Transcription
Sit down for a second because we need to have a conversation. Really, that should have been had at every kitchen table, every barber shop, at every cookout in this country a long time ago. Nobody told us, or they told us in pieces, right? And the pieces never added up. Yeah. So, what's happening to us right now? The rent, the groceries, the way the door keeps closing in our face every time we get close. See, none of this is an accident. And I'm sure you know that by now, right? See, they've been robbing us for 160 years and more. And they ain't stopped. And they don't plan on it. Okay? So, today I'm going to show you how. So, rock with me.
Well, hello everybody. My name is Lissa and I am the people's reporter. Okay. I might be new here, but I got a whole lot to say. Okay, so if you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. All right, I really appreciate you. And if you a subscriber, let me tell y'all something right now. Let me talk to y'all. I love y'all. Y'all know I was like 10,000 subscribers lower last week. So, I really appreciate it because it makes me feel that what I'm bringing to folks, my intention is actually being reached. And so for that, I say thank you so very much. And um, without any further ado, let's just go on and get into it, shall we? Uh-huh.
You ever wonder why we always feel like we two steps behind? Why your auntie or your mama working two jobs just to keep the lights on, but her coworker just got inherited a whole house from her granddaddy? Huh? Why your cousin got a degree and can't get a call back, but the boy who sat next to him in the class already got promoted twice? Yeah, that's my experience. Okay, it ain't you, it ain't us. It's the math. Check it out. 1865, slavery ends on paper. Our people walk off plantations with absolutely nothing. 250 years of unpaid labor. Labor that built the White House, the capital, Wall Street, the cotton economy, the textile mills up north, gone, stolen. We built this whole country and got handed an empty pocket and a Bible they made. In 1870, white folks held $100 in wealth for every $4 we had. And you heard about the 40 acres and a mule, right? That promise. Yeah, it was real. General Sherman signed the order. Land was being distributed. Our ancestors held it in their hands. You understand me? Andrew Johnson reversed it, took the land back, gave it right back to the same Confederates who lost the war. Yeah. Same time, same time, the government turned around and gave away 270 million acres of land free to the white settlers through the Homestead Acts. About 15% of every white person walking around this country today can trace their family's money back to that very land grab. So when somebody tells you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, remember they was handed the boots. We were handed a bill. You understand? M.
Now, let me talk about the houses because if you only remember one thing from this whole video, then let it be this. In the 1930s, the federal government set up a program to help families buy homes. Sounds nice, right? Yeah. Here's what they actually did, though. They took every major city in America and drew maps. Color-coded maps. Yeah. Green meant the bank could lend here and blue was the same. Yellow meant be careful. Red meant don't touch it. But guess what? Our color neighborhoods got marked. You guessed it. Damn near every black neighborhood in America got colored red on government maps. That's where the word redlining comes from. You understand? So, if you was black and you wanted a house, even if you had a good job, even if you had money saved, even if you did everything right, the bank couldn't give you a loan. Federal policy said, "No, not maybe, no." Meanwhile, white folks was getting houses with 3% down, baby. Sometimes zero down, okay? In brand new suburbs. The same suburbs we couldn't even move into even if we somehow got the money. Yeah. And listen, they ain't outlawed this until 1968. Yeah. Your grandmama was grown, your parents was alive, and some of y'all watching this right now was alive. And by the time they made it illegal, the suburbs were already built. The wealth was already passed down. We were priced out permanently. That's why your grandmama rented her whole life and somebody else's grandmama left them a paid off house. See, wasn't cuz grandmama didn't work hard. She worked two jobs. The rules were rigged. You understand?
Now, here's where it gets real ugly. Because once they locked us into neighborhoods, they started using neighborhoods against us. Schools funded by property taxes. So, if we can't build property value, our schools can't get funded. Period. Our teachers tried. Our kids tried. The money wasn't there and it still ain't. Hospitals, they closed them down in our neighborhoods or they put them on the white side of town and called it a day. You understand? The highways, they ran them right through our communities. They called it urban renewal. Um, James Baldwin calls it uh negro removal. And he would be absolutely correct. How do I know? Cuz I'm an urban planner. But let's get back into it, okay? Because I digress. Because this stuff is real. You understand? This stuff is real. Black Bottom in Detroit, Treme in New Orleans, Sweet Auburn in Atlanta. They bulldozed our businesses, our churches, our homes to build roads so white folks in the suburbs could commute to work faster. Yeah. Asthma ER visits are 2.4 four times higher in formerly redlined neighborhoods. Almost 100 years later, our babies are still gasping for air because of decisions made before they were even born. American Journal of Managed Health Care shared that information. And food, yeah, grandmama had a name for it. She called it poor food. You understand? Now they call it food apartheid. Whole zip codes where you can't buy fresh tomatoes, but you can get a fried fish on every corner. Diabetes, hypertension, heart disease. We dying, baby, 10 years younger than they are. You understand? That's a statistic. Look it up now. They don't even need to do anything new to keep us down. The damage from the past 90 years, you know, is still doing the work. They don't need to do jack, but keep stealing from us.
So, okay, who's running this play in 2026, you might ask? Cuz this ain't just history. You see, this is happening right now today while you watching me on this video. And we need to name what people are doing. First, you got think tanks. Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, Claremont, Federalist Societies. These are the folks writing the actual playbook. Project 2025. 922 pages. Took years to write, funded by people whose names most of us have never heard of. That document is the blueprint for what they are doing right now in Washington. And I've been telling people this for a minute, but that's okay. Second, the money. We're talking maybe two dozen billionaire families bankrolling this whole operation. The Coxes, the Mercers, Leonard Leo, the DeVoses. They don't run for office, baby. They don't need to. They buy the politicians. They buy the judges. They buy the media. And third, speaking of media, Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire, Joe Rogan, a thousand podcast bros saying the same thing every day. Quote, "Black folks getting handouts. Immigrants taking your jobs. DEI is real racism." They've been hammering this message for a decade and it seems to be working on their people, not ours. And fourth, they took over the boring stuff while we weren't looking. School boards, county clerks, judges, sheriffs, election officials. That's where the real power is, you see. And while we were focused on the White House, they was running the table at the local level. That's why I tell you to vote. And fifth, this is the slick part. They take white folks who are broke and struggling just like many folk, right? And they point them at us. "You ain't got nothing because black people got everything." A word. Yeah. It's a lie. And we ain't got nothing. Yeah, they got everything. But the lie works because when you scared and you broke, somebody hand you a target, you going to take that aim, right? You going to take that aim.
Now, my grandmother used to say, "Baby, every time we get a little something, here they come." Look at the pattern. Reconstruction. When black folks was getting elected to Congress, building schools, and owning land, they ended it. Brought in Jim Crow. Black Wall Street in Tulsa, 1921. The wealthiest black community in the country at the time. They burned it to the ground, baby. Bombed it from airplanes. 300 of us murdered in a single night. They lied about it for 80 years. Rosewood, Florida, same year, basically, same story. Wiped off the map. The Great Migration up north. Yeah, they gave us redlining. That's what they did. Civil Rights Movement. Yeah, they assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton. Then they gave us the War on Drugs. Filled up the prisons with us. And Obama. Yeah, they gave us this. Every step we take forward, they got a plan to drag us right back two steps. And that ain't paranoia. That's the historical record.
Here's where we get to work. Because knowing all of this don't mean a thing. It doesn't mean anything if we don't act on it. You understand? So number one, write a will. And I'm not playing with y'all right now. Okay? Write a will. We've lost an estimated 12 million acres of black-owned land in the past 100 years. A whole lot of it because folks died and the paperwork wasn't right. Now that comes from the USDA. 12 million acres gone. Land our great-grandfathers worked themselves to death for lost because nobody sat down and wrote it down. Don't let that be your family. Number two, if you got a house, keep that house. Put it in a trust. Don't let your kids sell it to the first investor who knocked on the door offering cash. They did that in West Oakland. They're circling our neighborhoods right now like vultures. Tell your people we don't sell. Number three, Bank Black. Real black banks. One United is one. Citizens Trust, Industrial Bank, Liberty Bank. Look them up. Move your money. When we keep our money with us, we get the loans. We build the businesses. We hire each other. And number four, use what we already built. HBCUs, Divine Nine, the Black Church, the NAACP, National Urban League, 100 Black Men, Jack and Jill. These institutions aren't relics. They're infrastructure. Our ancestors built them precisely because they knew days like this was coming. Number five, learn the money game. And I mean it. Compound interest, index funds, brokerage accounts, real estate. Understand the difference between income and wealth because they're not the same thing. They certainly won't teach you. A paycheck is rented money. Assets are owned money. You understand? They can redline a neighborhood. They cannot redline an investment account. You picking up what I'm putting down? All right. We'll see.
Now, here's the part that scares them more than anything. Okay. All right. Black Americans spend $1.8 trillion every year. Trillions with a T. If we was our own country, we'd be a top 15 economy in the whole world. You understand that? So, the problem was never that we're broke. That's not it. The problem is that money don't stay with us. That's the problem. Okay. A dollar circulates in our community about 6 hours before it leaves. In the Jewish community, about 20 days. Okay. In the Asian community, about 30. In the white community, forever. It never leaves. Six hours, y'all. That's the entire game. Six hours. See, if we kept our money with us for just one more day, just one, we'd be unstoppable. Three days, we'd own everything in our zip codes. A week, we'd be a sovereign uh economic power inside this country. Yeah. That's why they need us divided. You see, that's why they push the colorism, the regionalism, the light and dark skin, the African versus African-American, the Christian versus Muslim, the men versus women. Every fight they start between us is a fight that protects them. You understand?
Okay. And lastly, lastly, we came through slavery. We came through Reconstruction. We came through lynchings and Tulsa and Rosewood. We came through Jim Crow. We came through the crack epidemic. We came through Reagan. We came through the War on Drugs. We came through it all. And we're coming through this one, too. Okay? Because it's going to take all of us awake, organized, spending smart, building together. Stop watching them and start watching us now. Share this with somebody who needs to hear it. Your cousin, your auntie, your mama, your homeboy, your home girl. You understand? Hell, even the dog. All right. All right. Cuz they need to hear this conversation. We all do. I love y'all. Be safe out there. And I'll see you next time. And you know me, baby. My name is Lesa Honey, and I am indeed the people's reporter. And I might be new here, but I got a whole lot to say. All right. So, go on and click that subscribe button. Hit the notification bell if you will that you don't miss nothing because this is a stolen series. It comes in four parts. All right. And I'm giving my people what we need. What we need. You understand? All right, y'all. Say it with me. Uh uh uh uh. I'm black and I'm proud. Uh. I'm black and I'm proud. Uh. Power to the people, baby. Power to my people. Uh. Power to my people, baby. Power to my people. Until next time, Black America. Bam.