All Politics Is Local - Maryland Edition E01

My first Podcast 

Transcript

Tamara Davis Brain: 0:12

Hi, welcome to my very first episode of the podcast All Politics is Local with Tamara Davis Brain. Hi, I'm Tamara Davis Brown, and I am delighted to embark on this new journey of podcasting. You know, this has been, I guess, a work of labor and love for many, many years, and we are finally embarking on it here in 2023. So I'm excited about this year and what this podcast is going to do and the conversations that we're going to have. I'm really excited about it. This very first episode is just for you to get to know who I am, who Tamara Davis Brown is. Some of you may already know a little bit about me. Some may know me very intimately, but I'm going to break all that down who I am, why I'm doing this podcast, what this podcast is all about. And so that you can share and like and have your friends, colleagues, those of us who live in Prince George's County, live in the state of Maryland, and even beyond Maryland, because we're going to touch on some issues that are going to still be local, but they may have a more regional or more federal and national implications as those issues arise. So, first, I'm going to take a page from my church. And as I talk, I'm going to be revealing a little bit more about who I am, but I attend from the Heart Church Ministries. And whenever our pastor, Bishop John H. Cherry II, gives uh starts us off on a new teaching series, he gives us our intent, he gives us our purpose, he gives us our goal and our objectives for the lesson. So I'm going to do that with this podcast in general, what this podcast is about, what our intent, our purpose, our goal, and some of the objectives. And then I'm going to do it individually for each podcast. So that way you can follow along and know what to expect. Our purpose is to remind us of our civic duties and responsibilities beyond voting. I'm going to go into a little bit more detail about that because so many people think that, hey, I voted, I did my civic duty, and they feel real good about themselves. They give themselves a pat on the back, they wear their I voted stickers very proudly, not only for the same day that they voted, but maybe for the full week until elections are over. And that's very good. And I also applaud you and thank you for voting as well. But civics and our civic responsibility as residents, as citizens of this United States goes way beyond that. When we vote people into office, we actually have to hold them accountable. One of the many reasons why we see legislation that we don't like or we hear about it after the fact, and then we want to try to, you know, protest and get up in arms and find out, you know, what actually happened is because we're really not following what is going on with our local, state, and federal government. And it is important for us to do that. I know that it may take a little bit of extra time, but I promise you it's worth your effort because if you want to get results in your local community, if you want that pothole fixed, if you want that bridge repaired, if you want anything locally done, you're going to have to hold your civic leaders accountable. So the purpose again is to remind us of our civic duties and our responsibilities well beyond voting. After those big Tuesday elections, there's still more work for us to do. No matter how large the issue is or how small the issue may be, you still want to engage with your local politicians, your local elected officials so that they know what's important to you and that they can help you have a better quality of life. Third is our goal. The goal is to keep us educated and informed on all legislation that impacts our quality of life. And also, I'm not just going to be here in this podcast just giving you the legislation and telling you to follow it and tell you to call, but also to give you some tools to say, hey, these are some of the solutions and resolutions to some of the issues that we may encounter and that we need. So uh our elected officials, yes, they like to hear from us, and yes, they, you know, they they know they're going to hear all the gripes and complaints. But it's also good to go to them armed with possible solutions, with possible resolutions to some of the issues that you're facing so that they can say, hey, let's put this into legislation, let's put this idea into practice. And so again, the goal is to keep us all in not only educated and informed of the legislation, but to actually propose solutions and resolutions that's going to help us. And then we have some objectives. Um, for this very first podcast, the only objective is for you to get to know me. Like I said, many of you may know me that you're tuning in because I probably have sent you an email saying, hey, listen to my first podcast. We're starting a podcast called All Politics is Local. Some of you may be following me on Facebook or social media. And so you heard about this. Others of you have no clue how I who I am. You may have stumbled upon this podcast. And so I say to you, welcome. Thank you. And so some of the objectives aside from this very first podcast, but overall, what we're going to be covering are for this year, the 2023 Maryland General Assembly session. As many of you may or may not know, in the state of Maryland and across many states, your local legislation usually meets for a very short period of time, usually a 90-day session, so it goes by very quickly. Here in the state of Maryland, I'm going to be covering some of the very important local legislation that affects Prince George's County residents and some of the legislation that affects us all as Marylanders. Now, for those of you who are outside of Maryland, it's like, well, what does that have to do with me? Well, there may be some legislation that's on the horizon in Maryland that you may think may be a good piece of legislation in your state of town. Maryland is a very progressive state, and so the legislators really do do a good job in introducing progressive legislation that I think may be beneficial in other states and other cities and towns as well. So in addition to the Maryland General Assembly session, we're going to be covering the Prince George's County Council local sessions. We have a new Prince George's County Council that was elected uh this year. I think we only have one, two, two, four council members who are coming in as a second term, but the remainder of the council members are are our majority and coming in for the first, very first term. So we're looking for some forward to some great things and legislation that they're they're coming up with. And we're hearing some good things now. Um, we're also hearing some controversial things now, and we'll talk about those things as they go along. Um, another uh objective that we're going to cover in this podcast is local zoning and development, some of the local zoning and new building, new construction that you're seeing across the county, particularly in southern Prince George's County where we live. We're also going to cover education, public safety, business development, which has been a hot topic in Prince George's County recently. And then finally, and what I think is most important is uh the good news network. I call it GNN. So many times, I actually have just turned off my television because every um article, every segment, every piece of news always seems to be bad news. And so I want to focus on what good things are happening. And I'm just gonna give an example. And I said this to many people that I attended. I was at First Baptist Church of Glen Arden, their community center at their original location where I attended the court of honor for uh the Boy Scouts who made it all the way to Eagle Scouts, which is the highest scouting award that you can get in Boy Scout. And guess what? They were at number 100. And what I said to me, I looked around the room and I saw all the proud parents, I saw all the proud grandparents, family and friends, all the scout leaders coming to honor these young men. And I said, Where is the news media when you need them? They're all over, you know, they're all over our school system when there's something negative going on, whether it was at Suitland High School or Akakek Academy, and some of the negative things you hear, but when we had some positive things, a hundred, we were at, they were at their hundredth uh Boy Scout who turned Eagle Scout, and there was not one single person from the media there. And I think that's awful. So, what are the things that I want to do is share the good news about what's going on, not just in Prince George's County, not just in Maryland, but wherever I have some really um feel-good stories. And I think it's just it's good to hear those things and end on a positive note, begin on a positive note. We'll probably do one or highlight one or two segments. If you have some good news that you want to share that's been going on in the local community and you want that highlighted on this podcast, I welcome it. So can um so we want to focus on that. From time to time, we're gonna have guest speakers, we're gonna have guest visitors to come in who have a little bit more expertise than I do. And uh, we will just uh, you know, have a chat about what's going on. Um, you'll hear that throughout the podcast this year and for years to come, hopefully. So that's a little bit about what the overview I should say about what this podcast is all about. So in today's episode, it's just to get to know who I am. Again, I'm Tamara Davis Brown. I have been living in Prince George's County since 1988. I first came here and lived in Fort Washington in the Lynn Adlen Acres community right off of Palmer Road in 210. And during that time, I was attending Howard University School of Law. You may see behind me one of our most famous alumnus of Howard University School of Law and a son of Maryland, uh Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who has been an inspiration to not just all Howard University law students, because we all learn under the doctrine of Charles Hamilton Houston, who was the dean of the law school at the time, Thurgood Marshall was a student, to be social engineers. And that means that regardless of the type of uh legal work we do, I personally specialize in wireless telecommunications. I do a lot of work before the Federal Communications Commission. I recently started, I shouldn't say recently, it's been a while now, but started a company, Last Mile Broadband of Maryland, which provides high-speed internet to the rural and underserved areas in the state of Maryland and beyond. But regardless of the type of law that I practice, one of the things that was instilled in us as law students is that we should be social engineers in our local community. What that looks like, how that is done, is really independent on each and every student and how they impact. But for me, it was taking the legal skills, breaking down legalese to make it plain, make it understandable to the average person and average layperson so that they can understand what's going on. So much of the laws that we have in our federal government, our state government, and at the local level are written, one, by lawyers and two, have a lot of legal terms and loopholes, and so that it keeps us kind of confused. And so I have always endeavored to try to break that down into layman's term so that you can understand it. Many of you already receive my emails that I have put out over the years, and those emails do exactly what this podcast is doing orally and verbally. It's putting in writing some of the same things. I'm going to continue to send those emails out, but I thought I'd try some new technology, you know, trying to catch up with the age. My children really encourage me to step out and do something a little different. And we've been talking about this for at least a year, maybe even a little bit longer. And so I'm really excited about uh this podcast. So back to me coming to Prince George's County, uh, moving here in 1988, graduating from Howard's Law School in 1991. Um, I was at the time um during law school one of my very good friends and classmates who happens to be um now, I guess he's an adjunct professor of uh Howard University School of Law. He was actually a full professor, but now he's in the Biden administration um in the Environmental Protection Agency. And that is uh Dr. Carlton Waterhouse. He was a member of Ebenezer AME Church, and uh he got uh he came to preach his trial sermon and he invited the entire class of 91 to come and hear him um preach his trial sermon. Well, I was one of those students, it was crowded, packed, it was a lot of people there. I sat on the very last pew in the very last row uh at the the church at their their original location, and I was just in awe of not only uh Carlton and the church, but uh of the whole of the people who were there. And the following Sunday I went and I joined, I became a very active member of Ebenezer AME Church from 1991 to 95, uh worked as the co-chair of Womanhood Rites of Passage during that time, as well as a young adult co-chair for Women's Day season. So from there I became very good friends in the Rites of Passage program with uh my mentors' uh parents, and one of their very good friends was a gentleman who attended a church, Reach Out for Life Christian Center. And he encouraged me to uh join that church, which I did, and there I met my husband, Mr. Jerry Brown. So I became Tamara Davis Brown, and Jerry and I have um uh been married 26 years. Oh, again, we have raised two children, our son Aaron and our daughter Jessica Brown, and we're so very proud of them. Aaron is a 2020 graduate of Hampton University, where he was an aviation management airport operations major. He currently works at National Airport, and our daughter, um Jessica, just graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, and she works for a firm in their San Francisco office. And so we're incredibly, incredibly proud of them. And um so we have uh loved living in this area, and we remain active as parents, as residents, as students. Our our kids attended John Hansen Montessori off of uh Oxen Hill Road in Oxen Hill, which is right next to Top Golf, and we'll talk about that because our PTSA, along with the SGA at Oxen Hill High School, were really instrumental in working in that. And that's a good example about knowing what's going on locally and what they're doing and how to get involved to get something that we really want and really need in our community. So I think I've brought you all the way up to our marriage and our kids. And then let me just tell you a little bit about me politically. So after my first year of law school, now believe it or not, this is how naive I was about politics. I um interned for my congressman, the late congressman Mickey Leland, um, who is um who represented uh parts of Houston. Yeah, I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and came here again to go to law school. But that summer, as I was interning, I kind of overheard a couple of conversations that the the congressman was having, and he was saying something to the effect, I'll vote for your bill if you vote for my bill, this, that, and the other. And I thought that was really strange. And so I I literally called my mother and said, Mom, do you know they're over up here on the hill talking about I'll vote for your bill or will you vote for my bill? I was born under that schoolhouse rock kind of conversation. Uh I'm just a bill, I'm only a bill, sitting up here on Capitol Hill. I just thought that if it was a good idea and if if if it made sense and that was what the people wanted, Congress was gonna agree to it and it's gonna pass both chambers of commerce and Congress, I'm sorry, and the president's gonna sign it. Well, what I learned was, and my mom told me, yeah, that's politics. And so politics has not been something that's my strong suit. So even though I have run for office several times, five to be exact, um, what I have learned is that it really takes a special person to be a politician, but I'm really good at the nitty-gritty of like reading the bills, understanding the bills, making sure that there are no loopholes, all of those, all those sorts of things. And so that's really my strong suit and my my expertise. And so I thought I would bring that to you in through the the emails that I send out, also through this podcast. So uh before I end, I want to give you a couple of resources just even to start out, uh, particularly if you live in the state of Maryland, and these are these are the public media type things. So Maryland Public Television starting next week when session um uh starts in in general, and I'm not sure when we're gonna air this podcast because this is our first time taping, but I'm hoping that we'll get it out right away. But nevertheless, Maryland Public Television has a program called State Circle. State Circle is almost like our C-span of the Maryland General Assembly. You can actually watch live sessions now because of the pandemic. You can actually watch the live sessions um streamed on on the YouTube channel. So that's another resource. If you just look up Maryland General Assembly, they'll they'll have the House side as well as the Senate side of some of the legislation that you can um follow. But if you just want to get a snippet of what's going on and some of the other state circle on Maryland Public Television, it's a great resource. I'm a big proponent of public television and radio. It takes out all of that um opinion and commentary that you know is they may be biased. Um and it just gives you the plain facts, and that's what I hope to do here as well. So that's why I'm recommending Maryland Public Television. Another good source that is um media, but they tend to be more factual and less slanted in terms of of providing a left or right opinion, but just try to give you the facts, is Maryland Matters, which is a local newspaper, uh, which is pretty much gone now, all uh electronic. Uh but um Bruce DePoy, who used to be a local uh reporter um at our, I believe on WTOP and maybe some other local stations, is a great reporter. Um he calls me up and asks for quotes, and I, you know, try to get information and make sure I follow him as well. So those are two really good resources here in the state of Maryland if you're really wanting to find out a lot of what's going on politically at the legislative um level. And I will be using those as a resource, um giving op-eds on those and just making sure that we reference and cross-check information so that my information is accurate. And then I ask you, as my my listening audience, as my viewing audience, to please feel free to uh not only um like, subscribe, and comment, but in your comments, if there are any topics that you'd like to have covered or a question that you have that may be the subject of a future podcast, I welcome those because I may not know everything that's on your heart or what you're thinking about or something that you're seeing in your community. Now, it may take me a little bit of time because I've got to do one, my research because I want to make sure that I give you accurate information, but two, we have to develop this to to move this forward and keeping you educated and informed. So thanks for joining and tuning in to the first podcast. And come on back, y'all. Thanks. See you next time.