All Politics Is Local - Maryland
A Podcast to educate and inform a younger generation of voters beyond the ballot box about local civic matters in the state of Maryland and Prince George's County.
All Politics Is Local - Maryland
District 9 Grassroots: Tamara's Sit-Down with Carlos Childs
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This week on All Politics is Local, the tables are completely turned as host Tamara Davis Brown steps into the guest seat over on The Left-Handed Leftist podcast. The conversation was so rich that we decided to drop the entire interview directly into your this episode. Tune in to hear a fantastic, unapologetic discussion covering Tamara's run for District 9 County Council, her strong stance against hyperscale data centers and irresponsible housing development, and her innovative vision for bringing "medical innovation districts" to the county to spur economic growth and improve healthcare access. Sit back and enjoy Tamara's sit-down with Carlos Childs!
Welcome And Why This Conversation
SPEAKER_01Hi, welcome back to another episode of All Politics is Local with me, your host, Tamara Davis Brown. Usually I'm the one asking the questions, but recently the tables were turned and I was invited as a guest on the Left-handed Leftist podcast for a fantastic, unapologetic conversation about grassroots organizing and what it takes to drive change. The discussion hits on so many topics we care about that we decided to share this episode directly with you on All Politics Local. So sit back and enjoy my sit-down with Carlos Childs of the Left-Handed Leftist Podcast. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_00What's up? What's up, you uh? Thank you, thank you so much for being here. Tamara Davis Brown, how is it going today?
SPEAKER_01It is going great. It's going great. I'm having a great week. My birthday was on Monday, and so I am still celebrating and having fun out on this campaign trail. I actually did do some campaigning and knocked on doors on Monday, but after that, I um relaxed and had a good time.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a wonderful thing. I'm gonna say, I was saying I know you got a campaign to run, but still make sure to enjoy your birthday, enjoy your time. Yes, and also happy birthday to you as well.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00Of course, of course. I'm so glad that you're here joining
Meet Tamara And District 9
SPEAKER_00us today. So if you can please just go ahead and start us off with just telling the audience who you are and also what is the race that you are running for.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So again, I am Tamara Davis Brown. I am a candidate for District 9 County Council here in Prince George's County. So District 9 covers the southernmost portion of Prince George's County. I like to call it the ABCs. So Akakiek, Aquasco, Baden, Brandywine, Sheltingham, Clinton, Croom. Um then there's a small portion of Upper Marlboro that also includes the town of Upper Marlboro, as well as a small portion of Fort Washington, which is Old Fort Road South, off of 210, Old Fort Road up to Friendly High School, that near Friendly High School in that area.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01So it's the largest.
SPEAKER_00I love that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the largest district landmass-wise, but not necessarily density-wise, although they're building like gangbusters, and so we might be catching up with some of the other districts, but it's landmass-wise, it's the largest district.
SPEAKER_00And that is such it's so different than than the the northern part of Prince George's, because you said it's more, you have more of that like suburban rural field than the whole like Exactly big city, I guess you could call it. Right. As you go further north. And kind of with that, what made you decide to run for um for for county council and and and not like per se like a delegate seat, a school board seat, something smaller?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I've got a lot of history codes. So this is not my first rodeo. I've run for this seat in 2018, lost by 55 votes to our current incumbent. But I have also run for state delegate. Yeah, it's a flaw for that. But a loss is still a loss. An L is still an L. And so we got to, Carlos, we got to witness one this time. But uh I have run for delegate and um as well. Uh so I've always kept my name out there, but the the reason that I have run for District 9 County Council and why it's so important to me is as my podcast says, and for your listening audience that do not know, I actually have a podcast myself that's called All Politics is Local. And in the Maryland edition with Tamara Davis Brown, I am number five in the state, and I am number 75 of political and civic podcasts in the nation. So I'm in the top 100, top eight.
SPEAKER_00Congrats to you. Okay, you're breaking all the records. I love that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I love it. So, but I said that to say that the local politics and local government is really what affects you the most. It's where a lot of decisions are made. It's where you feel uh the government is working for you. If it's not working, is that potle being fixed? Is your the street being plowed after the snow? You know, my kids are going to school, what's going on with the education system? All of that stuff is the local issue. So that's where the rubber really meets the road, more so than at the federal level, more so than maybe even at the school board level. The school board level is just, it's obviously one tract.
Why County Council Matters Most
SPEAKER_01It's just education. But I have a particular interest in the county council because a lot of people do not know. And I hope your audience will understand this that about 60% of what the county council does in Prince George's County is sit as the district council on land use and zoning matters. And even when they're not sitting as district council, a lot of the bills that they're introducing, introducing have to do with how land is being used. You know, you know, are we gonna approve this grocery store? Are we gonna approve another liquor store? We're gonna approve another storage facility, all of those kind of things. And so that really lands really at the county council level. And I want to be able to make an impact on those local issues because that's what kind of got me involved. I'm a graduate of Howard's Law School, and so Howard has taught us that it doesn't matter what you practice, you always use your legal skills to be of benefit to your community. And that's what's called a social engineer. That term was coined by the dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, and he was the dean when Thurgood Marshall was a student at Howard Law School. And so, even, you know, when I went, which is way later, they still instill that in us. And so it's been my passion and my mission to use my legal skills to be of benefit to our community. And so I've always decided to say, hey, well, what is this legislation really looking like? What is it really saying? Because a lot of stuff is written in legalese, which in my opinion is intentional and meant to keep us ignorant, keep the voters ignorant, keep the residents ignorant of what's really happening. And so I try to break that down into um layman's term so that even a fifth grader would be able to understand this is what this legislation says, this is how it impacts you. And then you make a decision as to whether or not you want to call your local representative or whoever is presenting the legislation or whoever has to vote on the legislation and chime in and let them hear from you. And so that's what I call a representative government, a government that's for the people, of the people, by the people, and for the people.
SPEAKER_00Wow. I love how you threw it down right
Making Laws Plain And Accountable
SPEAKER_00there. And before we even get into your uh platform and stuff, I do want to kind of talk about the whole how you see laws written in this tough legalese jargon. And you're right, it is kind of written like that in a way to make people feel intimidated to even ask questions. Because you may say, okay, who am I to ask a question? And it's written for like lawyers and blase blase. Seeing the example on the state, state level, there was a bill a while ago that was trying trying to be passed on the state level that would make it so all ballot initiatives have to be written at a sixth grade reading level, which the majority of citizens actually do read on a lower grade reading level than a college graduate because a lot of people don't go to college, or you kind of don't, if you don't practice that, that same muscle, you're gonna lose it. Can you kind of talk about why it why it is important that legislation is is written, but also talked about in a way that that everyday people can actually understand?
SPEAKER_01And it that's it's that's just simply it. Your c your your question almost has the answer in it, is that everyday people need to understand what their legislators are doing and how it impacts them. And so I think that that legislation is important because you just have no clue. Like right now, we still don't really have a clue what Congress is doing right now, right? It's so dysfunctional. It's so, you know, when they're trying to pass laws, and I'm gonna use the example of the SAVED Act, because that's been the big, big topic right now, and you know, they're trying to get that pushed through. I think it's already been voted on on the House side in Congress, but the Senate side is not, and now they're trying to push through some other things. But you look at that legislation, and I had an opportunity to read it, but there's still some questions that I have, and I have a law degree, right? It's like, okay, does this impact, do you have to have, um, do you do you need to have a driver's license, a birth certificate? Do you need to have what is it that you really need to have in order to go vote? A basic uh US constitutional right that we have? What is it that we need to have to go vote? Maybe not necessarily in our primaries coming up in June here in Maryland, but in the November elections is when this is supposed to take effect and it's supposed to impact because obviously the other side is is trying to impact the elections. And so my question always is, you know, if you know, people with an education in the law degree can't understand and it's not written clearly, and I've got to go back and read it two, three, four times to make sure I'm trying to understand what the law is is. What would a person that just graduated from high school or, you know, don't have a 12th grade reading level comprehension? And so it's intended to, in my opinion, to keep us ignorant, to keep us uninformed, and for us to just say, okay, well, I trust my representative to go along and get along. That's not a representative government. That's not a government that is accountable to the people. That's not a government that is going to help the people understand how government is working for them. The problem is that you don't know what you don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? If if there's something that you you don't know, you're just anybody can just pull a wool over your eyes and fool you and say, yeah, yep, this this bill, this save act is gonna be the best thing since life spread. We're gonna stop all this voter fraud. It has save in the name. It has save in the name. Exactly. It has save in the name. It's gonna help us. We're gonna, we're gonna just rock and roll, and everything is gonna be good. You're gonna be able to vote, and then turn out in November, what? It's gonna be chaos in May because people are not understanding. And so I wholeheartedly try to make sure that people understand what is being proposed, how it impacts them, and to make them empower them to talk to their legislators, to talk to their elected officials, to say, hey, I do not support this, or yes, I do support this. It's important.
SPEAKER_00No, it definitely is, and that's wonderful that you're doing it. It's not enough people who are breaking down this complicated legislative jargon into actual terms and terminology that everyday people use. So that's just amazing that you're doing that work.
Development Pressure And Rural Identity
SPEAKER_00And kind of what you mentioned earlier about um uh 60% of what the county council does is around land use. I want to kind of get your thoughts on housing within your district, especially because a lot of people who move to district nine move there because it has that kind of rural, suburban, or even I say suburban light feel, feel to it too, where people expect I have acres upon acres, but as we see now, housing developers are coming in, buying up properties and turning it into kind of urban sprawl. What is your view on kind of what's been happening within the housing market within your district? And also, are you um supportive or against the uh residential development that's been happening?
SPEAKER_01So, in three words, I hate it.
SPEAKER_00Three bold words. Oh, I love it.
SPEAKER_01Okay, listen, Carlos, uh, I'm one of those persons that moved out here really for the rural nature of I live in Clinton, Maryland, but I'm in the southern part of Clinton, Maryland. So if you're familiar, if you've ever been to Miller's Farm, I'm just down the street from Miller's Farm. I can I can literally walk to Mirrell's Farm, but I wouldn't risk my life walking down that two-lane road now because it's just like people are going 50 miles an hour, there's no sidewalks, no shoulder, nothing. But the reason that I hate it is because when I I literally moved out here, and I uh I unfortunately I think I spoke this into existence. I said, I'm gonna make sure that I patronize these farms. At the time, there were three working farms. It was not just the Mills farm. It was the Mills Farm, the Parker family farm. They actually have their name on the road. And then there was the um what they call Cherry Hill Farm, which was owned by the Gallaghan family. And I said to myself, I'm gonna make sure I come to these places weekly, you know, go often, get my fresh vegetables, fruits. And the Gallaghan family, at Cherry Hill Farm, they actually had apple and peach orchards. So they had really fresh off-the-vine type of vegetables. Miller's farmers have gotten a little bit more commercial. They ship some of their stuff in. They still do farm a lot of, particularly in the fall and winter seasons, harvest, you know, the collard greens, the yams, and all that. But the other farms have stopped. They I won't, well, one sold. They sold and they build houses on the property. And the other farm, they have not, they my understanding is that they still have operations in Virginia. So they still have a farmstead, but they use it like for storage. But the mainland is now a big community called Hill and Trade, which is also in Clinton. And in fact, they used to sell berries. And so when you drive in that community, there's Strawberry Lane, Strawberry Hill, something, strawberry, you know, so the streets are actually named after uh, you know, berries and things like that. But, you know, why I hate it is because, you know, we have a two-lane road, Carlos, north and south, and all of this development is coming out on these two-lane roads. You got, you know, um, Hill and Trade probably has about three, 300, 300 or 400 homes. Um, my community, which is an older community built back in the 60s, has about 400 or so homes. But they're getting ready to build right across Vanilla's Farm um townhouses. And, you know, that's a lot. They want to put like 1,700 townhouses up. Where the airport, it used to be an airport, an old airport called Hyde Field. And so they want to put 1,700 houses there. And everything is coming out on these two-lane roads. And it's like, no, we cannot continue to grow like this at this capacity. We have to fix the infrastructure. And that's one of the things that I have been doing for decades, Carlos. I think what distinguishes me from the other candidates that are running in this race, and there are like nine Democrats and one Republican running, I think it's like 10 people running. Because it's an open seat, you know, it's always open seat, open season, is what I say. And so, but what distinguishes me from the other candidates, Carlos, is that I have consistently and been at the forefront of land use and development here in District 9. Barna, no one, there's no other candidate that can say that they have consistently been either fighting development, trying to work with the developers to get some community benefits, to get some infrastructure improved. And some of the promised infrastructure that we're getting has is a direct result of my advocacy along with my neighbors. I don't proclaim to be the champion of everything, but I have been at the forefront and brought our neighbors along to help either fight the development or um or at least try to get some community benefits. They also wanted to put apartments at the airport. Yep. They wanted to put apartments there, big five, I think like five-story, six-story building of of apartment units. And we said, absolutely not. That's a non-starter. Yes. Yes. And so we were successful in getting that stopped. But a lot of people, most of the people that moved here moved for that quiet enjoyment that you talked about in your question. We we didn't want the urban, suburban sprawl. We didn't want the traffic, we didn't, we want it to be nice and you know, our bedroom communities, this and that. And it's not that we're against development, period, wholesale, full stop. It's just that if you're going to develop in this area, at a minimum, please build the infrastructure to accompany it. And that's been my mantra for decades.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Okay. Wow. Thank you for that. Thank you for that.
Roads Safety Schools And Real Infrastructure
SPEAKER_00And I want to kind of key on what you're saying, actual getting them to build the um infrastructure side, we see that, as you mentioned, having a two-lane road as as a as the only kind of main thoroughfare for these, at this point, thousands of homes that you have, is not doing it. What kind of infrastructure do you want to see with within your um district? And also given the fact that um a large portion of people within your district may leave the county to go to work in places like uh DC, then Virginia as well, and then kind of keen on this too that uh you have the recent um announced development of the uh sphere, which is coming, which isn't with it within your district, but a lot of people are gonna have to be taking uh a 210 to go back and forth to work as well, increasing traffic.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right. So um, so the main thing that we need to see, and the fact of the matter is is that the county just doesn't have the budget to build new roads or to widen the roads. So they depend the county depends on the developers to do so. And that's why I say I want to make sure that we hold them accountable to say, don't just give us a you know 10-foot turn-in lane and out lane, and we're back on, you know, a two-lane road. Widen the road enough so that the rest of the traffic is not backed up trying to come in in and out of your development, and we can get in and out of our own development. So infrastructure, uh, road infrastructure is a big problem here in the southern portion of the county. Again, we've been working very hard to try to get some of that eliminated. I mean, not eliminated, but alleviated so that the congestion won't be so bad. But one of the problems is that a lot of these developments have been in the pipeline for decades. I mean, they go back from like when Councilwoman Marilyn Bland was in office, when Mel Franklin was in uh office, and now um Sidney Harrison in office. And because of that, some of these developments are just uh, you know, just now going through the pipeline, which I kind of have a uh a slight problem with that. I know that there was a pause because of the 2008 um housing crisis. It was a pause because something that the county did, it was just that the market couldn't bear those developments and of new houses. It was just, you know, foreclosure after foreclosure after foreclosure. People were not buying houses, people were losing their homes, and it was just a terrible time to be in the development space and build. And so a lot of those the developers kind of set on those projects. But now that the economy is not doing that great now. But when it started to get back great under the other administrations, but those projects started to come online, and we we are starting to see that we're starting to see the multitude of townhouses, and you talked about the northern part of the county, but it's like townhouse mania all over the county. Not just it, not just in District 9, it's in every district. Everything that's new that's coming up is coming up as townhouses. It's rarely any single family homes anymore. And so the big thing is the infrastructure. The other thing is the infrastructure for policing us, public safety. You know, we're understaffed at just about every station, police district in the county, and we need to have more officers to patrol our our streets and our communities and our commercial areas as well. We also need more people to, I mean, we need more money for our schools. Some schools are overcrowded, but some schools are not. Now, in District 9, we actually a lot of the schools are not at capacity, believe it or not. I know it's it seems like, but actually, and I a big portion of it is it's because a lot of people are putting their kids in private school. That's number one. Or they're homeschooling their kids.
SPEAKER_02Or that's a different problem.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's a that's a different issue. But the fact of the matter is, is that District 9 and really the entire county, we have some of the oldest schools in the state. There's some other there's some other jurisdictions that have some old schools too, but we have some of the oldest school buildings, I should say, school buildings that need renovation. And so every time that the developer builds in a community, they pay a surcharge that goes toward school construction. The problem with that is that the money is put into the general treasury and it just gets split all over the county. It may or may not be used for schools, nothing. One of the things that I want to do is earmark those dollars and say those dollars came from this development in district nine, or it came from this development in district six, this development in district one. And in that way, when there's time and we need funding. We need we can identify, hey, we have X amount of dollars in our budget that has come from developers to pay for schools that should be done to help either renovate a school, add a new addition, upgrade some classrooms, whatever that is needed, that money should be there for those schools. And so that's that's one of the things that I I'd like to do as well.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Thank you for that. And kind of piggybacking off of what you said, do you find it as a failure of, I guess not just the current administration, but as you said, the previous council people who have served in District 9, because I understand what you're saying, that the housing crisis of 2008 kind of like shattered things, but looking back, that's almost been 20 years ago. Right. And we're still not seeing the the housing or the housing actually work out. We're not seeing the roads be upgraded. We're not seeing public transit be uh upgraded and the basic necessities of infrastructure, even having street lights in certain in certain areas. Do you see that as a failure of previous uh council members?
SPEAKER_01What I see it as is a lack of overall planning. There's no, you know, the county and the planning board is very good at saying, okay, we're gonna have these plans. We got the plan 2035, Carlos, we got the subregion master plan that, sub region five master plan that deals specifically with this area, also sub-region six master plan. Each of the other areas and other parts of the county also have their own like master plans. And that's all they are. Just plans. There's no enforcement, no teeth to it, no nothing. It's like pie in the sky. You know, we waste our time as citizens going to these meetings and charrettes and telling them, hey, this is what we want in our community, this is what we don't want in our community, help us out here, blah, blah, blah. And they they write it up, it's all pretty, they put it in a nice presentation, and they close the books and it's done. Because what happens on a day-to-day basis at the planning board level at Maryland National Capital Park and Planning, what happens with them on at their level is that they look at the applications in isolation. They never look at it, in my opinion, take a holistic view and say, oh, this application is going to impact this community and this community and this surrounding community and this roadway and this road. They do a little bit of that analysis, but it's not in-depth enough for me. It's not, it's not where I think it needs to be in terms of taking a holistic approach. So when you ask the question, was it a failure of the prior administration? I can say yes and no. I would say, in terms of oversight over development that's coming in their community. Sometimes they're, um, sometimes the council person was fully engaged and involved, sometimes they're not. Part of the reason that once an application is filed with the planning board, though, because there's a possibility it could come to the county council sitting as a district council, there's some there's certain rules that say, well, you don't want to be unduly influenced, and so ex parte, what they call ex parte laws, come into play. And because there's a potential to be unduly influenced, the council people kind of step back from that process and say, hey, speak to the community, make sure the community knows and understands. It's just that I think the county council persons need to kind of direct that conversation a little bit more. Not so much necessarily influence it, but definitely direct the conversations. Give their constituents the questions that they need to ask, give them the information that needs to be posed before the developers so that they can make a good argument once they're meeting with the developers to say, here, this is what we want, and this is how we want this community to be built so that it is cohesive with our current community.
SPEAKER_00No, you're definitely right. And especially having it to be more than just saying, oh, developer, you go talk talk to community members because we see in a lot of time, especially from my uh experience in Charles County, developers will go to the community, lie to them about what you're getting, and then go tell the county council members a whole different story and say, Oh, well, well, we don't know what why the why the community is upset. One last question on housing too. How do you balance the, I guess, theoretical need of needing to build more housing with making sure the housing is actually affordable? Because we've seen a lot of these houses that that they are building are either half a million dollar single-family homes or $400,000 town homes, which aren't affordable to anyone at all, especially the residents who currently live there who may want to want to find a place for their uh children or or seniors who want to downsize.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So I'm living with that situation right now. I I have two adult children and they both were living in other states. My son was living in South Carolina after he graduated from college. Our daughter was living in California after she graduated from college. They have both moved back home because they found opportunities here, with you know, job opportunities here, which is great. But in terms of them being able to afford something, absolutely not. They cannot do it. They cannot do it. And so this question was actually asked of me last night. I had a meet and greet at a community in Akakek, and same question came up. And so I am hoping, and we we saw this a little bit. There was a press conference at a blue line, I believe it was Morgan Station Boulevard on the blue line in Prince George's County, but it could have been another, it could have been another metro station because Prince George's County has, I believe, 12 metro stations that are not developed at all in terms of, you know, a nice commercial, high mixed use, um, transit-oriented development. None. But there was a press conference with our governor and our county executive about building at this particular metro station for four affordable housing units. And so I actually support that. I I want to see more of that because that uh that's one less thing. Transportation is one less thing that those people have to worry about. They don't have to get a car. They can just hop on the metro and get to where they need to be, whether it's a job, whether it is another, you know, going to the grocery store or something, whatever it is that they need. So I am hopeful that we will do that and the county council will do more of that at the other metro stations to make them more affordable. Um building around that, even if they build some nicer units um around there, that they we set aside some for affordable house housing.
SPEAKER_00Okay, definitely. Thank you for that too. So kind of you kind of touched on it too around uh funding uh throughout the county. And the county has come out and said that they're having funding challenges. It was first reported like a hundred million dollar funding of uh deficit. It was another report that it's that is now like $10 to $20 million. With that, how do you see some of the challenges when it comes to funding the uh the county and how would you fix it? Some people have have been talking about look at whether it's raising taxes, whether it's uh building more homes to get more property taxes, or whether it's doubling down on tourism and uh a commercial development. What's your solution?
Affordable Housing Without Empty Promises
SPEAKER_01So, my solution actually is something that I'm not necessarily the author of. And to his credit, our current District 9 council person has introduced what he is planning to do, what's called the medical innovation districts. So a medical innovation district is a comprehensive, both medical facility as well as some residential, some commercial, all-around healthy living. They have a couple of those in Raleigh, North Carolina. So that Raleigh Durham area, there is a lot of nice hospitals centered around medical innovation. So, what medical innovation is, and I have to give this example, so I'm the caretaker for my 84-year-old, soon to be 85-year-old mother. She is a three-time breast cancer survivor. She had a double mastectomy, but it's quite common for the breast cancer. If it returns, it comes back as a tumor in their brain. So my mom had to have um breast cancer tumor in her brain removed. And part of the recovery is that she had to have a one-time procedure called gamma nites, radiation procedure. It's a one specific pinpoint shot of radiation, and then she she was done, and she's doing fabulous now. So my mom lives out of not in the state of Maryland. So I was actually thinking about moving her here with us so that she can convalesce and recover and this and that. So I was looking at the possibility of having that procedure here. You cannot, it is not offered in Prince George's County. Proton therapy for men with prostate cancer. You can't get that therapy here. You've got to go to GW, Johns Hopkins, and NOAA Fairfax. You have to go outside of Prince George's County to get those innovative care treatments, whether it's cancer, whether it's any kind of type of chronic disease, whether it's new innovative treatments, that's what, that's what we would like to do with the medical innovation districts. That does two things. It brings good paying jobs. The young men that were running those, they were very high-powered, sophisticated machines with just computers, this and that, no older than probably my son or my daughter, 26, 27, 28, you know, straight out of college. Or maybe they just went to school just to learn that particular teacher and how to operate those machines. Because everything is done by computer, and they put this halo on her and this, that, and you know. So it was very, very innovative, very high-tech. And so I want to see those same type of procedures being offered here in Prince George's County. And so our count, our current councilman is doing that at Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton, bringing the medical innovation district. And it's already, it's been uh we've already had the community charrette, which was actually done in 2024. Then we had the market um study and the feasibility study have been done, and then they had another community meeting last year, which I attended as well. Um, so it's already in progress. So I I do credit him for that. Um, but we need to replicate that. It doesn't just need to be at Southern Maryland Hospital Center. In fact, I want to see it in several areas in District 9, number one, and then it should be at every hospital. So the main hospital system in in Largo, Maryland, as well as the one in um Laurel, Maryland as well. So that's my plan because it brings jobs, it's commercial jobs, it brings in that whole piece of housing that's affordable. The housing stock that they're looking at is called a cottage style house. We may have heard it's not like a tiny house that you kind of hear about, but it's it's you know, little cottage style houses, maybe one or two bedrooms or so. And so it brings those areas into that. And then the other thing that I would like to do is capitalize on the fact that we have a lot of black farmers and a lot of still farmers in District 9 to bring a food co-op there where they can come bring their freshly produced, fresh produce, their fresh eggs, whatever it is, and bring it to the co-op on that same site and be able to have cold storage. People come and buy it as an alternative, particularly those areas that have food deserts, they can come from down to Clinton, they can come somewhere else to get fresh produce. And then we're supporting, again, bringing economic development to our local farmers, to those District 9 farmers, particularly our black farmers. And so I see it as a way to both help with health care, but bring good high-tech, high-paying jobs that should spur the economic uh development in different parts of the county. So that's what I would like to see, Doug. I don't think more residential development helps because my point always is that if you are building more houses, that means that you have to provide more services to the people that are coming to move. So that's more streets that need to be cloud, there's more trash that needs to be picked up, all of those other things. So that I don't think the tax dollars actually help us in that regard. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Awesome. Actually, those are actually that's a very innovative idea, especially with the whole um medical um innovation. One, it's stunning to hear that in a county of almost one million people, that you cannot get these surgeries and procedures that you would expect to get within the county, that you have to go out to DC and Baltimore and Virginia as well. Exactly. And also doubling back to the uh Black Farmers Co-op, I think those are wonderful ideas, especially for addressing food deserts, because often all we hear elected officials say is, well, we just need to make our county more pleasing to a big grocery store chain who could care less about the community, could care less about making sure people are fed. They just want to um uh focus on their uh profit margin. So having a co-op a way that just centers people is an amazing um idea. So yeah, thank you for for
Data Centers Benefits And Red Lines
SPEAKER_00that as well. I kind of want to stay within that kind of land use uh development and also this kind of also keys into uh budgets and funding of the county is data centers. Right now, that's one of the biggest hot topic conversations people are having now. You see council people either coming out full-fledged supporting data centers, being against it. I know uh Prince George's County had a study recently that kind of laid out a map of like what they want to see with data centers. It's been some kind of pushback, or not some. Residents have just been full-fledged pushing back. They show up to meetings, they're saying, we don't want you to sell us on data centers. We don't want data centers at all. So, what is your view on data centers as a potential uh councilwoman?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I gotta give you my backstory about who I am. So, the type of law that I practice is telecommunications law. So I do a lot of work before the Federal Communications Commission. I actually have my own broadband business. And so I understand the need for data centers. And when I say that, what we're doing right now through Riverside, we need a data center in order to do that, to do this podcast. If you have a cell phone and you have one text or one picture, you need a data center because the stuff is not stored in the cloud. There's no such thing as a cloud. It's a server in a big in a building, whether it's a big building, a small building, or not. So I said that to say that I want people to understand why there is a need for data centers because we have gone so far into the technology space of wanting to save all our pictures, our videos, we want to do podcasts, we want to do all these great things that is done and saved in some type of cloud server. Basically, it's a server. So, with that, in District 9, I unequivocally do not want to see a hyperscale data center in District 9, period. And I particularly do not want to see them in any residential areas, any rural residential areas. I don't want to see them anything outside of what I say is industrial, heavy industrial, if that's where we're we're going to be. I know that that is um big uh topic. I actually did a podcast on it last year about it was what's I it's called What's Up with Data Centers. And I'm basically saying the same thing I said then, which is it's, you know, I s I understand the need and I understand why we need them, but unequivocally don't want to see hyperscale data centers in District 9. And I don't want to see data centers anywhere in any residential area. I think if we're gonna try to try to do it, if we have to have them, that's the you know, be all, it has to be heavily, heavily regulated. And when I say regulated, I'm not only talking about the zone that it has to be in, but I'm also talking about the ability to pay for and not put on us the reasons that our electric bills are higher is because of the demand for data centers, for example. The PMG data centers that are are are being uh that a PMG, which is the grid that we are on, it stands for Pennsylvania, Jersey, and Maryland. But guess what? Virginia is also in our grid. And all those data centers that are off of um the parkway, the Fairfax. Right in Loudoun County. Yeah. Yeah, in Loudoun County Parkway, all of those are on our grid. And as a result, we're seeing higher electric electricals, even though we're not paying for, even though our bills and our use is not as high as it was last month or any other month. It's just that the demand has caught up and they're spreading the cost. And so the cost has to be upon the data center developers. The other thing is just with anything else, this is one of the things that I why I like doing telecommunications law, is that the law is always catching up with the technology. There has to be something novel and new that we got to catch up. It's like, oh, okay, this now it's wireless, now it's this, it was cable, it was this, now it's FIOS, now it's whatever. And so we're we're catching up. But just like in the industrial age, where um, and I'm gonna use Pennsylvania as an example, you had the steel industry. Once the steel industry went away, they got all these old dinosaur buildings just sitting around, rusting, doing nothing. The exact same thing is gonna happen with data centers, particularly the hyperscale, those huge, huge ones. I'm sorry, we have gone from the big discs being in our backyards, whatever, to a small antenna being on your house or a small disc being on your house. Everything is gonna, somebody's gonna come up with an invention that's gonna be able to store the data that we need that doesn't have to be on a huge servers. It's coming. And then the question is, what are we gonna do about all these antiquated dinosaur buildings? What's the exit plan? People don't think past like that. They just think, okay, we're gonna get all this revenue for data centers. It's gonna be really good. We're gonna balance the budget, A, B, C, X, Y, Z. No, it's not gonna happen. In about five to ten years, those buildings will be obsolete, and the next big and greatest thing will be here and we'll be moving on to something else. I might not be here, you may not be here, I don't know, but maybe 20 years and maybe whatever, but the next greatest thing is coming and we're stuck with these big, obsolete buildings. So absolutely not unequivocally, not that none of that um hyperscale. And in District 9, because we want to preserve our rural tier, we don't want to see them in our rural residential areas, the rural areas near the farms and all of the other things that people moved out here for, right? So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you. And I'll even kind of add on to your point too, is that a lot of people aren't talking about is that those servers only have a lifespan of like three to five years. So after that, they're gonna go to landfills where once it rains, all those chemicals are getting right into the ground, into the water supply. And then we have a an environmental crisis on
Brandywine Pollution And Cleanup Priorities
SPEAKER_00our hands. And kind of speaking of environmental crisis, um our uh last uh few questions here is around uh what's happening in brandywine within your district of having I hate to call it this, but it's almost like like Cancer Alley, just with the amount of uh power plants that you have concentrated in one area and people have called it a sacrifice zone in Brandywine. Can you kind of tell us one, what what is your thoughts and what do you want to see uh done when it comes to the massive amount of uh of uh power power plants concentrated in in brandy wine and the uh adverse uh health effects that people are facing?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So um the other thing that I'd like to see done in um um Prince George's County, and particularly in District 9, is to clean up that brandy wine area and clean up particularly District 9. And I say that because District 9 is literally the dumping ground for everything. So we've got four power plants, we've got a coal ash, i ash uh dump site, we have um also a super fund site, which is basically munitions from probably World War II that Andrews Air Force Base just dumped over there. You know, they've been ordered to clean it up, but it's still yet not clean. We have sand and gravel pits and we have what I call mountains. So the servers that you were talking about, guess what? They're going into those, they're huge. Have you ever been down Gardner Road to get from Prince George's? Okay, did you so when you come in from Charles County, coming to the left, when you're in Prince George's County and you see this huge mountain of stuff, that's construction debris. That's debris that is coming from DC, other places that have not been. They built and they're tearing down the building and then they're dumping all that stuff and then covering it up.
SPEAKER_00Literally a dumping ground. It's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. My number one, I I don't want to give any more permits for any of those things any any longer. I just that we just want to stop. Number two, we want to hold the federal government, starting with the military, accountable to make them clean up the Superfund site, number two. And then to the extent that we can, they've already, one of the power plants that has been closed is called Chalk Chalk Point. It's not fully closed, but it's no longer a coal burning power plant. It's now natural gas burning. And it was supposed to be closed all the way down, but um, for example, when we had the really cold snow weather, the ice storm back in January, they did power it back up with for natural gas to supply. So I saw Pepco trucks there. I saw SMECCO, which is probably what you're on, your energy supplier distributor is SMETCO. They were still coming back and forth using that facility. So I know that it's still on. So I would like to see, number one, a halt to all of those to the extent that we can, whether it's natural gas, whether it's definitely not coal, but to clean up what we have, clean up, clean up the sand and gravel kits and mining, that there's sand and gravel mining. At a minimum, if we can't necessarily close those down, we can certainly make sure that they're meeting environmental protection agency standards. And those standards, unfortunately, are being eroded by this current administration. So I don't know how much more we can do and have the EPA enforce them, but certainly we have to work with our federal partners to get those standards and make sure those standards are being adhered to.
SPEAKER_00No, you're definitely right. And that's a that's a plug for all of us to look out to who our next congressperson is within this district, too, to make sure that we're holding them them um accountable as well.
Curfews Policing And Youth Options
SPEAKER_00Right. Coming up on our last few uh questions here, you mentioned policing um and wanting to kind of see more or or expand the um the uh police force to hiring hiring more um officers, having them uh stationed in different places as well. What are your views on kind of the current policing that we've seen with it in the county? And I think think back to how it's been kind of a back and forth of the uh the uh curfew that it that has been uh put put over certain parts of Prince George's County, like the National Harbor. You have had instances of of police violence uh towards uh community members and kind of this like new frame, or not it's not new, it's kind of always always been around, but this ramping up of this kind of feeling of like police are are being dispatched specifically to handle kids just being kids and having fun. And then also, how do you balance the need for quote unquote policing with not having anywhere for kids to go and things for them to do?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question. So when I said that we need more police officers, that is to help patrol our current communities, right? And even the ones that are in the pipeline being built. When I was knocking on doing thousands of homes. Right. So when I was knocking on doors yesterday, someone said, Well, the particular community that I'm in, they have had a rash of car break-ins and stealing of cars. And so they're like, you know, we need police to literally be driving through, not on the main roads passing by. We need you to be literally driving through, patrolling our area. And so I wholeheartedly support having more police patrols on our neighborhood streets. You know, just, you know, casually going through, got your lights on, you know, nothing, but you know, just letting them know, okay, we're here and and and there's a possibility that we can we can see the extent to which we have the curfews. I think we do need to have the curfews for the students, and I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you why. Unfortunately, there's there's and it's not all children, but uh it's a few bad apples that makes an experience at National Harbor or experience at Tanger Outlet or wherever they're gonna, you know, convene makes it bad for everybody else. And then, you know, the stores are closing, you know, they're not opening, they're making you wait in line outside, so it's only one person, you know, a few people can go in at a store at a time. You know, that's just yeah. If I'm gonna go shopping at Tanger Outlet, I want to be able to walk in the store when I'm there and that's the store I'm going to because I'm not one of those persons that kind of linger around. I know what I want and I know what's store.
SPEAKER_00Window shopping.
SPEAKER_01I'm none of that window shopping. I know what I'm wanting. I want to go in, I want to get what I want to get, and I'm coming out. I do not want to have to wait in the line because some knucklehead kids uh decided that they wanted to smash and grab or do whatever they want to do. Now they only letting in five people at a time because they don't have they have one security officer to watch the whole store. No, I don't want that. This unfortunately, and this was on a call this morning, they were talking about an, you know, an incident, like you said, that was unfortunate with students. But the fact of the matter is, is that we have to do a better job of parenting and raising our kids to be respectable human beings first and foremost. Respect your elders, you know, respect, you know, you just can't go in and steal stuff just because it's fun. You know, that's a challenge. That's a whatever. We're gonna go in, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna come back out, you know, and get that high and get that rush. And I know, you know, at 15, 16, 17, 18, you know, whatever the age group is, you know, we we think we are invincible. I was there, I did some stupid stuff too, right? And so I I understand, but parents need to let their kids know that some stuff is just off limits, period. And stealing and breaking in stores and and causing havoc, and you know, um, some of them are hitting the um glass windows and shattering the windows, and so that all of that stuff. And then that brings blight to our community, and everybody suffers, right? Everybody suffers. Now I gotta go to CVS, I got to push the button, somebody just to get me a bar of soap or some deodorant.
SPEAKER_00Please. And one thing I will I'll say kind of kind of pushing back to is that, well, one, I have a gripe with with CBS and all these stores that have started, started putting up those like barriers, especially to these like kind of essential life products. And we've seen that not be so much led, led by people stealing more uh or or people stealing out of like just just the enjoyment, but people stealing just because prices are going up and people need these like essentials to be able to uh live. And stores know that, so they're looking at it. All right, cool, just lock it up and we'll deal with it. My side note in is that if these stores are gonna be locking stuff up, have a dedicated attendant be there so they can open the cage when I want to get my stuff. And that's just a whole side note. For that same point, uh, do you do you see like uh young people committing these quote-unquote crimes, vandalism and stuff like that as a cry for help that there's nothing to do with it in the there's nothing to keep them busy, there's no recreation, or there's also no jobs for young people to get to that they can make some money. So some of them may be stealing just to supplement the money because there's none at home and they're taking care of their kids. Or I also say this some some kids don't have a safe family life. So them being out on the streets is a better place for them than being at home where they could have abuse and things things of that nature.
SPEAKER_01That's true, that's true. So um two things can be true at once. One, you just got some knuckleheads that that just need to be, you know, pulled up by their pants and say, boy, stop that. You know, girl, stop that, that kind of stuff. You know, it y'all think it's cute and fun, but you're making it hard for everybody else. So that was my first point. But you did ask the second question about opportunities and things for children to do. Honestly, I think there is ample enough for them to do in our parks and recs department. I'm we have, and I know it's a big issue, and I don't know if you you want to talk about this, but we have the most award-winning parks and recreation department in the nation. The Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission has bar nine um won numerous national awards for their parks and programs. It's I think it's a matter of the parents putting the kids in those programs and getting them to the programs. Now, transportation could be an issue because they had the the parks department have been making and trying to have the late hours for teens, you know, the you know, the late night basketball leagues. I've seen those. I've seen some of the um computing classes, DJ, I think at South County Tech and Rec, they have a room where you can, you know, do your own DJ, make your own tape mix and all the little records. Yeah, record your, they have a whole recording studio. But it's a matter now. There is the bus, the county's local bus system that does run right in front of there, and it literally drops this um riders off at that location. So there is transportation there. It's just a matter of getting get on the schedule and getting there. So to the extent that there are students and young, young adults, young children that don't have that outlet, I highly encourage them, if they're listening or if this podcast gets out, that they contact an administrator at their school and say, hey, we need some additional outlets. Can you help me get into a program in Maryland National Capital Park and Planning, whether it's Spock Road, whether it's SARK, whether it's an Allentown Splash Park, there's to me there there are ample enough opportunity. It's just, is that what the children really want to do? Because they have a lot of teen programs. They have this extreme teen, extreme teen program where they offer, like I said, the late night basketball, especially during the summer, where, you know, because you're not in school, you have a propensity to, you know, want to get in trouble and, you know, dare, you know, somebody dared you to do something and yeah. And devil's workshop. Yes, yes, exactly. So I know that they have the summer camps, obviously, for the younger kids all the way up to probably like about eighth grade, but then those same camps need camp counselors. So the older kids could work, because my son, my son worked at Clearwater Nature Center. He was both he and my daughter were uh campers there in the summers, you know, at least a couple of times a w um, a couple of weeks out of the summer. But when he got 16 and we got old enough to work, he actually was a camp counselor to the younger kids at Maryland National Capital Park and Planning. And so I think there is some opportunities for them if they um would go to the park and planning website, try to apply for some summer job. Even they're always looking for lifeguards, Carlos. Um, at SARC, Allentown. So Fort Washington has two pools. They've got the Allentown one that's near Crossland High School, and then they have the new facility that is at the Southern Regional Um Tech and Rec Center. They have a new pool facility there. And then, of course, you got Sark and Brandywine. So they're always looking for lifeguards. So learn to swim, get your lifeguards license, and they need lifeguards year-round because the seniors take their um exercise classes during the day. They always have a lifeguard on duty because there are some classes that they do. They call it, and I even took this class called the um deep water aerobics. So you're literally um in like nine, ten feet. So you never touch the bottom, obviously. You gotta have the weights on. And I know one time, this one lifeguard he was looking at, I was really struggling. And he's like, You all right, ma'am? I was like, I'm okay. I just need an extra little floaty.
SPEAKER_00He's like, just let me know, do I need to jump in or not?
SPEAKER_01Yes, right. I was like, I'm okay. I just need an extra little floaty. This little exercise is a little bit more than challenging than what I thought it was. And so, but so they always have um during those classes where they have the seniors and you know, even the adult classes. They're not some are for seniors, some are just for adults. But even those classes, they always need lifeguards. So that's during the week. So if they need a little job during the week after school or on the weekends, if they can get to get their lifeguards, um, you know, they they they they pay pretty well, from what I understand. And there's always hours because there's always some classes going on in the mornings. Well, obviously, if they're still in school, they couldn't do it during the day, but in the evenings as well. And and especially during the summer, because that's when, excuse me, that's when the um students that are learning to swim, they can um one, help teach the class, and two, just be a lifeguard on duty. And then the outdoor splash park, obviously, they just need the lifeguards just watching kids because you know they're all over the place, ducking each other, and it's any other. So I definitely encourage if there are any young teenage children that are looking, but then uh the summer jobs would be your camp counselors, being a camp counselor's at those same places where you can go and have your own outlet and you know, you play your summer basketball. I think they have a volleyball league for the for the young girls that they do as well. So I think there are opportunities. The real question is, is it is it an outlet that they want to do? Even the um police department, they have PAL, police athletic leagues. The police athletic leagues usually are soccer, football, sometimes baseball. Um, some of those things that can give the kids an outlet sports-wise. So maybe you played um middle school soccer and now school's out and you need, again, some outlet. Try your local police precinct and see they have the police athletic league. I think the sheriff's office does the same thing. So I I I I am gonna push back on you with pushback, push your pushback back to say that I think that there are some opportunities for them. Uh they need to just look through Maryland National Capitol Park and planning, um, police athletic lead. But there are there are some programs. We kept our kids busy. We kept them engaged. And again, I know some parents, you know, they're working two or three jobs, they may not have that um ability to get their children back and forth, but if they're on, um, so I know for like I said, I know for example, Allentown Road and Splash Park, as well as the South County Tech and Rec, they're on the bus line. So I know the buses go there. Now SARC is a little different. There might, there may not be uh actual public transportation to get them there. So that might be a little bit more difficult there. See a study that's coming out that your viewers and listeners may want to know about, which is they're trying to expand bus service and they want to know if people want the bus service on Sundays.
SPEAKER_00Yes, please, people fill that survey out. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Fill the survey out. So I'll try to uh maybe get that to you. You can put that in the show notes as well. Uh so there is uh, you know, the county is looking to try to expand um the bus services on um Sundays now. And so maybe that's also, you know, another day of the week that when they're not at school, even when school is in session, they're not at school, they're feeling bored, their their buddies are like, hey, let's go, let's go tear up this, let's go tear up National Harbor, let's go hang out. You know, it's like nope, I'm gonna go. I got something else to do. Right. Yeah, I got something else to do.
SPEAKER_00So I gotta get my money for my new job.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Right, right, exactly, exactly. So I want people to, and you know, the one problem that the county has and that we need to try to think about how we do this, we have different silos of communications. So the school system has their communication system, parking planning has theirs, the county council has theirs, county executive has their. And it's not that they don't ever meet, but a lot of times the information is not being filtered out properly to, and so I think it I think part of the county council's job is to make sure that we're getting all that information out to everybody, whether it's in the school system or whether it's our seniors that need some other information. Everybody's getting the same information and it's being filtered out. I think the county council with their weekly um county connection is trying to do a better job of that. I see more of their stuff though. I don't see a lot of the parking planning type stuff that needs to get out to the parents. And we need to push parking planning needs to push that out through PGC, the school system.
SPEAKER_00Definitely, definitely. Thank you for that, and thank you for the pushback too. We definitely love this. Yes, I
Public Financing Musical Chairs And Where To Follow
SPEAKER_00love it. And my final question for you here, it's a one part that may be a two-part question is are you taking or are you participating in the public financing?
SPEAKER_01Uh uh I am not, and the reason that I am not is because I am officially disqualified. And let me tell you how that happened. So last year, there our at-large seat was vacated by a councilman.
SPEAKER_00And we can say that for a different podcast.
SPEAKER_01We can say that for a different podcast. And so I actually ran for that vacated seat last year. And unbeknownst to me, and I should have looked this up, but I forgot that councilman Tom Danoga put in an amendment. Wait a minute, let me go back even before that. I was part of the group that created the public financing in the first place.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01And wanted to actually benefit from it. What I forgot, once we got the bill passed, then there was, okay, we gotta now fund it, right? And so we got some funding, got some initial funding. I think the first tranche of $400,000 came in when Angela also Brooks was county executive. And we were able to, because they wanted to take that money, we were able to keep it, and then I think we were able to add like a couple of um about $200,000 more or something. So I think the somewhere between, there's somewhere between $600 and $800,000 for public financing for this current election. But when they added the additional funding, Tom Danoga putting in an amendment to that bill to say that if you were active, if if you were active in a campaign, your your campaign had to be inactive for two years prior to the funding. So all the candidates that are running in this race right now would have qualified, with the exception of me, because I ran in that special election and I I had a campaign finance I was collecting. So I disqualified myself from using something that I helped to advocate for and get get it on the books and get funding for. But that's my fault. Um would you want to change that? Well, you know what we elected. We should ch we should make it like what Montgomery County has. So Montgomery County has the same rule, but they say that if there are like any special election, special circumstances, if a candidate runs, they allow the candidate to pay back, you know, to you know, to in other words, you start like your matching dollars don't start until whatever you raised in those two years is you've raised it and you and now you're over that threshold. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So it's it's a way of balancing it out. In other words, I'm starting at zero like everybody else.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But my zero comes in a little bit later. Montgomery County does that. I think Prince George's County should should do that too, bespecially since we've had all these musical, you know, people leaving office and we got these special elections and all this other. It's it's been a mad, it's been crazy.
SPEAKER_00It's really been crazy with these um special elections and appointments and I would say, what is your just and and knowing and I want to thank you first of all for staying over time with me, but what is your just real quick thoughts on on all of this switching around? You have Councilwoman Ivy who went from her district to at large, to at large to Ranford County Executive, you have people getting appointed, Tim Adams, uh Daniel Hunter, you have Councilwoman Bougay, who went from her district to at large now running for Congress. How do you feel about all of this musical chairs? And also, is can the voters, if you win, rely on you, no matter what seat opens up, for you to stay in this seat to fill out your full term? Okay.
SPEAKER_01Three words, Carlos. I hate it. Three words, I hate it. There we go. I'm so um, I'm so over this musical chairs that it's that's going on. And yes, when I win, there we go, when I win, that voters in District 9 can count on me to stay in my seat and fill my term of four years. And if I decide to run again for another four years, one of the things I can That they're trying to tag me as the old person in the race. And I don't feel old seasoned. I'm seasoned, but I have a lot of vitality. I don't because I'm an established attorney and I've had a good career and everything, I see this really as a public service, Carlos. I really do see this as a public service. I don't see it as an opportunity to grow my political career. That's not what I'm interested in. That's not why I'm running. I'm running to improve our quality of life here in Prince George's County in all the different ways that we just discussed, whether it's land use and development, whether it's affordable housing, whether it's trying to get these children to have jobs and activities for them and transportation to get them to those activities. That's what's important to me. I'm at a stage, an age in my life where I don't need a, I don't need a political career, if you will. I just want to serve the people as I've already been doing. I feel like I've already been doing the job, Carlos, without the title.
SPEAKER_00There we go.
SPEAKER_01Honestly. Honestly, I really do. I feel like I've been doing the job without the title, but I think I would be much more effective with the title. And that's why I'm running to continue what I'm doing, but be more effective with what I'm doing because I have the title of District 9 Councilwoman.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, wonderful, wonderful. That was a way to close us out. And I always say, last question, this is the last question. Can you please tell our viewers how they can stay updated with you, your campaign, what's going on? Yeah, please. This is the moment's yours.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram at Tamara Davis Brown. Just, you know, my name, one word, all three, however you want to do it. My website is also the same, www.tamaradavisbrown.org, O-R-G. And shameless plug, I do have a podcast. It's called All Politics is Local with the Maryland edition, with me, your host, Tamara Davis Brown. And the purpose of the podcast is to um bring a younger generation of voters to move you guys from the just the ballot box into action. And so we talk about a lot of local issues that that go on in the county. In fact, I had a panel of millennials and Gen Z, and they were talking about what their issues are. So go take a listen. My highest glistening podcast, because I I also use the same, um, I'm just telling the viewers that I also use the same format, Riverside, that left-handed leftists uses as well. But most of my podcasts are are not, they're mostly audio, not visual and audio. So we have the capacity, but we just don't have the time to go back and edit and all this other stuff. We just really don't have the time to do the the video as well. So it's mostly, but the one that I did on Gen Z, we actually streamed it live on Facebook. So that one does have visual and audio. But the podcast that I got the most views, and I still get the most views, is tenants know your rights. Yes. Tenants know your rights. So knowing your rights and understanding um the laws governing landlord-tenant relationships and and how the landlord-tenant and the eviction process, and how you can hold your landlord accountable if they're your your living conditions are substandard, how to create a tenants association. And it was a case study of Heather Hills in Prince George's County, which made the news so much so I like to say that the podcast, which also featured a county council candidate, Martin Mitch, in District One, uh, the two of us teamed up together and did this podcast with the president of the Tenants Association at Heather Hills. It's I'm still getting a lot of views from that. So really good information in that podcast. But I encourage the, if you want to learn more about me, my website is the best place, Tamradavis Brown.org again. And then you can follow me on Instagram, Tamara Davis Brown. I'm I'm getting into not really into TikTok, you know, not really into that. Trying to um so I got some new folks, some younger people on board that's gonna help me kind of transition to some, yeah, transition to, you know, some of the other social media platforms. But right now it's um just Facebook and Instagram, and then with the website and the podcast.
SPEAKER_00And you all all of these uh links will be in the show notes below. So please remember to check those out. Tamara Davis Brown, thank you, thank you so much for being here. And you all head in me. Thank you, thank you. And you all remember this is a podcast, so please like, share, subscribe, follow, hit all, do all those things to keep this page active and this podcast active. And remember to hit that notification bell so you can get notified every time we drop a new episode every Wednesday. And with that, we'll see you next time.
