Welcome to the Tweet Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl, and you are tuned in to Tweet Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today.
Hello one, hello all. This is the end of Black History Month, so let's get started. Just thinking about the fact that February is almost over, has got me wanting to go and do a remixed rendition of New Editions Is This The End, because I'm struggling with the concept and idea that Black History Month is coming to an end. And although Black History is all day, every day of the year, still this one sacred month that we have to highlight Black excellence and, you know, not feel like people are looking at you funny because everybody should be celebrating this month.
You know, I'm blown away by how fast the month has gone by. So on today's episode, I want to highlight a success of my own that I'd like to put into the now Black History Catalog. And it's about an event that I hosted last night, and I feel like it was a big success. And I want to talk about it here with you guys.
Because this is a safe space, I know that I can share this with you. Now, I'm going to do my best not to get emotional because this particular event that I hosted last night, it encompassed a number of firsts for me, and I want to share that with you. And so I'm just kind of giving that disclaimer right now. If I get a little weepy, just don't even mind me.
Just somehow ignore the snot in and everything and just hear the words that are coming out of my mouth. You know, show some grace. That's all I ask for is grace. All right.
So this event last night was sponsored by a group called the Agents of Change. And the event was titled 2021 Vision for Building Stronger Communities. Now, this was my first true Facebook Live. I had done one years ago, and it maybe lasted 30 seconds.
It was like, let me just see what this does. What happens if I push this button? But whereas this one, this was an hour long session, an hour long discussion. And so this was night and day from what I had done before.
So I am sweating myself for the fact that I did that. All right. Now, the other part about it is that this was my first time doing a Facebook Live by way of Zoom, which meant we were in the Zoom, but we were broadcasting it through Facebook Live. That all in itself brought a gang of issues, but we figured it out.
We got through it. It went live. People could see our faces. And I'm happy about it.
I think we did a great job. So I'm not even sweating that either. Now, I will say this. When the event was over, we were no longer live.
I started to panic. I'm like, oh my gosh, how did I look? How did I sound? What, you know, did they hear when my cell phone went off?
Did I look crazy when I was looking all around my screen, trying to locate the question in the chat and all. I went into mini panic mode and then I had to stop and I had to blow in my own ear and be like, girl, calm down. Like you did that for real though. Like patch yourself on the back, show yourself some grace and let yourself know that you are the bomb.com.
Okay. And so then it's like, as soon as I said that to myself, I could breathe again. I was like, oh, yeah, because the bottom line is nobody's perfect. So somebody can go and pick apart my little conversation.
And that's fine. Go ahead. Still I rise though. So yeah, I'm not even sweating that.
So about the actual event, though, I interviewed a young lady named April England Albright. And she's with this organization called Black Voters Matter. And she is dynamic. And, you know, to talk to her, she'd be like, oh, you know, I'm not a speaker.
I'm not this and that. But she is passionate about, she is bound her thing. Okay. She is so passionate about the work that they do through Black Voters Matter that she had me wanting to shout, y'all.
I want to be like somebody hold my mule. Why I go do my little two step over here in the corner. But at the end of that conversation, I wanted to run outside and just like wake everybody up. Like, come on, guys, we need to get together and do something.
So needless to say, I was supercharged. And even talking to other people that listened to it, they came out of it feeling the same way. So I wanted to feel crazy, but too, I felt really good about this event. To give you some of the highlights from the discussion that I had with April, basically she summed it up saying that this is not a sprint.
This is a marathon. So when you get into this or you decide that you want to be involved in activism, then when you do that and make that decision, don't do it because you got a chip on your shoulder and you're mad about something and you're like, I'm going to make this change. Do it from a place of love. Do it because you love yourself, you love your people, you love your community.
And you know that the things that you are fighting for are actually going to help the community. It's going to be beneficial to the people and not so much that you want to go running around kicking over in hills. So that was one of the points that she made that I was like, oh man, I love it. That is awesome.
Another thing that she mentioned was about the fact that because it is a 365 days of the year type thing, that you don't want to let things fall. And what I mean by that is when you get out the vote, you're telling people, go vote, go vote, go vote. And it's a presidential election year and they go do it. But then you don't follow up with anything else until it's time to vote again.
Or you're telling people, fill out the census, fill out the census. And then after they fill it out, there's no follow up. So you don't know when the results came out or what they're even doing with those results. So don't let your work stop short of what the goal is.
So before you even start, you got to figure out what's the end game? What's the goal? What's the objective at the end that you're trying to reach? And then work your way to that.
Don't just start running. And then all of a sudden you're tired of like, ooh, I'm out of breath. But you hadn't made it to the finish line. So what's the purpose of that?
The last part of our discussion that I want to highlight is that April was stressing the idea that we need to hold our elected government officials accountable. When they get in these positions and like these senators have these acts placed before them and they're not acting on them. They're not acting in your community's best interest. You need to let them know that you see them.
You see what they're doing and that you're not feeling it. And she was she referred to a situation with water dripping on concrete that each little drip by itself doesn't seem like it's doing anything. But if you let it drip long enough, it's going to eventually break that concrete. So basically she was trying to tell us that we need to go ahead and Andy do frame her, you know, do a little shashank move and keep contacting these people over and over and over again.
And they're going to get tired of hearing from you. They're going to get tired of having a deal with you and they're going to be like, I'll get you know what, let me look into whatever this thing is that they keep talking about. Let me see what it's all about. Let me maybe even contact them back and let them know that I received it.
So you don't have to write me any more letters. You don't have to send me any more faxes. No more messages, please. And thank you.
But you know what, you still don't let them off the hook then. You continue until they make some moves. And so with that, we had a number of apps and websites that can help you with that process. You don't have to figure that out on your own.
You don't have to figure out how or who your representatives are. It's all in your smartphone. You can do it all from your phone. And so I'm going to list those out.
You know what, I'll go ahead and list them out now. So there's one call My Reps, M-Y-R-E-P-S. There's another called Five Calls, the number five in calls, C-A-L-L-S. There's a Resist Bot, R-E-S-I-S-T-V-O-T.
Vote, Vote Spotter, V-O-T-E-S-P-O-T-E-R. There's also countable, C-O-U-N-T-A-B-L-E. And last but not least is A-F-A dot Net. Those out, see which one works best for you and your situation and how you prefer to move.
Maybe you don't want to actually place a call. Well, one of them, I think it's Resist Bot. You can send a text. You type it in the text.
And it will then fax that text message to the proper person. So I mean, there are so many ways and means right there at your fingertips. You just have to take a chance, get started, and just do it. I know.
I know what you're thinking. You're like, Yvette, how in the world did you go and tell us all of this stuff about this discussion you had last night and didn't even give us a single snippet? Well, guess what? I got the entire snippet on my YouTube channel.
So check it out at heveve. That's at H-E-Y-E-V-E-T-E. I've got the entire thing there. Now, let me go ahead and do my little disclaimer.
Show me Grace. Because on Facebook Live, we went from screen to screen. It was a speaker to speaker view. However, in the Zoom, it did not go from speaker to speaker.
So we're side by side. So yes, there are a couple of times that I might be looking a little crazy because I'm looking all around my screen, looking at my notes, looking at other things. I'm typing on the computer here and there, typing notes back to my producer, where they're shooting me with questions. My phone rings in the middle of the whole thing.
And I dive under the table to grab my phone and make it stop ringing. There are a number of bloopers in this particular video. However, like I said, show me Grace. Perfect does not appear in this world.
And it's not going to appear in this video either. So now about that video, you can find it on my YouTube channel at heveve. That's at H-E-E-E-T-E. Using that same handle, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram and Clubhouse too.
I think I'm in Clubhouse under heave it. I'm not really sure. I haven't really checked him out a whole lot, but keep an eye out. I'll be there.
And then also you can find me on Facebook at heveve.1. All right, have a great, great, wonderful, marvelous weekend. And I will see you back here again on Tuesday.