When They See Us... A Few Thoughts....

all right Pisan greetings youtubers so when they see us you know this was a lot to unpack I'll be honest it was a very hard watch as well like I thought I could be one of those people who's gonna just box it up and bench do all four episodes I was like nah after two episodes I'd turn it off and come back to it the next day because I was ready to punch somebody in the back of the face watching that so you know but the reason I was excited about this series coming out was because it gives everybody a chance to see the victims humanized you know what I mean like I think a lot of times when things happen to black people especially things that are violent or moments when we get killed or there's something unjust that happens to us Society always says there's something we must have done to make that thing happen to us so you know when Trayvon Martin got killed it there must have been something he had done to deserve to die you know and Tamir rice got killed you know when the police showed up and shot him in two seconds well it was must have been something he had done when you know Aiyana Jones got killed for sleeping in her bed because there was a police raid while they were trying to shoot the first 48 hours and then she got killed must have been something she had done maybe she wasn't in the right place at the right time you know when they had the move bombing where they just dropped the whole bomb on the city block over in Philly oh it must have been something that people have done you know that's always been a narrative because a lot of times if we're being very honest America has no sympathy or empathy when it comes to any kind of trauma that happens to black people as a collective or individually so this was a great way to kind of see the experience through the lens of those who lived it you know there's been a really great documentary that came out a few years before but even then there were so many naysayers who still were like no these kids did it as a matter of fact something that kind of triggered me which I was gonna kind of put at the end of the video but I'll addressed now is there was definitely recently either it was a 48 hours or Dateline or 20/20 one of them shows and it was on last week or the week before where they were actually talking about this case and you still have the detectives and a lot of police officials and people who worked on that case as far as being a part of the prosecution still trying to push the narrative that these kids raped this white woman and that these kids why are we feeling sorry for them why are they being rewarded why are they getting documentaries and movies and big giant settlements and everything like that they were pushing the narrative that you know the reason they settle was because they knew whether they were gonna lose so like I said there's not a lot of empathy and sympathy for the plight of black trauma in this and so I'm glad that this series did come out because it gives people an opportunity to see what exactly happens when people go through this and not just the aspect of just being incarcerated or falsely accused but everything as far as the full circle experience how it affects your family how it affects your livelihood how it affects your mind how it affects your life afterwards and how do you put the pieces back together it's all of that so I thought they did a really great job I'm not gonna spend too much time actually reviewing the series i'ma just really say my two cents on everything but for the first two minutes let me talk the series cuz really I didn't watch this for entertainment you know what I mean because it's still real life and it still a lot of the issues that are happening today mirror what happened then and not much has changed in society so I didn't watch this as you know to be a critic in old they didn't have good lighting on this scene and you know they could have had a better actor yeah I think that's beside the point so you know as far as overall movie no I thought they did a great job the acting the the the individual who played Cory I forgot his name but yet he played that role very very well that very last episode and there are some spoilers in here and like I said it's not a movie so I don't know what I can really spoil cuz this is real life but you know he was phenomenal and how he played the role I think pretty much the entire cast was casted very well um III think they did a great job of capturing the emotional experience that the victims would face in the moments that they had during that film so I think those were the highlights um you definitely it did some to your emotional pills I'm not gonna lie I was teared up and choked up in a lot of scenes because I was so pissed off watching it that's like man it's a lot to sit through if you're somebody who can't take a lot of trauma or anything that really psychologically just messes with you you can't really sit through all this in one sitting you need to take a break and then you got to go do something positive afterwards so just something to kind of balance out that energy because you don't want to go to bed with something like this one your heart but anyway getting them to the actual story like I said the humanizing aspect is it is where they struck gold and because really it's only like a 6-hour type series but the thing I always thought about is you know we only watch six hours and it ended with it was tough to sit through imagine living that for four decades or or being in a prison for 14 years you know that six hours was painful enough but picture 14 years of that and you know the first thing I kept thinking of was the psychological damage that that experience would have done to those individuals especially when you're talking about I believe those Antoine whose father pretty much walked out you know that alone just did it kind of got to me too an aspect but really when we're talking about the psychological damage like when people experience these kind of things I think we always just associate being incarcerated with being locked down physically but in those moments mentally you're also incarcerated you don't have the freedom to just have free think and free will or anything because your entire mind is trapped in the cloud of shoulda coulda woulda and what if and what did I do wrong and how do I manage in this environment that I'm in and you saw that with the experience of the different characters and all that they had to go through there were so many things that were psychologically traumatizing to experience and so when you're talking about Antoine and how his father pretty much walked out and I say that alone you know it carried so much weight because when you think about the role of your father if you're fortunate enough to have a male figure in your life that's a father figure or if it's your father your grandfather your uncle a big brother or a cousin a stepparent a foster parent somebody who is taking care of you that that male aspect in your life as a child that role that your father serves is that sense of security just like how your mother is that sense of nurturing and they can kind of intertwine and switch back and forth but really that sense of security that you get from your father like me as a child I remember when I was like really little like 5 6 7 8 maybe 9 my father used to work late sometimes so he didn't get home until sometimes 9 10 11 o'clock and I didn't feel safe in the house until dad got home mainly because my mom spent so much time watching unsolved mysteries and America's Most Wanted so I always thought that was a psycho killer in the neighborhood and I wouldn't feel safe until dad got home you know and it's not even just physical safety it's like I remember the very first time I went on a rollercoaster I was terrified I didn't want to get on it was Space Mountain at Disneyland and I didn't want to get on it but my dad was like you had me waiting this line for two hours are we getting on this ride cuz I thought Space Mountain was like a story and looked like the house from the Jetsons when I saw it so like well let's go to Erin and I was like oh shoot just gonna get on this in anyway I was terrified of being on the ride but the only thing that kept me saying was I was sitting next to my dad so internally I knew well if dad is good I'm good I mean and that's the role our fathers play in our lives or any kind of mental figure that you grow up with you if you're fortunate enough to have one is that that sense of security and so when you look at what Antoine had the experience he didn't get that you know so when just pictured him being in that interrogation and he's sitting there and finally he sees his father and his mother for him he's probably thinking finally what is my normal my my feeling of normalcy is here I'm gonna be okay dad is here to come and protect me and unfortunately it didn't happen because they've already gotten to the Father you know they pretty much lied because this is the bigger issue is just the police and the lying in the manipulation and in the corruption just to get a charge and get a conviction by any means necessary you know they had gotten to the Father so imagine this kid waiting for his father to come in and save him and father then flip the switch and say no you need to tell them what you did you know cuz so we can go home cuz they were told you know confess to this and you'll you'll be a witness you know you're not gonna be going to jail but you'll be the witness to this case so just say what we want to hear and the father's endorsing this you know tell them what they want to hear and for him he's saying okay if my father is telling me this that means I know I'm gonna be okay that means I know I have nothing worried about because my dad's not gonna let anything happen to me and so you see what happens and no they get charged and he goes to jail and then there's the trial and it only gets worse because the father kind of pulls out it's already too much for the dad cuz I'm sure to dad probably dealt with something similar to the aspect of understanding what it's like to be a black man dealing with the judicial system and dealing with policing and the court system and all of that and for him it was already psychologically damaging enough for the father and father's thinking about his career and everything else like that and literally you watched the father go from a role of being that you know the alpha male secure take care of my family type guy to being broken down just like being a kid to being a teenager and literally as I watched it I saw the father in the same space that I saw Antoine I saw them switch roles I saw the father go from being the father to pretty much being a boy unsure himself insecure in an inferiority complex and afraid and so you see that happen and so as the case happens the father is not there and then when the father gets on a stand he gets manipulated the same way just by the verbage of how the prosecution presented everything with them giving a bunch of leading questions if you ever study law you already know like leading questions usually they would get kind of um you can object a leading question but you know but pretty much that's how they coerce the father and trip them with the verbage and everything and before you know it the father's testimony worked against the son so now the person that you're looking at who is your sense of security that's pretty much played a role into you going to jail you know by you putting your trust into father who was supposed to help you out and you put your trust into what he said because he also believed that doing what they said would get his son out because he just wants his son back look how everything worked full circle and so then by the time Antwon gets out of jail you know now his father's sick so Antwon never gets that experience of having those layers of security from your father that that layer of security from when you're a child and your father keeps you safe and you feel that you always deal with your father cuz I know when I was little I know files with my dad I was always good exact fight so I go anywhere dad was gonna have my back that aspect of your father having your back Antwon didn't get that and even the aspect of you know as you get older your father teaching you how to drive your father teaching you you know about different things when it comes to dating and everything like that the co-signing for the apartment and teaching you everything about leasing and then in the correct cards that when you get your first child and all of that Antwone I got none of that because by the time he gets out dad is sickly and dad is on the way out and so now unfortunately for Antwon he has to look past the void that are missing and go straight to forgiveness mode because his dad only have so much time left on the earth that's some psychological damage there that that's things that people don't think about when you're talking about their experience for the prosecution and the naysayers and the Donald Trump's and people who say death penalty to these kids like people don't think about the long term aspects of what also happens to people when these things happen when people are falsely accused of something and so that was very stressful to sit through and so when we're talking about also just the manipulation that they had with the kids was just traumatizing the witness because the kids set in interrogations for hours upon hours point hours they didn't get any food you saw they were getting beat up and then slapped around and everything the only thing they got was some sodas on occasion I soda here and there and the photo was the reward for finally saying what they wanted you to say and so as you're watching the different tapes because if you've actually seen the actual documentary if you go just go back and you eat the transcripts of what was being said in the interrogations and you just look at the old clips of the interrogations they're pretty much coaching the kids to say everything they need to say and everything like that and that's why the kids their stories kept shifting and changing and nothing made sense nothing added up and I think that's the worst part is knowing that the police lied and just didn't care knowing that there was no physical evidence there was nothing but they do like what we need to make something work and it just kept going with it and so it's crazy there's a scene in there where you see they get the picture of the boy who gets punched in the face by the police and they use that picture and a different interrogation with another kid and says you know how did this kid get the scratches on his face you know meanwhile it's because the police officers punched him but they said let's use the narrative as the woman attacked him while he was or or fought him off as he was attacking her so getting most kids to turn against each other because he you know you look at the origin pretty much long story short for anybody who's honking move with what exactly I'm talking about when you're talking about the Central Park five cases just there's a random white woman who gets a brutally attacked and raped in Central Park and there's kids who happen to be out in the area because it's New York City it's Harlem it's the Manhattan it's all at live metropolis lots of things going on the police pretty much to start rounding up kids and eventually they just kind of just frame some kids for the actual attack in the assault and so when you're looking at the Central Park five the majority those kids didn't even know each other never even heard of each other may have seen each other in passing but they weren't friends they didn't go to the same schools anything like that and so now they've been you know put in a position to turn on each other which for them wouldn't have been hard to go in and make up a lie about somebody you don't know if you've been in an interrogation for 14 15 16 hours you just want to go home and so you're willing to say any and everything just to get out of there especially some kids you haven't heard of so if they're saying oh this person did it just say that they did it oh yeah they did it to I'm ready to go home like that it's so easy to coerce children and do a lot of things I remember one time because I do work with kids I had this teenager who they're always forgetful I swear it's an Aries thing like people who are err he's always like forget stuff all the time but but she was an Aries and she would always leave her stuff all around and so I'd always given her cuz she leave her cellphone everywhere I'm like you can't leave yourself on laying around cuz people are not always honest and so one day we're on this field trip with the little kids and she was like one of my like help her chaperone and she left a cellphone on the park man so my coworker was like grabbing so fun let's let's hide it and act like it's missed and maybe I'll figure it out and everything like that so for just for 30 minutes we're like you know she's freaking out because she can't find her phone and we're telling the kids well you know reward for whoever can figure out what happened to the phone in 30 minutes these kids on this bus then turn on each other and they're saying this person stolen in that person stole it and the best thing was I had one kid who made up a whole person was like I saw somebody cuz while we were at the lake I saw somebody go in the bus and they took you and they took the phone and me my coworker looking like okay Wow so of course when we pull the phone out like here's your phone we had it the whole time it was like interesting just to see it looks on the kids face it's like it's so easy to get kids to pretty much buy into something if you coerced him enough and so that's pretty much what the police did and it's absolutely crazy and I think that the the story that I think really dicted everybody was Corey's situation you know all of them had horrible situations but I think because they spent an hour on Cory like Cory just the fact that he wasn't even at the park the fact that he was just hanging with his other friend and he was invited to go to the interrogation with the Ferno we'll be back yeah you can come with your friend go ahead and he just wanted to be a supportive friend and it seems that he ended up getting it the worst you know just one you know he was sick while he was 15 but by the time the trial and everything happened he was 16 so he was tried as an adult they sent him to Rikers Island same place where they sent kalief Browder we've had that conversation about Khalif and even when we go back to the psychological trauma we saw what happened with Khalif in the end even though he was even though he was he was let out and everything like that he never was able to recover he's no longer here you know all because there was an assumption that he stole a backpack which wasn't true and because they couldn't afford the bail he just had to sit in jail he set in jail for three years because they never started to trial and they put him in Rikers and put him in solitary and everything like that and by the time he got out I think he was 19 when he got out he wasn't able to matriculate through society the world was just a foreign place and he couldn't be himself and he's no longer here and so we look at Cory Cory case just ah even when it was leading to it the craziest part is I already knew everything that was going to have him but as I was watching it happen when you saw the police because their case were starting to fall apart because one of the parents are on Yusef Salaam Zaman pulled her sent out like no I think not so that Sun never confess to doing anything and then we have another kid who was already sent home and so the case was falling a partner said well we need one more kid and Cory just happen to still be sitting in the precinct waiting for his friend to come out and next thing you know they're interrogating Cory like that was the worst one because I also understand like Cory also he just processed things a little differently I don't know if he had a learning disability or what his fool case was but clearly he just did things a bit differently and they were aware that they caught on to that and they use that against him so you know in addition to the beating and holding them against their will for all those hours and hours and pretty much making them convinced themselves that they've done something they have it like you just look at how they pretty much tricked this kid and how you're able to get somebody who wasn't even at the scene of where any of this happened in mind you none of these kids were at the scene of where these sexual assault happened it was it happened a whole half-mile up from where they were at but because they just happen to be at the park it was collateral anybody who was black in the teenager you just locked for or or after Latino you just snatched up and locked away any way to see how they just pretty much manipulated this kid his take is the hardest one to watch if you go and you watch those if the real interrogations it's the most painful thing to watch because you he clearly doesn't understand what's going on and on top of that he's literally getting yelled at the whole time and not yelled at is in you're gonna be in trouble like yell that is in we're about to kick you gonna beat you you know you bout to get to more like he's terrified in the video he doesn't understand what's being asked of him they're using terms and phrases he can't quite understand and decipher and it's just making him even more confused and they have different people coming in and going and coming in and going then finally they bring in I think it was Elizabeth they bring in you know Elizabeth no it was Linda Linda Feinstein who's still working today I believe in the same field they bring her in cuz of course you bring in the white woman with the soft speaking voice maybe you might be a little bit more apt to try enough cooperate and that's exactly what they tried to do with him so they brought her in there and she does the whole soft speaking thing because she's the the soft fragile nurturing woman who can help you get out of this and next thing you know now he's talking about how he sexually assaulted a woman that he's never seen before alright and the interesting part is all five of the stories none of the stories added up the stories didn't make sense nothing didn't have the description of what the woman had on correctly they didn't have the right location for the assault took place they as far as what they did with the assault it didn't add up like it's just like de and y'all still trying to push this case y'all really just pushed it huh and so you see Korie and just going through all the different jail um the transfers and everything and the fact that he volunteered to go in solitary confinement goes to show you how terrible it had to be while he was in the jail or in the prison you know cuz with solitary confinement the hardest aspect of it is one you're secluded from everybody you know you may be cool for that first week in there buyer so but over time you start to lose a sense of who you are you don't know what day it is you don't know what time it is you haven't had communication with anybody you start becoming delusional you get into a space where you no longer fit in within society and the longer that you're in there the harder it is for you to snap back into your actual realm of what is considered normal for you you know when you get out and he was in there for years and I mean he just went from prison to prison in solitary confinement you had the the in house politics going on within the prison that's another thing when you talk about the judicial system it's not just the crooked police it's not just the bad judicial system and the rulings and courts and all of that but there's also what happens in the prisons and how a lot of these prison guards are not held accountable I personally think the prison guard sexually assaulted him I think that's what he kept alluding to in the movie talking about let me know if there's anything you can do for me over and over like I definitely think he was sexually assaulted by at least a prison guard but you saw everything that kept happening to him you know he already had a lot going on at home plus the fact that mom was already kind of back and forth with what she was dealing with so it's like that's an experience and I guess what really gets me as well is how they kept wanting him to admit guilt in order to get parole because that's how parole operates you don't get parole unless you would acknowledge your guilt and the reason why I think they do that that's insurance so if somebody tries to sue the police department afterwards if they you know say they get out or you know whatever happens the police are just gonna use that and say no because you confess to it right here so you can get out that was the agreement you have you don't have a case so going back to your life where you try to figure out how to make it with a felony good luck because if we want to be transparent about the judicial system in this country we know that ninety percent of the people who are in prison right now are in prison under a plea agreement that doesn't mean that they are guilty of the crime at they admitted to doing just recognize that the risk and consequence of going to trial and being found guilty even if they were actually not guilty at heart the consequence was greater than that I'm just going ahead and admitting to something you didn't do for a lighter sentence it just made more sense to just go ahead and listen if I do this I'll only be in jail for a year or two and I'll get probation as opposed to facing twenty years and so that aspect of manipulation and coercion and just the fact that there was no element of humanity with how they work with these kids like it just didn't care it was just anything goes let's just go ahead and get these kids to confess so we can call it a day and we have another case under our belt like that's injected part it reminds me I've told the story before for those who follow me I had a cousin who they slipped and fell playing basketball when they were younger and it messed up how they were able to understand things because they like really busted their head open and everything like that and so there was a situation that happened with my cousin and a few other teenagers and long story short because my cousin was one who really wasn't able to process information the same anymore they pretty much made my cousin the guinea pig and escaped go for everything because he didn't really know how to properly defend himself and so pretty much while he was in interrogation for everything that happened by the time his parents finally got that he had already signed a plea deal I already signed everything good admitted to something he didn't even do because he was so afraid of spending the rest of his life in jail like they told him he ended up going to jail for three years for something he didn't even do he lie and then he didn't want to fight it and something I learned you know depending on where you live you have to pay to be in jail like hey there's like a feat like he ended in the Fairfax County Jail until they sent him to the actual prison it was like a dollar a day fee I was like that's crazy and the other thing is you have to pay that fee whether you're guilty or not and you and and that's also assembly just goes to show how the judicial system in the prison industrial complex it's just a crazy operation because if you're somebody who's not in in affluent position and just pay those kind of bills back or say you get out maybe you don't have family support and now you have to figure out how to get a job and everything but of course you're a convicted felon there's no jobs for you if you don't pay that money back what do you think happens what do you think the ultimate you know consequences in the long run if you're not able to adequately pay everything back with in a timely manner like they will get you caught up it's absolutely crazy and but again like there's so many people who still it's disturbing it there's so many people who still really think that these kids did this and another aspect it's like I mean you just talked about the whole divide and conquer mentality like that's literally the only reason why all of them ended up in jail like literally they confess because they were told that another person told on them that goes back to that manipulation aspect they know that you can use the violent congregate people work against each other and they've always done that with black folks as a collective okay that's exactly how they were able to break apart the Black Panther movement that's exactly how they're able to kind of break apart you know the black nationalist movement you know as far as COINTELPRO that's how things have always been just get into the heads of everybody make everybody fight each other and so if you think about it the four of them all told them each other then ended up including the fifth person just because they were told another person told on them you know absolutely crazy and so they all pretty much worked against each other thinking it would help them get out and it just made things worse and so that's how things always end up working I'm telling you that Elizabeth Annette Linden lady I just the fact that there was just no empathy no simply didn't care it's just they had an mo and they were going by any means necessary to get it and even today especially that linda feinstein lady you know she still even as recently as a week or two ago is still claiming while all five of them were involved and the new person who whose DNA was found who was the reason they got off he was just a six-person she's gonna stick with that and run with it because she's she would rather just be right then too and I'm talking about right as far as her perspective then to be right as far as what's actually right she she's gonna look out for her own like that some jakab stuff where people will do that that's how my supremacy works people will vote against their own interest in everything just to be right in aspect of protecting the identity of whiteness because white supremacy there's always gonna be protected by whiteness it's all gonna be protected by the aspect of keeping things the way they are so some people can have somewhat of a decent life and even those who may not tangibly have anything who still share that white skin for them it's like at least we have power because we have we we have this at least we're not black you know that's the perception that would be my only reasoning as to why some people vote the way they vote when they vote against candidates that have all the interest but they recognize that they don't mind suffering a little bit if the people who they feel that they are above suffer a bit more that's some crazy stuff ain't it but anyway somebody lost was also saying you know you always moving it's not even blahblah and as a matter of fact some of the jewelry were black and I'm like can we go back to the aspect of the time that just took place now this is 1989 going in 1991 you have to look at what was going on when it came to the black image this was the time period of peak visibility when it came to giving crappy images of black Americans all right so one it's still the crack era the crack epidemic is still going on and now you also have to age thing going on and with the crack epidemic this is the same time period where you had the President of the United States George Bush number one sit there and do that address to the Union or address the nation where he was talking about all the crack that was sold right here outside of the White House we have a big issue in the war on drugs and setting xxx he was holding the bag of crack and then it turned out that all that was a setup and they set somebody up on purpose just so they would have this news story like they was purposely an effort to push out a false narrative about how violent how aggressive how dangerous black people were at the time and in addition to that you also had a shift in what was being put in media so you had TV shows like cops and and in crime mystery shows where you started seeing that imaging of good guys versus bad guys being put out there and then when you're talking about the location all right this is New York New York in the late 80s going to early 90s did not have the best representation for a lot of people New York looked like a very dangerous place and when and a lot of times they use images of the Bronx because you know the Bronx that just came out of the burning era you know the Bronx were no longer burning but there was no investment into the area so when you had all those landlords that burn down all their properties in the late 70s early 80s so they could get the insurance money and the insurance claims and then they moved on out and called her today the neighborhoods were just left destitute left with no investment so of course crime starts to rise but that would be the face of New York when I'd wanted to show black people all right now if they wanted to show the other aspect they give you the Donald Trump imaging they give you the you know the Barbara Walters skating ice skating and whatever little part that is over there like that was you know that was the imaging so the imaging of blackness was kind of under attack at that point and it didn't help like gangsta rap came out at the time so an art form that was pretty much trying to showcase to Americans who didn't live in certain neighborhoods what it was like to walk in the shoes of people who lived in certain areas around the country that narrative of protest against police brutality and wealth gap and what was going on in community and in fact that for some people selling drugs was the only way to yourselves because there were no jobs in the community because the liquor store wasn't hiring you know they turned that art form into okay it's these people corrupting the children and they're all misogynistic and they all want the kids to do drugs and are all cop killers and so you have that energy going out there and people were terrified of black folks if we really want to go there you just you know this is right before Rodney King was about to happen this is right before the LA riots was about to happen so America was already in a very unstable place when it came to race there's a lot of nonsense going on and the wreck UNAM extent the effects of Reaganomics were going on and so you saw a lot of black people some really crappy situations and so when you take that aspect and then you dig into the emotional peels of the jour you can get them to believe anything because what they did with the case if you watched it and you noticed in the movie if you just follow the actual case you saw that what they did was they dehumanized the boys they took out any elements of humanity out of them and made them beastly and they put all the humanity and empathy on to the victim who of the right crime and so you know they would show her pictures of what happened with the damage and you know she had to walk into the courtroom and it took her 15 minutes to get to her seat because you know she couldn't walk the same way anymore she couldn't talk the same way any more they made sure she was dressed a certain way and had the long flowing blonde hair and then even Elizabeth while she was doing her questioning the tone of how she asks her questions changed wasn't her cussing out the kids me when I was a soft tone and can you remember what happened that night can you and all of that played a role because it digs into the emotional appeals of the drawer if you're ever somebody who's into law your main goal in order to get the jury on your side is digging to their emotional Appeals and the best way to do that is to get them to see things through your lens and to get them to feel something whether it's angry or sad or scared or freaked and they were successfully able to get the jewelry angry and pissed off at the kids and empathetic towards the woman struggle to the point where even though there was no physical evidence tying these kids to that case the atrocities that happened to her were so bad and like I said they were able to just go ahead and associate that with the kids because at that time in America unfortunately and I feel like you could still happen today it was easier for people to believe that five random teenagers would go and write this and white woman in the park and literally almost kill her and everything like that then it was to believe that the NYPD would frame five teenagers for a rape because they didn't do the proper research and they weren't detail-oriented enough and they didn't have to follow through and they pretty much dropped the ball on the case but because they already screwed up and they already have somebody they just kept going with it so that they could be right you know it was easy easier to believe that the kids will go ahead and do such an offense as opposed to believing that the NYPD who are protecting everybody from all the bad guys but do such a thing so you have people go and and of course you had people at the same time who there was so much going on where you had like people who were like enough is enough enough was enough with the crime and what's happening in our neighborhoods and what's happening with this and so they needed to make an example out of somebody so the jury had no problem locking on kids up it was no anything it didn't matter what race the juror was they unfortunately because everybody was not in that same mindset and this is before the days of social media this is before the days of if the news media is putting out a false narrative social media can correct it in five minutes not even in 280 characters and one tweet changed the narrative you know this was back when you got Church sources of information from the newspapers in the news media and that was it and Donald Trump could take his 85,000 dollars in and put out his you know why the kids should be sent to death and everything like that and people bought into that because people still trusted the news media at the time people looked at that as the sale belt be all if you were on CNN if you were on ABC News and that means it had to be official it had to be the way they said it happened and so there's that that's why I always enjoyed that clip of Farrakhan lighting into Mike Wallace when he said that stuff about Nigeria I always enjoyed watching that cuz I don't know people cuz he said they're like I better I say it's the most crap nation in the world and farrakhan's what I was like it's always an interesting clip to watch but anyway um yeah so you had a lot of people who just felt like yeah it's easier to go ahead and convict these kids because it's harder to believe that the NYPD would frame them than it is to believe that they you know wouldn't rape this woman and that's something that's scared because it goes back to the imaging of the black man and the black youth and they do this with black women as well but at this time because there's black men against the white woman but we know that dynamic that dynamic that was always pushed that because if you go back to like the movie the original birth of where it's these black monsters who are trying to go and rape the virtuous innocent Christian white women like that's kind of it's that same narrative or if we talk about you know people like to use the imaging from what's the big dog monkey it's not Godzilla it's uh I can't think of the money you know we're gonna talk about the big moves with the big John eight and he got the white woman in the hand that movie um same imaging kind of thing it's all of that and so this was that time period for this peak visibility for a crappy black image that was that time period so it was very easy to buy in today um I'm alright myself because I'm talking forever in a day but like just hmm absolutely crazy um and then the other thing I was gonna say this part that makes it scary is that you're happy that they weren't able to be the exception that they were able to you know come above everything that happened to them and they they did get a settlement which I don't think was high enough but you know what about the ones who don't get that luxury what about the ones whose stories we're never gonna hear the ones who've already died from old age or execution or wherever are the ones who whose story is just not gonna get out there like because this stuff is still happening it doesn't change anything and a lot of people have been saying well I don't get why we're still making a hoopla about this they got like 41 million dollars and again money doesn't buy your way into liberation when you're living in a capitalistic society because at the end of the day money is just the entity that still runs that system you can't buy your way out of oppression in this country no matter how rich you are like as crazy as tiny is now he had a line when he said that bit if you buy a Benz you still owe you know what so um at the end of the day like people have to eventually get to a point to recognize that money is not it doesn't equate to freedom and liberation and I'm talking liberation of the mind and physically you know um which which is wise a little annoyed with the way to some people responded to my two cents I have on Steve Harvey but a dress that in another video but but again like just because they got 41 million dollars that doesn't take away from everything else they missed out on you know what I mean it doesn't take away from that the fact that everything here just the whole experience is different that's some crap I wouldn't want anybody test experience but anyway like I said it was a good watch definitely check it out if you can you might have to watch it in breaks and do what you need to do to make sure that you're still good here but yeah I'm gonna do a bunch of videos this week because I'm finally back I told you I was travelling for a little bit and then my mother came to visit me and I just wanting a little mini break but I'm here now I'm by the way my album is out for those who don't know also produces on all digital music outlets called the hardcover under the name cobble Michaels check it out when you get a chance anyway share your two cents on this documentary and we will catch up alright

Channel: Calvin Michaels

Views: 123,889

Keywords: When they see us, the central park five, ava duvernay, netflix, series, niecy nash, yusef salaam, raymond santana, kharey wise, antron mccray, kevin richardson, jharrel jerome, blair underwood, felicity huffman, linda feinstein, donald trump, documentary, redemption, humanize, interview, the breakfast club, the shade room, tmz, baller alert, hollywood unlocked, the jasmine brand, the view, wendy williams, black twitter, 41 million dollars, rikers island, judicial system

Id: GLE-v2Od5aU

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019