Hey y’all peace this KnowledgeBorn GodAllah calling on to us in the universal guide live radio. I’m talking to my brother bf –bf thames of Uncuffed the producer and founder of Uncuffed here at Solano State Prison. The brother’s a real sharp brother, I’m glad to call him my brother. He wrote a manuscript called the Black MANual. Here’s brother thames right now.
My name is Brian but I prefer to byline of bf thames I usually use it in all lowercase to signify that I’m not greater than anything any project that I take on. So there’s a meaning to that. Before I give a brief rundown of the manuscript, what I do here it’s I’m one of theco-creators and co-founders of Uncuffed, that’s U-N-C-U-F-F-E-D, is an award-winning podcast. It’s heard all around the world. ,And from what I’ve been told, and from what I’ve been seeing, it really impacts people’s lives in a really positive way. Essentially, what we do is, for the most part, we do one on one, human interest stories. So rather than a person coming into the studio here at the prison, at Solano, and telling their, quote, unquote, life story, what we tend to do is, we tend to look for that one thread in the blanket of your life. Your life is a blanket. We just want one thread out of that. And we talk about that it could be happy, it could be sad, it could just be a story. There doesn’t need to be a moral of the story. It’s just one of your many stories. And that’s to share with the public and the rest of the world, our humanity. We are not the crimes that we committed, or that we are accused of having committed, whatever the case might be. So that’s one of the things that I primarily work on and holds my interest and commands my passion and my attention.
Another thing that I do, I’ve written and published five nonfiction books. But in my mind, in my estimation, and from those close to me, who I’ve shared it with, the most important is what I will be putting out soon, as soon as I get all the formalities together, and it’s a nonfiction book titled The Black MANual, M-A-N in all caps. And the subtitle is Surviving Encounters with Law Enforcement, Hostile White Folks, and Others with a False Sense of Superiority. This is not a book about antagonism. This is not a book about us versus them. This is not what it’s about at all. This is what it sounds like. It’s a manual. It’s a multiple choice questionnaire that I’ve put together with scenarios that we are likely to find ourselves in, but much of the time, we may respond in ways that don’t help to de-escalate a situation.
Now, we’re not in control of how other people respond, with or without a badge. But we’re in control of ourselves. So the purpose for writing this, and when I get it out, is to help us to open up a greater conversation about what should and should not be done with simple traffic stops, simply walking down the street, being in a grocery store, whether you’re approached by a law enforcement official, someone who feels like they have something over you just because of maybe the color of their skin or their position. And we need to know how to survive these encounters, and not help to escalate that. So those are the two things right now that command my attention, that drive my passion, and that I want to be – I’m gonna to spend some time sharing with you and talking about.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio
