In this episode, rather than talking from the hood, I’m talking to the hood. We are making a case for why BIPOCs should care about climate change. Answer: bc it effects us the most .
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While there is a joy and affortitude that's unspeakable from growing up in inner cities as a black person and indigenous or a person of color, there is a reality that you're kind of living most of the time in the red zone, which is kind of true for any sort of low income communities where you have to triage what's information and issues are worth your energy. You're still trying to figure out food, You're trying to figure out safety, and when you're black, you're trying to figure out the boys in blue. You know. So if you notice our elders, unless they are highly educated or have a few financial margins, they don't worry about stuff like therapy because we just don't want to have time for that, especially when it talks about politics, like you know, a lot of times, man, you ain't got time for that. You like, what's going on right here, things like foreign policy, Man, I ain't got time to worry about that is what's going on right here. We're dining in the streets. It's it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When I taught high school, it was one thing I used to teach them kids, and I actually designed my classroom around that. Quick primary. Naslow's hierarchy needs is just this like pyramid of things you gotta take care of. So your first part is like your basic needs food, water, warmth, shelter, rest, and then the next step above that. Once that's said, you can start talking about safety and security, and when you're in the hood that stuff kind of blends, right. Then you can deal with like emotional and psychological things like relationships and friends and you know, interpersonal skills, and then you can start talking about esteem and prestige and feeling accomplished. Of course, it's not that linear in real life, in anybody's life. The point I'm trying to make is what I want to know about World War two? If I don't know where the food at, we're talking about algebra, what I'm why would I go to school if my school cross town where I gotta cross arrival and stay. Especially Tom, let's go to this after school y m C A program like wooll you know who live over there? I'm not good over there, ain't going over there. And then finally the top of Maslow's thing is self actualization and and then we could start really getting meta about stuff. But you can't get meta. You don't know where the food coming from. If I feel like I ain't gonna make at home safe, you think inter city kids ain't interested in what you're talking about. They got other stuff worried about. So I used to spend most of the first month or two of my class creating safety. You know, packing extra food, fire me, you know whatever, I got snacks in my my drawer. You know what I'm saying, Like it's an extra water bottle. Like because they basic needs met for I could start talking about heavier stuff. You worry about algebra and he's trying to eat. Also, when it comes to things like climate change, foods don't care. It just seems so far off. Today, I want to make a case for what the hood should care because it is about your basic need needs. Let's talk about climate change for the politics, right name y'all. So today I want to kind of introduce a different type of show. This is a little different. This show is not necessarily talking from the hood, but talking to the hood. There's things that like people where I come from, they just don't they just don't talk about. They don't really care about because it don't feel like it's an issue I need to worry about. The old zone layer, like you, what are you talking about? You know those are things that you know from the city. Is that's when they look at me like this little nega weird. That's you just don't care about things like that because you got other stuff you're worried about. And I totally understand it. I'm going back to the therapy thing. I know my my parents they talked about there. We did that at church. You went to counseling with the past. A lot of our needs, you know, especially in the black community, was met by the church, which is why Western evangelical stuff just especially when you're not from like white church. That's that's just don't make sense to us. Spending You're sending people all the way to Peru and Venezuela while you live literally across the street from one of the poorest neighborhoods in your city. You know what I'm saying, You ain't done nothing for them, so you just like, y'all needs are met, so you could look somewhere else. But when your needs ain't met, it's just I just don't have time for those things today. I want to make a case now that I got some margins that to continue the metaphor, man, you should go to therapy. We could use it. It's actually money well spent. And then when you start doing professional therapy again, you got the money to spare to do it right too, not need to find like a black therapist because you're looking across the table like there's no way in the world. Just dude, understand what I'm going through. Institutional, psychological, generational tryming like you don't get that. There's so much more going on here. That is hard talking to a perse saying who just ain't experience with your experience, It just don't seem it don't seem real. What I'm trying to say is I feel you because I'm from that. So now this is me after being able to learn a lot of things, travel across the world and rather than just be a representative of people that came from where I'm crying from that have gotten to go do other things. Now I'm turning back and I'm saying, hey, yo, squad family, this mug affects us, and it affects us in ways that we haven't noticed. We need to talk about this now now. I hope you don't hear this Like I'm not saying here become another thing we need to care about. Like now I'm exhausted. That's not what I'm saying, or I'm not saying we need to care about this instead of the other stuff we're caring about. What I'm trying to say is all of this stuff is connected, and it all feeds the same infrastructure that for some reason it's hell bent on destroying us. So follow me. I'm not trying to take away from nothing else. I'm trying to say, hey, but also this mug is connected. So listen, y'all. Everybody, welcome to the conversation, but I want you to know I'm specifically talking to our inner cities and specifically working class persons of color. But of course listening because everybody's welcome, all right, And I'm a specifically focused on California. Now California, actually the whole western part of the country is in one of the biggest droughts it's ever been in since the last twelve hundred years. Like we get our water from Colorado River into this reservoir called Lake Mead. Now Lake Mead is at its lowest amount of water they say, when it gets under or one thousand seventy feet it in imediately triggers a water shortage. And what's hard about this is it just seems so far away. The way we understand it is very simple. The water turn off if I don't pay the bill, that's why. That's how you get water, but paying the bill. And also this is crazy. It come out the sky. I don't understand why anybody gotta how is this so hard? But if you're from Cali, you know it don't rain a lot. We have these series of droughts to happen all the time. You remember the little commercials about that drought is real, and you just don't you you don't really feel it. You know, it's hot, real hot. And then I used to say, I always say that California got like we do have seasons. We have summer, we have fire, we got two weeks of rain, and we got mud slide seasons, and then summer again, that's that's our season. But if you haven't noticed that fire season has gotten increasingly longer and that rain season has gotten increasingly shorter. But again, it still feels so are away. What I want to do is I want to take it back home and process some things. But let's back up for a second lake mead water droute. What that got to do with your water bill? Well, let me light you up with real quick with this Who owned the water? Have you ever asked that question? You ever thought about that? And it seems stupid because it fall out the sky, you like, nigga god on the water? What is you talking about? But when you look at that water bottle, that's say, no Crystal geyser Mountain spring water you know bottled at the mountain somebody you think they just ran up to a random place and built a factory and just put them plastic bottles. And you can't just do that. You gotta buy at somebody bought the water. I'm let this sink in. Somebody owned the water. Now across the country there is a combination of private and public consortions of where your water comes from. And you could do your googles to figure out if your water come from a private company or not. And I know that sounds weird because you like it comes from the city, just like your electric bill, just like your power but it comes from the city. You you're looking at the power plant, you know, up the street around the corner. You know what I'm saying, if you're down there, and if you're down here in l A down in Long Beach, right at the end of the twenty two, in the four or five, it's a big old water thing right at the end of that. You like, it's next to the ocean. What do you mean it's seventy of the earth water. What you're talking about, Well, you know we can't drink most of that. We're talking about fresh water. Somebody own that water. And if you own water, will, where does water come from? Either the groundwater? You know, I'm taking you back to seventh grade. All the water that's ever been here is still here. That's the water cycle. It evaporates, makes a cloud, and then it rains. But if I own the body of water, don't that mean I own the rain let that sink in? Somebody own the rain right, and of course that's over a particular part of the ground that they bought, but you can own it. Now. In California, there's certain things called water rights. Will we'll get into a little later. And then with runoff, right, So if there's a part of a natural spring that kind of sprouts off into a different part that you don't own. According to California law. Okay, you ain't got no rights over that. That's like public domain. Man. You can't just you can't just take the stream now. You can't. You're not allowed to bend the stream. Now. If you've been the stream, you gotta go get permits for that. But I need you to listen to me. Somebody can bend the stream. But I want to go back to your utilities. You think they're coming from the city. You think that's public. That's not necessarily true. Now I'm a quote from the I'm gonna give y'all ganga links today because uh, I need you to go do your homework and it's too big for me to like really process at all. But u n C has this thing called the Environmental Finance Blog that I would love for y'all to understand, like how the money is going, So think of it like this. I'm a quote from there. Check this out. The dynamic between public and private systems have always been interesting, especially in the case of water and wastewater systems. Public water systems are usually nonprofit entities managed by a local or state government, for which rates are set by a governing board. But on the other hand, private water systems can be a for profit system managed by investors and shareholders. Though rates are monitored by state's public commission, private systems are not necessarily subject to a regulating board. Additionally, the difference between public and private are not always to stink. Now translation, you may not know because it's not clear who actually owns your water. You can't make no assumptions about this stuff. These are things you got to find out because the blend between public and private is very blurry. Now, let me give you some street stuff. If the water is the brick of cocaine, so the water is the way, right, what a plug plug Columbia, the club, the plug private, but private connect with the streets to cut that crack up and distribute it to y'all. So you're yelling at the crack dealer. Crack dealer, don't set the prices. The plug do, and there's nobody over the plug to make sure that then prices is fair. Because what you're gonna do not have water. Walk with me, Walk with me, y'all. So even the prices of your water, you may or may not know, you might be funding somebody private. And how does that work with the city where the city buys the water in bulk So Corporation a run up to Lake So and so by the whole lake and all the rain that comes thereof And then they say, I sell it to you in a brick form. I say you the whole thing. You'all can distribute however we want, but we need our money and that's what we're charging. And then they say, hey, and check this out. I got a homeboy over here that can treat the water for you to make sure that it's drinkable. But you gotta pay them too, though. That's part of the deal. So you gotta work with both of us. Now you gotta think about where your water coming from. Is this public or private or some consortion of both, And it's really hard to find out. California we got combos. Now you can look up your own district to kind of figure it out, but basically California is ran by what's called get this the water board. I know I'm burnt out. There is this thing called seeding clouds, which you can look China been doing it for a while. So essentially, if you own a plot of land, right and you say to yourself, this plot of land, I own all the water what's the natural next step. If we're talk in capitalism, that means I need more water. But what if the rain start tripping because the climate change? What if the natural process of how the weather cycle works starts getting out of whack. What you're gonna do. You're gonna do what anybody does. Well, I'm going to literally make it rain. And there's a process of seeding clouds where you can shoot these things into the clouds to make the rain happen more, and you change the water cycle. You can change the process of raining by seeding these clouds to make it rain in a certain place at a certain time more than what it normally does. So what does that means? That means that areas that might have been very wet you're usually waiting for their raine that comes they come in October. The rains ain't come no more. They happened a mile over right now. You got an entire village all of a sudden the desert. You feel me, because they ain't getting the rain. They always didn't. We did that. This ain't science fiction, y'all. You could do this. You can literally make it rain money, make it figure out stuff boy, And you can also chap tap in with the Safe Water Board or the Safe Drinking Water Information System and it'll tell you where your water coming from. Again, I'm a link all this stuff. So, like I said, Callie has a has a combo of both. And we've been in the worst drought in the last twelve hundred years. Like me, it's lowest level since nineteen So what does that mean. What that means is it's not so much. Somebody finally says, Okay, that's it, no more drinking water. What it says is, how do we allocate where the water go Now? How do you allocate where the water goes? Let me introduce you to something called a water right. I'll tell you after the break bid them back. Now, a water right. A water right now again, I'm specifically talking California law. A water right is just exactly how it sounds. Water right is the legal permission to use a reasonable amount of water for a beneficial purpose, such as swimming, fishing, farming, or industry. You're following me, so be able to use this like reasonable amount. You can't just like like I said, you can't, just like you can't just build the dam and be like, yo, this is my water and be like we're just talking about come from the sky. It's not allowed. Now, most of you' are not farming. I'm assuming some of y'all are, but most of you're not. But if you're farming, you need a considerable amount of water. Now, if you are a Californian, hopefully you understand that California is farm land. If you ever drove from chu La Vista and then you went east, you in wine country. It's a desert out there, right, this is a weird desert, and there's some wine country over there. Once you especially once you cross it to the border, it's crazy like a lot of Baja California's wine country. But if you're going north after you leave the grape Vine, you know, going five north, after you leave l A and then the surrounding areas in the valley and you going north, it's cows, almonds, and avocado till you in the Bay Area. That's most of California. And then once you leave the Bay Area you might as well be in Oregon. You got Lake Shasta, you got way Rika like them is farming rural communities, they're nothing like the cities. But the thing is the city take up all the water but who feeding the city the rest of California. See California in a lot of some some people call California like we're America's garden. We produce most of the produce photo country, which means we use a lot of water. And the way the allocation works, at least in California, according to our consortion is split into three sections. Right, so go to environmental, go to agricultural, and ten percent urban. So all the water in all our cities is just ten percent of the water that's there. And then fort go to agricultural. That's your vegetables, that's your alvocados, that's your produce, that's your beef, that's your pork, that's your in and out, that's your fatburger, that's everything everything. Look, that's our water, and go there. We're running out of it. So then the next question would be, like, well, who's to say who gets water? And how do we make sure that we could. I'm glad you asked, So then I ask you who's responsible for administering water rights? Well, in California, water rights laws administrated by the State Water Resources Control Board, or called like I said, the State Water Board, which is the division of Water rights on behalf of the State Water Board for day to day matters. The State Water Board is the only agency with the authority to administer water rights in California. Local governments, water districts, and California Regional Water Supply Control Boards do not administer water rights. The State Water Board shares the authority to enforce water rights with the st Eight Courts. So this whole board is the board that gets to say whether your city get water or not, whether your city get enough water or not. Now, if you've been paying attention at all in America, who you think gonna get their water? Who you think this affects the most? We think sitting at this table, I think them deals are made. Use your antennas. Now I know her followed me on this. Now he'll follow me on this if the allocations change, if they say to themselves. And I know you've seen it on the news, if you've actually watched the news where it seems so far away. But then farmers out there, you know that we all feel bad when we're driving by you seeing him Latino dudes out there, you know, picking him strawberries, picking them things, and you feel bad about him because it's hot his hell out there. But sometimes I don't know if you've driven up there. Again, I'm talking to California specifically, you drive up the five freeway and he has like, save our waters, save our farms. Right, They're fighting for their rights, and a lot of times these people don't like the city. They vote very differently than us because we have hollering environment. But to them, they like, y'all. Y'all don't get how this affects you or us. We are your food. I don't think you understand this. We are your food, So follow me. Hood. If the people that make our food have to ration and fight for the amount of water they have to produce the produce, didn't that mean they're not gonna make that much this time? They're not gonna be able to make as many tomato? You know what I'm saying, ain't gonna be a lot of apples. Now, understand supply and demand. If they ain't a lot of them, what do you think the price is gonna go The price is gonna go up. And if you're a farmer who you're gonna sail too, you're gonna sail to the person that can afford it. So what does that mean? For us who already believe we live in the food desert. Hope, they ain't no whole foods in the hood. Ain't no Trader Joels in the hood. You gotta go to you gotta go to Pasadena, you gotta go to the West Side. They're talking about fifteen dollars for a head of lettuce. It's already too much. So who's gonna miss out? That's that's us. The prices go up on us. There ain't no blip on they map. They find. But if these people ain't got enough water, they're gonna raise the price for this food. And if they raise the price for the food, they're gonna sail to the person that could pay for it. Can your hood, your corner store pay for this mine cane? Either this affects you directly, big dog, the price of your groceries. Finnah, shoot up. Yeah. Let me let me give you another example. You know, it's water in your toilet, right and y'all got loaf low flowing toilets. Anybody replaced it, you got you got one of those filtration systems that you attached to the back of your house, or no, because we don't own houses. That's not and if you do, you're just trying to make ends meet. So you so you haven't made your house water friendly. You got sprinklers outside. Let me tell you who're not draining their pools. They're not draining their pools for our water. They cool they their water bill can go down because they can replace their toilets. Their grocery bill ain't changed at all. Ours did. So Now me and you gotta decide which one of these things we're gonna pay for. You gonna pay for your water bill, you're gonna pass some vestibles, or you're gonna continue to eat this trash food that's available to us. Oh so then we get to continue to have diabetes. Right, Oh so you can go see your doctor on your non healthcare. It affects us, homie. It's this becomes our problem, just like exact Lee, how this pandemic showed the holes in the racism that's baked into our system the climate. Do it too. It's we're gonna suffer, y'all. Remember when, uh, when Malibu was on fire, that was it was awful. Do you think they had any problem getting that fire department over there the middle of a drought? You think they were coming put our houses out that fast. I mean, the fire department is county. You gotta get water from somewhere. I mean, of course they're not gonna let the city bird. I mean, come on, how are you gonna cover that shortfall? What would raise our water prices? You gotta get it from somewhere. She's not enough. I mean, are you gonna Are you gonna buy bottled water? Bottled from where? Somebody owned that too? I got two words for you. Flint, Michigan. They had a water issue in the city without telling nobody got a new connect, and that new connect tapped the body of water that was poisonous. Who's gonna suffer from this? Now, let me step back and make a bigger picture about climate change. Now, we had a gang of snow recently up in the Sierra Nevada's. It was amazing. It was like, oh we good, we out of the drive. Man. We've been talking about drips my whole life in California. But it got so hot so fast because of how deforestation is moving so fast, you chop it down so many trees that the temperature index has shot up so high that that water or that snow went from snow to vapor in fol days. We wasn't able to save none of it. It just evaporated. It was gone. We didn't all that snow gone because of how hot the ground to dry and it's too hot outside, so it just evaporated. And what's gonna happen is what we always know, fire season on the way. It's gonna be longer, and it's gonna be less water, and we're gonna suffer, and your price is gonna go up. Now what else does that mean? What that means is then not only do your prices for your produce go up, the prices for houses go up because now we have to make more regulatory things to save the water that we have. So that means your house had to get retrofitted. You gotta figure out other things so to make sure that California's houses that are made our water friendly. We already can't afford no houses out here. That's why everybody leaving you locked in. So what does that mean? Let's just say you do get Grandma on their muddy and them house, right, So now you got the house. I would lead thought she ain't moved in a long time. Now you got her house. The problem is your property value, and your property taxes aren't covering the cost that takes for y'all to have a decent school because you know, schools are funded by property taxes. But since y'all in the food desert, your property value is low. Therefore your property taxes ain't high enough there for your schools ain't getting enough funding. I'm telling you this stuff is connected. So what does that mean? What is our there for? Now? What do? What do we do? Well? The first thing I think we need to do is run for office. That's number one. I need somebody from Watts sitting at the table with the Water Council to be like, you're not gonna forget us. I need somebody from Compton sitting at the table being like, listen, If that's the case, then you'all need to build these apartments. You'll need to build these homes with water friendly toilets and sinks instead of punishing us for things we ain't had nothing to do with. If that's the case, then you'all need to walk into some of these places and being like, listen, just walked by the Beverly Center. It's a plot of grass out there that's not doing anything for anybody. And I just saw the sprinklers turn on. Why they get to have sprinklers? Don't get me wrong, grass is great. What's up with the succulents? This is a desert. You can playing some succulents. Why y'all get that. But if we ain't got nobody at the table, if we don't start telling the homies like, hey, listen, you I care about this stuff. You feel me. And it's not just your consumption of water. Water is used to make things. Here's one thing you could do. Buy you a little want them, a little brit of things to attach to your your faucet. Get yourself one of them, like mirror, like water bottles, reusable joints, feel your own water bottom because it takes the water to make the plastic. Also, and you don't need to be putting money into the air k and in their pockets. Not only that, you know how much money I'm not spending on bottled water it come out to fuscet. I'm already paying for it. That's part of this production of plastic is part of the climate change in the first place. Kay, little water bottle, you're all right, it'd be yours too, girl. Fill it with vodka. I don't care. All I'm saying is there are little things we could do. Look great, goose, you know what I'm saying. You know your mom got a gang of wash cloths that are kind of raggedy that every once in a while she used to clean the counter. Maybe get that instead of paper towels. Maybe just get a gang of water of wash cloths instead of paper towels. And like, you know how much money you spend on ship, you're just gonna throw away. I think about that every once in a while. I ain't boy, no paper towel, and I don't know how long because I'm like, I'm throwing away. But this is ridiculous. Just wipe the kid, counted down a little cloth joints. I mean, these are like day little things. You feel me. But at the end of the day, I know hood don't care about it. But it's gonna hurt us the most. They're gonna it's our prices, it's our homes, this is our food, this food out of our mouth. I know it may seem very far away, but I'm trying to tell you like it's gonna hit us. The hardest and last thing I want to talk about is rising sea levels. There's a collection of cities that by the year and again, I know that seems far away, but just finnaby gone. They're gonna be underwater. And you like what you're talking about. Proper niggas don't live at the beach. I'm like, oh word, you ever been in New Orleans? It sinks two inches a year? You know? In o l A. Yeah, Wally, it's sinking. Houston sinking, candy paint gone. It's finna be underwater. Now, let me ask you this. Think they're gonna give you a voucher for your house after it's underwater? Where you're gonna go? You in Houston, it's underwater where you're gonna go? What ward? You weapon? Where are you gonna go? You remember last time Houston and New Orleans was underwater? What they do for us? I know that you show that you heard the blank right there. That's what they did for us. Eight American cities gonna be gone. It's pretty wild. New Orleans already sinking, Miami, Florida probably gonna be underwater. Sea levels rising faster there than anywhere else in the world. Almost all of Atlantic City, Jersey for to be underwater. Parts of New York areas of Charleston, South Carolina. These places they get hit by hurricanes, they get hit hard. And listen, this is what I know. Ain't nobody coming for you? The ain't come for us the last time. Ain't nobody coming for us, Bros. Part of New Orleans still ufer in from Katrina. Oh they got the French quarters is fine, They're not coming for us. This is so. What I'm trying to say is like, look, we need to care about this, and we need to get some of these some of these old geez. We need to get some of y'all at the table. Start defending our hoods like we defend our hoods outside. Let's defend them at the table. Y'all with me, because I don't lobby at the Congress for this. A few times I'm saying, no, I'm not talking from the hood right now, I'm talking to the hood. This all water, y'all. Ain't nobody can't come help us except us, y'all with it on the hood, y'all. This muggle was recorded and edited by me Propaganda right here in East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles. Y'all can follow me at prop hip Hop on all the socials. You could follow the Hood Politics pod itself at pub Politics Pod, where we'll be trying to make takes on stuff that aren't really big enough for a whole episode, but definitely needs a little bit of clarity. His mother was scored, edited, mixed, and mastered by the one and only Headlights. Y'all go follow my dog Matt. I was Swelski. I still don't know how to say his name. I'm glad he changed it to Headlights. Follow him on his socials at Headlights. Underscore music telling you hear all these new other fly tracks, this food be making, and the theme music was done by the one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips, d J, Shawn P and y'all remember every time you check in. If you understand the Hood, you could understand Politics. Shouts to I Heart Media for making this happen.