Ep. 3: An Epidemic of Violence

In this episode of Self Inventory, host Brandon Chastang, reflects on the epidemic of violence in Philadelphia, which is now second in the nation for the number of homicides in 2020. He explores some reasons for why young people find themselves involved in violent situations; and how families, community members, and community leaders can work together to set a better example for our children.

Self Inventory is a podcast produced by Brandon Chastang and Studio D Podcast Production. You can listen anywhere you get your podcasts. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell everyone you know about Self Inventory.

Transcript:

Brandon Chastang: A Self-Inventory report is the type of psychological tests in which a person fills out a survey about personal interests, values, symptoms, behaviors, and traits. Self inventories are different from tests and that there is no objective, correct answer. Self-Inventory is a podcast where  we investigate the issues of society that don't seem to have any correct answer.

[00:00:24] Brandon Chastang, blends together history lessons, current events, and talk with people of all backgrounds to provide us as a society with a Self-Inventory in order to move forward. We need to look at where we've been and where we are now. It's time for Self-Inventory.

[00:00:56] You're now listening to Self-Inventory podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Chastang, AKA B McFly. And yes, B McFly stands for being motivated comes from loving yourself. You gotta love yourself. Right? That's the most important part. It's still October, right? I'm wearing a pink shirt. Breast cancer awareness.

[00:01:21] That's give our strength, our hope, our condolences, and our congratulations to those who passed away from breast cancer to those who are fighting breast cancer and to those who have survived breast cancer. So let's give our warm and hope condolences and congratulations to them. Let's get right into it.

[00:01:49] It's a few things that's going on in the city of Philadelphia. I just want to give y'all some history on Philadelphia. And not history to the point where I'm going back to the 17 and the 16 hundreds. I just want to give you some facts. Philadelphia is the fifth or the sixth largest city in America. We are the second largest city on the East coast, behind New York city.

[00:02:19] It takes, if you start from center city, Philadelphia to Manhattan, New York, it takes about an hour, went 30 minutes. If you got traffic, it's about two hours. Philadelphia is the poorest largest city in America. Meaning if you look at LA LA, Chicago, New York, Houston, Philadelphia is the poorest largest city.

[00:02:52] And even some cities that smaller than Philadelphia, Philadelphia is still considered poor then them. Philadelphia has one of the worst school districts amongst your largest cities as well. Public school districts. That's a problem for me. Because wherever the school system is bad, the public school system has bad wherever it's poor.

[00:03:22] You're going to see a lot of the crime rate go up. And the United States of America, Chicago has the most homicides and guess who's behind Chicago, Philadelphia. It bothers me. To know that we ignore, we ignore a lot of our issues in Philadelphia. I don't know if these issues is something to talk about because it don't bring money to the table.

[00:03:58] I don't know if these issues are just not important because I don't know, it just doesn't touch the hearts of men, but for me it does. We're already in a pandemic. A pandemic is when the issue is worldwide. All right. The epidemic is when it's local. So the United States can be in an epidemic with the drug use.

[00:04:28] But not the world. If the world was in the air, if the world was in, in, in a world emergency, it will be a pandemic. Like COVID-19, that's a pandemic. This is a, this is an epidemic in Philadelphia, the violence and the opioid addiction. Let's start with the violence. We have a 15 year old kid shot last night, the date of yesterday. Okay. So the 13th, the 13th of October today is October the 14th. I live in a community where it's gentrified, but it's still a lot of black people around, and I probably heard about six homicides in where I live at. That's disgusting to my heart and a lot of them are children. So this 15 year old gets shot yesterday and , it's like you didn't even live to see you're only half of 30, you're only half of 30 years old. You didn't even, you're not even no where near you're not nowhere near thinking of. Of how you can travel the world or coming up with ways of building a business, you know, bettering yourself you're 15 years old. So let's get in the mindset of a 15 year old kid living in an aggressive environment.

[00:06:42] Let's think this for a second, right? Because, because a lot of us I'm from an aggressive environment. I'm from the inner city. My mother was on drugs. My father was on drugs. I was raised by my grandmother and yes, my grandmother did the best that she could to raise me whether she was there or not. At 15 years old. It's a good chance that my grandmother wasn't around because he had to financially take care of the house. And at 15 years old, I'm being now, it's like, I'm watching myself. That doesn't mean that my grandmother wasn't a good grandmother. That doesn't mean that she wasn't raising me. Right. She had to do what she had to do.

[00:07:31] So I'm jumping in the mindset of a 15 year old. So now at 15, here come the peer pressure. Now you have some kids at 15 that are forced to do what they gotta do for us. What I mean by forced is nobody's around, no type of supervision, no type of love and affection, no type of guidance. I want the adults to stop thinking that this never happened or don't happen, or you never been under the circumstance.

[00:08:14] You have a child that's living in the house with three generations. You haven't lived in a house and it was three generations in the house. Okay. If you don't remember, let me, let me, let me bring this back. Let's go back in time. You got your grandmother. That's one generation. You got your mother or your father. That's another generation, depending on how old you are, how old your mother is, or your father is, they may have kids. That's another generation and you may be that child. That's another generation. It's no telling what's going on in that household, the influence, what you're forced to do, it was nights where sometimes, you know, some kids are not even eating some kids. It's like, yo listen or, or you will see one family doing better than the next family and one household. Whoa, Whoa. Now am I getting too deep? Am I getting too deep? We saying I've been in these situations though.

[00:09:30] Let's not act like we, ain't never been in these situations. Where it's two families living in the household, one household, and it's like, yo, this family is doing a little bit better than that family, from what it seems like. I mean, both parties are still living in the same household, but one is probably doing a little bit better than other and it's like, okay.

[00:09:53] Now was competition. When I act like y'all understand where I'm coming from, y'all know, and this makes the average 15 year old living in an aggressive environment, living in an environment where they're not being challenged to do better. Living in an environment where it's like, it's, it's no hope. So go wild and do what they gotta do.

[00:10:22] You have some 15 year olds that are having sex with older men and women, because there are plenty of reasons. Search for love being rebellious. I mean, you can name them. It's not all bad and it's not all good meaning and what I mean by that, it's all bad, but I'm talking about, we're not going to just blame it on the 15 year old because they want to do what they want to do. We're not just going to do that. You got some 15 year olds that saying, you know what, I'm not getting no love. I'm not getting no type of nobody's paying attention to me. So you know what I'm about to do? I'm about to go into the aggressive environment. And all I got down left to my name is my name. That's all I got left to my name. It's my name. And since all I got left to my name is my name. Nobody's taking that away from me. Nobody's disrespecting me. I'm not having it. All I need is a pistol and I killed one of you motherfuckers that way. That's how they think you. Don't nobody else care. So why should I think you care.

[00:11:31] See a lot of these kids don't know how to articulate their issues. They don't know how to comprehend certain things that's going on because a lot of these kids were taught. Suck it up. Don't tell nobody don't nobody care. Keep it all to yourself. So when they go out there with a gun now was like, yo listen. And they shoot somebody getting the attention that he wants. It may not be the attention that he needs, but he's getting attention that he wants.

[00:12:12] Versus, now this is all forced behavior versus kids with identity crisis. Now we talking about the children that are being rebellious. Now we talking about the children that just want to act like they want to do what they want to do. We talking about the children that always had a support system. That's different from a child that's 15 years old and was forced to do things that he never wanted to do.

[00:12:45] Father wasn't around mother was around, but wasn't around. Versus a kid with an identity crisis who had the mother around, had the father around hell, had the grandmother, the grandfather, uncles, aunts had a whole family structure around and you just want to do what you want to do because you want to test the waters.

[00:13:08] You want to be a real one. You want to know what it feels like to get the attention that everybody else is getting. But that attention comes with a price and that price is a certified stamp of a tombstone, a gel number, or you being in a way for the rest of your life. So you got kids out there with identity crisis, and we want people to understand that they're trying to do their own thing.

[00:13:43] And as a parent, We'd send to it's no, man, you won't have to raise a child. There's no, you can't Google. How do you raise a child? And you're going to get the right answers. We raise children off of knowledge, religion experiences, things of that nature, you know, morals. Intellect, but at the end of the day, you can't parent guilt yourself if you have a child suffering from an identity crisis, you can't do it.

[00:14:34] A lot of these children do one load. This is why they. I mean, I was 15 years old before, man, you running around having sex with multiple girls, whether they, your age, whether they a little bit older than you. And for real, for real, we use sex for love and that's what we want. But a lot of people don't want to talk about this.

[00:14:56] We're not being challenged enough. We're being told what to do, and we expect our children or even growing up. And when I say we're being told what to do, I'm an eighties baby. I was, it was do it. And that's it. These kids are not being challenged

[00:15:19] when your child is saying that they want to do everything under the sun, you challenged them. Now, some of us can't financially afford what they want to do, but it's other ways of challenging your child to make sure that you exercise every move on the board before you just say, damn, I just, I don't, I just don't know what to do at this point.

[00:15:46] A lot of people say, it's the fathers. Okay. It's the fathers. Because naturally men are leaders, not saying women are not leaders, but naturally when a man is leading the village follow suit, but it's the black men and the black women, because at the end of the day, you know, if you can handle a child mothers, You know, you get the last say so when it's all said and done, mothers. You know, if you're mentally and financially prepared for child, mothers. You know, not times out of 10, that man is not good to be a father right now, mothers. But we have this thing about, you know, what I don't need, no, man. I take care of the kid on my own. And it's like, now we're having babies just to make our baby suffer and destroy our babies. 

[00:17:02] Fathers is running around saying while I was in jail and this is why I miss significant amount of time with my children. So when you come home from jail, do you continue to live in your second childhood? Do you compete with the younger guys or do you say, let me swallow my pride. Let me get back, try to get back the time that I've missed. Not saying that you can rewind the time, but let me go, let me do what I got to do and be patient. Just as well as I was patient, when I was doing my time in jail, be patient with my children and let them get an understanding of me. Let me get an understanding of them so we can move forward.

[00:17:51] All right. So fathers, it's a proven fact that when the men are leading the village follow. So we need for our men to honestly step up and stop competing, stop living in your second childhood. Discipline yourself, rehabilitation of an absent father. Make sure y'all go to my YouTube page and check that out.

[00:18:27] So let's save our children. The second thing I want to talk about is the police brutality for those who don't know, I started out as a teacher assistant in a charter school. Then I became a lead teacher. Then I went to the school district, became a substitute teacher and then a long-term substitute teacher.

[00:19:00] And what that means is. I am, so many teachers are absent in the Philadelphia school district. And this is why I said it's 400. It's like 420 teachers absent a day and Philadelphia and the Philadelphia school district, the state will fund a prison 43 to $49,000 a year per prisoner. And we'll only fund the Philadelphia school district, 6 to $9,000 a year per public school student.

[00:19:44] And when I have these protests in front of 440, nobody wants to come out and say and give their concerns. When I tell people. Your child may have went to the next grade without having the teacher that whole year. So what did your child learn last year? Why do your child have an A in that specific subject?

[00:20:15] And it wasn't even a teacher then last year, I'm gonna let y'all, I'm gonna let that ponder.

[00:20:24] It's a kid that went to the, my school where I was teaching that, say a high school located on 58th and Walnut. And I remember seeing this kid every time classes changed and, you know, just walking at lunch and walking through the hallways to get to the next class. For me to go on social media. Not only to see people that I don't know, go through police brutality, but for me to see this kid go through police brutality hits my heart a little different, the same, but different because I know this kid, not personally, but I know him now, allegedly.

[00:21:15] They said he had a gun. Well, let's do this. Let's let's let's let's let's break this scenario down. If this kid had a gun allegedly, and the first thing that the officers are going to do is protect themselves and protect the community. Now, I'm not an expert on how police officers are trained. The officers will pull their gun out and say words to make sure the suspect is not about the shoot, harm himself, him, or herself or harm others, whatever the case may be.

[00:22:10] If the suspect puts the gun down and willing to get arrested is no need to be extra aggressive. When a person is gracefully bailling out. Now let's bring up another scenario. Let's say this kid had a gun. And let's say the kid ran. Okay, cool. The kid ran. Now, you got to chase after the suspect. Does that still give you what you catch the suspect?

[00:22:55] Does that give you all the right to use excessive force or what's excessive force?

[00:23:03] Holding a child by the neck? While the other police officer punches the kid in the face, punches the kid in the ribs, punches the kid in the stomach, resisting arrest, people. Does not warrant a police officer to punch a person in the face. Does not warrant a police officer to punch a person in the ribs or to punch a person in the stomach, especially if you're resistant arrest without the suspect using some type of force, like, like throwing punches or scratches or whatever, or trying to slam a police officer, you are trained to take down the suspect without using that type of force right or wrong. 

[00:24:06] I'll let y'all decide why watch it. 

[00:24:09] I watched this kid go through police brutality and yes, it's called police brutality. Okay. Cause while one police officer was holding the neck of this kid. The other police officers was doing the other police officer was doing a couple of punches.

[00:24:27] And then he actually bought this night stick out or whatever you want to call it and started hitting the kid. Don't talk about the after effect. Talk about the police offices punching and holding this kid around the neck. I am a victim of police brutality. I did absolutely nothing. But I was talking, standing my ground, talking.

[00:25:00] They didn't like what I was saying. Cause I was defending myself and they, they handled the rest. They do my face. They lift my head up, embarrassed my face in the street.

[00:25:20] And when they finally lift me up at the beat me up, they asked me my name

[00:25:28] and I was a young kid at the time. I was a young man and I spit in the cops face and he beat me up again. So at this point, For my initial point about police brutality. Yes. It happens all the time and we need to honestly figure out how can we stop us from engaging with police officers, meaning meaning stop, make their job hard and not easy.

[00:26:12] We don't know if that kid was holding a gun because of protection. If I get caught with a gun right now, I'm going to jail. No matter how positive I am you. And nobody's trying to hear, I'm scared. I live in the city with the second highest homicides. I don't know what to do. I'm just protecting myself.

[00:26:31] Nobody's trying to hear that you're going to jail and you deal with it in court. We can assume that he was holding the gun allegedly. Cause we don't know if he had a gun or not, but we can assume that he was holding a gun because a bunch of 15 year olds, a bunch of adolescents out there killing each other.

[00:26:49] Okay, cool. We can assume that he was holding the gun because nobody is protecting him. He lives on the streets and that's his only protection. See, before we jump into conclusions about what's going on and who did this and why this is going on, let's analyze the situation. If a person that had never been in had any encounters with the police officer and they're carrying a gun living in Philadelphia, are you going to say that you have to something.

[00:27:22] More than likely when you judgmental. Or are you going to say, you know what, Dan, we do live in the city with the second highest homicides, man, protect yourself. So I just hope that this young man is okay. I hope the police officers do get fired. Cause I have it up on my page. If you go to go to, @ B.MCFLY_  on Instagram, you will be able to see now, and last but not least, I want to talk about the leaders of Philadelphia.

[00:28:03] Every city has its own unique way, right. Of how they do things. Philadelphia has probably been one of the cities that I've seen a bunch of social media leaders. Now, again, for those who are listening outside of Philadelphia, I'm not saying that your city do not have social media leaders and influencers and you know, people that are spreading awareness and, and fighting for social justice and things of that nature. What I mean is in Philadelphia, you have a lot of public figures that are not, that are not as big as other people on social media and Philadelphia. What I've noticed is it's always a bunch of people fighting or not fighting physically, but verbally fighting with other people in both parties are supposed to be positive.

[00:29:20] You have one, one public figure saying what the other public figure didn't do or should do. And. Like it's a blatant, it don't even be indirect. It'd be blatant. Now, let me speak on indirect. When I first started doing what I was doing, I went to rehab. I went to a drug facility rehab, January the 21st, 2018.

[00:29:50] Shout out to Arms Acres in New York state. I was there for 30 days. I came home. I did my first skit in February a, of, of February, of 2018. And I didn't stop since I've been sober since I didn't stop since I will be the first to tell you on my podcast. Self-Inventory and this is why. I love my crew shout out to my guy Dylan. Shout out to StudioD this is why self-inventory is the podcast.

[00:30:32] Because self a self-inventory means that you got to check yourself, you got to reevaluate yourself. You got to man up and say, damn, this is where I went wrong. So in the beginning, I used to say in direct things, in my emotions, going off of what people say, going off of what I perceive things to be. And it took me a while, but I had to check myself like, yo.

[00:31:13] Now you done got yourself all caught up in, you know, the, he say, she say you are a positive motive, motivator, you spread awareness. You create skits, which you're doing is being messy. McFly, which you're doing is dealing with your emotions. B McFly. What you're doing is being caught up in the hype. B McFly it's time for you to man up and settle the score with certain people.

[00:31:56] So I jumped in a few peoples DM's and I apologize. And the first person that I apologize to. Was Wallo267 and I apologize to him, not because I'm right or I'm wrong. I apologize. To wallo267, because as a motivator, as an influencer, as a person who wants to stop the crimes, and want to stop all the negativity.

[00:32:37] And now with city. Whether I was right or wrong. Let me make a men's declare out the air. And I simply stated, let me tell you what I said, because I'm not afraid to be a man, not afraid to be a man. So I simply stated Wallo as a man. I want to start with the first apology. I truly honor your work ethic and your ability to change lives.

[00:33:19] I considered you as a hero at one point, maybe I caused the disconnect. So as a man, I would like to take charge in hopes to move forward. We need each other more than ever to help cure this madness with our own kind. The fight is not with each other. The real fight is with them. Even if we can't stand together, hopefully we can show others that we are still one. Continue to save lives.

[00:33:59] What I did was be a man...

[00:34:08] so we can cure the city of Philadelphia no matter who was right. And who was wrong. I took the initiative to say, yo, we need each other because they need us. So as a leader, how can we constantly go at each other and then talk about, we want to stop the crime rate. We want to stop the homicides. We want to bring men together.

[00:34:42] How do you expect to do that when we're constantly going at each other? Swallow your pride leaders. They're watching us. These are children. These are our children watching us. And if they see us argue and bicker and fight fighting saying, who did this and who did that? How do you expect them to change?

[00:35:12] Come on now. It's time for us to stop competing with each other. It's time for us to stop on being Alpha males towards each other. It's a lot of black leaders out there. I mean, I can name a few. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Huey P Newton, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale. Who else did I miss the minister? Louis Farrakhan.

[00:35:43] I wasn't born in the sixties, but looking back in history, I don't think neither one of them said something to each other to try to play each other or to talk down on each other. And they all had different approaches, black leaders in Philadelphia. We don't have to have the same approach. We don't got to constantly talk down on one another because we feel like, Oh, you're not doing the right thing.

[00:36:18] Malcolm X said, by any means necessary, Martin Luther King said, equality turned the other cheek. Now do that mean, well, you know what, by any means necessary, I'm just killing all white people. No, no. Turn the other cheek. Well, I'm gonna just let you punch on me and, and I'm gonna turn the other cheek and, and tell you, please don't hit me no more.

[00:36:46] No Huey P Newton was more of our own political party and protecting us.

[00:37:02] Fred Hampton, the minister, Louis Farrakhan religion. We have our own religion and through our own religion, we're building men of class of stature. We're building women, but not once did any of them say we hate white people? Not once. Did any of them say, I hate that leader over there because he's not talking about what I'm talking about.

[00:37:32] Think about these things. Everybody can't be soldiers.

[00:37:41] Everybody can't be political leaders. Everybody can't be community leaders. Whatever your position may be, do that.

[00:37:58] Stop forcing people to be you. And if you have a disagreement, black men learn how to talk to each other without being aggressive towards each other. Cause that's the game plan, right? For black men to be aggressive and kill and for white supremacy to kill us with intelligence. Now I'm not saying being timid, but aggression never works. Total aggression has never worked again.

[00:38:36] Let me say this again. Total aggression, a hundred percent aggression has never worked. You have to be intelligent along with aggression. So I just want to send my love and my strength and my hope to everybody that's living in Philadelphia to everybody that's living in a, in a aggressive community. Our would babys are dying.

[00:39:11] Our babies are suffering. Our babies need us more than ever. 2020 has been the worst year that I have ever experienced.

[00:39:32] I love y'all stay strong. Come together, black men, let's unite stick together. Let's protect our village. Thanks for listening to Self-Inventory podcast, Let's Go.

[00:40:10] Self-Inventory is a podcast produced by Brandon Chastang, in Studio D podcasts production. You can listen anywhere. You get your podcasts. If you'd like to support the show, please subscribe, leave a review and tell everyone you know about Self-Inventory.