Track4-Mic 4

Blake Kennedy is running for City Director for the City of Memphis. He wants to build and protect homes, supply downtowns, and make the city affordable for everyone. He is dedicated to being a voice for all residents. Blake Tierney, another candidate, is invited to speak to the Little Rock Central Leftist Club. He is praised for understanding the needs of the community and being able to connect with young activists. Blake Tierney has a commitment to Little Rock and wants to make positive changes. He has experience in public service and believes in bringing people together to address gaps and needs in the community. He acknowledges the heartbreak and hope in the city and is determined to make a difference. Despite challenges, he remains dedicated to using his privilege to stand up for others and break down oppressive systems. The interview focuses on the love for Little Rock and the potential it has to thrive if corruption, oppression, and compromised democracy can be addressed. The dis I'm Blake Kennedy, and I'm running for City Director for the City of Memphis. Together, we can build on the rocks and protect our homes, supply supplies to our downtowns, and grow to the cost of this one for everyone. I want to be a voice for everyone. I'm Blake Kennedy, and I'm asking you to hear from me. This is very important to me. This is Blake Kennedy of the story. I'm speaking for us, the City Director for the City of Memphis. Welcome to Community Conversations with Stand Up Arkansas. I'm your host, Steve Graf, and today we have the honor to be with the Little Rock Central Leftist Club. Leftist Club. I can't really say that very well. It's a student organization here on campus at Little Rock Central. My friend and political advocate, Ron, is part of this group, and he invited me to come visit with the club today. He asked me if I could help him bring political candidates running for office right here in Central Arkansas to speak to the club, and the very first person I thought of was Blake Tierney. Blake understands the needs of this community. He has a plan for the future, and he knows how to speak to these younger activists in ways I literally can't understand. Blake Tierney is running for City Director right where these students live and vote. You know, there are two kinds of candidates. One that decides one day that he or she is going to run for office. They raise a bunch of money, and they buy his or her way into that office. The other is to work in your community. Get involved. Understand the needs of the people. Listen. And then look for gaps and needs and find a solution to fill or fix those gaps and make your community a better place. You can guess which one we have with us today. Blake, thank you so much for being here with us and answering the call for the students and literally being the conduit so I can understand what these students need and they can get their voice heard. Thanks for being here today. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to be here. Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background. I'm just going to open it up to you to tell the audience out here, tell the students in here something about your background. Yeah. Thanks for asking. So my name is Blake Tierney. I'm running for our At-Large City Director position here in the city of Little Rock. It's a city-wide race, and I'm really excited about being able to provide this service to the city and be a sort of leader to everyone who lives here, from maintaining everybody to buying homes for everybody. I was born and raised in Little Rock, Utah. I have given my heart to this city in a lot of different ways. I gave myself to service at our house in the city of Maricorps. I led the multi-faceted youth group of Arkansas. Most of us. Okay. You can introduce yourself. So I've given a lot of myself to the city. From my service time at our house in Maricorps, leading the multi-faceted youth group of Arkansas, helping start the emergency community church in Little Rock, as well as career collectives and serving on the Haitians in Little Rock. I've been able to see both the heartbreak of Little Rock, as well as its incredible situation. Yeah. And so I'm running because things have been set up for too long in the city. I graduated from a great college. I got a degree in psychology. After my service at our house, I was away for a few years. I got my Master's in Public Service from Marquette University, and I wanted to bring all that back home. There's ways that I love, there's many reasons. I wanted to see more connections being made, especially between good people doing good work, nonprofits, industry, government, et cetera. And when I came back and I saw that things had changed, especially in the homeless sphere where I had done so much service, or in other spaces, I realized that things have been stuck in our leadership. And the same way you look at the community over and over again, and in particular in Mississippi where my opponent has been in the seat for 32 years. And so I decided that I wanted to jump in. And the more that I jumped in, the more I realized that this is both the right move to make for me and for the city, but it's also... I realized that it's both the right move for me, as a leader who has experience that we need to help the city grow, and it's the right move for the city to change the leadership of the county. So I noticed you talk a lot about having this sort of commitment to Little Rock and feeling the heartbreak, but also feeling the hope that comes with Little Rock. I would like you to elaborate a little bit on why you feel a dedication to Little Rock and a little bit about your background that led you to pursue public service in Little Rock, considering all of the problems that we're facing. I guess my core question is, why not give up? Why not move away? That's only a question to somebody that really knows what it's going to feel. I saw... I'll just give a short response to that. As a kid myself, I wanted to move away because I did not feel like I had the opportunities that I saw other people having in the United States. As a queer person myself, I know too many people that are incredibly hurt by the people in power in the United States. I chose to leave because I wanted to learn how to make things better. I knew at some point that I was going to return home. Didn't know how, didn't know when. It took five years, and then I decided to move back. But when I moved back, I carried so much with me, including being in Marquette, being in Milwaukee. I learned a lot from people there, including somebody who said something that really resonated with me about how I felt about the Iraq and about my own love, which was that if a place is too low, it's going to break your heart. That is what drives me, is that people want us to give up. People want us to be so crushed that we don't act and decide to make a difference in the way that we can, to realize the power that we have both as individuals and as a group. Like the group that we have here today, when people gather together and decide to stand up for something and use all the resources that they have, that is powerful. There can be many times that even when you speak up, people are going to say, people are going to ignore it. I've seen it too many times in the city board meetings that I've attended, but there's that constant voice in the back of their heads that says, it's going to be your voice that they hear. And the more that they ignore it, the more is evident that it's time to change and that people are going to step up. And that's why I did it. I knew, recognizing my own privilege, I'm white, I'm this, I'm male, I am Christian, all of these things that give me privilege to walk in this world in ways that my black, brown, trans, Muslim, whatever other identities, non-English speaking siblings in this world don't have that privilege that I do. I knew that even with my queerness that I had to be fun about it so that I could stand up for other people and use the privileges that I have to make a difference where I could and pay and break open the dams that have been built intentionally by these systems of power to keep holding them up for 32 years. I really appreciate the message that you've just given and I think it really rings true for a lot of people, especially people who have been really active in their communities for a long period of time. I haven't been active for a while because I'm not that old, but the first time that I ever got in front of representatives and spoke was at the Capitol. And the sheer bureaucracy and the sheer corruption and the sheer lack of ethics that is present in our government, it produces a sort of feeling that's very hard to describe. I think some of the things you said about loving Little Rock almost get to describing it. It's a sort of hatred that you feel that's coded in a love for your community and a love for the place that you grew up in. Because it's hard to feel such strong emotions for people that are hurting your community if you don't love your community. And I think that that's what really builds the ties of obligation that keeps us here in Little Rock. Even though there are so many amazing places in the world that are, quite frankly, probably healthier for us to be in, we know that our purpose is here to a very large extent. I know that I've visited other places. I visited New York over the summer. It was one of the coolest trips I've ever been on. I didn't think that the world could get that cool. And I came back to Little Rock and I didn't come back to Little Rock hating it. I came back to Little Rock feeling the same thing that I've kind of always felt. And it's that Little Rock has so much potential to be a thriving and active and loving community. But it is the systems of corruption, the systems of oppression, and the systems that compromise democracy that are keeping us from accomplishing that. I really do feel. Thanks, Roe. You know, Roe and I have done this together and I've gotten to know Roe over the last couple of years in the field, like hard working. Like an inspector in Arkansas trying to get abortions. That's tough in rural Arkansas. I know it's hard. I know it's tough. And Blake, listen to these students here. We're going to do something a little bit different for community conversations right now. I'm going to even stray from what we're talking about. The next session is about, I was going to ask you, what's your top three issues? What are the three main things you want to hammer home in Little Rock? We're not talking about Gaza. I'm sure you have a stance on what's going on in Israel. We're not talking about abortion. You can't affect that. What we want to talk about is Little Rock. This is all for Little Rock to get people to come back like we're talking about. So instead of me asking and facilitating this section, I'm going to step away from the mic for about ten minutes and I'm going to let three of the students come up here and they're going to talk to you about the issues of the city. And then after a few minutes, after everybody gets a chance to ask you a question, I'll come back and we'll close this thing out. Are you okay with that? I put you on the spot for something we didn't talk about before. Anybody else want to take my seat? Come on over here. Okay. Everybody introduce yourself and then ask your question. And you all can just interact. You don't have to just do like this. You change your mind on what question you want to ask. It's okay. This is a conversation. And it's better to really talk about what we need to do rather than vote. Is your stance on this? So good luck, y'all. I'm looking real forward to this. While we're in transition, I want to share two things. One is a book based on what you said about feeling all that love and that's really a strong emotion. It's called Delusional Intelligency. It's a book that I read in grad school and it's super, and it's an issue because it's basically when you get in touch with those, especially like male bodies never been in close circles as they can or like been in close circles too much. We have to deal with things in order to stay connected to one another, to ourselves, to the community. And whether that is like, there's another book that I'm planning on right now, Love and Behavior, I think is what it's called. But it's a similar vibe. So deal with feelings and let it fuel the work you want to do and change the history. The other is, yeah, watching those testimonies like the committee hearings last year was so infuriating. And kudos to everybody who spoke up. We appreciate it. And got interrupted and shut down in a democratic and liberal way. I've done a lot of work in community engagement with my nonprofit in the government field and they were telling a lot of nonprofit leaders, government leaders, you can't do that. That is actively un-democratic. Yeah. So I'm going to go on forever. Thank you all. If y'all have questions, I'm going to take a few seconds for everyone to move to your chairs. It looks better on the video. Yeah, everybody can speak. Good point. That's all right. Get up and get in. Do you want me to ask you a question? Yeah, I want you to switch that back and ask your question and then you'll go over here and then by the time it comes back around, you'll be kind of set and all smooth and all that. I want you to feel what it feels like to be in the mic when it comes back around. It's fun. Okay. Take it away, Ron. So I'm glad that we've covered everything that was covered. I would like to introduce Lucia. Hi, I'm Lucia. One of the questions I have for you is what would be your approach in addressing these issues that we're currently having in Little Rock? Yeah. So as somebody who's worked in non-profit, and I've worked over a decade in non-profit as well as working in non-profit. I did a lot of work in the coalition building. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I did a lot of work in the non-profit as well. I'm doing the same thing, but not doing it in the most effective way that I can do. I'm not talking to each other or sharing data. And so that is one way that I want to approach this. Let non-profits and non-service organizations be able to change themselves. The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... The other piece of that is... 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You take one wrong turn around the Midtown area and getting to where you go takes another 10 minutes. It's not like that in cities that are planned out better with mixed zoning and more thoughtful planning. I really think that would work to better our future. It has been absolutely amazing having you here and being able to interview you. Like I said, the passion you bring to this job is truly inspiring. I hope to see you more in the future. Do you have any final closing thoughts? First of all, it's really an honor to be here. I've been told that you're a high school footballer, and I've gotten to hear that you've been committed to the leadership and being an advocate for yourself and others and learning from them. I think you will grow as you learn how to not go in their own place. All I can say is that that brings back some really good memories for me being in this space, being with ex-lawyers like y'all, and seeing all the people out there. When I was in elementary and middle high school, I was part of an off-season line program. It was the Olympics, but then the Olympic Committee season in 1984, but I went to world competition twice and got the silver medal. I went to world competition once, and that's a big thing for me in school. Yeah, it's huge. Honestly, mine is such a great way of saying that you're given a problem and you're supposed to solve it in various ways. It's also a sign that people in elementary to high school you solve the problem, you design the problem, you make the script, you make the machine, and you own that machine. For me, at that age, it was one of the things like, oh, we can do a lot. I didn't have to go to world competition to see all these people from across the country, to see people from across the world. I didn't have to go through the lines to see people from my home town or from my local area. I did other work like that because I believe, just like you say, people that are close to the issue are the ones that solve the problem. I know it's a big thing for me when it comes to community engagement and there's work that I'm doing in my office in the community violence school. I'm so glad to be with you all and in that community. If you want to get involved in the campaign, you can go to... We have one final question. We want to keep this short and candid. I want her to ask her question. This is my last question. I'm sorry, I didn't get to ask my previous question. What do you think Jim should feel about what he did to support you in the campaign last year? Besides cops killing in the city? What would that be? While he's sitting here, what would that be? This is a long, probably, more interactive interview that was not built to be as live but more committed to the problem. It's not really a short film but I'll try and talk to you about it. It's a short film that seems to be there but kind of understated in terms of what's going on. I think she answered the question for you. I think it is going to take you long. I'm a hunter. I believe in having guns. I believe in protecting yourself from the enemy and anything that's not regulated with an unlimited number of bullets. I think that would help. There are laws that make it feel like that. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Gun laws are not like standing guns. They're all just more strict. Tell us, how can they get in touch with you? I know that these students are going to want to know where to go to the website, where they can go to help volunteer, knock on doors, phone calls, text, all that good stuff. The website is www.forlr.com That's www.forlr.com You can also find me on Instagram or Facebook and you can email me at connect at www.forlr.com I will give you all my number personally. Just give it to him afterwards. Why don't you want to put it out to the world? I will say it, but I want you to believe it. 501-920-6982 Here's my phone number. Please text me. I will give you two opportunities to get involved. I also want to hear from you all. What do you want to do in the city? We are go-knocking every weekend. We will be ramping those up with shifts during the week. Especially before get-out-the-boat. We are having a lot of different events. I will send you a link to my Facebook page. Most importantly, spread the word. Spread the word about the fact that this is an important election. Not just for the people at the top of Dallas or the people all the way down. We have an opportunity to make some real change at the local level. To tell people about their voice does matter in this. Also, that they have one of the clear choices in this election. Do we want somebody who has 32 years of real-life experience or do we want somebody who has the experience that they need to help this city reach its potential and meet the evidence? We just had an incredible conversation with a candidate. He is not just talking the talk, but he is walking the walk when it comes to community engagement and progressive values right here in Little Rock, Arkansas. From grassroots activism to addressing homelessness and bringing fresh perspectives to city leadership. I would like to show what it means to be a true advocate for the people. Remember, your voice matters. And your voice can shape the future of Little Rock. As students, stay informed, stay engaged, and let's keep the momentum going. Whether it's volunteering, spreading word, or showing up to the polls, every action counts. Arkansas isn't just a state. It's our home. Little Rock is our neighborhood. And we have the power to make it even better. So let's get out there and make some good trouble. Let the people rule. Let's keep it that way. Thank you. All right. Thank you. We will not go that long. Now, before we get out of here, what I'd like to do, if y'all are diggers, I will do the intro, and I'll do the outro, but I'm going to get off the mic and y'all can set it up. I want people to know what you're going to ask them in advance. So it's not a gotcha, maybe you can get an important answer. And I'll get somebody for the next Wednesday that y'all want. Just let me know what you want to do. And just to let you know before we adjourn, we're going to meet next Wednesday. Yeah? And it will probably be in the show, most likely.