Here we go, y'all! For the last Terraform episode of the year, we chop it up with Bart Jones of Cxffeeblack, a Memphis,TN based company who's mission is to de-gentrify coffee! Learn more at cxffeeblack.com.
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Media. I am stealing this man's time, bro one of my I like the trip to me ab solutely talk some more.
Yeah, check one two, want two?
You're talking little more than that.
Yeah, check one two one two one two, want too?
Maybe get closer to the mic? Oh yeah, I didn't know. I don't know if I need to. I thought you was gonna get levels. I was like, get levels, But you've got the mic way over there, cat like in your arm pits. Why is the mic in your arm pit?
Check one two one two one two one two.
Okay, that's way better. All right, Okay, so we might even I might even keep this in the show because it's funny.
All right.
So this is the last terrorforming episode of the year. As y'all know, if you just new to the show, what I try to do in the midst of whatever burning building our news has been And we're recording this on Da Delus Morthos. So I don't know who the president is yet. This is gonna come out, and when it comes out, we may not we still may not go crazy.
Oh yeah, we got wait till January.
Six, until the next until the next insurrection.
Oh my go that's crazy.
You think they gonna. I'm my My feeling is no one's gonna accept the results.
Yeah, Bro, I ain't gonna. I try to be in Africa like every end of the December anyway. I just want to be in Ghana and not worried about it. Bro, I'll come back when they figure it out. Speaking, I feel you.
Who is on this mic right now is a young man who I met a long time ago, who is doing some amazing things in Memphis, Tennessee with coffee. This is Can I call you coffee black? Or should I call you a bar?
Everybody does? They call me a neighborhood a coffee?
He called his boy coffee this is coffee black, a bar coffee. I talked about him on the It Can Happen Here podcast when I talked about that, like, we've only got twenty seven Harved's left unless we do something crazy. Yeah, because crazy, it's only twenty seven of them left.
That's wow.
Yeah, But we got a terrorformer here and in the best way possible. You know, I can take a little bit of credit for.
Yeah, Bro, gonna say all the way back to Wheaton College brat James, Yeah, but sir.
But yeah, so I agree. I would love to be in Africa by November eighth.
Yeah, bro, I'm not even gonna hold you.
Like, we're working on maybe doing this thing and kind of like because one of the Brest Exchange participants who didn't get a visa is ain't Ghana, and then another homie is like doing his West African coffee project and I'm like, it's a lot of.
Reasons to not be here, bro.
Just plus you know, they just broke it to the new jet, so I'm like, hey, the shop ban gonna be anyway, so like I might as well.
So we're talking about things that we know that y'all don't. You don't know what the Brest Exchange program is. You don't know what the word junt means. It just means joint, it means location, kosa.
Thing. I'm with it.
Yeah, the dang thang, the tilt the spot anyway. Uh so let's let's back up for sure. So this is a coffee company, a roaster, which is so much more than that. It started as an education program, right, Yeah.
So I've been doing the pitch all weekend.
Yeah yeah, so out here trying to get some bread.
Yeah yeah.
We halfway through our pre prec but so we're a hip hop based coffee company out of Memphis, and to see that sources coffee from pre colonial communities in Africa through all black supply chain. Once we get the coffee, we do three things with it. So we do storytelling like we just sold a sitcom to HBO Max. We do podcasting, music, documentaries, apparel, stuff like that. We also do products, so we do CpG products, so like your consumer packaged goods, the roasted coffee, do a ken coffee call god brew is not co brew, it's gold brew.
I told you.
We do you know, instant coffee things like that. And then we do creative placemaking, So we work with hip hop artists, activists, our neighbors to train them about coffee as one job training, but then two models for entrepreneurship, and then three to reconnect them to their own heritage through the coffees that we source from these communities.
So yeah, yeah, it was.
It's a light bulb for most black people to realize that coffee is an African fruit.
It was for me, Bro, I mean I remember when you did Left coffee and like I was like sort of getting into coffee and like I didn't know, I was still kind of like I felt like I was still trying to do my best, like hipstory barista, yeah rendition when I was in these places and I saw y'all rapping and like I still remember that Guatemalan joint with the Mayer Lemon note, Oh my god, and being like, yeah, bro, my wife got me the coffee because my wife was the one who gave me shout out black woman, Like she was the one who really gave me permission to spend money on coffee, because like that was one of them categories, like you could spend money on Jay's, but.
Like not on coffee.
It was like you you were considered wasteful growing up if you was like doing anything like that, and that she bought it for me and I had it, and I just it was like seeing the style of music that y'all wore bringing to it and like I was like, I want to see something like that from my community in Memphis.
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, the co chair for me, our Ethiopian co chair for me. I was like, there's advotasting nothing like this. You never got the Guatemalan second for y'all that don't know. Once upon a time before terror form my late record label that me and my friends kind of founded. We also had a coffee company called Left Roasters.
Yeah, and.
We would so part of my like merch package was you know, T shirts, hoodies and bounce bags of coffee.
You know, legal work.
Come on, yeah, legal work, you know what I'm saying. And so so so, like he said, you know, you have the business aspect, but the biggest part for why I would think to have him on the show is the community aspect. What's happening in Memphis and uh tell him a little bit about the anti gentrification coffee club.
Yeah, for sure.
It was a joke to be honest, like he was in the studio. Honestly, most of the if we did start off as a joke in the studio. So it's like Guji Man, which is like our best selling coffee was like we was in the studio and had to bring out of coffee, and so me and my homies had to go to like the little history joint up the street, and we was like, brother, it's stilling the vibe.
Like we didn't even want to rap anymore.
So it was like what what if it was a brand that was like made since in the studio, it would we all love coffee from the Guji Zone.
I was gonna say, Guji is a location in Ethio.
Yeah, it's in the southern region and it's in the.
Southern reason of the Reason of Ethiopia.
Yeah.
So it was like, well it would be, which is actually fascinating to talk about. Why cofee from the Gooozi zone? It is so dope, like to actually taught me to yg who's like our social partner there before you do that.
So they named the coffee Gujie Maine. Yes, because let's multi versus yes. I'm going to assume you don't know any of this. There is a rapper named Gucci Maine. Okay, right, yo, So Guji Maine is a play on that. Look I'm not I'm just gonna assuming they assume.
Yeah.
And so for us, it was like if coffee had always been black, what kind of names would we see? What kind of brands we So that was the Guji main thing.
It was a joke.
So same studio, we're chilling the pandemic is here that our neighborhood community development organization who's been a fiduciary with us for a minute, The Height Development Corporation Corp Corporization Corporation was like they had this space they were trying to use. It had been burned down. They were trying to get somebody in the community to activate it. It was like a like a freeze cup lady was there. If you don't know what freeze cups are, it's like kool aid, really really sweet kool aid.
Then people freezing the star real hood stuff.
Yeah, some real like and you know, the business didn't do well, so they were trying to get a business in there, and they were like, y'all shit.
The coffee thing we were like shipping.
We had dropped the love Black People's shirts, like love Black People, like you love Black Coffee was his shirt we dropped during the George Floyd protests to like send money to support bail bonds for activists and also just to call out the like super super gentrified coffee industry. And yeah, man, we were doing well online and like we were just like trapping out of my house, my wife's mother's house, Kenny's house. Who just pulled up, my homie, Kenny, White Boy Kenny just pulled up and they literally everybody thought we were selling drugs. I'm like no, we're not. And we're like, yeah, we're roast and coffee, but it's a lot of like traffic. I'm on Instagram in front of my house. It's like it's kind of not a good look at this point to be like moving this much product just from my house.
And so the.
Neighborhood Community Development Org was like, well, you guys can work out of this space in the neighborhood a couple of minutes away. I'm like, all right, cool, And they kept trying to push us to do coffee and I'm like, bro, I'm not finish gentrified my neighborhood, Like I know one hundred percent. As soon as I pop up with specialty grade eighty eight point Ethiopian naturally processed goujie and it's like hip and new and we're doing music, everybody's finna pull up here and they're not gonna see my neighborhood been drunk all night and they're gonna call the police on this man, and it's gonna be George for again.
Like I'm not I don't want to see that.
And we had just had the issue with Starbucks right in Philly where they had called the police.
I just didn't want to see it.
This is around that time, Yes, around the time we pulled you in for Poor Gummy Fridays too.
Yes, bro. Yeah.
So I'm like, man, I just didn't want to see that happened in my neighborhood. So I was like, bro, if we did do something, it wouldn't even be it'd be like an anti gentrification joint and it wouldn't even be a coffee shop. It'd be like a like a coffee club, like it was just for the homies, like members only come join the club energy. And then like the community development organization was like all right, bet yeah, They're like all right, run.
It like anti gentification coffee club. Yeah.
And I'm like okay, but like how am i gonna make money with that business concept? Like I'm head first into the e commerce thing like everybody was. We had just done like sixty K in a month. You know what I'm saying, I'm focused on I'm trying to do this, you know, like not knowing that once people come back outside, you actually gonna need you need to diversify your revenue streams.
So that's guy right there, shut out to yaweh. But like I was like, I didn't think it made sense, but I was like, if we do it, I'm not I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pay rent.
So we need like a sliding scale, and the coffee's expensive, so I'm gonna want to give We say the first ship is free.
I got neighbors on a thirty second ship. It's still free, you know what I'm saying.
Like we were having it would be like a pay what you can model, and like I would want to employ people from the community and all this other stuff. I didn't even have an espresso machine at first because I was like, that's the colinizes.
So I told you on the other show espressos from Italy.
Yeah, that's why. Yeah.
And I was trying to highlight this pre colonial perspective for what we were learning about, like the coffee ceremony and Ethiopia, and eventually I would learn a lot more. Right when we went to Guji, we went to tap in with the Abogadas and out of Sins and learn about the Godda system in Bunokalla and all these like pre colonial even pre Jebena like methodologies and perspectives and like philosophies. But at the time, I just knew, like I wanted to connect people to the coffee itself. Yeah, and I wanted to do that, and I wanted to do it in a way that was one affordable, but two still highlighted like this beautiful metaphor that I think coffee represents to black people but also to all people at the end of the day. And so like that's the start of the anti gentrification Coffee Club. Now we've been open. We started the end of the twenty twenty one it's about to be the end of twenty twenty four, so officially three years.
Yeah, man, praise God.
Also step back. A jevnah yeah, yeah yeah. A jevna is a clay pot that is traditionally used in Ethiopia for Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, which I again I'm referencing the It Can Happen Here episode where a lot of this stuff, like I tried to walk y'all through. But so now it's the world's first coffee pot. It's exactly, it's the world's first pop coffee pot.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I've been there to the to the spot and yeah, they do a cipher. I'm going to assume you know what a cipher is. So they set up beats, you know, they set up like their MPs at different paths, and they just and we just sat around in freestyled. It's a very it's a very beautiful experience. And it's an experience that is the question that like, going back to something you said earlier, like I told y'all four seasons ago, something a term called hintification, which is a Spanish term because hint they just means my people. Right, So in the Latino community, if you were to say, what if, what does gentrification look like if we were doing it to ourselves, So they call it hintification. Wow, So you see this picture right here, like, okay, that's hintification. That's like so the way that it's like we're still it's still graffiti, it's still la you know what I'm saying. But that is y'all can't see this obviously, but that's a escaleta from Diadelli's werthows, you know what I'm saying. So it's like, you know, there's a spot down the street out here called I told you before, called tiert A MIAs A. It's a third wave coffee shop, but it's pon dulce, it's for chopa lattes. It's like Wahakan chocolate. Like it's all very Mexican stuff. And it don't look like a coffee shop. It looks like a pan naia where your grandma would go every morning to go get her breakfast. Little ponds, you know what I'm saying. So, so they're like, this is you know, we did this. Yeah, So there's a term for it in the Latino community. It's called henthification. Right, So essentially that question is, like, what would it look like if we were gonnatrol our own future? And like you said, it was never interrupted as an American, especially an African American, Like it's it's hard for us to imagine if you because we don't live in that type of land, if the indigenous American was not sectioned off or wiped out, if they were allowed to flourish alongside of the culture that we exist in now, Like if they were done properly, allowed to be a part of the American system and their way. Like I wonder what our healthcare system would look like right now. I wonder what our education system would look like right now, What types of foods would be considered the American diet, like you know what I'm saying, Like if we'd actually listen to the natives and they'd be like that don't grow here. You have to change the soil to make this grow here. And there are locations like I know because I tour so much around Native populations that in their world there are they didn't stop existing. They continue to exist like that, and in modern Native towns you can see, you know what I'm saying, But it was still interrupt that wisdom was interrupted by a colonizing force. So for us as African America is the same thing, like it's interrupted that to the point to where it is what it is. But like you said, like we have our connection to our indigenous soil, like my like my wife, she understands Nawak, she understands Spanish, she understands, you know what I'm saying, a continual understanding of her ancestry. We don't have that, Like don't even know what part of Africa I'm guessing, you know what I'm saying, Like I think this part you know what I'm saying, But that the the what you're doing is using the catalyst of coffee to try to reclaim that tie to our ancestral yes history, and.
That's what that's So, this is how amazing the most ig is.
It's like, this is the thing that I learned from these coffee elders of baganizing of sins and this whole social system called the Goddess system where coffee is like this, uh, it's a sacred plant right within the system is that they believe coffee was a gift from the most High, from the divine, from the singular creator God to re establish peace after man's first transgression. And so the plant was given to like read the blessing Buna Naga Hindabina, which is like a traditional coffee blessing, especially in like the southern region with the Oromo people who kind of curated this perspective is mayor house lack no coffee nor peace. But my favorite translation is wherever there is coffee, there must also be peace. And so the belief is that the coffee is the is a plant that represents an opportunity for us to re establish a contract or a covenant of peace between ourselves and the creator, ourselves and the land, and then ourselves and each other. Yeah, and like that's what it was meant to do. So when I'm here and these people are looking at me and they're like, welcome home, bro, Like this plant brought you back.
Home, you know what I'm saying. And it was meant to reconnect you to us and to even for.
My wife and I.
They made us honorary a boganizing out of SINC in November for the first half of the Baristic Exchange program, which we missed you on.
We definitely got to run that.
Back next time. I'm coming.
I was I was being.
I was being selfless.
No, you did what you have to do.
Yeah, don't get in trouble on my behalf. You use having business, but to shout out you one. You were on the board for the first effort Pan African Blackburist ex Change program.
We hustled with Vanderbilt and Better.
Which is explain it. So the idea was us over here in America get to see specialty coffee third wave sort of situations. So we're at the other end of the supply chain where it's fancy, blitzy, beautiful. We get to do the you know Poindexter, you know, full extraction depth over decaf like really like first world experience for coffee being very pompous, right, But most people here have never seen, especially Black bearistas. I've never seen the soil like they've never seen where it comes from. And the connections that Bart and I are coffee Black and I are making because we've seen coffee at at origin in Africa, that connections already made for us.
And not only have we seen coffee, we've seen pre colonial, yes, fully self expressed and autonomous coffee cultures.
Coffee that was not interrupted by anything. We've gotten to see that. So this is the like balling, crying, getting back into your van, going back to the hotel, just unconsolable crying.
Like like that, yes, I can't believe.
You know what I'm saying, Just like like feeling like you've been robbed from your childhood of like we don't know who we are and then can't and then having to try to go back to America and try to explain to Pooky and them like nigga, we are more.
You know what I'm saying, We can say nigga. Okay.
So that's the thing I think too, is like I don't know if you're following way before. Don't forget that thought. I want to explain the Brees Exchange program.
Yes, keep going.
So so the idea was, first half, let's take American black American baristas and bring them to Africa so they can see it and they can meet baristas out there, meet farmers.
Meet the thing.
And then the second half was bring coffee professionals from Africa to America, which was the heart by far that we haven't even debriefed on that already.
Know. We just wrapped that part up.
I actually hit the group chat, but that was by far the most beautiful and also the most difficult, but.
The most worth it.
Yeah, because you can't just get a visa, Like that's the problem, Like you can't just so we've had people that we were like and then it sucks cause it's like you're almost feeding into this socio economics stratification of culture, this system of like haves and have nots and privilege and stuff like that, because it's like you're trying to open it to people that can get here, but it's like I can't. I can't tell your government to release a visa for you for you to go to America because of geopolitics, and some of that just has to do with we just don't trade with that company country. So because we don't trade with that country, you can't come here. And now us saying well, I'm sorry, you can't come is enforcing this system that is keeping you a developed country.
And this is what I say.
When they brought my African ancestors over, there was no visa requiirrems, no visa was everybody. So like, now I want to bring my coffee cousins over. You know what I'm saying, shut out coffee cousins, merge covery soon. Well, now I want to bring my coffee cousins over. And it's a problem. And it really really it was like this experience of trying to reclaim what I believe is a like biblical mandate for like blood lines to have the opportunity to produce a certain fruit. Like there's this perspective of like in the Book of Revelation where every nation is going to bring their crowns and lay them at the feet of God. And so like I remember being in Wheaton College, right and asking these questions, like what does that mean, Like they're going to have like a physical crown. And the perspective my professor told me was this is actually their cultural treasures. So every bloodline or nation or tongue or whatever has the idea was they have these certain outputs that they've been given the capacity to produce.
Wow, you know what I'm saying.
And like part of my frustration and wrestle with my faith was I feel like our bloodline has been.
Like like hobbled and like what we were given to bring to the world to present.
As like a reflection the image of God never had the capacity to operate without being a handicapped, you know what I'm saying. And I'm like, why are we playing with a handicap? Like why I gotta play with the deflated ball?
Like let me ball?
Like let me oh, because it's gonna be beautiful and the whole world is gonna benefit and it's gonna glorify our creator and it's going to be amazing, and like so much like don't y'all know y'all love it when we get busy, Just let us cook, let us don't don't you know you finna eat? Like just quit playing and let us cook, because it's gonna bless the world. It's gonna bless our creator. And like to realize all the way back to coffee that it was. This is one of those things that our blood literally is in our soil, and it only exists. All one hundred and twenty species of the cafe a plant, whether we're talking about arabbaica or Conifera or Siniphala or liberica or you genoid, these whatever, they all and then all of their varietals. Speaking of Typica, all of the thousands of varietals, tens of thousands of varietals of each species, they're all here right, And the world has only experienced a tiny, little, medium, tiny fraction of this. Because the only way we're willing to engage with our root is if when I say, we know what the world is.
Willing to engage with our root is if they get to control the fruit.
And it's like, just let the root cook and honor it, and you will get so much more diverse, so much more of a wider palette.
So we're all over the place.
But I'm like, this is what I wanted my community to experience, and I believe it's part of my life spiritual responsibility to be a steward, to be a vice regent, to be a a whatever of this little space that I got in the hood and myths in this corner and whatever opportunity to connect with our coffee cousins and our elders Ethiopia, Uganda, even folksing a diaspora for Latinos whoever that we're in community with, to try to establish this experience and perspective, you know what I'm saying. And like that experience and perspective was a big reason why I wanted to reach out to you for the Barist Exchange program because we needed a board, a very informal board, but I was like, man, the perspective on terror forming in this idea even going back actually like the Andy kroutchbook Whatever the Culture Care that I read and Wheaten and like, you know, all these things of like I was, I feel like you are, you know, to toot your horn, no diddy, you know what I'm saying. It's like the one of the foremost experts of like this philosophy on what it's terraforming. Yeah, for futurism, culture care, whatever the word. We're gonna use a hint gapification, you know what I'm saying. It's this idea of like, Okay, what did the creator intend? Okay, obviously this is what we are experiencing this outline with that, and how do we use our talents, our gifts, our imagination, our will, our skill to present a picture of that back to our world and have the opportunity to move in that direction.
Yeah, you know, and like, yeah, bro, so.
That's why I wanted you on the board and like being able to pursue that to some capacity because a lot of that, you know, to use the word discipleship was a part of my discipleship, you know what I'm saying, was like these ideas and thoughts read like listening to croocket chord or like being able to like just these things of like, man, can we don't have to our imagination and the vocabulary of our imagination does not have to be determined by the words that currently exist. Yes, we can make up new ones. Yes, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, so that's what we want to do with Coffee in the Hood. And like that's one of the things I think that is the most exciting about and honestly relieving about the anti gentrification Coffee club right now is like it's to let's be honest, right, it's a goofy idea, Like it sounds like a comic book.
You know, it sounds like a group of teenagers with like in a steampunk that that read a red soul on ice. Yeah, like the atrification.
Yeah, they fly around with steampunk backpacks and bruper like trap houses.
But it's like, that's kind of what we're doing.
Actually, it's like in this space like creating, because what I realized is the most fascinating about living like we do. We moved into our neighborhood with the John Perkins model right of like this like community development based in the Bible.
So let me let me back up, like everybody on here, like matter of fact, barely in Christians, okay, but the John Perkins was a civil rights activist, like one of the last living ones and one of the issues which most people have. Like first of all, y'all got to remember like our I say it's all the time on the show, Like our like black church experience is very different than white evangelicalism.
We have.
We have our own issues, our own baggage. But the shit y'all did is not that was not our experience. It's very different. So when y'all be like, I'm not religious, I don't do nothing to do with the church. It's like you're still picturing white church.
Yo.
I'm saying, like, that's not our experience. That being said, like I said, black church. Don't get me wrong, black church got problems, y'oll saying. But John Perkins addressed this thing that was he started these things they were called like parachurch organizations, which was this idea that like, all right, since there's so much turmoil, trauma, and sort of in some ways one could argue like conflicts of interest in the sense of like, what is your role in this community? Are you supposed to just am I here for your spiritual care, your physical care, your financial care, you know? And the answer, according to their believes is really all of it, you know what I'm saying. But you can't do it all right. So what John Perkins had this idea of saying, well, what we could do is rather than kind of using the term colonial, rather than having a colonial model where it's like you have this big financial institution and you're going out into these like inner city areas, there's all these poor areas. We're gonna feed the poor. We're gonna do this outreach, you know what I'm saying. You know, since kids Guatemala, that's still a still very colonial approach, and you're trying to bring them in. What he was trying to say is like, well, nigga, we live here. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, So like, yeah, well, since we live here and I know the elders of the city, like I know, pookin them.
I know.
You know, a lot of times you may think, you know, you want to really like like this is a true example. It's like, all right, you want your church want to come and give out backpacks to the kids to start school, but the park that you're doing at, you got to talk to the pyrus and like, but you got to know which piru to talk to. Just because they wearing a red rag don't mean they from the same set. If you don't notice this because you're not from here, right and you're you're not fluent in our language, that's because you don't live here, right. And even and even talking to the power, you still may have to talk to Miss Jenkins because the Pyroue still got to check in with Miss Jenkins, because that's grandma who took care of all of us, who was our babysitter. So there's these things that happens when you just live here that if you're trying to, for example, accomplish you know, the great commission of Like again, we're still talking about church organizations, the great commission of making disciples, making a place better than what it is. Like again, in the Black tradition, we come from some some of y'all might call liberation theology, but like we come from a position where you're the the liliberate. The liberty Christ gives is for your whole person. It's your your the laws, your stomachs, your families, your bills, your bills, and your souls. So like it's not just about downloading information and making you vote against like gender neutral bathrooms, Like it's that's white shit, you know what I'm saying. So so the John Perkins model that he's talking about is you can't just you can't just be like I do inter city ministry and you don't live here like.
You I'm saying, and you know, just thinking about it's crazy because it's been a missonce I read, you know, the book that he wrote, but he's watten a lot of books. But like even those three different identities of the ways you can interact with this right you can be a person who partners, you can be a person who sponsors, or you can be a person who actually does the work.
Yeah, he kind of identifies the voice to participate for us.
I grew up in the Haven, which is like in it's like an ex verb which we need to define experb expert. Yeah, okay, so expert sociologically was like a former suburb that has since experienced white like even though suburbs are where the white you know, like you know what I'm saying, fun enough confidence, Yeah that's kind of crazy. Yes, So like white Haven was an expert of South Memphis. South Memphis like the south part of any black city, like side every south side of everywhere. And so like I grew up in the Haven. If you listen to Memphis Rapp deuces from the Haven, like you know, and so like we were growing as ninety eight percent black, my church felt like, man, we need to go reach the nations, ironically, so they moved to the most diverse zip code of Memphis, which is just sixty percent black. Yeah, super black, but also Muslim and also poor white and also you know what I'm saying, Vietnamese and also increasingly very Latin, know, anyway, we moved there.
I'm like, I feel like I feel called to incarnational man.
So we buy a house in the neighborhood, you know what I'm saying, Which actually I went to high school over there, so it's not like I don't know this neighborhood, not from there.
Yeah, but we buy a house. We're still in Memphis. I'm living there. I've been there ten, ten years whatever.
And like the reality of like living in the community is like there there are rules, but there aren't rules. Like nobody says I can't sit outside on a corner and like make beats with my son and drink a lot.
There's no rule that says I can't do that. Yea.
And what's fascinating about like this idea of like terriforming or after futurism or like you know, decolonizing all this stuff is like a lot of the things that we see and don't see are not based on what we can and can't do.
It's just based on the fact we haven't seen it before.
But like the desire as a like very publicly identifying like nerdy kid growing up in the hood, was that you have to keep that nerdy stuff in the house, you know what I'm saying, But why though, like why but there was actually like other than the option of beating. But ain't nobody touching me now, you know what I'm saying, Like, you're not going to beat me up. Now I'm an adults and I'm much significantly larger. But it's like, yo, So the crazy thing about doing an anti gentrification coffee club is that we can you know what I'm saying, And like the only reason why it didn't exist before is because maybe somebody hadn't listened to the Diitrified song long enough in.
Mainhood and been like, well, what if we do the cof shoping?
You know what I'm saying, Like, we can just do this joint and I can take the little homies that I'm mentoring who are currently like I don't got no work or the only work I have is not the legal CND and be like, all right, come be a Barisa, come back up, legal beans, legal let's teach you something. Yeah, come on, do that and you haven't done it before, but that's fine. I'm competent. I got a master's degree in urban education. I know I can teach you apostrophes and sentence diagramming. I can definitely teach poor overs, you know what I'm saying.
And then the fun part about that is, like you know, you get these kids, like you said, like all they knew is illegal work. Once once they catch the vision, then their imagination starts opening and now they're tapping into their gifts.
They're like, yes, bro, why won't we do this?
Like you know what I'm saying.
Now, the craziest story, right, yeah, let's end with this story.
Craziest story. Blackberries to Exchange Program Phase two is happening. We're hosting five for bury from the African constant and diaspora who are here in Memphis, and we're partnering with Vanderbilt to do this. Right, We're about to go see Lyn Butler, probably the greatest black buristo. Yeah, only black person to win the US BARISA Championship. Mostly I don't even know that there is, yeah BARISA Championship, much less a country or world or a regional one. He's also the only black person to get top five in the world for the World BRITISA Championship.
First person to do all these things.
We're about to go spend a week with him, but first we have to go to Vanderbilt to host like a decolonizing Coffee symposium with Ted Fisher who and Gabby who's a professor of anthropology. I see both of these are an anthropology. But anyway, we're working with these professors doing amazing work. Ted wrote this book called Making Coffee Better and it's about reclaiming Indigenous Perspectives from Guatemala and like working with the Maya people to reclaim an indigenous perspective on land in general and how that could integrate in coffee. Which is how we connected because he was like, wait, there actually is one specific four coffee from Africa.
Yeah, And I was like there's multiple. I just him learning about when.
Yeah, so we're doing this work anyway, we're bringing all these people up in the van where in our first barista from the neighborhood, O Marion, who to be clear, did not move illegal work, you.
Know what I'm saying. He was like, he's like a little kid.
It was like just we had we were doing hot dogs, doing the vacation Bible, cool stuff, and he used to pull up and kick it with us.
But he was our first barista.
Now he's twenty, right, so he started when he was teen nice twenty right, and so he's seen the brand grow, he's seen us go all over Africa, he's seen us do the documentary be the most notable rosters in the world, which it just happened in February, and.
Now he's on the way with us.
But his experience with coffee is from this afro futuristic terraforming what if coffee was always black? So that's actually his experience, especially coffee, that it's always black. So we go and speak at Professor Ted Fisher's class and it's us. It's like ten of us, real deep in front of all his students, most of whom are not black. And we're in the car debriefing about the experience, and he was it's like, Bro, the craziest thing, I'm realizing, like it's so cool, don't feel real to see all these people from Africa here with us, and I seen y'all go, but out there here with me in the car and I'm getting to chop it up and check them and make fun of them and make coffee with.
Them and like just be brothers and sisters.
But it's like the craziest part was going to this class and seeing all these kids talk about coffees like bart, I didn't know this many white people drink coffee.
Oh wow, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, crazy.
And I think that with this current election reality and like everything that's going on to me, that the possibility of creating a world where the next generation doesn't even understand it when we try to explain how screwed up the world is right now is possible, even if only with a small thing like coffee. Right if we do the work to reimagine and terror form, even just our small corner of the space we've been given to steward, there is a possibility there's a possible multiverse where like the next generation looks at us crazy when we try to explain the problems.
Where it's it's amout.
Yeah.
I have nothing to add to that. Ladies and gentlemen, please drop the website.
Okay, yeah, Coffee Black with an X no oh, like Malcolm so Ce x f fee Black just gave my first Ted Talk. Go run it up, because you know what I'm saying. It's like a competition between people who give ted Talk. So my streams is not great right now. But I did do it Ted Talk. You did it though, Yeah, and I just dropped this, so y'all go check it out. And we're currently in the midst of like a community crowdfunding campaign on we funder. So if you love what we're doing, you can be an equity partner, do revenue share project with us and uh, you know, be a part of what we're doing. First little as one hundred bucks, so you know we thunder dot com backslash coffee black check it out, No sugar, no cream, need it.
You know what I'm saying. I have nothing.
That's he nailed it. That's a possible future where through coffee. That that's what I mean by Terraformer. Yeah, all right, politics, All right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded in East Lost boil Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If you're in the coldbrew coffee, we got Terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was mixed edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski Killing the Beast Softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com. I'm a spell it for you because I know M A T T O S O W s ki dot com Matthowsowski dot com. He got more music and stuff like that on there, so gonna check out. The heat. Politics is a member of cool Zone Media, executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and nobly Mattowsowski. Still killing the beats softly, So listen. Don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.