Episode 187 – When the Systems Fail Us with LaTasha Holloway

Macro N Cheese – Episode 187
When the Systems Fail Us with LaTasha Holloway
August 26, 2022

 

[00:00:04.200] – LaTasha Holloway [intro/music]

When you have individuals that go out into the world after high school, they have no skills, they barely are educated. We know they have intellectual disabilities. There’s no opportunities there for them. They end up producing this cycle of poverty.

[00:00:24.070] – LaTasha Holloway [intro/music]

Everyone says the same thing. It doesn’t matter what city you go to. It really doesn’t, even at this point, matter the state. Everyone’s saying that the educational systems are failing. So, why are we still having a discussion? If it’s not working, why aren’t we fixing the problem?

[00:01:35.110] – Geoff Ginter [intro/music]

Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse altogether. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43.090] – Steve Grumbine

All right, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. I have been jumping through union hoops lately. I’ve been talking about the environment. I’ve been talking about the Global South with Jason Hickel. At this point now, where I needed to go deeper, I needed to find the origins of struggle. I needed to get a fellow traveler that understood outrage, that understood the whole feeling inside of ‘it ain’t okay anymore’.

I’m not just going along to get along. Something’s got to change. And so that brought me to my guest today. This is a special show in my mind. We have Ms. LaTasha Holloway, who is running for Congress in Virginia’s Third District. And that in and of itself is unremarkable. I try and stay away from the shallow waters and the veneer of electoral politics. However, Ms. Holloway, she’s got a story.

This is the kind of story that we need to hear a lot more of, because I think there’s a lot of you out there that listen to this podcast that might be doing pretty well for yourself. And I don’t begrudge you that, not a bit. But it ain’t the same for everyone. And sometimes when you see the world through the lens of how good it is out there, where you can go out on your boat, you can go to five star restaurants, and you can live a pretty good life, sometimes you might forget what it’s like for the rest of us. So, this podcast is for the rest of us. With that, Tasha Holloway, welcome to the show.

[00:03:20.350] – LaTasha Holloway

Thank you so much for having me.

[00:03:23.110] – Grumbine

You better believe it. I am so grateful to have you on. This whole Modern Monetary Theory thing that I talk about so often, it’s really powerful and it opens doors and it opens the realm of possibilities and makes everything come into focus. You get this lens that tells you everything you need to know, but something that often gets lost in all the MMT conversations is that many people that talk about MMT are doing pretty damn well.

And it’s no slight on them. They’re good people. But when you don’t understand struggle, it’s easy to sometimes tell people to wait and be patient. Your story isn’t like that and I think that’s really why I needed you here. You’re here to be my savior in the sense of I need to hear somebody that really gets it for a change. And your story is so powerful.

You’ve been through hell and back with your children. As far as the court systems go, you’ve been dealing with an electoral system that is absolutely built for Jim Crow. You’ve been dealing with the entire machine of the Democratic Party trying to keep you out of your election. You’ve been fighting tons of battles that many others need to and should be part of your struggle as well.

But you’ve been doing a lot of this as a mom who has a child with special needs. And you, my friend, are an inspiration. So, I want to hear your story. Tell us what brought you to the point where struggle just wasn’t enough. You needed to do something about it. Tell us your story.

[00:05:04.030] – Holloway

Well, I have to start by saying that I would have to contribute all that I am today to loving and knowledgeable grandparents, because my grandparents did have to rear my sisters and brothers and I from about two years of age. My grandmother had to take custody of us. So, my story is a story that we see in every community.

My parents are both intellectually challenged and, basically, my family story is proof that the breakdowns systemically within our society have to be remedied with us understanding the benefit of MMT and how our government should be working for us, instead of us depending on this theory that our tax dollars are all that there is.

And when that money is gone, there’s no sustainable means to correct our educational system. There’s no means to remedy our foster care system. And you’re just left high and dry. Well, we know better today. We know today that that ain’t so, that the same people that print that money, they digitize it. It’s in the digital atmosphere somewhere and that money can mystically appear when convenient to them.

And we need to start demanding that those funds go to where we need them to go. As in my story, both my parents having their intellectual disabilities, did not have appropriate accommodations made to them in their youth. That meant that by the time that they were thirteen, they should have been introduced to trades and training and things of that nature. It didn’t happen.

So, when you have individuals that go out into the world after high school, they have no skills, they barely are educated. We know they have intellectual disabilities. There’s no opportunities there for them. They end up producing this cycle of poverty. Well, this cycle of poverty comes with a lot of trauma.

And I can just speak to the burdens that my mother bore trying to raise children on her own without the supports of a community that should have been able to come together and assist in meeting the needs of her then children with some of those disabilities. It didn’t happen. The institutions that were in place failed my family, and as a result, myself and my siblings, we ended up in the foster system.

And thank God I had grandparents to come and rescue me from that system because we know the horror stories that happened in that. But unfortunately, when my grandmother got custody of us, the good Commonwealth of Virginia did not feel it necessary to pay her in any way. So, my grandmother just continued working until she literally could not work any longer.

And there in lies another burden. Here we have a senior citizen that should have been able to retire at 65. She had to continue to work in odd jobs, odd hours, and trying to even pay for childcare and trying to instill in us the importance of education, even though she herself wasn’t able to be completely educated in her day. So, we see this pattern of this generational poverty that is instilled on a family.

And I can tell you how that ends up. That ends up with my older sister also being intellectually challenged, not being able to care for her children. And I, then, became the legal guardian of her children my senior year in college at Norfolk State University. I’m proud to say that I was able to break that cycle, but I was able to do so with the knowledge of what it takes to make and remedy some of the systemic issues that we have in our society today.

So, here I am now, a mother of four children, two of which I adopted from my sister and then two of whom I bore myself. I am saddened to report that when I got custody of my nieces, I, then, learned the sad reality of what my grandmother went through before me. Once again, the Commonwealth of Virginia looked at me and said, we’re about to put these children in foster care, and we’ll pay a foster parent about $1,000 to care for them, but we’re not going to do the same for you. In fact, if you take custody of these children, we’re willing to give you $120 a month.

[00:10:15.120] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:10:15.860] – Holloway

Now, for those of us who have reared children, we know that $120 doesn’t even buy diapers, and that was in 2001. So, imagine with inflation, with that hundred and something dollars would do now. Nothing. It did nothing then and it does nothing now. And, so, one of the things I think that most people don’t understand is how traumatic living in or continuing to perpetuate that cycle of trauma on the next generation or in-laws or that extended family is very traumatic.

It is traumatic to stand there and know that you can barely take care of your own household, but to look at the eyes of the children that need you, that for whatever the reason, their mother and father is no longer able to care for them and they need you. And to think to yourself, goodness, I could barely put gas in my car this week. How am I going to be able to take little Billy in?

Billy’s going to need a lot more than what I can give him. And to be told by your government that, well, take it or leave it. Either way, we get more money if we break your family up anyway. So, if you don’t want to accept this $120 a month, we’re going to pay this foster family to raise this child and God knows where and God knows what conditions, and we’ll see how it ends up.

Well, of course, I’m not going to stand there and play Russian roulette with a life. So, I decided to become a parent. I had not at that point had any children of my own, but it was necessary. It’s that good situation that I could put for the children that didn’t have anything from their biological parents. So, I did adopt these two children and they are beautiful spirits.

I, then, was presented with the issue of obtaining the accommodations and the things that they needed because they were special needs as well, for them to be able to even compete in the world, to be able to compete with their peers in school. To my horror, the school systems repeatedly failed these children. They denied them IEPs.

[00:12:46.930] – Grumbine

That would be an Individual Education Plan, correct?

[00:12:50.200] – Holloway

Right. And they denied even that these children had disabilities to begin with. So, imagine having the health department, which is the policy when you’re trying to seek care for a child that has a high level of need. You go through your local health department, they do their own assessment and they determine what the level of need of the child is.

My local health department determined that one of the children that I had adopted reached and met the level of a waiver. And most people don’t even understand what that means. That means that, in Virginia, the assessment determined that the child met a level that was comparable to their needs in an assisted living facility. Can I say that again?

That means that the assessment determined this child’s level of need met the criteria to enter into a residential facility long term. So, here she qualified for a waiver. And I, then, began receiving waiver services. And the school, at the same time said, there’s no disability. What do you mean? Why do we keep having to have these meetings, Ms. Holloway? Your child is not disabled.

And I had to show them what the health department, the same city, doctors working for the city, have identified the child as meeting this higher level of need. And to my horror, I went around for three or four additional more years fighting for an IEP for that child. And if that doesn’t speak to the condition of our current educational system, I don’t know what does, because I hear that story from parents every day from their point of view of what needs their child have.

But the educational institution has denied or deprived the child of having said interventions because all they have to do is shake their head and say it doesn’t exist. And then they don’t have to use a penny towards meeting the accommodations of that child. So, if it all boils down to a dollar, if you’re telling me that we’re holding our children back, we’re depriving them and denying them of an equitable education because you don’t have a dollar, why don’t you tell the public the truth?

You have plenty of money. You print the money. You make it when it’s convenient for you. You slow down when it’s not. So, we don’t have to run around and play games with the whole understanding about where the money will come from. You simply made the decision that this isn’t something that’s worthy of you spending your money on.

And that needs to be where everyday people like you and I become soldiers and warriors for meeting the needs of our community. That becomes the time when I know. I tell people. I became radical for Jesus and I went on a rampage to ensure that everyone knew what was happening to our children. I joined many, many groups for families with children with disabilities and empowered families that maybe did not have an outlet to even tell their story.

That’s where my story literally begins. It begins with the failure of our system and my grandmother pointing out to me how my father couldn’t even walk until after the first grade. But nobody would come to the house to help, so she had to work and then, also, tend to the fact that he wasn’t being educated and try to educate him herself, someone who also had been deprived of an adequate education.

This is what starts generational curses. But we don’t have to be bound to them. We can express our voices, we can advocate, and we can fight back. And I believe that MMT is our best resource to ensure that our systems that are so broken that the claims of the tax dollars can’t be stretched far enough to meet the adequate needs of everybody. So, we only can help the select few.

Well, that’s not true. And I believe that MMT is an answer to ensuring that these types of tragedies don’t continue to be perpetuated. Because I can tell you when I see my sister today, who also was identified as intellectually disabled, but the city of Virginia Beach did not identify and qualify her for the unique needs that she needed.

And, unfortunately, she’s homeless on the street right now. People have assaulted her. People have raped her. I’m just trying to ensure that the next generation doesn’t go through the same trauma because a society forgot about someone who didn’t live up to their standard. How sad is that? She’s still a human being and no one deserves to be treated that way.

[00:18:32.950] – Grumbine

I couldn’t agree more. I want to jump in here for just a second. You are just getting your feet wet with Modern Monetary Theory. And I’ve been doing this since 2008, 2009 and I’m still, in 2022, learning more about it. And once you start this journey, life becomes a series of explosions of ‘oh my God’s. And you start realizing all the lies we’ve been told about false scarcity and there’s no money and where’s the money coming from and how are you going to pay for it.

And it’s this thinking that keeps us from asking for more. And, so, I want to go through some basics with you here as part of our conversation because the struggle that you’re going through that I’ve experienced and continue to go through as well, different, but the same still caused by a neoliberal society that is based in white supremacy, based in patriarchy, and based on lies about the economic system.

I think one of the biggest challenges is understanding that we have two separate worlds, if you will. We have the public and we have the private. And we think about the federal government. It’s the public sector. It in and of itself is the currency creator. It spends money into existence. It never just prints money randomly. It spends that money into existence when a bill is written and then it taxes that money out of existence when it’s taxed.

So, the federal government creates a circuit and that circuit is there to make it so that you need its currency and that’s why they impose the tax. The tax is what drives the currency. It drives the need for the currency and it allows the federal government to provision itself to provide things that maybe we need or maybe it needs, like a standing military versus health care.

So, we’ve got some priorities that we start sussing out once we realize that the federal government, itself, creates the money out of thin air. The tax is not used to pay for things, it’s just there to drive the need and the value of the currency. And as Warren Mosler, who is the father of MMT, would say, it creates buyers and sellers of goods. But now, what happens when you impose a tax?

Now, you got to do something to get the tax. Anyway, long story short, as it comes down to education, which is one of the key things that you focused on in your discussion, it’s very important to know there is no federal right to an education in this country. They left it to the states. Therefore, there’s no federal funding really per se for a federal program for federal education because there is no right to an education.

That’s why you’ve got teachers that are underpaid. That’s why you’ve got students in over full classrooms. That’s why you don’t have IEPs for kids with autism, et cetera. But, then, you go the next layer down. And that is that those services that are supposed to be there to serve those children in need is so underfunded that the people that would work in those jobs, not only do they have to rise up and get degrees to get those jobs, they’ve also got to have other certifications.

But, then, they get paid the same amount that they would get as a kid starting their first job. And, so, you wonder, why don’t our children have the resources they need? Why don’t they have the education they need? And you look no further than we have no right to an education. The federal funding, which could support anything that we needed, isn’t there.

And the local and state governments that are forced to tax to pay for things. They are already strapped because there is a race to the bottom where other states are trying to pluck those businesses in your backyard out of your backyard and send them to Texas or send them to Kansas, where they give away the farm to bring business down there.

Leaving behind rust belts like you’ve got Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh. So, it makes sense why we wouldn’t have any services for our kids and why we constantly be wanting. But instead of us pointing at our federal government, like you said, most of us look at each other and hate each other, look at our neighbor and get angry that they’re taking something from us.

That the reason we’re not getting what we need is because somebody else is getting over on the system. The people at the bottom fight with each other instead of making demands, uniting and fighting back. I just wanted to put that in there because your story is so powerful and MMT brings that whole thing into a proper view. You can understand what’s happening in front of you.

And, to me, understanding MMT is the single greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life to help me begin to see the world through a different lens. And I like the word lens because it’s not really a thing. It’s really a way of viewing and understanding the economy. So, with that said, talk to me now about the education that you deal with in your part of Virginia for your special needs children.

[00:23:52.510] – Holloway

What education? Our Department of Education in Virginia is a joke. They have many jobs, but they’re supposed to be overseeing and ensuring that, at the very least, our kids are being properly educated and that our schools are meeting a standard that they aren’t mistreating, abusing, neglecting our children, and that isn’t happening.

And, then, the one thing that the Department of Education is supposed to be able to do is use their one big stick and they won’t do it. They won’t pull that trigger and say, our children are the most valuable resource that we have, and we will not stand for our kids not to be educated. So, I just feel like MMT is the answer. I feel like we have to start looking to our government to ensure that these standards are met.

And if you need a dollar, if that’s what it takes, that’s where we need to go to get it. And it’s a little disappointing at times when you sit down in these conferences and you’re having these meetings. Everyone says the same thing. It doesn’t matter what city you go to. It really doesn’t even at this point, matter the state. Everyone’s saying that the educational systems are failing.

So, why are we still having a discussion? If it’s not working, why aren’t we fixing the problem? And this is one of the remedies I do believe would assist with meeting where our educational systems have failed. So, I even worry with COVID being such a major catastrophe that we’re having to contend with. I worry about those kids that are orphaned that don’t have anyone.

I think the numbers, the last I checked, were 214,000 nationwide children that don’t have a mother or father. Here in Virginia alone, over 21,000 deaths occurred in Virginia. And I think of those 21,000 souls and the children that were connected to those souls and who’s caring for them ensuring that they’re receiving an education. It is imperative at this point that we stop pointing fingers, that we understand where the failure is happening, and we just get to work. What’s the problem?

[00:26:34.090] – Grumbine

I’ve talked to you recently, and one of the keys that got you into running for office was veterans as well. Veterans come home, and they’re treated shabbily. There is no real integration here. Our veterans come home, they’re broken, they’re hurt, they’re dealing with PTSD, struggle getting involved in society upon their return, and there’s just nowhere near the support that they need. Talk to me about veteran care as well. We touched on it with the children. Take it to the next level.

[00:27:10.330] – Holloway

So, one of the things my grandmother taught me is the importance of service and service in your community. My grandmother instilled in me that there’s such a large portion of our society that, when you get old, they want to throw you away, she would say. So, she would help and take people in, and we would go and visit the sick and shut in for the church.

And I continued that on with my children. One of the things that I tend to do when I find a veteran that is homeless, that’s without a family, without anyone to care for them, and they are senior citizens, if, within my power, I can’t find them appropriate placement, appropriate home, I bring them home. So, I can speak probably louder than most of the failure that I see on a regular daily basis from the VA.

The Veterans Administration has simply, all you can do is cry, cry with these veterans who will tell you with tears coming down their face, they promised me, once I served, they were going to help me. They were going to provide medical care, anything that I needed as far as housing that was going to be taken care of. It didn’t happen for whatever the reason.

One of my platforms in my campaign is I tell people, get me in that congressional seat and let me crack open the VA system as it is devastated our communities when it comes to our veterans. Our veterans should not be homeless because they are not able to receive the mental health care that was promised to them. Our veterans should not be struggling with getting appointments.

In some cases, I’ve seen veterans die before they can even receive the medical care that they needed making these appointments with the veteran hospital. That should never happen. I have veterans that are still applying for veterans benefits. It should not take years to receive veterans benefits, if at all, because I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but a lot of African American veterans did not even and cannot receive adequate benefits because their service was not even considered on the same level.

Many of the things that they did were not even acknowledged during the times that they did serve. So, here we have veterans that I’m helping them to do these Nexus letters. And we’re trying to track down other veterans that can vouch that this person was tossing barrels of Agent Orange over the side of the truck and it was splashing on their body.

And as a result, they have sores from head to toe that need to be cleansed and bandaged multiple times in a day. That is, literally, the story of the veteran that I have in my home right now. And I would have to bandage him like a mummy, almost like mummifying his body with bandages, to prevent infection and cover the seats because he would bleed through the bandages.

That’s how bad these sores are from the chemicals that they come in contact with, not from the bullets. There’s some remedy if you had gotten shot, but they’re up until, do you understand? Jon Stewart just a week ago was able to champion the fight of our soldiers that have to stand at these toxic chemical sites where they’re tossing all of these horrible chemicals that do devastating things, not only to the human body, but to the planet.

And what do you mean that we had representatives that laughed and thought it was funny that these veterans didn’t get the benefits that they should have been receiving decades ago? It is disgusting that we are still having to go and battle it out with persons who have no problem with paying for wars and starting wars. They have no problem with fighting over land in other countries and dredging up somebody else’s oil for profit.

But when it comes down to the human factor of our own veterans, of our own citizens, they fail. That is why I was motivated and just came in as a catalyst to speak for those who have been ignored. And my veterans, they fit the bill. They have just been devastated by the government ignoring their needs. And we hear that story all over and it disturbs me that we continue to talk about it. But I’m a person. I don’t just talk, I walk it. And I’m going to make sure that our veterans get the remedy and relief that they need, because they shouldn’t have to live this way.

[00:32:56.770] – Grumbine

This falls into caregiver as well. What is the impact on your life being a caregiver?

[00:33:05.350] – Holloway

It was not until January of this year that I finally got someone’s attention at the VA after writing letters for this particular veteran for almost ten years. That the VA felt, we’re going to send some people out there to look at him and we’re going to try to get him whatever help he needs, because his health is declining.

And, at the time that this particular nurse came in, she remembered this veteran and she just shook her head. She said, I can’t believe he’s still alive. And I’m looking at her like, well, was that you all’s intention? If you do nothing, he’ll go away and die? And she looked back at me and she said, I can tell you really care.

And she said, I could tell from the way he looks at you that he really knows you love him and he loves you right back. And I said, absolutely and he knows I’m not going to let you all come in here and disrupt his world and do anything to harm him. And she reassured me, she said, Miss Holloway, don’t worry. We’re not here to disrupt anything.

The fact that he’s been with you all this time, she said, we wondered what happened to him. I said, Well, I couldn’t just leave him on the street. I’ve been writing y’all letters, I’ve been going up there with them and begging for anyone to do anything from all these 50 million departments you have up there. No one acted. So, yes, as a caregiver, I am, literally, up during the day and night now for him, because he does have dementia and he does what’s called sun-downing, where he doesn’t recognize that it’s 02:00 in the morning.

He gets up and he thinks he’s supposed to start his day. Well, guess what? He wants me to start my day with him as well. So I get up with him as best I can. Sometimes I can convince him to lay back down, and sometimes I can’t, but he can’t be left alone. So, I get up and ensure that he’s safe. But what needs to happen is every veteran needs to be somewhere that they are ensured that they’re safe.

And what I would like to see happen, is I would like for there to be a nationwide rollout, not just for veterans, for all types of daycare, if you will, if you want to call it that. We can have daycare paid for children. We can have daycare paid for our seniors. We can have daycare paid specifically for our veterans. It’s not rocket science. We know that right now we are caring for that baby boomer generation that went down in history.

So why haven’t there been measures like this to ensure that the baby boomer generation isn’t ending up on the street? Because that’s what I’ve been seeing. If you’re working your job and you can barely afford to pay the rent over your head, what do you think is happening to the senior citizen that lives up the street that is on a subsidized income?

They are having a harder time than you. So, why aren’t we putting forth measures, rolling them out nationwide to ensure that those persons are housed, that those persons have adequate food, that those persons are insured care, appropriate care? That’s what I want to see happen, because that’s what absolutely needs to happen for our communities today.

[00:37:24.510] – Intermission

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[00:38:42.320] – Grumbine

You said something to me the other day when we talked, and I felt like it was worth bringing up here. You’re the candidate for whistleblowers, that the corruption needs to come to an end, and you’re there to not just go to sleep and to make change happen by any means necessary. And I know that you got some litigation that’s currently in the courts so you can’t really dive deep on it.

Can you give us an understanding of the legal battles you’ve been going through. Both as a candidate and as a mom you fought a corrupt electoral system, you fought bad education, and you’re still fighting a Democratic party that has kept you off the ballot, quite frankly. Talk to us about your political campaign in terms of what you’ve gone through just to try and get in office.

[00:38:43.470] – Holloway

Well, I tell you, I got sick and tired of having people come up to me and tell me their stories and to hear a common undertone of corruption everywhere that I went. It was so important for me to show people how to fight back. And so, yes, I do consider myself to be the whistleblower candidate, because I’m blowing the top off of every bit of corruption wherever I go.

I’m shining a light. Consider me a lighthouse, for goodness sake. I want to make sure that our current at large apartheid voting system could never hurt another family as it did my family for many, many generations. And so that’s why I bought that complaint pro se, mind you, because at the time, I could not find attorneys to take the case. But thank God the good people over at the CLC, the Campaign Legal Clinic.

The most dynamic attorneys that I could have ever prayed for, came to the rescue and just did a dynamic job with this case as we continue to do. Because we still have so much work left to do when it comes to ensuring that Jim Crow not continue to rear his head in every aspect of the lives of everyday people.

So, that’s why I have several other legal complaints going on right now, but especially the one pertaining to my campaign, where here I am trying to become the candidate of choice, trying to be that whistleblower candidate that everyone’s been asking for, and I am required to turn in 1000 signatures of registered voters here in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And I turned those in with enthusiasm. I actually exceed the numbers that I needed to meet. I turned in 1400 plus signatures, only to be told that only 531 of those signatures would be accepted. And, so, that’s when I really, truly got to see firsthand how that game can silence so many voices in Virginia. So, literally, we have had over 100,000 registered voters deactivated right before the November election of 2021.

And the reasons could be various reasons. But what is the most concerning for me is the fact that here we are coming out of a pandemic and we know that the moratorium has been lifted in July. And, so, as of the lifting of the moratorium, we know that the highest incidence of unhoused people was inevitable. It was coming. So, what do you mean that one of the criteria is that you have to have a street address.

You can use a PO box when it comes to registering to vote, but you cannot use a PO box when it comes to signing a petition to ensure that your candidate of choice is on the ballot. Do you understand that you are excluded if you don’t have a street address? And that should disturb everyone. That the fact that the Constitution doesn’t afford that, oh, if you don’t let us know where you live, then you don’t get to vote.

It only gives the one stipulation of if you are convicted of a crime, then yes, we could take away your right to vote. But aside from that or death, what do you mean you just routinely go around deregistering people? Everyone should be outraged by that. And so, yes, I want to be that candidate, then, that will challenge that. And the question in your head should be, why hasn’t anyone else challenged that?

If the Democratic and Republican Party truly believe in democracy, as they say, they truly believe that everyone’s voice should be heard, why hasn’t that been challenged.

[00:43:11.430] – Grumbine

Yeah.

[00:43:12.070] – Holloway

And the answer is there are many persons who benefit from white supremacy ideals. And, unfortunately, when that policy was put in place, clearly, that’s what the intent was, to exclude portions of our society from the opportunity to vote. And I am here every day to fight against that kind of exclusion because I believe everyone deserves an equitable opportunity at the table.

[00:43:41.550] – Grumbine

Some of the things that you’ve raised, not just in this interview, but in other publications and previous talks, you’ve identified that anybody can do this. And your specific message was to moms as well. You want to be that voice for women to say, you can do this. Talk to me about your focus there.

[00:44:06.690] – Holloway

I just believe that, especially, there is no greater time than the present to speak out for the rights, especially, of women. And I believe that we need to do a better job of ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table. And if you know the system just as I realized the system in Virginia Beach was not an equitable system that afforded everyone the seat at the table.

I take from the book of “tear the whole doggone table down and let’s build a new one.” Because we cannot afford to keep moving forward with the institutions in place that continue to perpetuate harm on entire populations of our society. It can’t happen that way anymore. So, I have taken a great interest in acting as a mentor and ensuring that those persons that I come across that have a skill set maybe didn’t even think about going into a political career.

But I may meet and say, you are a dynamic speaker. You are an awesome organizer. Your community really could use you. And I talk a lot about civic duty, something that my grandmother often talked to us about. But if you weren’t a person who was blessed to have a grandmother like me to talk about the importance of civic duty, you just don’t know any different.

And so that is the importance of leaders producing and ensuring, supporting, educating and preparing more leaders that come behind them. It’s been disturbing to me to watch persons that have taken from that old rule book, from the white supremacist ideal book, that once in power, if you want to keep making your money, stay in power, no matter who it may hurt.

I continue to believe that there’s room at the table for everyone. And if you are coming from the position that you want to be able to take advantage and fleece off of a community, take a backseat. We don’t need any more of that. We need people that are going to get in those seats and truly serve the community. And, so, that is what I try to really instill in everyone, everywhere that I go, that it can be you.

Don’t belittle yourself and just say, oh, but I’m just a mom. Hello? You gave birth and reared a whole person. I think that sitting in a room with a bunch of older guys, I think you got that covered. If you can carpool and pull together all of these different doctors appointments and meeting the needs of the different kids in the community, I think you’ll be okay with sitting on city council.

Stop belittling yourself or believing that you can’t because someone somewhere said that this particular type of person that went to this particular type of Ivy League school are the only type of people that belong in the room and start understanding that our government is meant to work for everyone and, therefore, everyone should have a voice at the table.

And if you identify that the persons and the situations and conditions that you currently live in do not have a voice at the table, then stand up and be that voice. Be the change you wish had shown up for you in your time of need.

[00:48:00.330] – Grumbine

You’re running as an independent, and I want to be clear on this. The storyline goes like this, people want ranked-choice voting, and I raised this up to you previously that in order to get something like ranked choice voting through, you either need ballot initiatives at the state level where people can take matters into their own hands, or you need politicians that are currently in power to vote away some of their power by enacting ranked choice voting. Tell me a little bit about how you envision independence outside of the duopoly making a difference at the local and state levels and even national level.

[00:48:42.990] – Holloway

I believe that’s the future of our democracy. If you truly believe in our democracy, we’re going to have to do things differently. And relying on the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is just not going to get us there. If it were going to get us there, we’d be there by now. So, what we have to do is we have to go to grassroots. We have to build from the bottom up.

We have to stop waiting on our knight in shining armor, suffering from the Cinderella complex coupled with our white supremacist ideals that have been embedded in us for eons. We need to throw that away, purge it from our system, and understand that everyone has an opportunity to sit at the table. And if the table that they are sitting at isn’t one that affords an opportunity for everyone, tear it down and build a new one, just as we’ve done in the city of Virginia Beach.

It works and it’s a means of helping those who have historically been voiceless and been ignored. So, this has worked that I have seen work utilizing the judicial system to ensure that these types of systemic racist systems are just struck down. Strike them down, but they can’t be struck down unless someone brings the challenge to begin with, brings that complaint to the table and says, this is hurting us and we need to change it because…

So, that’s what I believe and I believe ranked choice voting is a good system. It works in many municipalities. However, I do not believe that it was something that’s a viable choice today under today’s situation, because it would have cost us about 50 years before we would have been able to see candidates of our choice on our city council.

So of course we couldn’t wait those 50 years. And I was very pleased and grateful for the system that the city of Virginia Beach did ultimately come up with. So, every locality, though, has the opportunity to do that. Every system in fact, has the opportunity to do that. Just because something has been in place for many moons and that’s just the way that we’ve done it all these years, doesn’t make it right.

So, we have to get in the habit of understanding that. And if we understand it, then we can then correct the wrongs that were put in place that no one was bold enough to just fix. It really is that easy.

[00:51:34.410] – Grumbine

Can you tell me about the case you won, the big case regarding voting? Tell us a little bit about that battle.

[00:51:42.510] – Holloway

So, I had some horrible things happen to my little people when they were in school. And I can remember going to the leaders of my city and they wouldn’t even look me in my eye. And I thought, well, maybe if I go and I speak before council or school board, surely they hear a mother’s cry about the injustices done to the children of this community. I was wrong.

What ended up happening was that the leaders wouldn’t look at me. They wouldn’t acknowledge me, they wouldn’t return phone calls, return emails. I was the outcast of the city before I even realized I was an outcast within the city. My family was, literally, treated like second class citizens. We didn’t count. So, I discovered that it was because the leaders of my city knew something I was not aware of.

And that was that the area that I lived in, where most communities of color were, was identified as an at-large area, which in my situation meant that the entire city got to vote on what happened in my part of the city. So, it meant that someone who lived down at the oceanfront would be able to speak for the conditions of my children’s school where we were.

They would be able to speak for what the animal control person did when they come around or when the mosquito guy would come around. What are you doing way on the other side of town telling me what I should be doing or what should be happening to me and my children while they’re in school. That shook me to my core.

And then I started having other people approach me and say, well, this is the horror that happened to my child and this is what happened to us and nobody would help us either. And I said, well, we’re not going to stand for this, and we can come together and we can challenge the city about this voting system that they know renders us powerless.

And I went to a lot of people, and I went to different pastors and different activists, and my city has been under such oppressive strain that so many people have learned, and rightfully so. It’s a founded fear that you don’t go up against the machine, you don’t go up against this city. You just let them be. And you just shake your head and say yes, sir.

And if you don’t say yes, sir, they’re going to give it to you. And I said to them, I don’t give a flying fart, as my grandfather would say. I’m still going to stand up for what I know is right. And if we know that they’re doing these horrible things to people, we all should be saying something. We should be going to our federal government and reporting the abuses of power.

Well, right when I was telling someone that in one of these groups we have, one of my elders turned to me and said, you need to be careful. And I looked at them in their face and was like, what is that fear? The next day, I get a call, and it is my housing director who got a call from the children’s school. And the call kind of went like this; if you don’t put your children back in our schools, yeah, I heard about what was happening to your kids, and that’s sad and everything, but if you don’t put them back, we’re going to take away your housing and we’re going to make sure you and your kids are homeless again. You don’t want to be homeless again with your kids, do you, Miss Holloway?

[00:55:41.250] – Grumbine

Wow.

[00:55:42.280] – Holloway

To my horror, I learned the power that was being stolen from my community was, then, being wielded against me for having a voice to say, you’re going to stop treating my community like this. They not only took away my housing, they subjected my family to constant surveillance from the police department, from the protective Services unit of our human services.

When I say that it has been painful to remain living in a city that you know doesn’t love you back, for fighting for justice for everyone, for an equitable voice, for every citizen to have a seat at the table, it was disappointing. But I will tell you also in the same breath, I wouldn’t change a thing. And I’m not done yet.

So, that’s what I have been very outspoken to any group that I go before and speak at these different engagements, it’s to explain to everyone there is going to be discomfort and there is going to be pain. As you said before, no testimony can come without a test. And when you understand that, but you also understand what’s on the other side of that testimony, and that’s relief.

That’s the blessing being fulfilled. If you understand that, then you understand why you have to fight. There’s no sitting back and waiting for someone to do it for you. You have to be the change you want to see. Stand up and fight, and you will see the change that has bought so much pain to generations before you come to an end.

That’s what wielding the arms of justice against my city did for my citizens of Virginia Beach. The good people of Virginia Beach now have the chains off their vote. And that is more powerful than anything.

[00:57:59.070] – Grumbine

I want to quote Malcolm here. This particular quote really sticks out about what you just said. If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.

[00:58:11.760] – Holloway

Amen.

[00:58:12.300] – Grumbine

Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound.

[00:58:17.890] – Holloway

That’s right.

[00:58:18.320] – Grumbine

And America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife. And then Martin Luther King gave his great talk about the white moderate and basically said, beware of the white moderate who cares far more about rules and regulations than justice. And they will always find a way to equivocate and accept the unacceptable, but they don’t have to suffer.

It’s people in incredibly dire circumstances, the people least able to defend themselves. And those same white moderates are the tone police. And they try to control you by trying to control your rage and pain and everything that comes out of you. They try to make you the bad guy for daring to use the words of struggle, for daring to be outraged and angry.

And to me, someone like yourself fighting this fight, what are your thoughts on that? Because this is a tool of oppression that keeps us from letting people really genuinely know what the hell we’re fighting for. And when I hear your story, I think about all those tone police out there that don’t realize that going along to get along isn’t okay anymore. People are getting their voice. What does that kind of behavior do? What do you say to that because that makes me insane.

[00:59:46.710] – Holloway

And my response to that is my babies were diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the actions and behaviors from those that thought that the white supremacist ideals that had already been in place were okay. They didn’t even let my babies get out of kindergarten before they started trying to institutionalize them and introduce them to what I can only describe as concentration camp type of actions.

Putting someone in a confinement chamber, that’s always going to be my response. I’m going to always hold up a picture of my son being dragged up a hallway for no other reason other than being a little black boy with unique needs. That’s my response. And we have to understand something. And this is what I try to speak everywhere that I go.

That you can stand there and point fingers and try to be divisive and explain away why someone else had to be treated in an unequitable way that is separate from the way you would accept being treated all you want to, but at the end of the day, it hurts everybody. Having an unequitable voting system hurts everybody. Because you aren’t being heard either.

They’re not giving you a seat at the table either. So, if you want an opportunity to be able to always have an equitable voice, you have to ensure that that right is afforded to everyone. Or else one day you’ll find yourself being on the other side of that wall, being excluded, being dragged up the hall. Maybe it won’t be you. Maybe it’ll be your grandchild. Maybe it’ll be your godchild, your niece, your nephew.

The point is, you always have to ensure that the human factor is being met, else you end up being treated as the monster. And if you don’t want to be perceived to be the monster and to be cast out of society, as many of our veterans have, living in bushes, peeing in bottles, living under inhumane conditions, then you ensure that there is opportunity for everyone in your community to live equitably.

And that is going to be the message that everyone needs to hear over and over and over again. Stop pointing fingers, stop making excuses, stop acting as if they’re invalidating why someone is being treated in an unfair manner and simply validate everyone. Even our criminals have standards of care, for goodness sake. So, what do you mean that you would subject everyday people to having to resort to living under a box?

What do you mean that you have to resort to children not receiving an education, not even learning cursive, for goodness sake? And part of our criteria for registering to vote is to sign your doggone name and these kids can’t sign their names. So, you tell me how that’s going to work in a few years. What’s that going to look like?

We have to begin to understand that we have to change these systems that are excluding so many people and build ones that are inclusive, that do provide relief and opportunities for everyone. Because one day we’re going to be part of the everyone, whatever that means, whatever category you thought you were never going to fit into. Isn’t that the truth?

[01:04:12.260] – Grumbine

It is.

[01:04:12.780] – Holloway

We all think I’m not going to ever have to deal with dementia. You don’t know what tomorrow has for you. My neighbor is 46 years old, dealing with dementia.

[01:04:27.000] – Grumbine

Wow.

[01:04:27.950] – Holloway

If anybody had told them, they would have shunned them. Oh, that will never happen to me. It happens. That’s why we have systems in place to ensure that conditions aren’t taken to a place where a person is living in an inhumane way and it should remains that way. We need to continue to build those systems around and embrace, encourage inclusion instead of consistently casting people out of our society, because that doesn’t benefit anyone.

[01:05:02.730] – Grumbine

No, it doesn’t. And with that, first of all, let me thank you so much for being so gracious with your time. I really enjoy listening to you talk. You are a vibrant, charismatic, fire brand, the type of person I would follow into battle. So, I really like what you’re putting out there. But that said, tell everybody how we can find more about you, how we can support you. You get the final word.

[01:05:32.730] – Holloway

Final word is stop participating in groups that only talk. If you’re in a group that all you do week after week, is talk about what you wish you could-a should-a, would-a, start you a new group or find a group such as my group, the Virginia Beach Coalition. We’re all about action to ensure that you’re getting the job done, whatever that means for your community.

Start looking at what is important, and what is important is the human factor. If the leaders of your community don’t understand the human factor, you have the power to get them out of that seat. In fact, I’m going to encourage you to run for that seat and be a voice for the community that you are familiar with that has no voice or that has been consistently excluded from the conversations.

I’m going to encourage every ear within earshot of my voice to get involved. I cannot say how damaged our communities have become solely because there are so many persons that are more willing to be in front of a camera or just to talk about it than to actually put things into play to rectify harms that are being done to people every day.

That being said, once you have found your people and you have ensured that they are people that are ready, willing and able to activate and bring change where change is needed, make sure you are supporting those groups, make sure you are highly participating. You are also going out and helping to ensure that there are new voices within that group, even because that is the lifeblood of any community.

We have to make sure that we become the answers we want to see every day. So, therefore, we need to be the one to understand the power to put people in the seat and the power to remove people who are not doing their job is in our hands. So, if you want to help me right now, you can join my efforts to recall the current mayor of the city of Virginia Beach, Mr. Bobby Dyer, who has failed to protect every citizen within the city of Virginia Beach.

We have had many assassinations and murders within our city. We have lost so many good citizens of the city of Virginia Beach, on city property, no less. And I want to just speak out for Deshayla Harris. Mr. Donovon Lynch. I want to speak out for every family of the May 31st massacre who have not yet received answers. And I want to say to them, stand up.

Do not allow the city to deter you. Fight back. And we have all joined forces to ensure that we are going to find the answers and demand the answers that these families deserve. That is a story that you could hear in every city. So, we just want to make sure that people understand your power is putting people in the seat, taking people out the seat.

And if nobody will speak up for you, you stand up and you speak for yourself and those persons in the same condition as you. You can find me, latashahollowayforamerica.com anywhere. Every letter that you send to me, I do, personally, respond to. And I hope that you heard the cries from the people today to ensure that every voice is heard within our great nation. You guys have a blessed one.

[01:09:37.270] – Grumbine

Thank you so much. LaTasha. My name is Steve Grumbine. I’m the host of Macro N Cheese, my guest, LaTasha Holloway. We are out of here.

[01:10:10.080] – End Credits

Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts, and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.