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Full Transcript: Digital Media Guru And MIT Graduate Liz Burr On GHOGH Podcast

Full Transcript: Digital Media Guru And MIT Graduate Liz Burr On GHOGH Podcast

Black cultural optimization liz burr
Liz Burr, the senior vice president of product and operations at REIGN, speaks to Jamarlin Martin on this episode of the GHOGH show. Image: Anita Sanikop

In episode 25 of the GHOGH podcast, Jamarlin Martin talks to digital media guru and MIT graduate Liz Burr.

They talk about business prospects for podcasting, censoring Black artists and activists online, and how using the N-word got a top exec fired at Netflix.

They also discuss a hypothetical Democratic presidential race with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker running against Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

You can listen to the entire conversation right now in the audio player below. If you prefer to listen on your phone, GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin is available wherever you listen to podcasts — including Apple PodcastsSpotifyYouTube, and SoundCloud.


Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 25: Liz Burr
Jamarlin talks to digital media guru and MIT graduate Liz Burr. They talk about business prospects for podcasting, censoring Black artists and activists online, and how using the N-word got a top exec fired at Netflix.

This is a full transcript of the conversation which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jamarlin Martin: You’re listening to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin. We have a go hard or go home approach as we talk to the leading tech leaders, politicians and influencers. Let’s GHOGH! We have Liz Burr in the house on the GHOGH show. She’s a digital media executive and guru, and we’re very thankful for her to come on the show. How’s it going, Liz?

Liz Burr: Pretty good. Thanks for having me.

Jamarlin Martin: You’re from LA, but you’ve been in the New York City digital media streets for a long time. Walk our audience through your story growing up in LA and then coming to New York.

Liz Burr: I’m actually originally from New Mexico. I was born on a farm. Well I wasn’t born on a farm, but my grandparents are farmers. So we lived with my grandparents and so when I was about one year old, my mother and I moved to live with some family here in LA. So specifically we lived in Compton and Watts, we kind of went back and forth between different relatives for a little while. My mom didn’t finish college, but she tried to take some classes at Cal State Dominguez Hills, and eventually she had a job in Orange County. I remember she used to get up and leave at 5:00 AM from Compton to get to work at 8:00 AM, and then she would leave work at 5:00 PM to get home at 8:00 PM. So, my mom actually worked for some software company that was eventually swallowed up by Microsoft, this happened in like the late eighties. But mostly when it was time for me to go to school, my mom, since she worked down in Orange County, she decided that I should probably go to some better schools that were down there. So I spent most of my childhood between Orange County and a couple of years I did with my grandparents in New Mexico.

Jamarlin Martin: You went to high school, you went to college. Talk a little bit about that.

Liz Burr: In high school I actually read a book, ‘College Planning for Dummies’, in my freshman year. That book changed my life, because none of my parents had finished college or gone through any kind of competitive process, so I was just at a bookstore and got that book, read it front to back and said, hey, this is my strategy for getting into a good school, because I knew my parents couldn’t afford expensive schools. So I ended up actually at MIT for undergrad, and it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

Jamarlin Martin: What was your major at MIT?

Liz Burr: Comparative media studies. So what’s great about that program is that their motto is, we prepare you for jobs that don’t yet exist. And I felt like that was a really a good thing that I want it to be about because I really liked being on the bleeding edge. So a lot of classes I took were classes that had never existed at MIT before. They were always offering new subjects. It taught me a lot of different media theory over the years. And I think I got a good grasp of how we got from pre-written word to the internet. It was very comprehensive.

Jamarlin Martin: You end up going to USC for grad school, and then what happens after that?

Liz Burr: Yeah. So USC, I did it at Annenberg. I did a new digital media program that had ever existed before. I thought sign me up, that’s where I want to be. So I did that program and in the course of doing that I got an internship at PBS working in their new media department. And eventually right after I got that internship they hired me. So I did that for a year and a half and I enjoyed it. My job was basically just trying to figure out how to repurpose our television programs for the web and how to make interesting experiences online for our audiences. I really liked it except it was very slow, and I wanted to be on the bleeding edge of things. And so this was probably like 2008 at the time. And I remember I had come up with this idea for a Facebook app and I thought it was going to be amazing, it was going to work with one of our TV shows, but my problem I had was that I first had to define what Facebook was to the executive. So I said, hey, this is what Facebook is. Then I had to explain to them why our brand should be there and then I had to explain to them why my idea was awesome, and so it was a little hard for me to have to go through that process because I just wanted to go right away into product development and design and get this thing shipped. So I got very frustrated with that. So on the side I actually did some consultation for various clients. I worked in a startup space, advised one startup. I advised your company, Moguldom Media Group as well, and a couple other companies and it was just mostly around digital strategy publishers. My role or entrance into the space was around content. So blogging and audience development before it was called audience development, SEO, stuff like that. So I did that for a couple of years just independently. I didn’t really have aspirations to build some agency or anything like that. I just wanted to kind of be very flexible and do my own thing on my own time. So I liked it.

Jamarlin Martin: When did you have the spark that I wanted to study media. I’m interested in media. Was there a specific event or person that said, hey, I want to get a degree that relates to media?

Liz Burr: Yeah. So my stepdad actually, he’s a producer now, but when I was in high school he was a production assistant and he did a lot of production assistant shoots, he did music videos, and he did commercials and sometimes he would bring me on set with him, and I think just being exposed and being on set at age 13 was just really cool to me and I got to go on some of his cooler shoots. And I think for me, I knew that that’s when I wanted to work in some sort of creative capacity. But on the other hand I’m also a nerd and I’m just really into tech and things like that. So I would say I’ve always wanted to work in the intersection of tech and media or tech and entertainment. And so I would say that initial spark came from the media side just working with my stepdad at work, and he does side projects too. And then once I got to college I think that honed in all of my real nerd stuff and it kind of got that crossover.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. So you mentioned you were a nerd. I’ll call a geek. When you look at the lack of women, black women specifically that are in tech, that are in digital media, do you think it’s more of an internal, cultural thing or is it more of an external thing in terms of, hey, it’s Google’s fault, hey, it’s Facebook’s fault, it’s the system’s fault, or do you think it’s something going on culturally more so, in terms of how we perceive and promote being a geek is cool?

Liz Burr: Oh, I definitely think it’s more external. I hear these experiences where geeks say that they were traumatized by other black kids, calling them geeks when they were kids, or saying that they’re trying to be white. In all my experiences, I’ve never had that experience. I’ve always been a bookworm. I’ve always been a nerd. I’ve had cousins who maybe harassed me for being a nerd, but not saying like, oh, you’re trying to be white. I think they’re just picking on me because I was the youngest and I was well behaved.

Jamarlin Martin: I have a different experience, but I feel like if you had a pie chart in terms of black culture and what’s promoted, what’s cool, who’s successful, your role models, there can only be so much stuff in the pie chart and you have a lot of athletes, right? Parents want to brag that, hey, my son or daughter, they went to University of Washington, went to USC, they’re playing ball, and so a lot of the energy and resources and cultural equity, we have seen people be successful in entertainment, athletics and so there’s a disproportionate amount of cultural equity that goes into these other fields. Not that these fields are bad, but it’s at the expense of other things.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I do agree with you there. I think part of the problem there though is that people are not necessarily aware of all the other options that are out there for career endeavors. Right? So like everyone knows about being a doctor, being a lawyer, being an athlete or being some sort of celebrity, but people don’t know a product manager, right? They don’t know how much a product manager could make. They don’t know engineers. Engineer is a very high level, mysterious type of career path and engineering can mean a lot of different things. And so I think a lot of it just has to do with exposure and maybe education on this. It’s still weird to me to explain what I do to my family. They’ll ask me what do I do, and I work in product and I still try to struggle to explain to them what they do. They’re very proud of me. Definitely brag about me to the rest of my family and their friends and things. But I think trying to get a tangible explanation out of them is difficult, I think because it’s just kind of a foreign area of work

Jamarlin Martin: But you would agree that when you look at the problem of a lack of geekness in black culture or the promotion of geekiness in black culture, that it can’t all be external, meaning that we’re going to wait for Silicon Valley, big tech, white folks to do something, and then we’re going to get more geeked up in the culture. You do believe that there’s room for internal optimization in the community in terms of stuff that we can do, that we can change?

Liz Burr: Yes, definitely. I just think that there’s a lot of education and awareness that probably needs to happen in order for us to get there.

Jamarlin Martin: I know it sounds small to folks, but when I listen to 4:44 and Jay-Z starts talking about Afro-Tech and talking about legacy wealth and talking about VC funds, that’s how I believe black culture, it’s a step in terms of a reprogramming, acknowledging that the culture is not perfect. There are some problems and that we have to reprogram the culture for excellence. We’ve got to optimize it.

Liz Burr: Yeah. I don’t think it’s because we’re shunning it though. I think it’s just because we’re not aware or we don’t know a lot, and a lot of this also just has to do with the images that we see of ourselves in media. Right? So like you can have a Facebook movie, but can you have a Facebook movie with a black leading role? Probably not. We haven’t seen anything like that. And so I think that Facebook movie at least maybe introduces some kids into like, hey, this is a type of career path that you can go to quote-unquote get rich. But that had like a lot of white people in there, right? We don’t have a black version. My assumption is maybe if we have more black faces doing lots of different things, then that might help move the needle for us a little bit.

Jamarlin Martin: For sure. I want to share with you a great company called TopTal. That’s T O P T A L. This is a company that I use if you’re in the market for a freelancer, whether it’s an engineer or designer, this is one of the leading companies are going to help you identify and hire top freelancing talent. You can go to https://moguldom.com/toptal/. Click on that link and register and someone will get right back to you to get more information. Be sure to check out TopTal.

We worked together for about eight years. What did you hate the most about working with me over those years? Keep it real with the audience. What did you hate the most? But you have to average out the eight years. It can’t just be stuff at the end.

Liz Burr: Yeah. I don’t know because there’s so many things that make you very unique Jamarlin.

Jamarlin Martin: That’s being kind.

Liz Burr: Some of them were stressful at the time. However, I feel like there’s so many lessons I learned so it’s hard to be…

Jamarlin Martin: But if there’s one thing, like, hey, you change things too much.

Liz Burr: I don’t know. You changing things kind of helped me stay well equipped for change. Right? And now I feel like…

Jamarlin Martin: We’re going to get into the positive stuff. I need something negative. Objectively, you’re the consultant coming in and you’re like, look at this leader here. This is one thing that this guy really needs to work on or that annoys me.

Liz Burr: I would probably say…

Jamarlin Martin: Nepotism. You could say that too.

Liz Burr: No. I would probably say maybe not promoting from within when we got to executive level, right? We had a lot of executives who came in and didn’t understand our business very well or at least how we do things. Maybe they understood the space but they didn’t understand how we did things. And so they’re created a lot of disconnect and I guess it just was a lot of time to ramp up and get synergy.

Jamarlin Martin: And looking back at when we were at 80 or 100 employees, one of the things that we should have done as a company is invest in the leaders, the loyal leaders who have been with the company, they understand the original science that we had, and you invest in management training more, in terms of you’re scaling up internally versus bringing in these folks from other companies who kind of get lost, who are at risk of getting lost.

Liz Burr: Or at least helping them understand, hey, we know you work in this space for a long time, but this is how Moguldom gets down. So you’re going to have to figure out how to make this work. It’s not something that you can kind of just come in and do something drastically different because we have our secret sauce for a reason. Right? And we’re trying to build upon that. And I think sometimes people came in with different context.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. And then of course the other executives would say that Moguldom was so successful for so long, meaning a lot of things went right, is that we, the management team, were resistant to doing certain things to kind of scale up, to change or mature the secret sauce a little bit. Okay. So what did you love the most, now that we got the negative thing. What did you appreciate the most?

Liz Burr: I would say a big thing that I liked was the ability to work in a lot of different contexts or roles there. I had really good opportunities I probably couldn’t go anywhere else and do unless I started a company myself. And so for me specifically, I helped to launch your studios in New York. I got to produce a lot of content. I worked on the content press side of things as well as ran your whole product division. I got to like help launch new websites. I really, I’m really into design, so like I had a lot of good, I think for the full time that I worked with you over the eight years, five years as an employee, I got a lot of experience under my belt and things that I really wanted to do because I’m definitely very multifaceted in terms of my interests. So that was pretty great.

Jamarlin Martin: We break up and you go to, professionally speaking, we break up and you go to Elite Daily, a company that has a lot of momentum, they’re doing a lot of kind of social media, viral stuff. Talk about that and then going to Daily Mail.

Liz Burr: I went to Elite Daily and they had probably been acquired by Daily Mail for about a year by the time I arrived. And so what I liked about Elite Daily is that they were…  Being with Moguldom was like scrappy and very small. Right? I had been through the very early stages and even through the more mature stages, but Elite Daily was bigger, as one single website. And so I wanted to know what it was like at a mid-size kind of media company. I also just needed a break from working with you for eight years. So my time at Elite Daily was really for me to like chill. I wanted to do something that would keep me preoccupied and interested. I didn’t want to like completely just be bored. But I also just wanted to get some new experiences.

Jamarlin Martin: And you mentioned you wanted to back out a product and you go to Elite Daily and you’re working on paid marketing and audience development. Right? And what type of budgets are you managing there?

Liz Burr: At that time I was managing a budget of about $350k a month.

Jamarlin Martin: Most of that’s going to Facebook, right?

Liz Burr: Yeah. Going to Facebook. And I was just buying monthly uniques so it was kind of cool because I really got a model down in terms of how many uniques I needed to buy so I could get to a certain Comscore number.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah, there’s something going around Twitter about what do most people misunderstand about your industry? And what I think about that is when people see like a Buzzfeed or Vice or some of these other platforms, would it be fair to say that most people don’t understand how much money a lot of these publications pay for traffic? And so for the media company or website that’s paying for traffic, can you share with the audience some of the kind of considerations or reasons that they’re spending millions of dollars a year on paid traffic. What are they looking to do?

Liz Burr: For the most part, at least in our case at Elite Daily, we wanted to hit a specific Comscore number of monthly uniques. And if you don’t know, Comscore is an industry-wide analytics program that advertisers look at to say how many people are actually on your website so that they can decide if they want to spend with you or not. So there’s a few ways you can do digital marketing, you can either buy page views or you can buy people. So I focused, at Elite Daily, on buying people so that I could get us to a specific Comscore number. And it became really hard to do this because Facebook kept changing the algorithm. So before where we might get X amount of Facebook users organically, every month, we were starting to get less and less organically from Facebook, which then meant we had to supplement that by buying more and more people from Facebook every single month.

Jamarlin Martin: For the audience to understand, a lot of these media companies, they’re going to pump up their traffic, what I would call artificially, right? I’m going to spend millions of dollars on Facebook or Twitter. And pumping up your Comscore numbers is the play. So you spend a lot of money, you spend maybe $5 million a year, and the bet is you’re going to get more advertising from having a higher Comscore number. Of course, the advertisers look at Comscore and they go, ‘Whoa, look at all the traffic, a lot of people love this site’, and then the bet is at the advertising dollars will flow in. The other side of that though is that if you’re spending a lot of money on paid traffic and the people are not coming back, there’s a high risk that, what if your sales team does not close the deals. What if the advertisers don’t bite on the Comscore numbers, which could put you in a very vulnerable position?

Liz Burr: And I would say Elite Daily, at least, spent a lot of money to have consultants tell us this and to guide us that way. I would say they definitely don’t spend the same amount of money that I used to spend. They’ve since been acquired from Daily Mail by Bustle. So I would say, especially judging from their Comscore numbers, they’re probably not buying nearly as much traffic…

Jamarlin Martin: It doesn’t work.

Liz Burr: Facebook keeps changing their algorithm and just making it worse. It’s a losing game, especially if you’re buying a lot, right? Like I bought over 10 million uniques a month, so that’s insane. That’s an insane budget to have to try and maintain. And those people don’t return every month. It’s a very low engagement from that traffic. So Elite Daily, definitely from what I know doesn’t spend nearly as much as that.

Jamarlin Martin: And was there a lot of debate within Elite Daily and Daily Mail about diversifying off of Facebook? This is risky, we’re going to be Zynga’d, we’re going to be Panda’d at some point.

Liz Burr: It was definitely like, hey, we need to figure out a way to not spend this much on Facebook every month. And we did have a strategy in place to get us off of that high spend every month. But they were acquired by Bustle before we got through that strategy.

Jamarlin Martin: You were a big believer in the podcast format very early on. How did you fall in love with podcasts

Liz Burr: Okay. So one thing I didn’t mention is that I was one of the founding members of Verysmartbrothas.com. We started that site in 2008, it was me and Panama Jackson and Damon Young, and back then we started a podcast together. So that’s when I kind of figured it out, how does it all work, how do you host this? Because I was a tech person. The two of them wrote, but I did all of the tech and strategy and stuff. So part of that was figuring out podcasting. So I really got into it, I would say around 2009, when we launched our first podcast. We kind of deserted it. It was very difficult I would say on a technical aspect to execute, as well as hard to get any traction just because a lot of people were not into listening to podcasts. It was definitely a very geeky space. I mean it’s still kind of that way, but I just see a lot more podcasters with a lot of different interests, and also just a lot of people with different races. A lot of women are doing podcasts and stuff like that. So, it’s an interesting space now. I’m glad to see that it’s matured.

Jamarlin Martin: So with the podcast industry blowing up now and there’s a lot of new money coming into the space, media companies, New York Times, a lot of folks are investing in this space. How much of the growth of podcasting has to do with the big claws of the duopoly of Google and Facebook, that those two monsters are not in this space and it’s possibly the most organic medium right now to connect with users without having the Silicon Valley monster entities just gobbling everything up, where it just destroys the medium or puts significant pressure on the medium from growing, in terms of, for example, programmatic, automated advertising. Right? So the robots come in, they crush the CPMs or the revenue you can make on a website’s page, or in some cases video. So the robots are taking charge, people are arbitraging, the big companies are gobbling up all the revenue and there’s little left for the ecosystem. But with podcasting, these monsters are not in it.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I think part of that has to do with the fact that podcasting necessarily still isn’t standardized. There’s a lot of different end points that people can access various podcasts or even just uploading one to the Internet.

Jamarlin Martin: Do you agree that it’s been a material benefit to the podcast ecosystem that Google and Facebook, their claws are not in the space.

Liz Burr: Yeah. And even, Apple kind of initiated podcasting, right. But they’ve definitely been a very, I guess relaxed overlord if you will, through this space. Like you can still just create a podcast and put it on Apple for free. It doesn’t really cost much to do, you just have to figure out your hosting. But I think there’s still some ways in which podcasting needs to mature. Analytics is still kind of inconsistent. I think that they will probably eventually try and come and control the space.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. Google just launched a podcast app. They’re creeping in and I could definitely see them buying one of the podcast platforms such as Libsyn, or some of the others who roll up podcasts. I do think that they’re going to start stepping in.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I feel like podcasting is currently in that web 2.0 space that the internet and blogging was in back in 2008.

Jamarlin Martin: I totally agree with that.

Liz Burr: So the marketers get a hold of everything and then everything’s going to go to hell, I think, because I feel like they ruined the rest of the internet.

Jamarlin Martin: One of the things that’s interesting about podcasting is the amount of inventory you create with one podcast. When you think about the average listener on the podcast for this show, it reaches over 30 minutes, and you’re creating a lot of ad inventory, if you have, of course the right content pieces, but it’s an efficient way to create quality ad inventory where the users are highly engaged, where you’re competing against someone quickly watching a video clip or clicking on a webpage for two minutes. It’s just a different type of a setup. Okay. So let’s go into Mo’Nique and Netflix. I want to talk to you about that because this issue, it touches on a lot of points, I believe, that are going on in the culture and in big tech. And so to recap this issue, my understanding of the issue is you’ve had negroes, a lot of Hollywood negroes, I would say. They seem to side with Netflix when Mo’Nique challenges getting a fair deal on her programming or her show, meaning that she feels that she was low-balled. And what struck me was black folks are low-balled across the board. This is not me. This is the federal government, where the federal government has come in and looked at various industries and they have said that there’s systemic discrimination across industries in the United States. Right? So you negroes out there, do you see what Netflix is paying everybody else? Do you see how much of you are driving the growth and engagement of Netflix? This is a black box. You don’t see anything but you won’t give this actress the benefit of the doubt when she’s going up and talking about this beast. Mo’Nique may be wrong, but I believe the community deserved to give her the benefit of doubt because Netflix is a black box. And when you look at their board, none of you people are on the Netflix board. None of you black folks are running Netflix, it’s all mostly white men. What did you think about that?

Liz Burr: I do think some people, at least from the circles that I pay attention to. I think people agreed with her that she was low-balled, but I think, at least the black people that I saw that took issue with this, took issue with maybe the way in which she went about it and how she talks about it, and I think her husband’s her manager and people were kind of wondering about like, what’s his deal? Because he seems a little strange. But I think that she was right to speak out.

Jamarlin Martin: I saw people questioning whether what she was saying had any merit, meaning that I saw folks suggesting that they probably gave you a fair deal, essentially it was in that box, then some of the viewpoints that I read about suggested that you’re just complaining because you’re not good enough to get a better deal.

Liz Burr: Sure. However, I don’t know if those same people also saw prior to Mo’Nique coming out about this, Amy Schumer came out and was like, hey, Netflix isn’t trying to give me the same amount of money they gave Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock. And everyone was like…

Jamarlin Martin: Hey, you’re not that.

Liz Burr: Yeah. Everyone was shading her. It was like, well girl, your jokes aren’t as good as theirs. So that’s why you’re not getting the same amount. So I don’t necessarily begrudge Mo’Nique for coming out and saying this. I don’t really follow her comedy that closely. But I think that people who took issue with her saying something are in the wrong, I think that they should really understand. And I personally try not to take issue with how people ‘protest’. Right? So if you have issue with the way she went about it, it is what it is, right? People protesting will state their complaints the best way they know how.

Jamarlin Martin: In terms of probability percentage, when you look at Netflix, when you look at the management team at Netflix, what probability percentage would you say that Netflix does not have systemic bias in terms of how it treats the black content creator versus the white content creator?

Liz Burr: I don’t know about percentage wise, but I wouldn’t say that it’s worse than what everyone else deals and all other industries.

Jamarlin Martin: But let’s just look at Netflix. What’s the probability that Netflix is giving black content creators who can’t go anywhere else, just like the Democratic Party, where are you guys going to run to? Nobody wants to buy black stuff. Right? So Netflix has a lot of leverage. What’s the possibility that when you really look into how much black subscribers are engaging with the content, driving the stock price of Netflix, supporting the platform and how much they’re paying the black creators, what’s the probability that there’s systemic bias? If let’s say the federal government came in and said, hey, we want to open this stuff up.

Liz Burr: I mean, I don’t necessarily know what the probability is. I don’t even know if I could quantify that.

Jamarlin Martin: It’s an estimate. That’s all I want.

Liz Burr: But I don’t know generally what is the going rate for bias. I would assume it’s a little higher. That’s the nature of the industry.

Jamarlin Martin: When you look at the management team of Netflix and you understand the history of systemic bias in America across industries, it’s highly improbable that black content creators are getting a fair handshake, in terms of when you look at the engagement that they’re providing, the money, the value that they’re providing with the Netflix platform and how they priced the black content creators deals.

Liz Burr: I think you’d have to consider the people though, right? So like Michelle and Barack Obama have a deal with them.

Jamarlin Martin: I’m sure there’s going to be outliers where there’s going to be people who get really good deals, but when you look at the total universe of black content creators, most likely there’s going to be systemic bias. Yeah. And Hollywood has a problem in general. So it’s not like Netflix is going to be separate from Hollywood. Right? So we’re better than Hollywood and we treat you fair.

Liz Burr: Right? So I think part of the bias though is just general negligence, right? It’s not that like, hey, we are biased against black people or black content creators, as much as like we’re just not taking the time to care to pay attention to them.

Jamarlin Martin: Or we’re just trying to make the most profitable deals and we know that we can exploit other folks not backing black content in an equitable way. So we can take advantage and price your group lower.

Liz Burr: Potentially. However, I will know that they’ve been going really hard with marketing their black content recently with the whole strong black lead movement.

Jamarlin Martin: Okay, let’s talk about that. So, Mo’Nique is banging against Netflix. As you’ve had since slavery, you have a group of black folks come in and start defending Netflix because Netflix is paying quite a few black elites, folks in Hollywood. Netflix has partnerships, so the community is kind of divided over this issue. So some folks are defending Netflix. They’re saying, Hey, Mo’Nique is some crazy disgruntled woman. Netflix treat their people good. ‘Master treating us good’. Look at all these other folks getting eaten over here. This is just a crazy person. So the community is divided. So Mo’Nique says Netflix most likely is low-balling her based on race and gender. After Mo’Nique says this, Netflix decides to fire one of their top executives for saying the N word in a meeting, Netflix puts out a press release saying, hey, we don’t tolerate this, blah, blah blah. So after Mo’Nique says this stuff, a big executive at Netflix is using the N word just at a meeting openly, right? And so after this executive is fired from Netflix, they could have been working on this before, they put out a pro-black ad. Netflix is like Black Panther, Netflix is like Black Panther party. Netflix is like The Nation of Islam. Netflix is pro-black. We just fired this big executive. You guys are not on the management team, you guys are getting low-balled, but we’re conscious, we’re the conscious network. We’re the folks who are supporting conscious black creatives and content. So to me this is strategic, right?

Liz Burr: There’s definitely some strategy going on, but I don’t know if all of those are necessarily created. So the strong black lead. I became aware of that campaign in about March, early March. And I said, hmm, this is just related to kind of what I do. But I was like, hmm, they’re really going after black audiences and black content. And then months go by, they’re getting momentum and all that kind of stuff. And then I saw the executive announcement, but I heard that this had happened a while ago, so he just got let go or finally got let go. But then that promo piece that you saw for strong black lead was tied into the BET Awards. I think what’s likely is that Netflix had had that campaign ready to execute during the BET Awards specifically because they knew they had a captive audience to launch this campaign with. So I think the executive who had been saying the N word probably had reached his final days of when they could let this go before they actually…

Jamarlin Martin: I think they were working on that ad before.

Liz Burr: But I also just heard that he should’ve been fired a while ago. The incident had happened a while ago.

Jamarlin Martin: Obama. Last week Obama was in Silicon Valley raising millions of dollars from the go-to elites in Silicon Valley. He’s going to the venture capital firms. He’s going to the liberal elites who could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for access, to get in his ear. He leaves Silicon Valley with bags of money for the Democratic Party.

Liz Burr: Really?

Jamarlin Martin: Is it problematic for you that the corporate side of the Democratic Party are super cozy with the venture capital firms, Google, Facebook. They have had, Cory Booker, they’ve had an unholy alliance with Google, Facebook, venture capitalists, they’re too cozy. And here’s why I say this, because Obama is still very influential in the party. He’s going to be out front in the elections coming up in that if Silicon Valley, these elites, who I believe are part of the problem with the inequality in the society. They are part of the problem with the divisions in the society. They are part of the problem that produced a Trump, and in Facebook’s case, once the evidence comes out, most likely Facebook was used to flip the election, with Facebook operatives inside the Trump campaign. And most likely those folks were working with the Russians. Meaning that the Trump folks had a big wallet. Facebook respected them and allowed them to run racist ads during the campaign, anti-black ads to help fuel the pro-Trump fire. But are you uncomfortable with Obama going to Silicon Valley, getting bags of money from the elites out there, and all the corporate elites in Silicon Valley being in his ear, being cozy with him. Does that make you uncomfortable?

Liz Burr: Yeah, I think anytime any industry can do that, it’s a problem. Right? So I feel like in some ways Silicon Valley is like the new Wall Street, when Wall Street was too influential in certain kind of ways. I think even the workforce of Wall Street was problematic and I think the workforce in Silicon Valley is problematic. Right? It’s just kind of shifted. In some ways you could also argue that Obama helped make Silicon Valley to be this way. Right? So when he was writing his campaigns in 2008 and 2007, he embraced the tech industry. He was the first to really embrace Linkedin and Facebook and Twitter, more than any other candidate.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah, the co-founder of Facebook helped Obama. He was running his digital media marketing. So there’s been an incestuous relationship with Silicon Valley and the Obama corporate side of the Democratic Party.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I think they scratch each other’s back and they have for years.

Jamarlin Martin: Does that make you angry?

Liz Burr: I don’t know if it makes me angry.

Jamarlin Martin: It doesn’t make you angry?

Liz Burr: But that’s because I support Obama generally speaking. Right? So if it was another candidate that I didn’t like, I’d probably be angry.

Jamarlin Martin: But if the same party has responsibilities to regulate these beasts, they’re very influential. Google, Facebook, they’re crushing other businesses, right? They’re crushing consumer privacy. They’re policing what content you see and which content you don’t, which content is promoted, which content is not. For example, Twitter, a month ago, they unverified Minister Louis Farrakhan, but some folks say hey, why do you take his verification away based on the qualifications to get verified in terms of public figures, but other folks who have real power like Trump, they stay verified. But when these systems are policed, and a lot of our people sometimes are calling for the police. ‘Call the police!’ R. Kelly, this rapper. But when the police come out, you going in first, right? So be careful what you open up. So why does Obama get a pass on being cozy with Silicon Valley? I’m not aware of any big regulatory review as these Amazon, Google, Facebook, as these companies are getting bigger and bigger and more influential, more concentrated, more monopolistic as these companies are getting bigger and bigger. The Obama administration is totally silent, but Obama’s in the bed with this group. So I’m thinking at the big picture, right? So we can’t have the leaders having a master in terms of the white liberals in Silicon Valley because these people are part of the problem in terms of the inequality in society.

Liz Burr: Generally speaking, yes. I just don’t know what’s the best way to have avoided that problem.

Jamarlin Martin: In terms of, hey, there’s not a lot of places I can get the money I need to bang back against the Republican Party, so I got to get the money from these guys. I got to get the support from these guys.

Liz Burr: No. I think they are his natural supporters basically. I feel like both of them came up together at the same time. Right? So Obama definitely leveraged the internet to get his message across more than any other candidate did, and I think that tech, at least in the way that we know right now, came up around the same year. That was the web 2.0 era. There’s a lot of change going on and so I don’t know if we could have avoided this because it just seems like both Obama and Silicon Valley really saw a surge around the same time. It’s not as if Silicon Valley had existed for decades.

Jamarlin Martin: But Obama helped create this problem of the market concentration, the abuse of privacy, of having these monopolistic entities and their claws over everything, and kind of having a unhealthy control over winners and losers in the economy, in society.

Liz Burr: Yeah. But it’s not to say that all of Silicon Valley was on his side or that they’re all democrats. I tdon’t hink they are. I think there are some people who are problematic, or don’t necessarily see the same views as Obama.

Jamarlin Martin: What are your thoughts on the surprise win, at least among the corporate side of the Democratic Party, the surprise win of Alexandria Ocasio, do you have any thoughts on some of the stuff that you read in terms of opposing her or the support? Do you have any thoughts on her?

Liz Burr: Actually I was very surprised that she went and I’d never heard of her and I live in New York City. I don’t live in the Bronx and Queens, which is where she serves. But generally speaking when it comes to these kind of off cycle elections, as a registered voter, I always notice that most of the people on the ballot are incumbent, so it’s an incumbent who’s been here for like 20 years and there’s some random new person. And so I was very surprised that she was able to overcome that. So then when I looked closer at her campaign, I thought our marketing was amazing. I thought that visually her design was really good. I thought all of her commercials are really good and I think that combined with her putting in just a lot of leg work in terms of reaching out to her constituency, it made sense. It definitely reminded me a lot of Obama. Obama also had really good design, very good strategy, had good marketing. I think a lot of politicians actually have horrible marketing, generally speaking, and they kind of just rely on their name.

Jamarlin Martin: Do you think that could be related to her age? She represents a younger politician, and for the audience, if you’re not familiar, she represents the Bronx, will be a freshman congresswoman.

Liz Burr: We’ll see what happens in additional election cycles after this. I don’t know if the Democratic Party is going to shift in her direction in any kind of way, but at least in New York it makes sense that that could work. I don’t know if that’s gonna work in other democratic districts across the country.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah, I was happy to find out that she was following me on Twitter before the election. She should get extra points.

Liz Burr: You must be saying crazy stuff that she likes.

Jamarlin Martin: But she’s connected to Bernie Sanders. She was a Bernie Sanders supporter and I’m gonna throw something out there, hypothetical, and I want you to keep it real on the answer. So Kamala Harris at the top of 2020 of the Democratic Party, and Cory Booker. These are the anointed machine leaders, it looks like one of them at least is going to be on the ticket in terms of who’s anointed by the corporate side of the Democratic Party. So Kamala Harris and Cory Booker as VP in 2020. They run in the primary against Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Cortez. Who would you lean towards?

Liz Burr: Oh, that’s a hard one. I used to be a very big fan of Kamala Harris early on. I think being from the state of California, it sounded like she had been doing some pretty good stuff. Same with Cory. I think he, but this probably skews more because he was very web-based and kind of I could see more of what he was doing because he embraced the internet so well. I probably say ideologically I probably skew more to Cortez.

Jamarlin Martin: And Bernie Sanders? They’re on the same ticket. So Bernie Sanders at the top Alexandria Cortez.

Liz Burr: Yeah. I’m not really feeling Bernie like that. I never really did. And I don’t want to be ageist, but I feel like he’s too old now. We need someone who’s gonna live a long time in the office potentially.

Jamarlin Martin: But you’re not banging against Bernie Sanders’s policies though in terms of his policy prescriptions? So let’s put the gray hair, the old skinny Santa Claus look to the side.

Liz Burr: Yeah, policy-wise I probably… That’s a hard one.

Jamarlin Martin: I would skew more towards Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Cortez because I know that  Kamala Harris and Cory Booker represent a side of the Democratic Party that is scared, for example, to speak up for Palestinians. They’re scared to bang against Netanyahu, after 60 Palestinians are murdered. You see Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, they’re quite close with the Silicon Valley elites, a lot of the corporate interests. And it’s not a coincidence that for most of their political careers, they have not championed removing money from politics. You see, with  Bernie Sanders and Cortez, these people are saying, you are running on a treadmill until you remove the big wallets out of Silicon Valley, the big wallets out of Wall Street, the big wallets, the foreign interest groups, the lobbyists, your vote is not going as far as it should. Black folks can be voting all day, but the corporations and the lobbyists, that’s who are in the ear of the leaders, meaning that these democratic leaders are coming into power and they got debts to pay. They don’t got debts to pay necessarily to you. They don’t necessarily have debts to pay to Watts, who don’t have any money. Compton don’t have any money. Bronx, you don’t have a big wallet to sit down and get in Barack Obama’s ear. You don’t have a big wallet that could influence policy. And I believe on the top agenda of black America, there needs to be a change, where one of the signature issues is backing candidates and pushing to get big money lobbyists out of the picture of the political system. If you really love the GHOGH podcast, one way to support us is going to http://www.moguldom.com/survey. Fill out that quick survey, that gives us better information on our audience. It helps us with our sponsors. That’s one big way you can support us and keep our movement going. Go to http://www.moguldom.com/survey. Thank you.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I think I would say that Kamala and Cory definitely honed in on the status quo of politics, which just says that you need all these big donors. Who cares about having a bunch of small donors? You need a lot of big corporate donors. You need people with big pockets and I at least think with Cortez and Sanders they don’t believe that. However, that didn’t get Bernie very far at the last primary.

Jamarlin Martin: I thought it did. It looked like he was on the edge of winning. Right? Of course they have a delegate system, some people say it’s rigged in the Democratic Party. They were manipulated. Least I believe that they were manipulating things in favor of HRC.

Liz Burr: He may have gotten farther if Hillary hadn’t been there.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. But to me Ocasio, at least her messaging, I can’t say that I’m an expert. But Ocasio represents where the Democratic Party needs to go. They need to go to the left. Stop all this kind of this Tim Kaine, I’m gonna try to please more white folks. I’m going to not go too hard to black lives matter. I’m not going to speak up for Palestinians, but the safe middle of the road lacking conviction side of the party. I think there needs to be a coup in the party, and this time I think Bernie almost did it. But the folks who want to take the money out of politics, I think this time they’re gonna knock that corporate machine, that Silicon Valley machine, that elitist machine that’s controlling the Democratic Party, you’re going to get knocked out in 2020. That’s my prediction. You’re going to get knocked out, and the Democratic Party is going to move more to a populace left. The more that the big money comes out of politics, that’s good for black America. That’s good for everybody.

Liz Burr: It could happen. I don’t know if it’s going to happen as soon as 2020. I think in some ways Obama, maybe not policy-wise, but strategy-wise, I feel like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she had a very similar message that Obama had in his early election days. It’s like, oh, I come from a working class family, I represent the common man. Exactly. So I think that it could happen, especially if we continue to see more momentum that she was able to do. I just don’t know how effective is that going to be in places where maybe they’re racist or maybe some of her policies are a little too alienating for them.

Jamarlin Martin: How does this Trump stuff play out? We’re deep in the Mueller investigation. How do you see this stuff playing out? Does he end up in jail? Does he just kind of get off? Is he re-elected? How do you see this stuff play out?

Liz Burr: I hope he doesn’t get re-elected. I mean, I think best case scenario should be that they convict him on some state crimes so he can’t potentially pardon himself unless they change the law.

Jamarlin Martin: A lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people I talk to, they don’t realize, they think Trump’s going to get off the hook, but the way Mueller is setting this up is there’s going to be state charges and the federal pardons, as you mentioned, are not going to work at the state level.

Liz Burr: He needs to get caught on whatever shenanigans he’s done illegally prior to running for president. And then you can’t be president if you’re locked up. Right? So I’m hoping that that’s the way it has to go because Congress is not going to vote for impeaching him. It’s probably just never gonna happen. So I don’t think that we can get him on election charges necessarily.

Jamarlin Martin: That’s where I depart from the consensus. I understand why folks would say this. Congress, they don’t care. They’re going to protect Trump. I understand that point of view. But before the Nixon tapes, of course, it wasn’t a popular view to impeach Nixon. I’m a little bit more optimistic that when the full body of evidence comes out or some big stuff leaks. And then of course you have witnesses with Cohen, his former lawyer looking like he’s about to flip, Manafort in jail right now. Most likely he’s gonna flip. He probably doesn’t want to get raped in jail or be vulnerable in jail. You can’t debate once the evidence comes out. In Nixon’s case it was the tapes. Right? But I believe we’re waiting for the Nixon tapes part of this case and I do see a strong possibility that you get enough republicans to impeach him. But regardless of that, I only see two scenarios. One, Trump goes to jail at the state level. It’s not clear whether pardons can work because it will be tested at the Supreme Court. I believe he’s trying to tamper with the Supreme Court with a lot of shady moves. But there’s a question of whether you can pardon your co-conspirator. You can pardon someone who helped you commit crimes, but I believe he’s going to either go to jail once all this stuff comes out or, and this should be concerning for folks, is that Trump, I believe based on his psychological profile, could create some type of event, black swan event, that could put the country into some type of war or something in that direction, or he could go a fly Air Force One into Moscow.

Liz Burr: So going back to the black swan event. So you think he’ll do something that gets America so angry that they’ll get rid of him, like war?

Jamarlin Martin: No. So if you’re Trump and you’re saying, hey, if this stuff keeps on going, I’m going to go to jail for the rest of my life. I’m going to die in jail. So there’s another out for me. It’s crazy. I may have to do something, but it could be like a catastrophic event or something that could prolong his situation. There is a point of view also is that if he trips America up into some type of event, the constitution could be suspended.

Liz Burr: Oh, okay. Gotcha.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. Or there’s a civil war. If there’s racial kind of resistance or a lot of blood in the streets of America where the Trump supporters are saying, hey, you’re taking our leader away from us. Right? We elected him and you guys, you undemocratic liberals, you guys are taking away the leader. Essentially you took him down with all these deep state actors. Right? And so it’s not just me, Roger Stone, other folks. And it looks like Trump’s messaging, he’s getting people ready that when they come for him, in the final days, you could see violence in the streets. And so this would set up, in Trump’s case, you may want a lot of violence in the street. And in terms of Trumpers, really cranking up the stakes is because maybe the country says, including at the state level, governors, we have to heal the country, we have to come together. And the only way we’re going to come together with this violence in the streets, possible assassinations, the only way we’re going to come together is you gotta let Trump go. And then the people will stop.

Liz Burr: Maybe. I think your third theory, him going to Moscow is probably more likely.

Jamarlin Martin: Air Force One. Yeah. Well that’s been the place of choice for spies. Agents of Moscow who had been tipped off that the feds have found out that they’re spying and their agents, they have left the country and lived the rest of their lives in Moscow. That’s also a possibility.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I think something’s got to be done. Definitely not re-election. I don’t know how long this Mueller stuff is going to go on. We’re almost halfway through his presidency.

Jamarlin Martin: So how does it make you feel that 40 percent plus of the country still supports Trump? How does that make you feel?

Liz Burr: Yeah, that’s hard. I think some people in that number are more apathetic or they are in denial about how bad he really is and maybe they have no interest in learning more or understanding, but…

Jamarlin Martin: I think you’re giving them too much credit.

Liz Burr: No, no. I think some people are genuinely just like, Hey, I’m voting and I support him because that’s just what everyone in my neighborhood does and I don’t want to be the outlier or the outcast, so I’m just going to go along with it. I think a lot of people are like that.

Jamarlin Martin: On the Trump side?

Liz Burr: Yes. I’ve talked to some. So they basically said, oh, well everyone in my neighborhood votes for him. So that’s why I voted.

Jamarlin Martin: Well, maybe cause you’re black you’re not gonna tell you the real. A big piece of Trump, not everything, because I do feel that what Bernie Sanders was trying to communicate, what Brexit was trying to communicate to the corporate machine of the Democratic Party. You had Brexit, you had Bernie Sanders rising up, Hillary Clinton, Obama and some of the others, they were not listening in that people are fed up of the corporations, the elites, how they’re manipulating the economy and the rise of inequality. So white folks see the rise of inequality for them where they’re not sharing in the upswing of the economy, and there’s a populist sentiment in the center, in terms of there’s white folks between the right and left, maybe not strong supporters either way, but they know that the stuff that HRC and Obama, the kind of agenda that they’re pushing is not working for that group. So they’re like F-it. I think there’s a lot of white fear out there obviously, that the country’s changing, we’re losing our identity. Trump is our last opportunity to fight back against the loss of the country. I think that that’s part of it. Also I think there’s a side on the Republican Party that says we weren’t going to win without Trump and we can get the stuff that we want. It may sound unethical or immoral, but they’re saying, hey, Trump allows us to change a lot of stuff that we want to change. So it’s like a transaction where I can look the other way because I’m getting a lot of the stuff I want. I’m getting the tax cuts. I’m getting the Supreme Court justices. We’re getting good republican stuff, in exchange I can look the other way on some of the other stuff.

Liz Burr: Earlier when you were talking about the 40 percent, you still have to remember that Hillary won the popular vote, right? So not everyone or at least the majority of the country is necessarily on his side. But I do think republicans have finally figured out a way to work with him to get what they need out of it. It’s a sad state of affairs in terms of where we are right now. It makes me thankful for Bush, thankful for those Bush years because at least in some ways he had some sort of moral compass. He was more competent than our current president.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah, we’re not going to agree on the guy who lied and took a lot of black and brown troops, and white troops, in an illegal war in Iraq, essentially resulting in the deaths on both sides based on a known lie, an open lie. But Bush aside, what would you say that when Obama was president, you had black folks start talking about post-racial, more black folks who started saying it’s about class, it’s not about race anymore. America has moved beyond race. Look at Barack Obama. Look at Michelle, look at that chocolate sister in the White House. America has turned the corner. And so from my perspective during the Obama years, Obama was and still is like Jesus, right? He was going to change America and his election showed how much America has changed. From my perspective, black folks let America off the hook on a lot of issues. So when stuff is going wrong, people are getting shot in the streets. Trayvon Martin, we’ve got a black president, we got a black first lady. So because the president is black, America has a defense where black folks do not crank it up as much as we should because hey, Barack Obama’s president, Michelle Obama is the first lady. America’s not so bad. So from my perspective of Obama, this wasn’t intentional. I voted for Obama twice. I still support Barack Obama. I think he sincerely cares about our people, black folks that is. But this post-racial mess, and thinking that has turned a corner because there’s a black president put a lot of us to sleep. We became complacent. There’s less activism, right? Why you got to bang against white supremacy, racism, systemic racism. Why do you got to do all that? Because look, we’re going in the right direction, look at Obama. And so when Trump comes and he shows America the truth that this country is massively racist. This country is so racist that you probably have more than 30 percent of the country that would probably support shipping black people out of the country still. Trump exposed America is being much more racist then a lot of the post-racial Obama supporters thought in that Trump woke a lot of us up. A lot of us are banging harder now.

Liz Burr: I would say Trump maybe woke a lot more people up, but I think there are definitely still black people during the Obama era who were like, hey, it seems good, but everything’s not good. Number one, a lot of people called Obama out just for not doing enough for the black community specifically during his presidency. But a lot of people didn’t want to say that out loud because they didn’t want to talk poorly about a black president because they still wanted to see him succeed. Right? So I think now though, there is a lot more activism and I think just because Trump has been so ridiculous with his conduct and his policies. A black man could never have done the things that Trump has done or couldn’t behave the way that Trump behaves. So I think a lot of people are outraged, but I don’t think that everyone fell asleep during the Obama era.

Jamarlin Martin: Not Every one. But what I would say is that there’s greater black consciousness under Trump right now, than Obama. There’s more of us cranking it up, getting organized, putting agendas together under Trump than Obama. And if Trump goes down without any kind of big black swan event, I believe black people specifically are better off going through a Trump scenario than HRC. And here’s why. Because what HRC and Obama and a lot of the more corporate democrats, what they’re offering black people in the United States, they’re offering you kinda slow incremental steps. Slow change. We can’t do too much, Just wait, stuff is going to change stuff. The inequality data’s gonna reverse. We’re working towards it. So they’re offering a patient agenda. Black folks, you can wait to get your fair share in America. You’re going to have to wait on a lot of this stuff that’s oppressing us in the United States. However, when you open up a Trump, it opens up the opportunity for more radical change. And so with any big reward, you got to take risk and I believe that black America is going to be better off going through a Trump than going through an HRC because what it’s gonna do is gonna open up a more radical side of change coming from and within the Democratic Party, that has opened up a hole for black America to go through, which has exposed the racism of the United States where people are less inclined to accept that soft stuff of the Democratic Party pre-Trump.

Liz Burr: Yeah. I do think what’s probably happening is we take six steps forward with Obama, but then we have to take three really hard, painful steps back with Trump, right? But we’re still up three steps from 12 years ago. So I think it’s gonna go in these waves and I’m hoping that our experience in the Trump administration is that we will go harder to see more progress and specifically within the Democratic Party because I do think black people, a lot of us pick the Democratic Party as the lesser of two evils and maybe kind of fell asleep at the wheel in that way because I think Conservative Party has a lot of policies or beliefs at least that I think could attract a wider black audience. But they don’t care about us enough to actually pull us over.

Jamarlin Martin: Are you one of those Democrats who say, Hey, black people just vote, just vote. You need to be voting. Our ancestors died for the right to vote and you need to be voting Democratic Party every time. Don’t matter who’s running, you just vote Democrat.

Liz Burr: I say black people should vote. I’m not going to tell you how to vote, but I would say that you should vote. You should always exercise that right to vote.

Jamarlin Martin: This is one of the many areas I break with the consensus because I actually believe that not voting is a political weapon, and that when you think about what black America has trapped between the corporate elitist Democrats who are controlled by people who don’t align with the progress of black America. When you’re trapped between the corporate elitist democrats and the racist republicans. You don’t have any options. Like go there. You can go over here. Two options negros. Which one are you going to pick? So historically the consensus has said, hey, you got to go Democrat every time because it’s not as evil or it’s not as bad as the racist republicans. But we can strategically weaponize the idea of non-voting and I think Trump plays this out. Look black America can organize, put an agenda together and tell the democrats that were not taking your lobbyists corporate elitists agenda. They’re giving you all the money. You’re listening to them, you’re not listening to us. And look, if you don’t play ball and compromise with our agenda, we won’t vote. So they don’t want right the other side either, right? So if you don’t want the Republicans to go back into power, we need more equity. We need more equity for a vote. We’ve been voting for you guys at 90 percent, the most reliable a group that’s tipping the elections for you, net-net on average. But we get back is so little. And so I believe that one of the biggest weapons in the toolkit for Black America is to bang back against the corporate elitists side, the interest groups that are controlling the Democratic Party. And say, look, if you guys don’t stop this crap, if you guys don’t play ball with us, the black men and women, they have to stay home. We’re not going to come out and vote just because you’re less racist than the Republican Party. So in terms of political leverage…

Liz Burr: I think there’s some black people who do that already though. I think there’s some black people who say I’m not going to vote at all.

Jamarlin Martin: Yeah. And I’m not advocating, don’t vote. But in terms of thinking strategically about how to move the people forward, that needs to be a weapon in the toolkit that if the Democratic Party, the corporate machine, you guys are the ones funding the Kennedys, you guys are making a lot of these decisions, that if you don’t put the right people in front of the people that reflects the wishes of the people and it’s going to be all about the corporations, the elitists, foreign governments and their lobbyists. If it’s going to be all about them and not about us, stay home. We’re going to stay home. And that is a weapon that either we’re gonna shake things up or we’re not just going to play this slow game.

Liz Burr: Yeah, I definitely think it’s a weapon. Is it going to be an effective weapon? I don’t know. Because in terms of our population size, may not be strong enough to be able to be effective.

Jamarlin Martin: Oh no doubt. I think it is, where you have the white population in the United States divided, and there’s a big enough black population and brown population to tip the thing. And so the Democrats have been exploiting for decades that negroes, you don’t have a good choice. You got a bad choice and a bad choice and we know that you have nowhere to run. So in HRC’s case, I don’t have to advertise on a lot of the black media sites because you guys don’t have anywhere to run. You guys only got Trump. And so HRC, for example, she held back a lot of media spending with black media. But it’s not like a secret. It’s like, why spend money on a population that votes 90 percent? All I gotta do is get Obama, Jay-Z, Beyonce come out, perform, meet with Black Lives Matter and I don’t need to go out and get you guys because you guys don’t have anywhere to go.

Liz Burr: Yeah. I definitely think the Democratic Party needs to do more to appeal to our population. I’m actually very confused as to why HRC didn’t try strategy like Obama’s campaigns. Obama’s campaigns were very strong, very different. I felt like he laid out a template for us on a way to win and she didn’t follow through. And I think similar…

Jamarlin Martin: How did you deviate from the Obama strategy?

Liz Burr: Well, I think, like you said, she didn’t necessarily pay attention to everyone. People she thought she had, she didn’t really bother to spend time with them. Right? And I think the states that she lost in some cases she had that arrogance where it’s like, oh, I already got them. I don’t need to go talk to them. I don’t need to make sure I secure their votes. I think she was negligent in that way.

Jamarlin Martin: Didn’t Obama speak out about that? In terms of certain things that she did that deviated from his advice.

Liz Burr: But I think Ocasio-Cortez, I think that she followed a pretty good template for the way in which she ran.

Jamarlin Martin: It’s a bottom-up strategy versus top-down.

Liz Burr: Exactly.

Jamarlin Martin: HRC is top-down.

Liz Burr: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know why she made that decision, but it is what it is, and I think the next candidate definitely needs to probably take more of a bottom-up strategy.

Jamarlin Martin: All right. Thanks Liz for coming on GHOGH. Where can people check you out on Twitter?

Liz Burr: It’s https://twitter.com/calinative and http://www.lizburr.com is my currently outdated blog. I’ll probably update my website.

Jamarlin Martin: Thanks for coming on the show. Let’s GHOGH! Thanks everybody for listening to GHOGH. You can check me out @jamarlinmartin on Twitter and also come check us out at www.moguldom.com. That’s M O G U L D O M dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter. You can get the latest information on crypto, tech, economic empowerment and politics. Let’s GHOGH!

This podcast has been edited for clarity.