay, well what doesn't matter then? Or what are you saying?
If you're saying this does matter, then what are you implicit and what are you implying doesn't matter? And those are all challenges I think they're just going to face because of the way the movement's entitled and the way that it's positioned. And I think some of that was intentional. It was positioned to take a more aggressive stance. But that also will create challenges from a messaging standpoint in order to try to broaden buy in. It's just the challenge that always exists.
And so, I mean, I know you wanted to get back in on this. I kind of jumped in because I want to talk about the efficacy of the results as well. But I'll let you. While we're still on this.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah, no, because this is part of the marketing stuff. And I'm just thinking about myself as a person as well as a lot of other people that I know.
And that's where I feel like at this point, if BLM wants to have a long term survival, like I mentioned Urban League or naacp. I mean, I think. And that's where we're talking about if they raise 90 million in 2020. I mean, this is where, if I ran the organization, let's just say that I would be okay, let's formalize.
And for example, Urban League and NAACP have local offices in most large municipal cities areas and they also have the naacp. I had a friend, that's why I would know some of the stuff who, when he was fresh out of law school, did pro bono work for the naacp. And I just learned being, you know, talking to him and him, you know, sharing with me that there was a lot of important kind of legal work that they did at the grassroots and ground level in various communities. And those are things that I think that BLM as an organization will want to start doing and just having. And I think that's where we see some of that tension. Let's say going back to Michael Brown, you know, the article which got us into doing this topic.
One of his arguments and gripes was that he wants them to open a field office, he wants them to support, like open a center. I think part of it is they wanted funds to open a center like a community center in the Ferguson city limits that would be named like the Michael Brown Jr. Community Center. Just a place for people to congregate. But probably you could have education, all that kind of stuff.
So like you started out with, and rightfully so, that people like him should be questioning an organization like this and demanding more from them. So I think it's up to BLM now to respond to these type of demands. I think the other thing is just basic marketing. If you look at NAACP for example, it stands for the national association of the Advancement of Colored People.
I know that's an old terminology, but it's kind of non threatening in a certain way of advancement of people.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: No, that could be taken if by that could be you could imply the same things from there, like oh, you're advancing them at expense of someone else, but they also go by the acronym.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: I recognize that, but I recognize that as I was saying it, that I could see 100 years ago, what does advancement mean and all this stuff. So I'm sure that could have been taken certain ways by people from the outside of the organization.
But I'm just making the point that, you know, when you have the name Black Lives Matter, again, I don't have necessarily a problem with it. I Get what they're saying. But what I'm saying is it invites a lot of unwanted and unnecessary attention and reasons for people to just say, well, the whole thing, like, all Lives matter and all that. Like, that's to me, like, I get that Black Lives Matter isn't saying that other lives don't matter, but why give people that are already trying to be detractors another reason to say, look, telling the rest of the society that this group over here means something that they may not want to mean?
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Well, that's what I meant as far as, like, it requires context to understand where they're coming from. And context is not a strong suit of our society. And also, I mean, it also is exclusive in a way. Like, it's like, okay, so then if you're Hispanic, does Black Lives Matter stand up for you as well? Like, and I think that this is. Well, let me.
I wanted to get into, I think the results.
I think that it has been effective from a result standpoint. And I think part of the reason is kind of the same principle that we're talking about as far as people should ask questions about what they're doing with the money they're raising and that when Black Lives Matter increases just public awareness. Black Lives matter. Being around cops aren't. Cops have eyes, they have ears. People are talking about this stuff in their community. They are going to be by and large, a little more careful because it's like, oh, if this happens, then it's not going to just easily be swept under the rug like it may have been under a lot of circumstances. Now we're going to have all these protests and it's going to be, I'm going to. People be looking at me, my family's going to be like. So it changes the equation in terms of someone overreacting or at least gives them more to think about if someone's going to overreact in a situation. More reason to try to keep your cool or whatever, to approach things a certain way. It's not going to be 100%, but it is going to make a difference on the margin, most likely if somebody's watching, if somebody's watching and ready to raise a big stink about it. So I think from that standpoint, it clearly has been effective from a result standpoint, as shown by. And we'll link in the show notes to some of these studies that have been coming out recently as far as the drop, particularly in killings by the police.
I think from a awareness standpoint, they were helped, so to speak. I mean, I Don't like putting it in that phrase, but it was. The salience amongst the public was increased following George Floyd in this past summer and, you know, it was on the court at NBA games and so forth. And so I think they've done a good job from an awareness standpoint as well. Again, from the messaging standpoint. I think they have certain challenges that are kind of inherent with the direction that was chosen to go from a naming standpoint and so forth. And that's just, that's what it's going to be. I mean, it's going to be something that a good person, organization wise, good person from a. From the standpoint of marketing will be able to overcome. It's just one of the challenges. I also think with that they will. Part of the maturity is going to have to be a direction. I think you made a good point as far as like the smaller things that the ncaa, ncaa, the NAACP does from a legal standpoint, getting small wins in communities here and there and, you know, like, being there, being there, showing up, you know, being a part of something. I think Black Lives Matter will have to set out and this will help address what we're talking about here with the Michael Brown Sr. Issue. They're gonna have to set out kind of what they are, what they are about and then be about that. I don't know that you can be an organization that's supposed to be all things to everyone. And so if their issue. Well, yeah, let me, let me just say the point. So if their issue is going to be, for example, police over policing or, you know, the way the police treat people of color or just people in general and saying, okay, no more extra judicial killings or things like that, then they should really lean into that and lean into that on a local level more. So not just after a killing happens, but maybe lobbying beforehand, maybe trying to create a counterbalance to the amount of lobbying, the money that comes from police unions to avoid accountability in order to create incentives for cities, municipalities to create that incentives for more accountability and so forth. So I think they would want to pick something that's going to be what they really are about. If you are trying to be about everything, then I think they're going to run into bigger problems because it's just not something that any organization can do.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, you're right. And one of the things just then I'll get off the marketing side.
When people talk about things, I find it amazing because I have again, friends and people I love and consider close to me on all sides of these Spectrums. And it amazes me how people that say they support BLM and people say they hate blm. Neither side, when I really ask them, have ever gone to like BLM's website and actually just studied it themselves to say, what are these people actually saying? Versus what am I being told they're saying? Or what did someone on TV tell me about this group or that group?
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Or just what I gather from the name, you know, like a lot of it doesn't. And that's, that's again, getting into the challenges when your name requires context to understand and can be taken in certain ways. But go ahead.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's what I was going to say, that I'm going to talk about me here because I know myself and I can judge for myself and I'm not going to put my assumptions on someone else. So I'm going to say this.
I appreciate BLM and understand exactly kind of the overarching ideas that formed it. And I support the idea of equality and also of continuing to clean up things like systemic racism and the justice system, which I do believe exists and certain imbalances like that and in other areas of our society. So when I go to a BLM website, I'm looking at, okay, so what are they about? So I go hit the about tab and I made sure to check it today to make sure that I was accurate. And this wasn't something that I first saw six months ago.
Right now on their about section they talk about. And then one of the areas that I'm going to read here is we affirm the lives of black, queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within black liberation movements.
Just reading that, I'm a bit confused and I don't mean to poke fun at it, meaning you start off with black, queer and trans folks and then they're talking about people that are marginalized within the black liberation movements. So part of it is, number one, like that's a much bigger tent than I thought I was gonna get into. When I went to a Black Lives Matter website, I thought it was specifically about what I just said, right?
The justice system, imbalances and systemic racism. And kind of at that 30,000 foot level, I didn't realize that there was, I gotta start, you know, also talking about transgenders and other people that they have rights to and all that. I'm not questioning and I'm not gonna get, you know, off tangent on this but it's just what. That's kind of what I'm saying. I realized, man, there's a lot going on here that I didn't realize as a guy who just thought he was coming in to look at kind of more of a civil rights type of conversation. And then I started thinking, too, about the definition of black people. Right. We're not a monolith as a group. Just like no group's a monolith. So I thought about some of the most conservative people I know are black.
And if you look at, like, I was thinking about people I know that are. That are like.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Well, you mean. But you mean real conservative.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: But that's my point.
So let me go.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: I think it's worth specifying because in our society right now, conservative has become more of, like we talked about a year ago on our show, it's more of a gang sign than actually a signifier of beliefs. But you're talking about actually, like, yeah,
[00:30:19] Speaker B: I'm not talking about someone who says they're Republican.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Yeah, you're talking about conservative worldview, like
[00:30:24] Speaker B: people that don't support gay marriage, people that don't support legalization of marijuana or other drugs, people that are conservative by nature and very religious. And so I thought about if you look at the black Baptist church kind of culture and that whole swath of our society, you look at the black AME churchgoers, and these are. We're talking millions of people in this country.
So my point is, is that I'm not sure they would support that total definition that I just wrote about what read from the website, even though they support the civil rights aspect and the systemic racism, beating that and all that aspect. So those were things. And then there's the BLM demands. So there's seven demands. One is, the first one is convict and ban Trump from future political office. So I kind of thinking, okay, well, there's 77 million people that are not going to get won over from demand number one.
Demand number two, expel Republican members of Congress who attempted to overturn the election and incited a white supremacist attack.
Again, this type of language, the way I'm looking at it is even though I have no problem with following up on the insurrection and making sure that people are held accountable, if I'm trying to win a majority of the country to see my view, I might use different language. What that got me also thinking is other organizations that I've been involved with, at least here locally.
One is aipac, and we talked about it. The American Israel Political action committee. And I feel like that's a good example of an organization that represents a traditionally marginalized group in the world. We know that Jews been persecuted for 2000 years in various ways. And what they did was they were smart in finding that if you're going to court power, you need to kind of play both sides. You can't just be coming always from one side. So my experience with aipac, again, my experience is that they lobby both in this country, Democrats and Republicans, equally.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: But they do them in different ways though. Like they have different messaging for different sides a lot of times.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: But there are areas they bring it together. So for example, they always, every year there's a certain amount of freshmen in the Congress.
Or every two years, let's say when a new congressional class comes in, AIPAC makes the point. I mean, I guess someone can choose not to go, but they invite the freshmen from both parties and they go to Israel and they walk them through all the, you know, the Golan Heights and the other areas and they show em where the rockets come over. What that does is it gives a buy in, in a certain way. And I thought about something similar. I was like, what if BLM or you know, whatever name it could change to in my world, right?
Had something like that where they went and lobbied new freshman congresspeople and had them do drive through inner city neighborhoods, go look at the, you know, the bail bond situation in these neighborhoods, go look at the food deserts, go look at all these things that we kind of know are going on in certain communities.
But again, that's what I'm talking about, the maturity we need to be able to now take that 90 million, let's say that was raised last year and begin to put it to work like that. If this is going to get any further than it is right now.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: And that caveat is a good place or good thing to say because that's kind of the thing. What we're talking about is if the movement wants to continue its upward trajectory like it's had a trajectory so far, of starting from nothing as a movement, obviously the sentiment has been there, but starting from nothing as a movement and growing substantially in terms of power and influence over the course of the last seven, eight years, so say officially six years and so. But with that, if they want to stay, if Black Lives Matter wants to stay as a activist, rabble rousing type of organization, that's fine.
But that may cap, I'm not gonna say will, but that may cap how much influence it ultimately can wield. But it would allow it to stay purer and closer, to make less compromises in terms of its messaging, make less compromises in terms of what it's shooting for to do in terms of that in order. Because they wouldn't have to appeal to a broader audience if they want to stay really on the radical side relative to society, keep pushing the envelope. If society catches up with you, then you push it further. And so that's one approach that they could take the other approach and which seems to me to be something that is in play and should be really considered if you're raising $90 million in a year. I mean, that shows a certain level of wherewithal that, hey, you can make this bigger and more powerful and effective is that is looking at the power game, how power is wielded, how resources can be best wielded. And some of that requires a level of focus in terms of your aims and goals and ability to communicate that focus in a way that gets more buy in, that keeps the money rolling in, and that allows you to deliver results in that area.
The concern would be, obviously, if you're raising a lot of money, but if your focus stays very scattered, your organization stays very scattered, then it's very easy for that money to not be deployed in ways that are really going to make a big difference. And so, I mean, I think one, it was interesting to us to see people ask those questions because it's not just Michael Brown Sr. But also some of the local chapters of Black Lives Matter have raised issues in terms of what the national organization is doing and so forth. And so it's good that those questions are being raised because that signals that it's time to cast that lot, so to speak, and say, okay, no, no, no, we're going to stay decentralized. We're going to stay on the cutting edge of radicalism or no, no, no, we want to up this. We want to take this to the next level in terms of being able to wield influence and turn the amount of people that we can turn out and the amount of resources that we can marshal together, turn that into policy, turn that into things that really will change society in meaningful ways and that stick, so to speak, that aren't so transient. And so, yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see, you know, and it's an interesting, obviously thought, thought game to kind of just play out in terms of. And looking back to past organizations or organizations that are current or whatever or past movements and how they were able to do these types, same types of things. It's often instructive.
So yeah, that's. We also wanted to. There's no seamless way to move from that to our next topic. But one of the things that caught our eye over the last week or so was a publication talking about researchers had been able to communicate with people, to establish two way communication with people that were sleeping and dreaming basically and get them in some cases not 100% of the time, but get people to use motion of the eyes to answer math questions and engage basically. Now again, they weren't able to do this with all the people. They tried, but what was your take Tunde on these discussions? You know, and just, you know, what's your thought as far as like how much is going on, you know, like with our dreams and whether we can tap into that, whether we can maybe able to harness that at some point? Like we've seen Inception, which is super cool, but like, are we heading that direction now where people are gonna be able to tap into someone who's dreaming and interact?
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean this is, it's fascinating to me. I'm glad we did this topic. And it's funny, you bring up the movie Inception. I really like that movie. And now I want to watch it, but it's funny. I want to watch it, but I'm intimidated because I remember it was like three hours, so I probably won't watch it again.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: But.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: No, but it's, it's, it's, it fascinates me, all this stuff on many levels. And you know, we'll get into that. But the study I found was interesting because I was all kind of gung ho to read it at first off the headline. And then when you read it, it's interesting. The study, again, we've got 8 billion humans on the world and this study was done on 158 people. So I'm not sure that I started getting my science hat on, like, okay, is this sample size really big enough? Da da, da. And then also it seems that they corresponded with the researchers correctly, 18.6% of the time. And I guess to be real quick in the explanation, these are people that when they were having specifically lucid dreams as opposed to, I guess non lucid dreams with the rapid eye movement and all that.
There was a whole study with controls and set up and all that. We didn't only get into it, but long story short is they were asked questions by the researchers while they were actually in this period of REM sleep.
The study basically showed that there's A certain percentage of them that were actually able to answer questions while they were in deep sleep and dreaming while the researchers were asking. So it showed that for the first time ever, scientifically, I guess it's been documented now that there's a certain percentage of humans that actually can be communicated to while they're actually knocked out sleeping and in dream state.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Give something back. I think that's the real big thing. Because the way they just. And again, we won't get into the study too much. We'll post it in the show notes so you can check it out. But communicating through movement of the eye. Cause during that REM sleep, the only thing that can move in your body is your eyes for the most part. And so they were able to communicate with movements of the eyes. Like they taught them how to do this before they went to sleep and so forth. So yeah, the two way aspect of it, because everybody's had dreams and somebody's saying something to you in the dream or an alarm's going off or something like that, and then that kind of works its way into your dream.
So I think that that part about it was kind of like, okay, let
[00:39:58] Speaker B: me speak to that because that was very interesting. There's a part I'm going to read from one of the articles on the study. It says, and I quote here, one dreamer reported math problems coming out of a car radio because one of the researchers was asking them about addition of subtraction. And it says another was at a party when he heard the researcher interrupting his dream like a narrator in a movie task and whether he spoke Spanish. So to your point that I started thinking about the same thing, like how many times through human history, all of us, you have some weird dream like someone's talking to you or something. But maybe there was just.
And it could be as far I'm thinking about like when we're kids and you're six or seven, sleeping in the back of your car and your parents are talking, maybe you hear some voice coming in and it's really just coming from that conversation.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah, because your ears still work. Your ears still work while you sleep, your brain still works while you sleep.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: And that was one thing they talked about in the research, that this kind of. One of the things that this helps, I guess, to move along from a kind of long arc of historic progress and all that over the over decades is that the scientific community was pretty sure that when we went to sleep there was like a true turnoff. Like our brain somehow was able to turn everything off from the outside world and be in its own little zone. And now this kind of disproves that we're still. Our brains are still somewhat wired in and have the potential, I guess, to be influenced from the outside world while we're asleep.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Well, let me jump in on that because I actually am a. I've read Carl Jung a lot and who is like a European, like dream specialist psychologists and dream specialists and so forth. Almost a contemporary, like a Freud and so forth, but I think a little after that. And he talks a lot about dreams and archetypes that make it consistently into dreams of people around the world and so forth. Like how just a lot of this stuff seems to be hardwired in our brains. And then one of the things that was really meaningful to me is just to be able to conceive the conscious part of the mind and the unconscious part of the mind as two different parts of the mind that are both going. And so one of the key things he spoke about in that. And these are things that were tested scientifically as well, but just that the unconscious part of the brain just doesn't work like the conscious part of the brain. The conscious part of the brain organizes information, presents in a way that's how we can talk, that's how we can do all these things, because it's the way it's organizing information. But the unconscious part of the brain just doesn't organize like that. And so when we try to make sense with our conscious mind of what's going on in our unconscious mind, then we're trying to put it in the constraints of a conscious type of framework, but it just doesn't work because the unconscious mind doesn't work like that. And so. And it's the unconscious mind that's doing all this stuff during dreams, obviously, the conscious mind is off, kind of like you said, during the dream. And so I found this to be from that lens. I found this to be going down in that direction and more away from the direction that Freud kind of had some different thoughts as far as the way the dreams worked. But, you know, so I found it to be very interesting from that standpoint. And one of the other takeaways from Jung that I found to be pretty interesting.
And the book that I read of his was man and His Symbols, by the way, in case anybody wants to look it up, which was just. It's a fascinating take on all of this stuff, but just that the unconscious mind does actually try to communicate with the conscious mind, you know, and sometimes dreams are a way that it does that. And that can be helpful for the overall being of the person and so forth. So a lot of times these dreams can be meaningful. And I know there was something you said about with death and how that interact. So there's something. There can be something meaningful. Not always. Sometimes, again, you can't put the unconscious mind in the constraints of the conscious mind. So everything's not going to necessarily have meaning. But some things can. Some things can be supposed to be. Help your conscious mind deal with things and so forth. So the fact that we know so little for sure doesn't necessarily mean that there haven't been interesting theories and thought exercises and experiments that have been done over time and that you can look into. But this stuff, yeah, really was rubber meet in the road. Like answering a math question or answering like a true or false yes or no type of question with eye movement was like, whoa, whoa. Like, that is. That's a different level to me was like, okay, that's worth, you know, Tunde. Did you see this type of thing? No.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: It's interesting. But that's what I'm saying too, is like they said it's good. You know, obviously they were honest in their reporting. Right. 18% of. Of. Of the 158 people. Oh, sorry. They were correct 18% of the time.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: It said something like 16 or 17% of the time that the researchers actually couldn't figure it out. Like the way the eyes were moving and then 60% was just like, whatever. Like they didn't respond. So I just thought, yeah, I just don't know. Out of 158 people and getting 18% correct responses, I mean, that's where I'm starting to question just how accurate is this in terms of. Out of, you know, let's say all of humanity. But it's.
It's just fascinating because I think it's another proof. And we talked about this briefly. I want to get this out because it was kind of cool that when I thought of it that I like watching a lot of space documentaries.
[00:45:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Like literally about space and the galaxies and all this, you know, and things about quantum physics and all that. And you kind of realize when you get into all that stuff that as vast as our massive galaxy is, and it's fascinating that the Voyager left the Earth in 1977, has been traveling like 80,000 miles an hour. And it just got out of our solar system last year.
You figure 40 years going that fast, that's so big. I can't fathom that with my brain. But then when you.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Solar system.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. That's not 13 billion years of light traveling at 6 trillion miles a second or whatever, a year or whatever. But.
But that's what I'm saying. Then you go to, like, once you start learning about quantum physics, it's almost like an opposite. Like it's this universe that's microscopic and so little. And I realized that this thing about dreams and our own brain, like how our brain actually works, is as undiscovered as outer space.
And as.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Or the quantum. Yeah.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Or the depths of the ocean. I was watching some. One of my nerd journeys recently, and it was about the deep ocean and how we know more about actually our solar system than we do still about the bottom of the ocean at the deepest part. So it's just another reminder that we Tunde, as humans assign meaning to a lot of things. And that's why even reading this study and things I was thinking about all that stuff like from Sigmund Freud that I've read about. Like, I think there was. I remember reading that if you.
He surmised that people who have dreams about kings and queens, that they're dreaming about their parents.
And I'm just thinking like, well, who knows if he was right? You know, like, there's so many. Our brains are so complex that it's just fascinating. I think it's going to be a long time. Probably past our lifetimes. You know, you and I may not be around to see this whenever. If humans ever get far enough, you know, we talk about mapping the human genome and all the things we've Learned
[00:47:03] Speaker A: through, like DNA, which was inconceivable 100 years ago.
[00:47:06] Speaker B: Correct. At some point, we may map the human mind and really understand this whole thing. Like, we hear about. We only use a certain percentage, a small percentage of our.
Of our brain at the conscious level because there's so much going on subconsciously. And, you know.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: You know, Tunde, there is a quote with that, which is, if the brain was so simple that we could understand it, then we would be so simple that we couldn't.
Which I believe was physicist Emerson Pugh. And that is. I mean, I think when you look at outer space, when you look at the depths of the ocean, when you look at the quantum type of, you know, like that level of size, that's that much smallness that all things that we don't understand, none of those are as close to us and as integral with our being as our own mind.
And so in a way, the Being able to try to understand the mind better. Would behoove us in ways that, you know, could affect our lives more so than understanding the depths of space or even the depths of the ocean and so forth.
So I say.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: I thought you were gonna just say sometimes people are human beings too.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: That's from great philosopher Tunde Ogunlana.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: I was all ready,
[00:48:24] Speaker A: but no, no, that's. So I say. All that to say, though, that there's competing interests there. Like, for us to be able to understand what's going on in our head.
We trying to understand something that's complex enough to allow us to be as intelligent as we are. But on the other side, like, there's a will there. Because, I mean, hey, if we can understand how to better leverage what's going on in our heads.
Or something to that effect. Then that could have a remarkable impact on 8 billion people or something like that. So it's baby steps, man. It's baby steps. Like, today you can say, what's two plus two? Tomorrow you can come up with a cure for cancer. Because your unconscious mind can work in a certain way. So you never know. But it's just that they're looking is one, encouraging. And two, it's like. It's interesting.
[00:49:13] Speaker B: I'm just laughing because today, in today's hyperpolarized society. Someone will try and convince you that two plus two does not equal four.
And there'll be someone else that will say, they're right. You're right. It's make fake math.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Yeah, fake math. But.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: But, no, but that's where I'm back. And I know we'll wrap it up is.
That's where I find this dream stuff very interesting.
Because we all. This again, it's like going to the bathroom or dying. Right. It's like every human being does this.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: And we all have a personal.
Again, it's like going to the bathroom. Right. We all do it. We all do it every day.
And we don't really talk about it. Right. It's something we all do, but we don't share with each other. Like, I don't wake up every day and call you James. I dreamed about this. Exactly.
And just like, I don't call you and say, james, I'm on the toilet, man.
But.
And I guess, you know, obviously we understand other parts of the body much better from a scientific aspect. But I just find it interesting that as human beings, a lot of us find comfort and control.
Understanding how things work.
And that gives us a bit of comfort and not understanding and Having a lack of control of things can make us nervous. And I feel like dreams are one of those interesting area. And kind of this whole thing about the subconscious and the sleep is so not misunderstood. Just yet to be totally understood is another area where we're a bit vulnerable as humans. You know, we don't understand it. And I think that's where there's a lot of this. That's why I said, I got no idea if I think Sigmund Freud was a science smart guy and should be respected. And a lot of his stuff definitely, I think has changed for the better how we see ourselves as humans. But when it comes to dreams, I'm just saying, like, you know, that's his interpretation about kings and queens, but we really don't know. And.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Well, you should check out Jung. And that's a really good one. And in terms of taking that stuff and really expanding upon how there's certain shared symbols or shared types of presentations that seem to be hardwired into our brains. I mean, the archetype stuff like, that's. That was fascinating.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
And you say this a lot too, which I thought of when I was reading some of these articles, which is, you know, are people looking at stars and seeing constellations? You know, do we see what we want to see? And I think that every society and culture. That's why I'll check out that Carl Jung book, because we all know that every culture going back to recorded history has had some sort of way of interpreting dreams. I mean, look at certain Native American tribes. We know the famous thing, the dream catcher, the thing. So you just put it over. You sleep with that over your kind of head. And the idea is that that caught dreams and all that. And I was just thinking, as I was.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: It just goes to your thought of control.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: You know, like, that's that desire for control and that's the conscious mind trying to put some type of a leash on the unconscious mind to try to control it. Particularly for people who derive comfort or experience great discomfort with things they can't control. Because dreams thus far have proved pretty elusive to any type of control. So there's no surprise that many societies have tried to come up with ways to try to control that thing that is so poorly understood and completely and utterly out of our control.
[00:52:39] Speaker B: Yeah, and one can see, I mean, like, we're talking about that our scientific.
Because of our technology in terms of electricity and then, you know, putting rockets in space and then having the. Let's say the Kepler or the Hubble telescope out There, taking these deep images, we have a much better understanding. And also because they revolve around things like physical science, you know, and just kind of physics itself, gravity and the speed of light and all that, it's a lot easier for us to begin to comprehend those today than dreams. But if you really think about it, let's say a thousand years ago, I mean, I was reading, when I was doing the preparation for this, I learned that Aristotle was kind of the first, I guess, in our modern history to really be recorded talking about lucid dreams. So imagine how mysterious something like the sky was when we go back to talking about constellations and stars and the rotation of the sun and the Earth around the sun and all that at the same time. So you looked in the star in the sky and it was mysterious and then you went to sleep and what was happening in your brain was mysterious. So it stands to reason that a lot of our stories and things that we have, you know, like fables and things like that, and even I could say even maybe things that have formed into religious stories over the eons came from the ability of people trying to explain these things that are, a lot of them are still unexplainable, maybe a bit more understandable today. But you could, you know, in the Iron Age or the Bronze Age, they probably were really not understood at all. And you're right, going back to control the need to control your environment somewhat or feel like you can control, like
[00:54:20] Speaker A: you understand it, then you feel like you can control it.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Led to certain explanations as to what this meant. And I think we, because I remember my mom used to be on that too. Like she would have dreams and then she would interpret them herself and act like she knew what they meant. And you know, maybe she did, maybe she didn't, but you're right. But part of it, I'm sure, was a need. Yeah, the need to control what that was and how it related to what was going on in her life. And you're right about the comfort, peace of mind was probably derived from it. So, yeah, I get off my high scientific horse here, but the control part
[00:54:53] Speaker A: is like a big part of it. I mean, if you think about 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, most of the things that you experienced in your day to day life, you didn't really understand. We understand more now, but I'm sure there's just as much depth that we don't get. And when I say we understand more now, we understand what happens when you eat food and then you go to the bathroom, or when you do this and do that when you get sick, we have better understandings of those things than they did. But there's still endless things that we have no idea either. And we implicitly just assign values to it because it's one less thing for us to worry about. There's one less thing that was like, oh, how does this work? What's going to happen here? So, yeah, I mean, that's that's part of the human experience experiment. Excuse me. Experience. But now we we appreciate everybody for joining us, you know, as we get dive into these two topics. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:55:38] Speaker B: I'm Toondeg Online.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: Out. All right. Subscribe to the podcast Rate Us Review. Tell us what you think, and we'll talk to you next.
