Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to our classroom. In this space, we talk about education, which is inclusive of but not limited to what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto German, and our classroom is official. Welcome back to our classroom, folks. Hey, we are going to get into this today. My special guest is GC Fatheree III. George.
Roberto Germán [00:00:41]:
Fatheree III, if you don't know, you're about to know about the Fintech founder, social impact entrepreneur and attorney. And listen, I came across his work, read this article that was referred to me by my friend and co host for today. Said he'll see me. You already know him, so I ain't going to say too much about my Mexican banker friend who's in Los Angeles, who's written 13 books and 550 essays, but who's counting? But GC Fatheree worked on this Bruce beach case. I ain't know about this, people, but when I learned about this case, I said, I got to have this guy on. And not only did he work on the Bruce's beach case, which you are gonna learn about here today, but he also led the rescue of Ebony and jet from going into bankruptcy. Listen, folks, y'all know that's important for the culture. So we have somebody out here who's doing some amazing work.
Roberto Germán [00:01:43]:
And you're going to learn a little bit about him today, but you're going to learn a lot about this Bruce's beach case today and why this is important not just to black folks, but to all folks. Why this is a wealth narrative that we should be talking about and looking at as a model for change in our society. With us today. GC Fatheree, welcome.
George Fatheree III [00:02:08]:
Thanks so much, Roberto. Thanks, Sergio. Thank you guys for having me on. I'm fired up to be here, man.
Roberto Germán [00:02:14]:
Well, it's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. I've been doing a little bit of research, and I've seen you on other platforms. I've read some articles. I'm extremely curious, and Sergio was the one who introduced me to your work. So thank you for doing so, Sergio. And I want to hear from you directly because I've read it, but I want to hear from the source. I first came across the work that you did with the Bruce's B Cage by reading the Los Angeles Sentinel article.
Roberto Germán [00:02:45]:
And it was encouraging because this is a rare victory, the first of its kind in this country. So salute to you. Can you provide a brief summary of the case just so folks can learn a little bit about this before I go into detail with some of the questions, and we could process that together.
George Fatheree III [00:03:04]:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity. So for folks who haven't heard about it, Bruce's beach refers to a piece of beachfront property in what is today the city of Manhattan beach, which is a city in Los Angeles county here in Southern California. Now, the story starts about 100 years ago. In the early 19 hundreds, a woman named Willa Bruce and her husband, Charles Bruce, moved to LA county, and they ended up buying a piece of property, beachfront property, on this beach in Manhattan Beach. And they opened a hospitality business. Now, the business started very humbly. There was a shack, and Mrs.
George Fatheree III [00:03:48]:
Bruce would serve sandwiches, and you could get a soda, and black folks would come, and they'd go to her business, they'd get a bite to eat, and they'd go down. They'd enjoy some time at the sun, in the sand, in the ocean. And the business started taking off. And in a couple of years, she had some money, and she added a changing structure, a tent. She rented out bathing suits so black folks could come down. You rent a bathing suit, you get a sandwich, you go down to the beach, enjoy your day, and then you'd come back, and the business got more successful. And so in a few years, she was able to buy a second piece of land, and she had enough money where she built a two story brick building. And at the time, this was state of the art.
George Fatheree III [00:04:34]:
So the ground floor had about 30 changing rooms. And then you'd go upstairs, and there was a parlor and a dining room, and you could go dancing and listen to music. And this was the spot for black folks in Southern California in the early 1920s. Resort became so popular that over time, other black families who would come and visit Bruce's Beach Resort, they bought property in the city of Manhattan Beach. They built their homes in the city of Manhattan Beach. And so it was really a tremendous success story to this black couple, these entrepreneurs, who in the early 1920s had this vision and built this. Now, unfortunately, not everybody was excited about the success of Bruce's beach and all the black folks that were coming to town. And so pretty early on, and I've gone back and I've read the newspaper articles and reviewed some letters from around the time.
George Fatheree III [00:05:31]:
What you see is that pretty early on, a bunch of the white neighbors start feeling like this is going to threaten their way of life in Manhattan Beach. And you read the newspaper articles, it talks about fear of the Negro invasion, and it talks about how the Negro invasion is going to ruin our way of life. And so what the Bruce's and their patrons ended up facing was a string of harassment and intimidation. You would come back from being at the beach and you'd find somebody flash the tires to your car. They put up no parking signs all around the area where the resort is so that people couldn't park. Conveniently, one of the neighbors actually constructed a wooden fence that separated where the resort was from the water. So if you wanted to go to the resort and go to the beach, you had to walk like about a half a mile in either direction. I read one story, Roberto.
George Fatheree III [00:06:30]:
A group of men found an old mattress, and they soaked it in kerosene and they shoved it under the building. They tried to set it on fire to burn the building down. And what I'll say is, in light of all of this harassment and intimidation and violence, the business just got more and more successful and people kept coming and it kept growing until finally, in 1923, under pressure from some of the neighbors and folks in the community, the Manhattan Beach City Council took the property using imminent domain. Imminent domain is a power that the government has to take privately owned property for a public use. And in this case, what the city said is, we need to build a city park, and the park's got to go right there, right where the Bruce's beach building is. And so in 1923, the city condemned the property. They instituted a lawsuit to take the property. The city was successful.
George Fatheree III [00:07:30]:
When the city got the property, they immediately demolished the building. And they also passed a number of laws that would make it illegal to open up another business along the beach. They wanted to make sure that the Bruces didn't just go a few hundred yards down the beach and open a new business. So as a result of that, the Bruce's basically lost everything. They left Manhattan Beach. Those other black families that I mentioned who had moved to the city and had built homes there, they lost their property in that same imminent domain action. They were forced out of the city as well. And what I'll say is that to this very day, almost 100 years later, no park was ever built on that property that was taken from the Bruces.
George Fatheree III [00:08:13]:
It was a clear farce. What I'll also say is that about three years ago, I got involved and I had heard about the story, and we can talk about that. But as a result of about three years of hard work, not just from me, but I had a team of lawyers and there were elected officials and folks we work with. But as a result of that work, what I'm excited to say and proud to say is that 100 years later, that land was returned to the great grandsons and the great great grandsons of Willa and Charles Bruce. And that's the first time in US history that property has been returned to a black family after having been taken under those circumstances.
Roberto Germán [00:08:56]:
That's amazing. That's amazing. My goodness, there's so much there. Thank you for providing that context. I felt an array of emotions in hearing you describe all of that. I felt some anger and frustration when you described what happened to the bruises and how their property was taken away through eminent domain. And then I did feel some joy and some vindication in hearing that the property was returned, albeit 100 years later. I'm definitely left with the curiosity about them.
Roberto Germán [00:09:33]:
Did they go somewhere else and start a new business or were they just completely defeated after that? And I'm not asking you to respond to that question right now. These are just curiosities that surfaced for me because I could see how that could be completely debilitating for a family. Right. You work so hard to establish something, you have a good thing going on, you're seeing the fruit of it. And just like that, it can get taken away. And obviously there's a justice issue here.
George Fatheree III [00:10:09]:
A huge justice issue. And look, we don't have this historical records. We don't have a lot of information about what the Bruce's did after they lost that property. I was able to find a foreclosure record. So it seems that when they lost their property in Manhattan beach, they came back to live in the city of LA and had purchased a building. And what I saw is a foreclosure record where they lost that building for the inability to pay the property tax. So it leads me to believe that they lost the family wealth. They lost the wealth that was created from Bruce's beach and they likely died in poverty.
Roberto Germán [00:10:48]:
Wow. Tough. It's a blessing that we're able to get that back into the hands of the family generations later. I'm wondering about the process of returning Bruce's beach, how that process started. You got into it a little bit from my research. I do recall that part of how this surfaced was that there was somebody, an advocate, who happened to learn about the Bruce family. And then through some of that advocacy work, it was covered in the LA Times. And it came to your attention.
Roberto Germán [00:11:24]:
I'm sure I'm mixing up the details a little bit, but perhaps you can elaborate a bit in terms of the process of returning Bruce's beach and obviously your involvement in making it happen.
George Fatheree III [00:11:37]:
Yeah, well, so look, this is an important part of the story, especially as we wrestle with topics like restitution and reparations today. This is an important part of the story. It's like, how did we get this done? And look, this started really the Genesis. It started a way that, I think a lot of change starts, and that is it started with a story. There was a local reporter down in this area in the South Bay in Los Angeles county, who had done research and discovered what had happened to the bruises in the 1920s. And she ended up writing an article about it and getting the word out. One of the people who read this article was a single mother African American woman named Kavan Ward, who was living in the South Bay in 2020. And she read this article, and this was after the George Floyd murder.
George Fatheree III [00:12:36]:
And this is when we as a country were kind of mourning, and we were angry. And so Ms. Ward read the article, and it made her angry, and it made her feel like she wanted to do something. And so she ended up organizing a protest in the city of Manhattan Beach. And it was called Hashtag justice for Bruce's Beach. And so that got the word out more. One of the people who read about the protest happening was an elected official, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who read the story and heard about the protest. And when she asked her staff, she said, well, who owns that property now? Who owns that land? Her staff said, supervisor, you own that property now.
George Fatheree III [00:13:27]:
That property was taken by the city of Manhattan Beach. It was transferred to the state of California. Then the state of California transferred that property in the 1980s to Los Angeles County. So you own the property. And when Janice Hahn heard that, she said, well, if we own it, we ought to see if there's a way to give that property back. And then how I got involved was, I've got a close friend. It's actually a mutual friend of Sergio's and mine, who used to work at the Los Angeles Times, used to work for Los Angeles County. She's a very high powered, high impact local publicist here.
George Fatheree III [00:14:05]:
Her name is Lisa Richardson. And Lisa had heard about my work rescuing the Ebony and Jet photography archive out of bankruptcy and helping a group of foundations acquire that archive. And so when Lisa heard the story about Bruce's beach, she reached out to me, and she got me involved. And once I got involved, I got a team at my law firm. We engaged with the county, we engaged with the family, and we worked together as a team to have that property return. But I think the point I want to make is that this was not something that one person did. This was something you had a reporter who covered the story. You had a community activist who kind of raised awareness.
George Fatheree III [00:14:48]:
You had an elected official who demonstrated political leadership. You had a lawyer who was able to navigate and advocate for the family. This was a team effort.
Roberto Germán [00:15:01]:
It's great. And I love to hear when the community comes together in that way. You love to hear stories like this because it demonstrates that there are still people out there with integrity. There are still people that have a heart for doing the right thing. When you talk about politicians, I'm not trying to paint all politicians in the same light, by the way, but when you talk about politicians, for a lot of people, it might make them react a particular way. And so hearing that somebody was able to come across this story, come across this information, draw the conclusion that, hey, the right thing for us to do is to give that land back. I mean, again, this is not a common story. We know it's the first of its kind because there's only been one victory such as this.
Roberto Germán [00:15:51]:
I think it's important to highlight these individuals, as you have done, so that people can leave with some sense of encouragement that, hey, while this is not common, there are still people out there doing the right thing and that by taking some small steps, being an advocate, writing up a story if you're a reporter, all right, not writing up rumors, not writing about meaningless things. But let's write stories that matter. Let's write stories that help amplify the voices and experiences of people that are historically marginalized. Let's bring things to the light that need to be unearthed. And then let's figure out where the great lawyers such as GC father e are at so we could make it happen. Let'S COntinue to reclaim.
George Fatheree III [00:16:43]:
Right?
Roberto Germán [00:16:44]:
We need a lot of folks to reclaim what's rightfully theirs and so proud of the work of all the individuals involved in that. And I think there are things that we can all learn. Obviously, this platform, our classroom, focused on education, focused on what's happening in terms of the intersection of an education society. And so I'm wondering, what can educators and students learn from the Bruce's beach example?
George Fatheree III [00:17:16]:
Yeah. So look, I'm going to take it back to the story. To me, If YOU REAlLY THINK ABOUT, WElL, WhAt WaS the CRitIcaL MomenT? What was the critical thing that happened that set these series of events into action? It really came back to that story. And when I think about the role for educators and students, what I think about is the important opportunity around narrative. AND WHaT WE NEED IS NARRaTIve BuSting, Right? We've all seen that show. We've heard of that show, myth Busting, where they go, MythBusters. THEY GO AND THEY DISPEL TheSE MyTHS, OR THEY PRoVE TheSE MYTHS. WE NEED NARRATIVE BUSTING, BECAUSE WHAT WE'VE GOT IS WE'VE GOT A POPULAR AND PREVAILING NARRATIVE ABOUT THE REASON THAT THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE TODAY, WHY WE HAVE SUCH A PRONOUNCED AND PERSISTING RACIAL WEALTH Gap, WHY BLACK HOMEOWNERSHIP TRAILS WHITE HOMEOWNERSHIP BY ABoUT 30 POINTS.
George Fatheree III [00:18:15]:
AND THE PREVAILING NARRATIVE THAT WE HAVE IS A NARRATIVE THAT HAS ITS ORIGINS AND ITS ROOTS IN WHITE SUPREMACIST, ANTI BlaCK RACISM. WHAT The NArrATIVe SAYS IS THAT THE REASON THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE TODAY IS BECAUSE BLACK FOLKS HAVE DIFFERENT PRIORITIES. Black folks have different cultural values. Black folks lack ambition. THEY LaCk A HARD WoRK ETHiC. They've got different intellectual capacity. WHAT'S POWERFUL ABOUT THE BRUCE'S BEACH STORY IS IT CHALLENGES THAT NARRATIVE, AND IT SHOWS US THE REAL AND THE TRUE REASON THAT THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE TODAY. I want to mention something.
George Fatheree III [00:18:59]:
IF YOU look at the black population today in the city of Manhattan beach, it is 0.5%. That's about the lowest percentage of any city in all of LA County. Wow. But that's not an accident that it's that low, right? I mentioned that in 1923, not only did the City of Manhattan beach take the Bruce's property, but they used imminent domain to take the property of every black family that was living in Manhattan beach at the time. They made it clear that those families were not welcome. They made it clear that they did not want those families there. You can draw a straight line from 1923 and that imminent domain action to the 0.5% today. And so it's important that we correct that narrative, because otherwise, without understanding the story, without understanding the history, you look at Manhattan beach and you say, hey, how come there's no black people here? And it's like, well, this is an expensive area, and black people can't afford to live here.
George Fatheree III [00:20:00]:
That's not the story. The story is that 100 years ago, the City and its citizens engaged in a deliberate and systematic and systemic effort to get black people out of the city. And the results, the fruits of those efforts, can be felt 100 years later today. We got to bust these narratives. We got to change these stories.
Sergio Muñoz [00:20:21]:
So, Roberto, there's also a secondary narrative based around the same thing that George is talking about right now, which is. And George has mentioned it before, and maybe he can enlighten us about it, which is the story of entrepreneurship. Right? As you were listening to the story, and you were hearing that things were just getting better and better and better. That prompted some fear into the community. Right. But if you look at it from the perspective of, for example, the Hilton family, they started their business the exact same, and, and look at their empire now today. And so you can go back and see how it actually happened. But you can also go into a sort of fantasy of how it could have happened for the Bruce family if they didn't hit these artificial LimitS to their.
Roberto Germán [00:21:27]:
Man. That's. Yeah, that's a narrative mean. It makes me think about Black Wall Street.
George Fatheree III [00:21:40]:
Right.
Roberto Germán [00:21:41]:
It makes me think about what could have been. We saw the potential. Well, we didn't see it firsthand, but you read about it, you understand the first hand accounts of folks who lived it. You're like, wow, the trajectory that Black Wall street had.
George Fatheree III [00:21:59]:
That's right.
Roberto Germán [00:22:00]:
And what that could have been and the way that could impact the generations of families and likely all across the United States. Right. Because if you're doing well financially, if you have the means, you have the access now, you're not even just limited to one place now, you could spread your wings. And in the case of the, you know, maybe they start moving all throughout California. Maybe they go beyond California.
George Fatheree III [00:22:37]:
Think about what the Bruce's. And Sergio has a good analogy talking about the Hilton family. And today, I don't know, there's probably a few thousand Hilton hotels. The Hilton business is worth about $40 billion. You think about what could have been if the Bruce's business success could have gone undisturbed. Right. And I think about not just the wealth that would have been created for the Bruce's. Think about the people that they would have employed.
George Fatheree III [00:23:05]:
Right. The Black families. They would have given jobs to. Think about the black families who would have visited there. Been inspired to see these Black entrepreneurs. Think about what they could have done with their wealth. Right. Think about the elected officials who they could have helped put into office.
George Fatheree III [00:23:18]:
Think about the nonprofit, the charitable causes they would have supported. Here's what we got to do, though. We've got to stop, and this goes back to the narrative point and the narrative busting. We've got to stop thinking that Black Wall street in Tulsa and Bruce's beach were one offs. Right. We're spectacular. We're remarkable. We've got hundreds of these stories.
George Fatheree III [00:23:42]:
I'm reading a book right now. It's called Wilmington's Lie. It's about town, Wilmington, North Carolina, which know at the time it was a majority black city. And the blacks in that city were affluent. They were bankers. They owned the newspaper, they collected the taxes. And what happened? The white supremacist led a race riot in the early 19 hundreds that forced all the Blacks to leave town. You look at what happened in Overton, Miami, in Florida, right? Overton was basically, it was the Harlem of the south, they called it, right? There were hotels and theaters and this is where Dizzy Gillespie and these performers and musicians would come and stay.
George Fatheree III [00:24:23]:
It was a vibrant black business hub. But of course, when the state of Florida wants to build a freeway through, what part of town do they pick? They ran that freeway straight through Overton. The population of Overton went from about 40,000 to about 8000. Decimated the city, decimated the community, the neighborhood, destroyed the wealth and the businesses that have been built there. We've got to stop thinking that Black Wall street was a one off, that Bruce's beach was a one off, that Overton was a one off. This happened really after slavery, for the next hundred years, right? 150 years that black people have been deprived, systematically deprived through government actions of the right to build wealth, create wealth, and to pass that wealth on, to build intergenerational wealth.
Roberto Germán [00:25:16]:
That's good. GC. It makes me wonder, though, I'm listening to you use these terms that folks come after me and my platform and my business over terms such as white supremacists, for example. They don't land well for some people. And it makes me wonder, how have you been able to navigate the spaces that you're in as an attorney, high profile, handling some different stuff? You're in interesting spaces. I gather you're speaking quite boldly. Some would argue that you're speaking boldly.
George Fatheree III [00:26:02]:
Right.
Roberto Germán [00:26:02]:
And some people don't want to use this language at all because of the resistance, because of the pushback, because of the hate, so on and so forth. How have you been able to navigate this? And the reason I'm asking you this is because I think it's important for our listeners, especially those who might be in the neutral zone, to be able to receive some wisdom, receive some counsel, receive some encouragement from someone like you. In terms of like, yeah, I'm an attorney. I deal in a lot of different spaces with a lot of different types of people. And I'm going to call this what it is because that's what you're doing.
George Fatheree III [00:26:43]:
Yeah, look, you're right to say this is a sensitive topic. This is a topic that makes folks feel uncomfortable and not at ease. But we got to start being straight with each other, right? And we got to realize that if we're serious about moving forward as a country and if we're serious about achieving this greatness that we're capable of, we got to do it with intellectual honesty, right? When I say that, I'm not talking about blame. There's a big difference between kind of correcting the narrative and understanding why things are the way they are today and how we got here and blame. Right? That's not what I'm trying to do. But if you look, you say people are uncomfortable when you use terms like white supremacy. That was the reality in 1923. That was the reality in the early 19 hundreds.
George Fatheree III [00:27:47]:
You go and you read the newspaper accounts and you read the lawsuits and you read kind of the views that people were expounding of why they didn't want black people there, why they didn't want black people elected to public office. And it was white supremacy, and they called it white supremacy. And so this idea that we're going to be able to move forward and realize the goals and ambitions of our democracy while trying to hide from the history or not educating and appreciating the history, I think we've seen where that's gotten us, and it's gotten us where we are today, which is we're stuck. What I'm interested in is moving forward. And I think the way we do that is by correcting the narrative is by educating folks and making people understand. And look, I'm not saying my narrative is always the right one, but we need competing narratives, and that's where the truth is going to come from. But we've got to expose people to what happened. And how could what happened 100 years ago explain where we are today and why things are how they are today? And until we're willing to be kind of intellectually honest with each other around that, I think we're stuck.
Roberto Germán [00:29:01]:
I like that. I might get a T shirt that says, hashtag narrative busting.
George Fatheree III [00:29:07]:
There we go. We should start a show.
Roberto Germán [00:29:12]:
You're taking notes.
Sergio Muñoz [00:29:15]:
I am. But you also, I think, should maybe tell the audience. George comes with a lot of validation. Right? Like, he's educated at Harvard, he's working at big Law, which is not easy. And it's not something that should be taken lightly because his work with big law allowed him the three years to be able to dedicate to this particular pro bono case.
George Fatheree III [00:29:53]:
Right.
Sergio Muñoz [00:29:55]:
And he's spoken in front of legislatures. And he is the type of character that if you start to ask him questions, he's actually going to respond to those questions with a very extreme intellectual capacity, oftentimes and I hear what you're saying, Roberto. I get this because I deal with White folk from the Mexican perspective, right, where they have their opinions about Mexico. And no one's going to change their opinions about Mexico, regardless of whether there's facts about Mexico that they haven't heard. But if you can't answer their questions or if you get heated about their questions or if it turns into a Jerry Springer show, then it becomes a lost opportunity. And George has the capacity to not let it go in that direction because of his.
Roberto Germán [00:31:07]:
Great. That's great. Yeah, we're definitely not doing Jerry spring around here. So maintaining the guardrails. But I'm going to go to the fun part of the interview, which is, if you had the opportunity to have lunch with anybody that are alive, who would it be and why?
George Fatheree III [00:31:29]:
I know we're going long, but I tried to pick just one. I couldn't. So my lunch is going to be table for three. We have three of us there. Bob Marley's been on my list forever, right. Since I was a boy. Bob maRley. I remember the first know I'm biracial background.
George Fatheree III [00:31:47]:
My mom's Polish American, my dad's African American. I remember the first time I learned that Bob Marley was biracial. I was like, yes, that's another. Like, I really kind of felt validated.
Roberto Germán [00:31:58]:
You felt GC.
George Fatheree III [00:31:59]:
Yeah. Here's what I love about Bob Marley is the world that he came up in was filled with racism and corruption and violence and oppression. And his message remained one of peace and love and brotherhood and sisterhood. And if I could have lunch with Bob, I would want to understand how he did that and how he managed to channel. And not just channel, because he's not singing about it. He's living it. So Bob Marley's at the table. And then the other seat goes to my favorite artist, Kerry James Marshall.
George Fatheree III [00:32:46]:
Kerry James Marshall is a Chicago based painter. He was actually born in Birmingham, Alabama, and then lived in Los Angeles for a while, but he's been in Chicago. A brilliant painter depicts black people in different aspects of life. And what I'll share about Marshall is, you know, when he was a boy, what I understand is he got a bus pass, and he went to Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was on the bus route between his home and his school. So he would go to LACMA and walk around. And what he realized was that nobody on the walls looked like him, both in the subjects or the painters. And at that point, he made himself a promise.
George Fatheree III [00:33:37]:
And the promise he made himself was that he was going to dedicate his life to changing that. He was going to dedicate his life to changing the art canon and making it have people that look like him of work that was made by people that look like him. And he's probably 13 when he makes this commitment to himself. And lo and behold, he's done that. Kerry James Marshall has changed the art canon. He's put Black faces, Black images in the art. Cannon. He's put Black artists in the art.
George Fatheree III [00:34:09]:
So I'm so inspired by his identification of a problem and then his personal promise and commitment to basically achieve a level of excellence where he Would demand a seat at that table. So those are my two. That's my lunch. You're welcome to come.
Roberto Germán [00:34:32]:
Both of you guys appreciate that, man, that's great. So for those that are listening, what is a message of encouragement you want to offer them?
George Fatheree III [00:34:46]:
Yeah. So here's my message, right? My message is, find what it is that you care about. Find what it is that you care about. Right. For me, it was this Black justice for Kerry James. It was having art in the Museum of folks that look like him. Find what it is that you care about. Right.
George Fatheree III [00:35:12]:
That's number one. Number two, become excellent. Become excellent at that. And then number three, find your role to make a change, and I'll go back to where we started, which, how did Bruce's beach start? How did this land get back? And remember, it didn't start with a lawyer. Didn't start with a civil rights lawyer. It started with a reporter, someone who early on said they wanted to tell stories. And what did they do? They went to school. They got a job.
George Fatheree III [00:35:44]:
They became excellent at that. And they found their role. And then it was a community organizer, right? Someone who decided they want to advocate for change, they want to organize communities. They became excellent at that. An elected official. Right. Someone who wanted to run for office and wanted to change people's lives. She became excellent at that.
George Fatheree III [00:36:03]:
She found her role. And finally an attorney, someone who'd gone to school and studied and worked at big firms and developed skills and got experience and found my role. So my message of encouragement are those three things. Figure out what you care about, go and get excellent at that, and then find your role and make a difference.
Roberto Germán [00:36:22]:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's something we can embrace. That's something folks can apply. That's something we could put up on the vision board and go attack. That's great. Thank you very much. GC Fathery II.
Roberto Germán [00:36:37]:
Where can folks follow you if they need a lawyer to work on their case if they want to learn more about Bruce's beach, if they just want to see what's going on in the world of GC. Is there somewhere where folks can follow you?
George Fatheree III [00:36:52]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn, George Fatheree at LinkedIn, and I try to get on there weekly, and I try to do some narrative busting. Check out. I got a post there that talks about reparations and whether you think somebody asked me if I thought the US would ever pay reparations for slavery. I think my answer might surprise a lot of folks listening. So check me out on LinkedIn, and then I'm [email protected] ww georgefathery.com is my site, so thanks for the opportunity Sergio and Roberto. Thank you guys, and thanks for the listeners.
Roberto Germán [00:37:26]:
Oh, man. Thank you for dropping these gems, for helping us learn more about Bruce's Beach, but also just widening our perspective in terms of what this can look like when we go and reclaim, when we work in conjunction with other change agents, when we do the things that you mentioned that we should do right, when we find what it is that we care about and become excellent at it and find our role and make change. And so I'm full of encouragement by what you've shared with us and looking forward to hearing your engagement in our classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race bias, education, and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. Peace and love from your host, Roberto Germán.
