Millennial Minds Eps 10 Paul Monteiro

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This is your girl Yasmine Gazzie speaks Harrington host of Millennial Minds. Today we have a distinguished guest with us. Mr. Paul Monteiro.

He is the current chief of staff for President Frederick at Howard University. H. U. You know, former he's the former deputy director of religious affairs on the 2008 Obama campaign and is currently running for the county executive of Prince George's County, Maryland.

Welcome, Mr. Monteiro. Thank you so much, Mr. And it's nice to see you.

It's a pleasure. It is a pleasure. I'm so glad you made it and you could come down here and share with us. So tell us about yourself and what you're doing now.

Okay, well, I'm a chairman of your fan club. Oh, for those who are listening, Miss Harrington was one of my best students. Several years ago, actually, back when she was in eighth grade. Yeah, we go back like a Cadillac.

Yeah, so it's good to see you there. But yeah, I'm a native apprentice, just county, Maryland, okay, attended kindergarten at Delphi Elementary School, okay, middle school there and graduated from high point high school in Bell, Switzerland, Maryland. So I'm a proud apprentice, county public school graduate. I'm the first my family to graduate high school.

Well, both my parents dropped out. my mom got pregnant. And my dad lost interest. Okay, my sister, I'm the second of five kids, my sister's the eldest and smartest.

She got pregnant at high point. Okay, I was going to drop down. So I was the first to sort of pick up the baton for my family. And then I went on to college down the street at University of Maryland, college part.

All right. And I had a great time there. And what did you study? I was a history major.

Okay, I want to go back to high point and be AP US history teacher because I had a great teacher. And then my freshman year college, I got an internship at the United States Supreme Court. I'm not surprised. That's amazing.

It was just a blessing a door opened up. And one of the blessings of this very junior internship was you sit on the bench with the justices of the United States Supreme Court. So I'm sitting behind the justices as I hear arguments from the best lawyers in the country. I understood like 10% of what they were talking about.

And this was your freshman year of college. So that put me on a pathway. I stayed as a history major, but I was like, I want to go to law school. So yeah, I graduated graduate with a degree in history.

And then work for a couple years at a law firm as a paralegal, because I wanted to go to law school but needed to save up money. And then I went to Howard University for law school, one of the best decisions I could have made participated in the Marshall Brennan constitutional law program. Okay, constitutional law to eighth and ninth grade students, including yourself. Yeah, Paul, so that's how you came to us.

Okay. And after that, I went to work for Senator Obama, you know, on his campaign in Chicago. Now, how did you hear about him? I think, you know, like everybody else, he was sort of everywhere.

After he gave that famous speech in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention, that he was on the map. Oh, they were like, who's this guy? Yeah, and then by 2006, everybody knew who he was. You know, he was a senator, the only African American senator at that time.

And yeah, I just decided I wanted to work for him. So I applied to work in his Senate office. And got open up a door to work there. And once he announced he was run for president, half the staff moved to Chicago.

So I packed up my car and drove to Chicago and took the job as the national deputy director for religious affairs for his 2000 campaign. How was that? It was great. I mean, looking back at it, it was wild because at the beginning, it was 2007, people were like, what's his name?

Barack what? And he thinks he's gonna do what? And so a lot of the attack lines against him were rooted in his identity and belief, you know, what about his name? What does he really believe?

What about the school he went to when he was a child in Indonesia? You know, it's a religious extremist school. What about his pastor? There's you know, the attack lines around Jeremiah, right?

Trinity United Church of Christ and the church had a black value system, where some people that were trying to deal with utilizing were saying, well, that's inherently racist, how you going to church that's a racist church. And so just pushing back on some of those attack lines and saying, we'll tell you what he believes will show you what he's about. We'll show you his career in public service, helping people serving people, the fact that he's a committed Christian. And he was a community organizer, too.

Yeah, that's sort of his background before law school, he was organizing on the South Side of Chicago with with low income communities of people that were unemployed to help them improve their situation. So Yeah, no, but it was it was 18 months on the campaign of establishing his identity, including his his religious identity and showing he shared values with a lot of people. So it was a great experience. It was tough because you see a lot of vitriol, a lot of animosity thrown his way by people just saying he's not somebody that anyone should support, he doesn't share your values.

And we made the point successfully enough to get him elected, he does share your values. I'm so thankful for that point in time in history, and for the journey that you all took and are still taking and barking upon, it speaks a lot to to the power of messaging, in the power of, like you said, you know, showing shared values. And we miss him. Every day I saw him on this week we met up and just he looks very relaxed.

Right? I'm sure he's still very much focused on, you know, we have some serious things going on and he's figuring out how to play constructive role. And the Obama Foundation. Yeah, you know, working hard on getting that go and getting the library stood up in Chicago, raising money, and finishing his book, you know, I guess I finished his book project because that's coming out next year.

Oh, another book, I love it. I love it. So you are currently running for County Executive, Prince George's County. So tell us why, you know, how how this how this thought and idea came about and share with us, you know, your organizing principles and what you hope to accomplish.

Sure. So this is this is home to me. And you know, having worked, you know, in Chicago for the the first campaign, as soon as it was over, I moved back home to Prince George's County. So I've been there other than that, you know, Chicago, I've lived there my whole life.

I never really left. And because I love living there and have a lot of gratitude for the place. Like I said, I grew up in a family with a lot of kids, young parents, not a lot of money. So having some outstanding public school teachers that went out of their way to help a kid like me, you know, free lunch kid, not a lot of money, you know, helping me get exposed to authors, books, you know, cultural literacy.

I appreciate and value the place. And it's I'm coming from a place of I want to take care of home. Prince George's County has a lot of good things going for it. It's the most affluent.

It's one of the most diverse counties in America. And it's most affluent Black majority county in the country. I've heard that. It's true.

Okay. Okay. But in the same breath, you know, folks never want to talk about the other part of the county. And inside the richest Black County in America, you have concentrated poverty in neighborhoods that look very much, you know, unlike national harbor or or buoy, you know, where it's like, really very poor.

I mean, people are struggling. You know, pay rent, people are struggling. I mean, the hunger rates in the DMV have gone down the last several years. They've gone up in Prince George's County.

And you have a very diverse population, many immigrants, communities coming into the county that are just kind of working to survive. And I look at Prince George's County as a place of I was on the other side of the spectrum. We my dad was a roofer back then. My mom was a secretary and they have four kids.

So, you know, using the food bank using the free lunch using the public school system. I based on the last 11 years of experience, haven't worked, you know, for the president on his campaign, but serving five years on his White House staff, two years running AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps, AmeriCorps Vista, and a year running the mediation program at the Justice Department. I have a skill set that I can leverage to use a place that helped me. So that's where I'm running.

And the reasons I'm running the education system in our county is something people always talk about, but never really seems to change. I remember being in the in fifth grade in a trailer, you know, running out of paper, the school runs out of paper, so they send a letter home asking the parents to donate paper. Learning what furlough meant. That's when you can't pay the teachers for five days.

So you have school four days a week and you're closed a fifth day to save money. You know, just silly things of like my high school was built in 1954. How many high schools or any schools in the county have, you know, the water coming out of that water fountain is brown right now. You know, there's mold in the building there's air quality issues.

And you know, I just say education has to be first and foremost, but you also have to talk about economic development the way that we make it hard for businesses to start in the county. We have some savvy entrepreneurs, many, many, many, who want to start their own business in the county, we don't make it easy on them. We actually make it harder. And so they're looking at what's easy to do business in T.C.

or Montgomery County or in around the county or how we're like, we need to chase that talent to keep them. That's wealth. They're built. Yeah.

I love to brag like we're the county that you know, Jim Henson who started the Muppets. You know, really? Jim Henson's from Prince Church County, which is an awesome high school. Sergei Bryn, one of the founders of Google from Prince Church County.

So we have people that are, you know, and those are just two of so many. We need to chase businesses and keep them in the county. Restorative justice is a third part of my platform. We should not throw people away because they call it a We Charge or any chart if they messed up.

Okay, you have to be accountable for that. You got to do some time do the time to pay the fine pay the fine. But once you do that, welcome back. And you see what happens when a lot of jurisdictions throw the book at somebody, even when they get out, there's nowhere for them to go.

No job that will hire them. No place that will live in the neighborhood. No community that will welcome them back. And so you get the very predictable in and out in and out in and out in our county, we should be leading the way on saying accountability short.

But once you do what you have to do, this is the pathway back because unless we give you a pathway back, you probably get a real fan. And that's a problem for everybody, including you. So we were talking off the air about the bail bond industry. The fact that we have a bail bond industry in Prince George's County where you know, there's an industry that's a parasite.

It's like, okay, you got arrested. You now in jail waiting for your hearing, you could get bail bond man to help you get out. But you got to pay bail bond man some money that you probably don't have. You got to call all your relatives to get a thousand dollars together so they can, you know, bond you out right over the line of DC it shows you not to do it that way.

DC says, you know, you get arrested. Okay, we're gonna evaluate you through pre trial services. What's the likelihood of you showing up your hearing a month from now? And if we can trust and believe you're going to show up, we'll see you in a month in court.

And most people show up, right, we don't have that option in Prince George County. It's like you got to go either plea out and say, you know what, I got to get out, I got to get back to my job. So yeah, I did it or I'll just take a plea. So I get out and get back to work tomorrow.

Or you go to bail bond man, if you have the money or can get the money to bail you out to come back for your hearing a month, or you just sit in jail for a month, and so you're here. And it's like, so even if you didn't do it, whatever job you had is going because I'm not gonna wait a month for you. And so you know, it's just the fact that you go to Upper Marburg, you see the courthouse and all around just like the liquor store or a check catching place and it's bail bond man, just waiting to like help service you, you know, and I just think it's a parasitic industry that should not be existing in the most affluent African American majority country or anywhere, you know, is at that point, you just distort the justice system where it's like, what depends on how much money you have. And the last part of the platform is just restoring a culture of stewardship, county offices, county services, county functions, this is public service, and it should be delivered as such with a culture of customer service.

These are citizens that are paying for services. And if you know, every person working with the county should respect that. I think it's phenomenal. You know, these, these principles that you have, especially with education and restorative justice, and all of them actually economic development are so necessary.

So I just think it's phenomenal. Like I'm so excited to see where you're going and what you're gonna do. Your listeners are excited. Oh, yes, we're gonna rally up.

And if you can inform us, when like what are the benchmarks, you know, for us casting our votes and all of that? Sure. Yeah. So the primary I'm a Democrat running for the Democratic nomination.

So the primary for the Democratic parties in June of next year, June 26. So you have early voting in Prince George's County, and you have absentee voting too. So you can't physically show up to a polling place you can mail your ballot in. And you know, the race, you have to be a registered Democrat, we have a closed primary.

So if you're an independent or Republican, you can't vote in it. Really? No, it's some states have closed or counties to have closed primary. So only Republicans vote for Republicans, only Democrats and Democrats.

So that's something voters should be aware of. But yeah, with early voting, there are places you can go in advance of June 26 to cash your ballot that have different hours to be more accessible to people that may work during the workday. But yeah, the general election is in November of next year. But Prince George's County, they're 10 to one Democrats.

So if you win the June primary, you're likely to win the November general election. So that's why everyone's focused on the June primary next year. Okay. And then what can we do, you know, to help you like the millennial?

I would say millennials can win this election. And what I mean by that is first and foremost, in this county of Prince George's County, you have about 18 to 20% of voters vote. So if you think about that, most people don't vote. 80% don't vote.

And my point is you look at their 270-something precincts. They're schools you can vote at, churches you can vote at, post office library, about 270 so places you can vote. Some of the precincts, seven people showed up. You know, it's like so small.

And I think millennials, you know, they have the most to gain from this election, especially with education pieces, saying, listen, a big part of my platform is saying, the high schools, this public school system should be serving them well, and we got to get away from a place of stigmatizing everything about college. Because an audit came out two weeks ago showing where we are falsely inflating our graduation rates. An audit came out showing like, listen, and it's not just a P.G. either.

No, but we got caught in an audit. So we're definitely in the cross-airs because they found administrators went back and changed grades for kids, students that were not eligible to graduate so that they could graduate. But that's, I mean, I saw that going on some level when I was in school, it was like, people were just not doing anything and they were so graduate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So but the problem with that is like, you're disturbing these students, like, okay, so now they're in the workforce. They're not competitive for jobs. Some of them can't read. Some of them can't do high school math.

That's a setup. And in this area, like you can't, you're working at Chipotle, I love Chipotle, but you can't survive in this very expensive area. And you're setting these kids up for no opportunities. And I think for a millennial in high school right now, or recently graduated saying like you and your peers, or millennials with children, which is especially, yeah, especially with children.

You have a lot at stake in this election because I'm talking about, as the only person running who actually graduated from Prince George County Public Schools, I've seen the schools, I know what time it is, you know, because I've seen it from the perspective of a student. And you have to get serious about putting more money and better controls and accountability into the school system to serve kids and say, listen, you don't want to go to college, fine, but I have a responsibility to you to help you work to land in a career. Where are you going to work when you graduate? We should work backwards and say, we need to get you from ninth grade.

Take your classes in the morning, but working for an apprenticeship program or an internship program that leads to a job you can live off of. And I'm not just talking when I say apprenticeship like vocational, although those are good, my brother's a union plumber. He makes more money than some college graduate friends of mine. You know, so that's not wrong with that.

But even if you don't want to do like, you know, the manual labor, what about coding? What about cyber security? What about health IT? What about- You need your basics?

And you need your basics, but these are jobs, these are not minimum ways, jobs. Oh, no, no, no. And I'm saying you could come out high school diploma and a job you can live off of. Everybody's good when these students have a healthy salary they can live and start a family off to what they want to do, handle their business.

But it's a set up to graduate them quote unquote where they don't have basic skills. They're not competitive for any jobs and the school system kind of didn't work with them. They're over here working with the kids on their fast-selling getting them to college, which I'm not knocking. I'm saying not everybody's going to college.

We got to a place as a country just saying like college is everything. So if you're not going to college, must be because you're not as smart or you're something's wrong. You're like absolutely wrong. Absolutely wrong.

Because again, a lot of these jobs that don't require college, you could get you can make 80k, 90k, 100, let me pet go to the power company. They start at $23 an hour. So when she's growing over time, that's a six figure job. The problem is they have a math test, 50% passagery.

And they're testing graduates. So it's like, hold on, how can only half of our students pass a pebco math test to get a very good job? So something clearly is messed up. And I'm not here to like blame a teacher.

I'm just saying we have a systematic issue. Let's be honest about it and fix it. Because these students, when they graduate, they don't disappear. They're in the community, probably living in these concentrated pockets of poverty, you know, district heights, fair amount of heights, capital heights, wherever we know the school was not effectively preparing them to see beyond what they've seen in the neighborhood, what everyone in their family does.

And we could expose these students to a whole other career and a future if you just, you know, we're intentional about it while they're still in the public school system. I agree. That's excellent. So let's also get into you are an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland.

I teach on Tuesday nights, yeah, University of Maryland. And you're an excellent teacher, by the way. So I'm excited for these college students to have the opportunity to sit under you. And now you have all this additional experience as well, so that they get to listen to you and pull off of your knowledge and experience.

So religious liberty. So let's talk about that. You know, we're in an era where millennials, a lot of millennials and even generation Z that's behind us on the younger children ages, like two to 18, they're either none, you know, they don't identify with any religious religion or religious structure, or they'll say they're spiritual but not religious. So what kinds of things do you hear that your students saying and maybe in the papers, you know, like what are the current, what is an issue maybe that that they're that you all are wrestling in this religious liberty course?

Yeah, and I'm so glad to hear that you're at one of the great divinity schools in our nation at Howard University School of Divinity. Some people think differently, but it really is. Hey, I would just say, yeah, my class really looks at this argument that defines America because I feel like it's just it's this 500 pound gorilla that's in it's America and people are always surprised when it comes up. I mean, that was a fight over Obamacare, you know, Obamacare and it's like, well, it's going to make employers cover certain things where women's health, including contraceptives, right?

This, you know, and so it's just you always had this tension between governments operating over a very religiously diverse population and government wants to do certain things to promote certain things and people in the population say, well, I can't do that. My religion won't let me. Well, my religion says, you know, I have to do this, but the government's saying I can't do it. And so it's just it's ongoing debate in America.

And now you have you've never had this large of a percentage of Americans publicly saying, none unaffiliated. You know, my parents, that was good for my parents. I want to do it differently. Even if I keep the label, I'm not going to walk it out the way they did.

I, you know, you see how many churches are like redefining church. You don't have to wear a suit. You don't have to wake up at seven in the morning on a Sunday, you can go Saturday night, you know, so just the way that the institutions are changing to try to cater to and engage a generation of people saying like, I don't want to do it that way, or I'm still turned off by the negative things I've seen. I don't don't don't want that label anymore.

I'm gonna do it my way. I just be a good person. I'll do community service. I'll be focused on the golden rule, the universal morals that unite all the religions.

I don't want to pick one. So it's just a fascinating subject to study because this force that created America, again, people were coming here to exercise their beliefs. It's just a different time now where what happens when you have, you know, the institutional church is getting older, older, look at the mainline Protestant churches Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, getting smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, dying off, really. Yes.

And, and you have a larger and large group saying like, don't label me any of that. It's a fascinating, to me, it's a fascinating topic. And we were talking about again, like, you're coming up on the holidays. You already know, it's gonna be, hey, what's up with that Christmas tree down there or that nativity scene down there?

I have a problem with that, you know, and it's, and then the other side says, well, it's so warm Christmas again. Here they go. We're just trying to celebrate the birth of our Savior. And here comes, you know, so it's just as a class.

I don't take sides. I'm just saying this is an issue to track. Mm. Wow, that's phenomenal.

So based on what you're seeing with our systems in terms of our educational systems in terms of our, for lack of a better term, you know, our justice systems, which, you know, there are lots of holes and issues there. What advice do you have for millennials and Generation Z, the younger folks moving forward? You know, what are some of the things that we should be aware of? What are the things that we should be looking for?

And what are some ways in which we can help to improve and to deconstruct and break down a lot of these systems that have only been growing. And so for some, it's beneficial. But for others, it's very detrimental. Yeah, I would answer that with sort of my time at the Justice Department.

My time at the Justice Department, I ran the Community Relations Service. This is a little known program that's part of the Justice Department. It was written into the Civil Rights Act in 1964. They're basically teams of mediators that go to communities in crisis because, you know, the Civil Rights Act in 1964 says, you know, you didn't have to serve in your restaurant yesterday, but today you do.

That's not just going to happen. So these meetings were like, how do we keep this calm and peaceful and unviolet, but say you have rights now that they have to respect, let's mediate this. And 2016, it was like, if you think about all the things that happened in 2016, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, you know, the shooting in Charlotte, shooting in Baltimore, shooting, you know, so many places. And every time we would go to try to mediate these cases, we're up in the mayor's office and the police chief's office around the table.

It's like a big cheese pastor, big cheese mayor, big cheese chief. You look out the window, who's outside? They don't want to come to this meeting. It's these young people, middle school kids, in Baton Rouge, middle school students, after the sterling shooting, they made away for themselves to express themselves because they did not trust the people sitting at the table.

They're like, you don't even want to hear me before. Oh, you want to talk to me now though? No, thanks. So every time you look out the window, I was like, who are those young people out there leading the protest or with a list of demands?

They made their own way. And I would say this generation, I mean, I'm all about like, you know, don't just throw out every structure. If it's working, use it. There's a lot to learn from existing structures, but this generation, I don't have to tell them.

I mean, they're making their own structures. That's, you see the rise of these, you know, we call them autonomous organizations. I think Black Lives Matter is the most known one. You show up on the scene, Hey, who's in charge here?

Nobody. Well, I want to talk to who's in charge. I want to, you know, what do you want? Well, I'll tell you what I want because I speak for me.

Miss Errington asked her what she wants because I don't speak for Miss Errington. And if I try to, Miss Errington would tell me, you know, it's a very flat thing where it's like they're making their own way to have a voice. And I mean, they're making an impact. So I was just, I don't have to encourage them there.

And again, just making it clear, they have so much influence. Maybe they don't realize they have it sometimes because again, going back to the voting conversation, most people don't vote where I am. Some of these precincts were one with 100 votes, but you could, you could have taken a precinct, get your friends together on social media. Like let's show up here.

Boom. Because only seven people showed up. You have eight friends, you win. But sometimes people have a really high bar in their mind.

Like, well, unless I have a million dollars in a million friends, I can't have a voice. Oh, but that's not sure. They're showing. They will be heard too.

So I'm excited to see what they do to make their own way. Because what, you know, what they've inherited, it's like a jacket that doesn't fit them quite right. And like, I want to wear that jacket. I'm gonna make my own jacket.

Right. Yes. Well, thank you, Mr. Montero.

Thank you, Miss Errington. It was a pleasure to have you. So you all heard it here. We have been enlightened and educated by Mr.

Montero. And he's running for a county executive at Prince George's County Maryland. Paul for Prince George's dot com Paul for Prince George's dot com for this online. George's dot com.

Yes, visit online. All right. You're listening to W. E.

R. A 96.7 FM. This is Yazzy speaks on Millennial Minds. Until next time.

Peace.