Hawk Newsome

And in the Mangione case, a similar, if opposite, fandom developed on the far left, valorizing Luigi Mangione for stepping into a void and taking matters into his, his own hands.

Uh, when, when the Penny case was resolved and Daniel Penny was, was finally acquitted, um, Jordan Neely's defenders, including an activist named Hawk Newsome, stepped up to the cameras and said, "If they're gonna have vigilantes, we need our own Black vigilantes.

We need our own schools.

We need our own healthcare system." So we have to ask ourselves, and one of the aspects of the mirror I'm trying to hold up in this book is, is that where we wanna go? Do we wanna drive-- And I'm not shaming any of the individual people who are drawn to this idea of taking matters into their own hands.

A similar, if opposite, fandom developed on the far left, valorizing Luigi Mangione for stepping into a void and taking matters into his own hands.

When the Penny case was resolved and Daniel Penny was finally acquitted, Jordan Neely's defenders, including an activist named Hawk Newsome, stepped up to the cameras and said, if they're going to have vigilantes, we need our own black vigilantes.

We need our own schools.

We need our own health care system.

Yeah.

All right, so do you guys remember when I did Hawk Newsome's Don't Shoot the Messenger podcast? And that

guy stormed out? Yeah, with

the minister from Affleck Church.

Uh, Penny's lawyer sees him as a sympathetic potential defendant, an ex-Marine being made the fall guy for a city that surrendered to disorder.

You got a BLM leader, Hawk Newsome, who immediately sees modern lynching.

Another instance of black life is disposable.

You got our friend, Reverend Al Sharpton, who understands that this is going to be a war of narratives and has an idea about that.

Okay, so maybe then you buy me a little space.

Oh, okay, there's different views gonna be here.

And probably by the time you're done with a few pages of Hawk Newsome, you might be like, I mean, I'm sympathetic to some of that, but this is kind of a lot and there's no room for, you know, he's talking about how all the black leaders who came before him are kind of doing nothing and only he is really able to step up and all these other black leaders are useless.

You may be saying, okay, that seems a little, and then you're with Sharpton in the next chapter.

Last thing on this before we move on and we get to the main topic.

So our buddy, Walter, also known as Hawk Newsome, when I was speaking of blackface paid actors, he came out in the protest.

And I just want you to hear this.

Walter's logic.

oh yeah they call them back you had right oh absolutely ron's flying out rally's flying in from 32,000 feet.

These guys take different tours.

I think, listen, here's the reality when it comes to Hawk Newsome.

I worked at the South Bronx.

And I believe I told Kendi the story.

I said, "Dude, Hawk Newsome, the president of Black Lives Matter, interceded on my behalf w- with the phrase, 'No, he's cool,' right before I started to have a fistfight with some 20-year-old that was there with him." And he believed me racist simply because of the color of my skin, and Hawk Newsome saw past it, so why doesn't anyone else? And it doesn't excuse what went on before.

A-and there was a very prescient ...

And we talk about Jefferson a lot around here, but Jefferson warned, and Lincoln, say what you will about Lincoln, Lincoln was a Jeffersonian scholar.

Several people go speak.

And there was kind of a thread to s- several of the talks, particularly most prominently Hawk Newsome, an activist, the Black Lives Matter of Greater New York.

This was also present in some of the other remarks, that the system cannot be trusted to save us anymore.

We are on our own.

We must take matters into our own hands.

Stop petitioning the system.

Hawk Newsome suggested, you know, the time of marching has sort of passed, and he said, "Let the marchers march and let the steppers step." It's, it's time for stepping, right? And that means, in his telling, he said Black folks need to set up their own schools, to set up their own media outlets, set up their own mutual aid, whatever.

But also, he said, "If they're gonna have white vigilantes, we need some Black vigilantes in this country." And it struck me as I was standing there, I remember just standing there in light rain, I think, and I remember holding in my mind at the same time the arguments I had been hearing from the Penny camp for a year and a half, the newfound arguments that one was hearing in the news from the people who were kind of just gleefully celebrating the death of Brian Thompson, and then this argument from supporters of Jordan Neely and his family saying, "We need Black vigilantes.

And right before the blows started to fly, in comes the president of Black Lives Matter, who knew me personally because he had been on my show a bunch of times.

Hawk Newsome, and he said, no, no, no, this guy's cool.

And think about that.

The only reason he knew that is because he knew me, because we had had personal interactions away from this giant cafeteria full of high school bullies that we call the Internet.