In this episode George is joined by Terence L. Shigg. BLAKPAC is returning to the past to fix the future. BLAKPAC is calling on all political campaign to commit to spending 10% of their budgets with Black owned businesses. This is the Art Fletcher Pledge, named after the father of Affirmative Action. George discusses the importance of voting and volunteering to work at the polling stations. George calls on professional athletes and entertainers to help get out the vote.
In this episode George is joined by Terence L. Shigg. BLAKPAC is returning to the past to fix the future. BLAKPAC is calling on all political campaign to commit to spending 10% of their budgets with Black owned businesses. This is the Art Fletcher Pledge, named after the father of Affirmative Action. George discusses the importance of voting and volunteering to work at the polling stations. George calls on professional athletes and entertainers to help get out the vote.
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George T. Farrell :Good day, everyone. This is George Burrell. I am the Chair of blackpack e black Latin Asian knowledge political action committee. They helped to get blacks elected to Congress, all across the country were very successful. We expect a very successful year in 2020. Our website is www.bl KPAC dot GOP, again, our website www.kp AC dot GLP. And we welcome you to look and review our website. And let us know if you have any suggestions, any candidates, any nominees or any events that you're doing, that are related to conservative black candidates, black Latin and Asian candidates around the country. So we're the number one in doing this with a number one political action committee and getting out the vote. We turned out 1.8 million votes in 2016. This year, we expect to turn out 3.5 million votes, working not only with ourselves, but with a few other political action committees that have popped up, which are now in action. So I thank you for your time. And I thank you for listening. And again, if there's any questions, go to our website, you can leave a question I will get back to you within 24 hours.
Terence Shigg :I know you got a special project coming up the Fletcher project.
George T. Farrell :Yes, Terence we have a very special project named after art Fletcher. Many people don't know art Fletcher. But art Fletcher is probably one of the most incredible people you could ever meet. I knew him when I was a very young man, art Fletcher is the father of affirmative action. If you look him up on Google, you'll see that he was the father of affirmative action. He came up during the Nixon administration. This is 1971 during the Nixon administration, with what was called the Philadelphia plan. Now the Philadelphia plan only apply to contractors so that black contractors and employees will have a shot at getting a construction job started in Philadelphia. And that's why I was called the Philadelphia prayer. He later went to serve with the Nixon administration all the way through the George Bush, one administration, making sure that blacks had great opportunities. And he did a fantastic job. I can tell you from my personal knowledge, I grew up in Washington, DC. And in 19 7070, if you were a GS seven, you were the top of the line, you have McCaskey art Fletcher with his magnificent foresight. I mean, there would be no Colin Powell, if there was no art Fletcher, that's how strong his personality was. And all of a sudden, you had black African Americans, his department, his gs 13, gs 14, we actually started moving up the ladder. And art Fletcher was responsible for so many qualified overqualified African Americans getting jobs. That is just an incredible thing. I can give you a little bit more DC history if you'd like. For one, for one example, Marion Berry, a lot of people don't know this, had a had a chemistry degree. He graduated with a degree in chemistry, and came to Washington to find a job, couldn't find a job became an activist and became one of the greatest mayor's we've ever had in the United States of America because he also used the government to employ a lot of blacks department his and once Marion berry started hiring a lot of overqualified blacks, the federal government started opening up around the same time when art Fletcher so these two giants really are responsible for the black middle class. So when people tell you that there's a Prince George's County, that is the one of the most affluent black areas in the country, is because of these two bad knees, two giants that kicked open the door to the federal government for opportunity for many, many blacks. So that's my history lesson. Okay, let's get back to the heart switcheroo. Right.
Terence Shigg :Well, I like that topic and I wanted you to break down something cuz you use the term overqualified blacks, but When people hear affirmative action, the first thing they say is, well, that's just making sure that that black people get jobs that they're not qualified for. So can you clear that up for him? Because I think that's a misnomer or miss is,
George T. Farrell :it is it is a misnomer, the misrepresentation. You know, we've had HBCUs for a long time that has produced millions and millions of graduates all over the country. And we would come out and we would end up going to the post office, or going to the, I mean, I can tell you, I knew black folks in Washington, DC, who had master's degrees who are working at the post office, because that was the only job they could find. So that's why they would say there's always work at the post office, they say it as a joke, but it was true, because even if you had a Master's or PhD, you ended up working in very few places. I mean, one of the reasons the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King was headed by the I don't want to say garbage man, but the garbage men in the garbage man strike was because that was the only jobs we could get as black men. You know, there was an old movie called Julia. With I think it was Lawrence Hilton Jacobs first movie, I'm saying this because you're in Hollywood, you understand how this movie talk? So long as Hilton Jacobs. His first movie was in a movie. It's not Julia, but it was a movie with James Earl Jones where he played a garbage man. And that's the reason he played that garbage man. That's what those were the roles we had back in the 70s. So you know, aren't Fletcher
Terence Shigg :that was the one where they had to hide all the stuff when the okay.
George T. Farrell :I can't it's not Julia. But there was a movie, there was a TV show called Julia. But yeah, you. So yes, these were real time for African Americans in folks like art, Fletcher, just kicked the door down, open the door of opportunities for so many African Americans who were overqualified with college degrees, but no place to go. Yeah, ended up in the post office and sanitation workers of place like that. We were not, you know, even considered for department heads, but we were overqualified. So when you see someone like Maynard Jackson, and all these other great mayors, Harold Washington and Chicago, they not exceptions, they were always overqualified, but people around them are always overqualified, we just did not get the opportunities in the 70s and 80s. And sometimes I'm afraid we're going backwards. Okay, to get those opportunities again, especially with this COVID and all this jobs and layoffs, you know, we we really got to be careful. And we got to honor people like art Fletcher, and let me get to the art Fletcher pledge. One is for pop his political campaigns and campaign committees, campaigns and political campaign committees will raise over $2 billion this year, in the next 50 days, they'll probably raise another $1 billion, while we're asking these campaigns to do including the presidential campaigns, is to make sure they spend at least 10% of those funds, with black firms and black banks and black businesses, you know, to spend 100 million out of a billion dollars is not a great sacrifice. That's whether we're doing events, whether we're making designs, whether we're we're marching or making t shirts, or whatever we can do whatever we can do, there's a black business out there, there's a National Black Chamber of Commerce Association, if you don't know where the black businesses are, look at their website, the National Black business of commerce, they have a list of all the black businesses in the United States. So this is just something that if you want to do it, you can do it. But if you want to make excuses and say I can't find any black businesses, it's because you're not looking.
Terence Shigg :So now that kind of goes into what you're talking about last time with the opportunity zones. Yeah, and making sure that those are also something that are being utilized by the African American population as well.
George T. Farrell :Correct. The opportunity zones is a great real estate investment, I think is a part listening opportunity zone that I would like to see corrected. First of all, for the opportunity zone to be beneficial, you have to have someone looking for a tax break. I don't think that should be a requirement, I think you should be able to invest in opportunities on whether you need a tax break or not. And that that should not be the central focus of giving somebody a tax break to invest in opportunity zones. Right now we have historically low interest rates, we have 2% interest rates for houses we which means that if you're borrowing a larger sum of money, you can get even better interest rate. So what we need to do is we need these banks to give access to capital for some of these projects, we actually need to remove the requirement for the capital gains, break for the opportunity zones and just give it straight great to anybody that invest. So I think we need to widen that tax break for the opportunity. So he's also work, because I've seen a lot of talk about them. But I haven't seen a lot of them actually start with projects. And the reason is because if I'm a wealthy guy, I've already got my tax situation figured out, I don't need help from the government for tax break for capital gains, I've already got that figured out with my accountant with my lawyer. So what I like to do is, is see that law amended to give this tax break to anybody, sometimes this is a 30 year tax break, where you don't pay taxes or real estate, with these historically low interest rates. You've got the Treasury Department, my friend monition, giving zero percent loans to cities and municipalities to refinance their debt right now. So the cities are getting a break zero percent on their bond financing, I can actually take my bars that I have now in my city, call the Treasury Department get a zero percent bond to replace the debt, and I'm out I'm using right now. So we've got a lot of tax breaks out there. We just need to make sure they get to the right people. And we got to make sure that they apply without all these extra loopholes, because the capital gains is an extra loophole that you don't need for opportunity zones. So I like to see that amended.
Terence Shigg :Okay. And then with those opportunity zones, are there any qualifications in there that allow for employing people in those communities?
George T. Farrell :Yes, there's a tax break, isn't it? There's a tax break for how many employees you bring. So all this all this comes together, but right now it only benefits a wealthy investor, which I think is the wrong way to go. If you're not a wealthy investor, you're not getting any of these tax breaks. So what we need to do is real men this bill so that no matter who invest, maybe it could be someone opening a corner store that invest $150,000 give them a tax break for working every day. 12 hours a day to make sure people have food on the table.
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George T. Farrell :Okay, this is Georgia blackjacks. I'm back with Terence. Thank you Terence. Mr. Shigg, you've done a great job. Let me say this about voting. Everybody has the vote. Don't let anyone talk you out of not voting. Every vote will really count whether you vote early, whether you vote by mail or whether you vote in person, don't let anyone come up with any programs I heard there was some kind of hip hop covered up with stayhome on Election Day campaign, don't fall for that get get your butt out there and vote. because let me tell you the the country is not split 5050 split 30 3030 30% of our voters are not registered with any party. And those are the people who are going to make the decision on who wins these elections. These elections are very, very close. I can give you example after example, in Florida, the governor's race 2018 was decided by 44,000 votes for governor of a state with 10 million people 44,000 votes have decided that race. So if you stayed home and you didn't vote for governor in 2018, shame on you. So you need to get out there and vote. And in Georgia, the governor's race was decided to get in by 75,000 votes. And that's another state with 10 million people 75,000 most of us decided who was going to be your governor on a statewide race. And these these these elections have consequences because they can decide who's who's going to be in charge of Department of Motor Vehicles, who's going to be in charge of collecting your taxes, who's going to be in charge of booting your car, if you don't have tickets, and
Terence Shigg :with everything going on talk about the importance of judges,
George T. Farrell :and the importance of judges. The judges are very important because these governors get to a point to the state Supreme Court. So you get the wrong judges on the state Supreme Court, you're going to get some wacky laws, you're gonna get some laws that will lock you up for walking down the street.
Terence Shigg :And that is the importance of the local elections because that's who controls those controls those municipalities in some places is the the local judges, the sheriff's, local sheriff, Yahoo's board offices, all those positions.
George T. Farrell :Yep. I mean, I can I can tell you a story where I was with the governor of florida his name was rick Scott and I set up a meeting with him for with a pastor pastor manual Sykes. On a Sunday morning, the attendant manual Sykes church. He was running for governor against Charlie Chris Emmanuel Sykes asked and he said, Look, our children are getting stopped and arrested. I don't want our children getting stopped for minor offenses. I would like our children to get a desk ticket for parents. So after governor scott One morning, the first thing he did was changed the policy in Florida, where young children when they got stopped, they weren't they weren't treated as a criminal. They were given a ticket and told to appear later with their parents. at court. They were treated like a they had some respect. And this was a just a one meeting before a church service, read read Reverend, manual sites, churches, new Bethel ama church or new Bethel Church in Florida and St. Petersburg, Florida. But that's the that is the importance of having access to your politicians. That's the importance of access. So you can ask for things that are important. Now that didn't affect Reverend manual sites, but it was affecting his congregation because the young people in his congregation were feeling discouraged that every time they had an interaction with a police officer, it was negative. And that's something else we've got to get back to. Our police departments have to get back to having positive interactions with young people with children with adults, every interaction with a police officer should not be negative. And we've got to go back to our officer friendly policing, we've got to get back to that so we can build trust in our communities. Because when you don't have trust, you have these incidents like we just had in Los Angeles when there's no trust of police officers at the community. And now you're at war with your community. So we can actually stop the war with our communities by having positive interactions with our shirts, with our sheriff's deputies, where it's not always a negative interaction. So we're both a little at fault. I do pray for these police officers that they get well and they get injured. And I do hope that whoever did this heinous crime, is arrested and is persecuted because that that that one incident will now put that entire community on lockdown. In the people who suffer are people that that will be walking down the street to the corner store or driving to get to the freeway. Those are the people who are going to suffer because now you're going to have a whole community are locked their way. Everybody in that community is a suspect because of one person's crime. But we both got to get back, we both got a back up and find out how do we fix our police department so that we have some positive interactions. And that's something that we need to do as a police department, maybe we need to have a police fair where they bring the carnival to town or something. But this is something we have to do because we cannot get rid of the police. Because we do need some some security in our communities. We can't have prosperity, we can't have opportunities. If we don't have security, and peace in our communities because no one's going to invest.
Terence Shigg :I know the importance of poll workers. If you have an establishment that you can use as a polling site, all of those things, volunteer your time. Make sure you volunteer your place and they're even paying for poll workers. So yeah, even say you're getting a paycheck from
George T. Farrell :poll workers. If you need a quick part time job. I think poll workers are being paid $20 an hour is a great gig for four hours a day you can make 80 bucks, but be upwards of poll workers and volunteering at the polls. It is very important. Now there's some creative things being going on. I know that the the stadium in St. Petersburg, the dome, the St. Petersburg dome, where the baseball team plays is now being used as a polling station. It's very convenient as in the middle of the city. Perhaps a lot of these other sports arenas and aren't being used right now. Because there's no sports, they can turn they can volunteer and use their facilities as a voting precinct to make sure that everybody votes because, look, there's going to be long lines, it's going to be a lot of distance information. The more and larger voting precincts we can set up that we can set up Los Angeles stadiums, as a voting preset San Diego stadiums and we can set up our stadiums as voting precincts our especially our dome facilities. That would be great. If we could set up our movie theaters as voting facilities, that would be great. That would take the pressure off a lot of these small places where you vote because I know a lot of schools are used as voting facilities. They use just the cafeteria for one day. And sometimes that can be crowded and that's when you have these long lines. So I'm asking most most of the cities and the stadium owners consider using your stadium as a voting preset LeBron James to get on this right. James can push
Terence Shigg :well I noticed that that is something that he was pushing and Jeanie buss was also pushing and then one of the things that I was saying is even some of the entertainers the NFL stars, NBA w nba stars, they should volunteers poll workers or come to these polling places to increase turnout. They have an
George T. Farrell :ad Great idea. Yeah, that's a great idea. They're out there talking a lot of what should happen but having them step forward and come out for two or three hours as a poll worker would be great. I would love to see LeBron as his poll worker. Of course, everybody would just get a signature. Maybe that could be a requirement. I'll give you a signature if you go vote. still be a little voting thing I voted. You'll get a signature from abroad right? Oh, that would be great to have these NFL players NBA players hockey players step up and get out to vote do a real good out vote not just with your voice, but what's your action? So I'm I'm asking all you NBA players, all you NFL players to go out there and be seen in the community. Come back and shake a couple of hands, give some autographs and make someone's day. You know, take some pictures, but only after they vote. They have to vote for him. Yes. In then get the picture. So that would be a great, that'd be a great thing to have. I like to see that happen to LA and other cities across the Dallas Houston, Chicago. That'd be great. Yeah. Transcribed by https://otter.ai