Recycling Inequality: it's easier than you think.

Recycling Inequality: It's easier than you think.

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Speaker: Imagine a community where you are denied a home not because of your income, but because of your race, your religion, or who you love. That's not a dystopian past. It's happening right now in the US [00:03:00] states of Arkansas and Missouri. They call it Return to the Land, but behind the pastoral branding is a whites only community that bans Jewish people, members of the LGBTQ plus community, black people, Latinos, and anyone else who doesn't fit their version of ancestral values.

And here's the twist. They're not selling homes. They're selling membership units in a private LLC, it's a legal loophole designed to Dodge Fair Housing laws, no title transfers, no rentals, just exclusion wrapped in paperwork. This isn't [00:04:00] just about one town. However, they're planning more of these cities.

They're planning more of these land developments using land ownership to build racially homogenous enclaves. It's segregation 2.0. They want quiet, rural, and legally murky housing just for themselves and while they hoard clean land and water. Black and brown communities are still fighting for basic rights.

This is racism in real time. Who gets to live safely and who doesn't? I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it.

 [00:05:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back for another episode of Ayana Explains that all the podcast bridging the gap between current events and human behavior. I am your podcast host, Ayana Faki, your black Muslim lady lawyer who has an opinion on everything. In case you haven't noticed, look around. I talk about everything. Look around you. Well, around the litany of episodes, I talk about everything from the environment to technology, to the economy, to race politics, to parenthood, to psychology, whatever's going on in the news in my own life, or just when I need, just when I think people need some gaps filled in.

I'm here for you, baby. I'm coming to you from the great state of Ohio, the [00:06:00] northeastern part of the state of Ohio. Great. I said, great, and ironically, yeah, we're corrupt. Anyway, it is Saturday, August 16th, 2025, and there's a lot going on in the world. But first I wanted to introduce you to myself. I am Ayana Fakhir.

I am a single mother of two adoring loving young adults. And I am also an attorney. I've been an attorney for, what year is it? It's been 22 years now. Yay. I, started this podcast three years ago, four years ago. We're in season four.

Go to our website, www.ayanaexplainsitall.com. That's www.ayanaexplainsitall.com. That's A-Y-A-N-A explains it all.com. And you'll learn about all things podcast. You'll find every episode of the show. You'll find show notes, transcripts. I started a blog a couple months ago. [00:07:00] You'll find ways to support the podcast, to be on the podcast to , whatever you wanna do with this podcast.

Rate it, review it. Leave me a message, a voicemail, an email. Email me at Ayana. Explains it all@gmail.com. If you wanna collaborate, if you wanna sponsor the show, I welcome sponsors. I welcome you. Please. Also. You'll find links to all of the places where the podcast is available. It's available on the website, but you can also link to it through our flagship Spotify.

But we are also on Apple Podcast, iHeartRadio, Pandora. We're on good pods. We're on a whole host of other places, including YouTube. YouTube, yes. We have our own YouTube channel. Ayanna explains it all. And we're on Amazon music. You can just ask, that computer lady, I don't wanna say her name because I don't wanna activate her.

She gets very, she's very sensitive. When you say her name, just tell her you wanna listen to Ayanna Explains it. All. The black Muslim lady lawyer who has an opinion on [00:08:00] everything, she'll, she'll know. She'll know. She'll know.

Uh, in the last episode I talked about environmental racism, and that episode is available at iyana explains it all.com. It's available everywhere. And, this episode, also ties into race and politics, which my God, could I possibly talk about anything else?

No. No, I can't. No, I can't. I don't have that luxury I'm finding lately. Uh, these things, these, these race and politics and government seem to keep slapping me in the face every time I read the news or turn on the tv. And sometimes I like to find an escape from that. Sometimes I like to watch Love Is Blind or 90 Day Fiance, or Love After Lockup.

All of these shows about complicated relationships where people are pretending to like each other for money.

I love it. I love it. [00:09:00] But, um, what's going on in the United States right now? Is it, it, we're a mess. We are a mess. We are a mess. I had this whole episode about the return to lands planned out, and I'm like, I'm gonna stick to it. I'm gonna stick to it this week. I'm not gonna divert from my course.

I'm gonna stick to it. And then, what's his name? The orange blowhard announced his, his plan to take over the District of Columbia. Like he acts as if anything he does is new. No presidents before you have done worse things. Unfortunately, this is so far pretty tame compared to what his, uh, predecessors like George HW Bush and George and, uh, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. What they've done and their presidencies, I mean, some really horrific things. People love to cite FDR as being a great president. He was a fucking racist piece of shit. Okay, fine. Just put it out there. He was a racist piece of, you know what, and so [00:10:00] was Woodrow Wilson and all the presidents before them.

Harry Truman was also Dwight Eisenhower was also Nixon was Reagan Sure as hell was George Bush. The first one was Bill Clinton. Mm mm They called him the first black president, but he wasn't really on our side. He was not. I'm, the more I I learn about these presidents, the more I realize none of these dudes really was feeling us the way we thought.

We used to, you know, oh, bill Clinton, first black president, look at him playing the saxophone, and then he would go and talk shit about black people. Only they would, he would frame it as, you know, being constructive. They had these constructive criticisms of blacks and, and blacks in certain areas, and blacks in the ghetto, in the hood.

And then you would find out their policies were actually destructive for black people. Incredible. But we love them, don't we? We have a [00:11:00] President's Day, have a whole day to celebrate these people. Ooh. They're not deserving. They're not. When you hear, and the more you know about their policies, it's like, what?

The, why? Why do we even have a president? Please just go away. Can we just have like a council? We have a panel of people to run this country. I know. It's not in the constitution. A I know. My gosh. It's crazy, man. It's crazy. But this return to Lands thing is even crazier. And what's worse?

It's legal. It's legal. But you know what, and I talked about this in a previous episode about the, the epic city, about the Muslim community outside of Dallas.

And all they did was buy land, right? All they did was buy land and show their plans and apply for permits. And the entire state of Texas was brought to bear on these people. It's, remarkable. They [00:12:00] investigated them for, violating, the funeral laws. violating, the housing laws they even got the Department of Justice involved in that. But for what? They haven't even built anything. It's a community unlike the return to lands, it's a community that's open to everyone. It just centers around the Islamic faith because Muslims like to live where we worship, like the near the mast.

We'd like to live near the mast. It's more convenient. We also have a particular way of, of doing funerals, washing bodies, and et cetera. So we like to have our own funeral homes. I guess it helps to have your own cemetery too, but having a school, having an Islamic school, this doesn't mean that people who are not Muslim couldn't go to the school.

If you wanna go to an Islamic school, hey, go right ahead. If you wanna live in a neighborhood next, to Muslims, if you wanna live in a neighborhood that's centered around Muslims, go right ahead [00:13:00] please. We welcome. Unlike some people, we welcome everybody. We welcome everybody. Why? Because it is not our job to tell people who belongs and who doesn't belong.

You see that it's not our job. We're not in charge of the belonging. We are not in charge of that. We love to live together because we love to support each other. We're more familiar with each other. There might even be people who speak, you know, we all speak some or read some Arabic at least, and you wanna be around people where you feel comfortable.

People don't question this when it comes to other communities of people, Latin communities and Asian communities only when it comes to Muslims, because they're terrorists. That's what you think about us. They wanna bring Sharia, all the Sharia. And I explained all of that in, in, the episode I did about Epic City.

I'm not gonna go over that again because you all are ignorant and dumb if you think that's what's going on. And I don't, [00:14:00] and I'm just gonna dismiss you as ignorant and dumb. That's what you are, sorry to your parents, sorry to your kids. But this return to Lands thing is just absolutely incredibly ridiculous.

And you know what fuels this type of thinking? When you get , a clown of a president who gets on TV and tries to convince you that there are neighborhoods, pockets of the United States where there's so much violence. It's worse than Baghdad, it's worse than Baghdad, Iraq, it's worse than Pakistan, it's worse than India, it's worse than Yemen and Syria,

those people and some of those places. And some of those places are dealing with actual bombings every day from the United States. And thankfully the United States isn't bombing its own citizens here in the us No, but you're bombing those places. And then you're saying that those places are safer than some of the big cities in the [00:15:00] United States, like, uh, Cleveland and Milwaukee and Minneapolis and the District of Columbia and Chicago.

I beg to differ. You, you all really are. You're selling it. You're selling it so sickly that I understand the point you're making. When you say unsafe, you mean black. When you say ghetto, you mean black. When you say DEI, you mean black? When you say affirmative action, you mean black. When you say thug, you mean black.

All of these words you use, all of these euphemisms and things that you all use actually means black. You all don't want. And when I say you all, I mean whites, you don't want the proximity to blackness. Although you will accept our recipes, our foods, our music artists, our fashion trends, our hair trends, our slang, you'll accept all of that.

But the proximity to us for some of you is just too much. It's too much. That's enough. I've had enough. [00:16:00]

Some of you will want to work next to us. You'll wanna sit next to us at work, but you don't wanna live next door to us, right? If you see one black person moving into your neighborhood, that's fine. Two.

And then they bring their kids, and then they wanna have their, their family members over for gatherings and parties, and they wanna play their music, wanna cook their food? Oh, no. Scatter scatter. Scatter, scatter into the rural areas, return to the lands, return to the lands. People, the black are coming, the Negroes, they're coming NOOOO

you get scared. White flight is still very much a thing. If you all think that white flight has gone away, it has not. It is still very much a thing. White people feel safe next to each other. They could be living next to the most notorious white serial killer ever. They will feel safer living next door to Ed Geen and Jeffrey Dahmer [00:17:00] than they will your black ass

 it's crazy. It's crazy. But these ideas are reinforced by. Politicians who need some oomph in their, in their platform, some, some oomph in their campaigns, they will suddenly get tough on crime. Clinton did it. Clinton absolutely did it. George HW Bush did it. George W. Bush did it. Reagan did it.

Nixon did it. Johnson did it. They will suddenly get tough on crime when they wanna inject some oomph. That's how, George HW Bush won his election. Dukakis was leading that dude all the way up until the August before the election when he came up with that Willie Horton story Dukakis had some program, some amnesty program that would allow people convicted of crimes to have, furloughs, right?[00:18:00]

And he was the governor of Massachusetts and they, they allowed furloughs and while out on furlough, I think it was like two people committed murders and one of them was Willie Horton. And so Willie Horton, was all George HW Bush talked about. And Dukakis numbers went down, he used Willie Horton to convince Democrats. White ones. Okay. White Democrats who were all too happy to vote for Kennedy and Johnson. It was what he used to convince these white Democrats that they would suddenly need to vote Republican. Because this Republican guy was going to save you from these violent, vicious criminals that Dukakis was gonna let out on the streets.

And you don't want that. You don't want violent, vicious criminals on the street. Nevermind that, I mean, violent, vicious criminals were there all over the us, all over the us, including in the [00:19:00] state that he came from Texas. But they were all over the us. No one president was going to clean that up at all.

But they tried. They tried. They tried through the mass incarceration of black people, black men specifically, they tried to clean up crime. They were tough on crime. Get all of these, uh, monsters out of the neighborhoods, get all of these tough guys out of the neighborhoods. They really did try. Turns out you can't be tough on crime and clean up crime by just putting a bunch of people in prison.

Turns out that that's not what lowers the crime rate. It isn't surprise, surprise, but they will use it. They'll use it. Donald Trump is using it. Donald Trump is using it for some reason, even though the District of Columbia has seen a decrease in crime overall in the city, [00:20:00] the city that is the capital of the United States, they've seen a decrease overall in crime for some reason.

Conveniently crime increased the day that Donald Trump decided to announce that the National Guard was going to be used for the purpose of corralling and harassing homeless people into shelters. Whereby the way a lot of them say they don't feel safe, and they are not safe, but also to harass, use law enforcement in DC take over the law enforcement of DC and use that to harass people hanging out on the streets.

Then institute a curfew. This is when people need to be very aware of the laws, right? You need to be very aware of the law because PE police will try to get you jammed up. That's their job. They gotta fill those prisons, they gotta fill those jails, those for-profit prisons. They gotta fill them and they can only fill them with humans and it'll be your ass.

They try to get you jammed [00:21:00] up. So like Ohio, DC has has gun laws. You can conceal, carry in DC You can also possess for personal use up to two ounces of marijuana. You can give two ounces of marijuana to someone for their personal use. So, but you can also smoke marijuana on your personal property. On your property or property You've been invited onto.

Private property on your private property, you can't do it in a park, you can't do it outside of a library. You can't do it on a sidewalk, in an alley, whatever, whatever. If you're at a restaurant and the owner of the restaurant allows that, you can do it. So what police have decided to do is just tell people don't be outside smoking weed, which is bullshit.

You're allowed to be outside smoking weed. You're allowed to be outside drinking alcohol. Now, I don't recommend you [00:22:00] do either of those things, but that's because I'm Muslim and well, I'm a bit of a religious person. But that's because, uh, those are my religious beliefs, right? Those are my beliefs. No, no, no smoking of the reefer, the devil's lettuce.

No engaging of the drinking of the alcohol. And don't tell me, you know, a Muslim who smokes and drinks because I do too, but that's their business. I don't recommend you do it. But if you're going to do it, know the laws of where you are, where you live, where you are present if you're going to do these things.

Some cities do not allow you to consume alcohol outside in public. Some will allow you to do it only on the grounds of a restaurant you're at. Some won't, won't even allow it on the grounds of the restaurant you're at. You know, restaurants have to get a permit that allows outdoor drinking, and some cities don't allow that.

In Ohio, which recently approved recreational marijuana, there are [00:23:00] rules. There are still rules. You can smoke weed on your private property or property on which you have been invited and allowed to do that.

You can drink outside on your private property. Can you do it in a car? No. Can you do it in a bar? Yes. Would you, could you in a house

with a hammock in a house? I don't know. But you, you have to know the laws, just like you have to know the, the, the gun laws too. In Ohio, we are open carry, we are concealed carry. We are no license. We are, you can carry around an ar as long as you are legal to possess a firearm, you could possess whatever firearm you are legally allowed to have.

You have to be a certain age, like 21 to buy a certain firearm. I don't know if there are restrictions on the number of guns you can own or ammunition. I don't think there, there [00:24:00] is again, Ohio has very liberal. Liberal gun laws liberal as in open and expansive, not liberal, as in Democrats want gun control.

So if you're, if you're lawful to possess a weapon and you have a weapon, you can have that weapon in your car. You can have it on your hip, you can have it in your purse, but, but you cannot carry that weapon into certain places, like most stores, malls, bars. Actually there's some bars that do not, that will allow you to have a weapon on your person, in your purse, whatever, in your pants.

You can't have a gun within a certain amount of feet of a school, of an elementary school, high school, junior high school. You can't carry it into a federal building. You can't carry it into a courthouse. Uh, there are so many [00:25:00] rules. That's what you have. You have to know the rules.

Know the law, know the rules, because these people will try to get you jammed up.

But getting back to the return to lands, they see the president get on the TV and they see what's happening in these big cities. You know, everyone thinks the big city is violent and dangerous, and don't go downtown and, and don't go with here, and don't go there and dah, dah, dah, dah.

And they don't even check the stats. They don't check the stats. They don't check any of the, the, the residents are the residents. Complaining are the resident. They don't listen to the people. They, you just assume because convenient narratives. Convenient narratives circulate more than facts. We need facts to circulate.

Convenient narratives can go in the trash, and I don't care what side of the political spectrum you fall on. Convenient narratives are almost always stereotypes, extremes, and some shit. Somebody made up, [00:26:00] like the welfare queen and hood rat narrative. These convenient narratives about the welfare mom or the lazy welfare person sitting on their ass collecting a, a collecting snap and collecting welfare,

those are convenient narratives or about Chicago being so violent. Oh, it's terrible. Baltimore's violent. It's terrible. New York City is violent. It's terrible. These are convenient narratives. You don't know shit about these places. Even if you live there, even if you live there, you, you may not be paying attention to what's going on.

A lot of people who live in Chicago don't live in Chicago. They live in the suburbs. Just like in Cleveland, a lot of people who live in Cleveland don't actually live in Cleveland. They live in the suburbs of Cleveland. I live in a suburb of Cleveland, shaker Heights. Ohio is a suburb of Cleveland. It's actually right next door.

I could walk down the street and be in Cleveland. Cleveland has a lot of these suburbs. When you say you [00:27:00] from Cleveland, it's like, okay, are you from Cleveland proper? I was born in Cleveland. I was raised in East Cleveland, another suburb, suburb of Cleveland, another next door. You walk down the street, you're in Cleveland suburb.

It's all Cleveland as far as I'm concerned. But Cleveland proper. Cleveland proper has a lot of problems. It does. It's subject to the same issues that a lot of big cities are subject to. The loss of the manufacturing base, manufacturing is what Ohio was known for. It was part of the rust belt. It's experienced, the loss of the manufacturing base.

It's experienced, um, it heightened poverty, it's experienced in Cuyahoga County. The brain drain. People want to go live where, you know, they have a good balance of family life and, and entertainment and nightlife and sports and all that good stuff. Cuyahoga County, okay. Yeah. But for the longest time, it, it really wasn't attracting [00:28:00] young professionals.

It wasn't attracting young professionals and now they're building up areas. Some will say it's gentrification, and I will agree with them. It is they're pushing out some of the poor people, some of the people who can't afford to live in the homes they're in. They're pushing them out. People are being taxed out of their homes.

 Property taxes going up in the state of Ohio to a ridiculous amount, to the point that you may not even be able to afford the house you live in. The next time I get my, escrow statement in around September or October. I'm trying to see, are taxes going up again? They went up last year. They went up the year before that. The one things these taxes have never done is go down. They ain't never been, ain't never been.

I've lived in my home for 17 years. They ain't never gone down. They just go up and up and up. And I live in a city with very wealthy people who love for their children to [00:29:00] go to very good public schools. Unfortunately, and I'll just put it out there, shaker Heist does not have the best schools in the state of Ohio.

Sugar Heights doesn't even have the best schools in the county, but people think they do. And so a lot of people wanna live here because they think, they think that proximity to wealth and whiteness means good schools. And it just don't. It does not. We do not have the best schools in the county. We do not have top 10, not even top 100 schools in the state.

We don't. We try. Oh, okay. And I guess they think that reorganizing and tearing down and rebuilding the buildings will make the education, but the building is not the damn problem. The building ain't the problem. That's what we need to come to the conclusion. The building is not the problem.

You could have a nice building and still be at the bottom, honey, you have a nice house and still be broke as hell. [00:30:00] But people wanna live here. But really wealthy people live here, right? I ain't wealthy. Not to me. I'm a public interest attorney. I don't make a lot of money. I don't make as much money as lawyers in the private sector who are making 200,000, 300,000, and they've been in attorneys for 22 years. And look at where it has gotten me a very long career in federal service, but spit on, not appreciated, in fact, not wanted by the people I work for.

I did some episodes on that. You guys can go back and listen to me whine about that. No, but I'm serious. We're hated. In any event, there are very wealthy people living in shaker heights. Million dollar homes, multimillion dollar homes in this city, and then there's me with my thousand dollars home. But it is the wealthy and white.

They get to [00:31:00] determine what the tax rate will be. They're the ones that get to determine what the tax rate will be. Nevermind that the income tax rate of this city is so fucking ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I have to pay taxes to the federal government, the state government, the city where I work, the city where I live.

Then I have to pay sales taxes to the county I live in. I have to pay property taxes to the city that I live in.

My paycheck, be looking real crazy after all of those taxes and then health insurance, and then retirement income is taken out. My paycheck be looking real measly. Okay? I'm taxed out of my ass. But it's the wealthy and white who get to determine what you'll pay in taxes when you own a home, especially

when you own a home, especially, and especially in a state where property taxes [00:32:00] fund public schools, but the property tax money is not divided equally among the school systems like it's supposed to be. Like the Constitution says, like the Supreme Court of the, the state of Ohio has said many times, but the corrupt state of Ohio has ignored that.

So again, you end up living somewhere where you're being taken advantage of, but you don't get to do a return to lands, right? You don't get to be like, okay, you know what? I'm tired of this. I'm just gonna go somewhere rural. Oh, look, there's this community of people, sorry, you can't get in 'cause you're, you're not White

you're not White

and people ask, does this violate the law? Does this violate the law? I mean, the way they've set it up. No. We have the Fair Housing Act, and we have the Civil Rights Acts that prohibit racial discrimination in housing.

But these people are not selling homes. They're not selling [00:33:00] homes. They're selling memberships in an LLC. The return to lands claims that they avoid legal liability by not selling or renting property directly. It offers memberships in a private LLC that owns the land. The LLC owns the land. You need to look into who, who owns that LLC, who owns that LLC?

Why does this LLC get to determine who can buy a house and who can't based on their race? And why does nobody give a fuck? And this is a, a conversation I've had with many people. They think it's hilarious. Oh, white people wanna live by themselves. Oh, okay. Maybe it is a little funny, but when you think about how this is spreading.

This is spreading to other parts of the United States. It's not staying where you know, it can be easily controlled. Soon you'll have these whites only communities, once again, whites only communities, all over the United States, and it'll be perfectly legal [00:34:00] and accept. It's socially acceptable because black people don't care if white people don't wanna live near them.

But then when you hear why they don't wanna live near us, they think we're violent, they think we're poor and unworthy. They think we're beneath them socially, economically, they think we're not well bred. They think all of these terrible things about us, and they perpetuate these stereotypes in the books that they write, in the educational curriculums they import in their schools, in the stories they tell when they're looking at, uh, hiring you for a job, it's the attitudes and the words that become the actions, and then that becomes them denying you things and getting on TV and calling you violent thugs that need to be corralled and controlled and rounded up. So you people think it's just, oh, [00:35:00] white people don't wanna live near us.

No, it's something bigger than that. These attitudes eventually become a way for them to discriminate against people who don't look like them. Then it'll become people who don't make as much money as them. Then it'll become people who don't come from the same lineage as them, the same shit they've been doing for hundreds of years that we've been fighting against.

We've been trying to get out of, if I wanna go live in a rural area and you're telling me I can't live there because I can't buy a membership in this fucking LLC because I'm black, that's a problem. I wanna live in a rural area that's nice. And I can go frolic and have a big ass plot of land and plant a bunch of flowers.

I love to garden, by the way. I wanna do that. But I can't buy a membership in your LLC so I can buy a piece of, property here and build a house because I'm black. That's a problem. That's a problem. And while people laugh and they think it's funny, get your [00:36:00] ro get your little laughs off right now. Go ahead, get your little laughs off.

When you go out to buy a piece of land somewhere, you found a nice piece of land for your family. Black people always talking about buy land. Buy land. Y'all need to buy land. Buy land. When you find out you can't buy land because you are a black person, that's a problem. And I need you all to wake up to that I'm angry about what's happening and I'm angry that people aren't taking this seriously because apparently racism has ended. We're in a post-racial America, Ayana, and you know my ass. My ass. Post-racial America, there's no post-racial, nothing.

We ain't in a post-racial, nothing. We're in a continuation of the same racist as bullshit we've been putting up with since we set foot on the shores of this goddamn place.

I'm tired of people not taking this seriously, and I'm tired of the black people. The black people who participate in this, who [00:37:00] think it's cute, it's not cute. They're laughing at you, they're making fun of you. They're using you. You're being used, you're being manipulated. You're being lied to,

and the only way we can do this is to fight this in court. Fight it in court. We you can fight the return to lands movement in court. Lots of ways to do that.

You can even amend. You can amend fair housing laws. Oh, imagine that you can amend a law. Imagine that the Civil Rights Act has been amended. God knows how many times. It didn't really have any teeth until the 1980s when it was amended, I believe in 88, was it?

You can amend laws. You can even amend the Fair Housing law to explicitly cover ownership structures like this LLC. When it's used for residential purposes, you can amend the Civil Rights Act.

As society changes, as the cultures change, we [00:38:00] need to modernize these laws to change as well. Who would've thought that in 2025 we'd see white people trying to exclude blacks and Jews and gay people from housing by using an LLC? Who would've thought we would've seen this? And now that we've seen it, now that we know this trickery goes on, now we can amend the law to include these LLCs and these private membership, the laws have to evolve to match the evolving economic models, the evolving social models, the evolving real estate models.

Attitudes also have to evolve because this shit ain't funny. It's not funny. Have we gotten so far away from the civil rights era that now we're laughing at racism? Everybody wants to tell jokes. I know. Oh, take it easy. You know, Ayana, just take it Easy words mean things. Words mean things. When people say things and they think it's a joke, they think you're just joking.

Thoughts mean [00:39:00] things. Thoughts become words. Words become actions. Actions become the thing that is used to separate you from what you are equally entitled to, from what you are legally entitled to, from what you're entitled to as a human being. It ain't funny. It ain't funny, and what's going on in the United States is just, is not funny. None of this shit is funny, man. Trump has his own damn Gestapo. Telling black people that they don't belong, telling homeless people that they don't belong out in the open. Get in the house, go into a shelter. Nobody wants to look at you.

Nobody wants to see you. Just living. Just living and being in existing people should be allowed to go outside and not see, not see this, not see someone who's, who looks different from them, who looks down on their luck. God forbid your eyes should have to look upon a [00:40:00] homeless, an unsheltered person.

Are you? Oh, it's, they're unsheltered, they're unhoused housed. Oh, why should I have to look at that?

My very first time in DC was 2015, was 2016. Rather, Donald Trump had been elected. Everybody was in their fifis, including myself. I was there for a job interview. I didn't get the job, but whatever. They were building the platform where the, the, the inauguration shit was gonna happen, right.

And they were putting up a giant border fence around the White House, so you couldn't really get close to it. But one thing that struck me the most about DC was that scattered among these million dollar homes. Yeah. 'cause they got some really nice homes and DC proper million dollar homes. These restaurants, these shops, these federal buildings, these monuments scattered among [00:41:00] that were unsheltered unhoused people, people sleeping, living on the street.

 And. I have talked about this in another episode too, about when, uh, the episode about criminalizing homelessness, that Supreme Court case out of, uh, Oregon.

It's not a crime to live on the street, but if you wanna live on the street, by all means, but people are being told that it is a crime to be on the street camping, homeless encampments, that they are illegal. And the Supreme Court has said, yes, that is fine for them to say that camping in public, on public lands and parks and et cetera is illegal, and you could be fined for it.

And if you don't pay the fine, if you don't show up for your court date, you can go to jail. The Supreme Court has said it's okay. [00:42:00] What I saw when I went to DC surprised me only because I was looking at. The wealth and wondering why the hell do you have people sleeping on the damn street? You are looking at the wealth and the beauty.

All of these, this money going into these monuments, the upkeep of all this shit in these parks and, and the beauty, the, the, the lands and all of this. And you got people literally sleeping on those steam grates on the street, people sleeping on bus stop benches, people sleeping in front of the White House, and maybe that's where they wanna be.

Hell, maybe that's not where they want to be. Maybe they don't have a safe place to go. Maybe they're home burned down, maybe they're sleeping in their car. Maybe they wanted to buy a fucking plot of [00:43:00] land and they couldn't because they're black. Whatever the case, the wealth juxtaposed with the abject poverty was so striking to me, was so striking to me.

'cause why, why, why do you have this? Why do you have this why? And, and, and don't go out there and tell them to move and leave and you're, you'll be fined and go find someplace else. Go to a shelter. No. Why is there no compassion provided for these people? Why is there no compassion provided for people who are unsheltered?

And again, if that's where they want to be, fine. There is plenty of space, but there are people who don't wanna be there. And all of a sudden the United States has found money. They found money. To house these people? No, no, no, no, no. They wanna stick them in already Crowded shelters [00:44:00] that exist. They're not building new shelters.

No. They're just forcing people into shelters that are already crowded that you can't get into anyway, because they don't have any space that're not injecting new funding into this. Because believe me, if you can find funding for new homeless shelters, you can also find funding for the people who are still sleeping in tents in areas where they had damage from hurricanes and fires.

If you can find it for one, you can find it for the other. And that's how you know this country is some bullshit because they always have money for what they want. They have money for what they want. Our economy, this country, hundreds of trillions, trillions of dollars.

They will stick people into an overcrowded, homeless shelter instead of building a new one, which they could afford to do. Instead of building housing, [00:45:00] instead of creating programs that perhaps help people sustain housing, sustain sobriety, sustain being able to take care of themselves. Some people just don't know how to take care of themselves and sleeping on the street provides them with an opportunity to just fucking be because they don't know how to, to do all the day to day, the daily activity stuff, taking medication, going to appointments, keeping a checkbook, keeping a savings account.

They don't know how to do it. They need help doing it. That costs money. If they wanted to, they would. If the government wanted to, they would. There's still some kind of belief that human beings are just these. I mean, we can be miraculous creatures, but a lot of us need help long-term help, long-term care,

and admitting that perhaps is the first step.

But we have the money. We have the money. We do. Don't let anybody [00:46:00] tell you that the United States does not have the money. That is bullshit. We have the money. We do. We have the money to make sure no one is hungry. We have the money to make sure no one is sleeping on the streets. We have the money to make sure probably everybody had a car.

They don't want to give you the money. They don't want you to do. They want you to give them the money. They want you to make them money. They want us OMS to make the money. Then they want to take the money from oms, the middle class, the lower class, so that they can have tax breaks for the wealthy. Again, the wealthy have been getting tax breaks.

Big tax breaks since the 1980s. Under Ronald Reagan, they get tax break after tax break, after tax, break after. What they don't get is their taxes raised. Now that's some shit that's not going up. [00:47:00] They get cut after cut.

And people will say well, they make, they work hard and they make their money and they should be able to keep their money

Goddamn mansions. Do you need, how many, uh, yachts do you need? How many pair of, of Faragamo and Louboutin shoes do you need? How many Birkin bags do you need? How many fancy ass jars of caviar do you need? How many fucking college educations do your kids need? Which by the way, is very expensive to go to college in the United States now.

You almost have to be a millionaire to pay for your kids to go to college, or you had to have been saving since you were a kid for your now children to go to college. It's crazy. It's crazy how everything here is built for the wealthy and now they're building things that are just for the white and wealthy.

They're just for white people. And you're being told that it should be okay. It's not a big deal. [00:48:00] Why should, why do you care, Ayana? Why do you care? Because this shit spreads and it doesn't stay localized. It doesn't stay in just these rural areas. Before you know what they'll wanna be taking over, city areas saying this shit is whites only.

If you can't have a city that's Muslims only, if you can't have even a neighborhood a gaggle of streets, that's just Muslims only. Well, you can't have a Whites only motherfucking thing. You can't, but I suppose you will because the government's not doing anything about it. They talk to, um, state leaders in Arkansas and Missouri and they're just like, oh, what do you want us to do?

It's legal. I don't know. I don't know. What do you want us to do so far? I mean, we'll investigate it. We'll look into it, but it's legal laws can be amended people, laws can be amended. We have to push for it. We have to push for it. But first you gotta convince people that this [00:49:00] is a problem. And I tell you, I'm having a hard time doing that. Black people, some black people are so fed up with white people that they don't give a fuck.

Let 'em go live where they want. But you don't understand the flip side to that. When you wanna go live where you want, it's a problem. I'm talking to black people. When you're Muslim and you wanna go live where you want, it's a problem when you're Jewish and you wanna go live where you want, it's a problem.

And maybe when you're gay and you wanna go live where you want, it's a problem. That's all I'm saying. It's a problem when you wanna do it, but when they wanna do it, nah, it's okay. It's legal, it's fine. Leave them alone. Let 'em have their peace. Didn't you see the president said that DC's violent, Chicago's violent, Milwaukee's violent, all the big cities, they're violent.

I could just, I could just scream this new Jim Crow, this new Jim Crow segregation, this [00:50:00] Jim Crow 2.0. This, the, the, it, it.

I don't know what will get it through to people that we are not going back. We're not going back to this shit. We're not going back. And I know a lot of you born after nine 11, don't remember what it was like to live through war on crime, war on drugs crime Bill, the first Gulf War, Vietnam, the second Gulf War.

Y'all don't remember what it was like to live through all of this shit. Y'all don't remember what it was like to live through race riots. Y'all don't remember what it was like. Y'all don't remember what it was like to live through being demonized on TV by presidents. I don't remember what it was like to be called names to be discriminated against, to be had prejudicial things thrown at you.

To the point that celebrities are on tv, making [00:51:00] songs, begging people to work together, to live together. Please, for the love of God. We all the work. I don't, Michael Jackson was making songs about, I'm starting with The Man in the Mirror. Oh, celebrities were making songs left and right about, uh, prejudice and racism and starving children in Africa.

And do they know when

I, how bad it was? Remember, farm aid for the farmers? Although the farmers now are a problem, they're a problem. They created a problem for themselves and now they're being a pill. Because the problem they created for themselves is not getting solved. Imagine that. Imagine you create your own destiny and then when the destiny doesn't, um, move in the directions you want [00:52:00] it to, you wanna do over, you vote for Donald Trump because his values align with my values and my values is I don't like abortions and I don't want men in women's sports.

And I don't want no man undressed in front of my daughter, in the, the man's in the lady locker room, and I don't want the lady to have abortion.

Those are your values. So you vote for Donald Trump, and what does he do? He takes away your entire fucking labor force.

He dries up your entire labor force. He dries up your entire labor.

I'm only laughing because it's funny.

I'm only laughing. It's funny.

I wanna say you [00:53:00] get what you voted for, but you, you absolutely do get what you vote for. You. You do. You fucking do. He told you he was gonna do it. You think he wasn't gonna do it? Oh. Oh, you thought he cared about you. Oh, you thought he cared Because he has a habit of doing that because he, he's displayed a long history of caring about people other than himself.

Right.

His father sued him for racial discrimination in housing dummies. His own father. Yeah. Big bunch of dummies.

What are we doing? When do we become idiots? Not me.

Do people not pay attention to history? No, you don't. I know you don't. I know you don't. Why am I asking that You don't? Do you not know [00:54:00] things? Donald Trump was so proud and people were so proud of him touting this, uh, crime reform bill, this sentencing reform bill.

Look, he wants to let the blacks out of prison early.

Look, he thinks the sentences were too harsh Only for him to come in with his next term and put black people back in fucking prison send the National Guard after him, round them up. Y'all fall for the Okie-doke. Y'all fall for the small little offerings these people give you. They're using you as props to platform their politics, to show the world that they're good so they can get votes.

You're being used, you're being lied to, you're being manipulated, and you're allowing it. You're being discriminated against and you're allowing it. You're being treated unkindly, unfairly, inhumanely.

And a lot of you are just, ah, what do you want me to do, Ayana? What do you want me to do? I [00:55:00] gotta feed my kids.

Gotta eat, gotta work, gotta eat. I don't know what to do. I'm powerless. I don't know what to do. What do you want me to do?

Well, no, I don't want you to do anything. Don't just do nothing. Just do nothing. I just want you to sit there, watch your tv, watch your tubie movies, or whatever the fuck it is you're doing, and go to your, go to your, your, your barbecue pits and your wig stores.

Do whatever that do. Just live your life. Maybe it'll, everything will work out. Maybe everything will just work itself out. We do nothing. Maybe everything would just work itself out. You have to hope for the best, Diana, right? Bullshit. When has that ever worked? When has doing Nothing ever worked. You can't even let a pimple sit on your face.

You can't even not pop a pimple. Please.

What do we want our legacy to be? What do we want our history to be? We want it to be this racism and discrimination and stereotypes and [00:56:00] this bullshit all the time. You know how expensive that is? This is expensive. Discrimination, racism. It is expensive.

You wanna put more money in the economy? You want there to be more money to spend. You want prices to go down. You wanna earn some real wealth? Gain some real wealth. Stop being a dick to people who don't look like you. Humble yourselves. Realize that the least of us is the best of us.

And this has been Ayana Explains it all. Brought to you by facts, figures, and enlightenment. Take care. [00:57:00]