So where did you go with your mum at the age of five to six? And then how did the kind of the years transpire after that?

So so we got a little apartment and we lived in that apartment for for a handful of years.

And then we basically my my father stayed in the same town just on the other side.

That's where his mother lived.

And then eventually, after I think there's about a year and a half, he got his own place once he died.

So he had lost his job as well.

So he lost his family.

Nice.

Tell us about what you remember about those harrowing days that started a year ago, and what damage emotionally, economically, and politically still linger from that?

You know, I remember October of last year, my son had a chess tournament at the Urban Warriors Youth Center off of Pulaski and 26th Street.

We were there at 8:30 in the morning, um, and by 9:00 AM, I started getting text messages and chats alerting of Greg Bovino and his henchmen being in an armada heading into our neighborhood.

Community watch, uh, folks from all walks of life came together and stood on every corner of 26th Street with whistles, and I remember getting a call from Pastor Matt Mateo saying, "Mike, they're headed your way." I, my wife and I were standing on the corner of 26th and Pulaski.

We'll always remember the left-hand turn that Bovino made with his henchmen onto 26th Street.

They stopped a couple feet down, and they took a man.

Um, they took a man, and there was a family that was unable to get out of the way who was in a car.

Was that the low point of your tenure?

Michael, do you feel that the report reinforces those concerns that have been manifesting for a long time, for years, about the influence of Cuba beyond the island? We've already seen it in Venezuela, in Nicaragua.

Totally, totally.

And it's something that when we read this, we said, how good that this was exposed out there, because Cubans have been saying it for many years.

We're seeing how communism, how socialism, how the snake that comes out of Havana has reached the entire hemisphere and has been reaching the United States for a long time.

This is not new.

They are trying to enter here at the level of universities.

You see things in the universities here in the United States that we never thought would happen, and we who escape from that regime, who know how they indoctrinate young generations, how they begin to enter schools.

If we remember the first words of Fidel Castro when he was starting the Cuban revolution, he said that they were not going to be communists, that it was not a communist revolution, and at the end of the day it ended up being, and look at the price we have all had to pay for those

No,

and I think it's very important.

I mean, I'm glad that we're doing this.

I'd be very happy to spend all my time touching on these topics because I think they are so important.

In general, I'm, I'd say, kind of disappointed that a lot of the commentary that has been made since the Episcopal Consecrations on July 1st and then the excommunication decree that came out of the Vatican the following day, I think a lot of them, the arguments go into a lot of minutiae, legalisms, and we're not addressing the very important points that all of us have to examine our faith with.

So I want to point out that one of the very positive things that has come out of this is that the Society of St. Pius X, they published a profession of Catholic faith that stated June the 24th.

the 2026, so the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.

Brilliant.

So please introduce yourself.

Yes.

Thank you.

Uh, Michael Rodriguez.

I actually, uh, my, my actual profession is I am a multi-unit, uh, Subway franchisee.

Uh, and so I've got 25 restaurants throughout the state of North Carolina.

And, uh, you know, first of all, you wanna talk about resilience, get into that QSR and, and restaurant space.

Yeah.