Pocho Hour Of Power - Friday, June 19, 2026

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1. Coming up this week on L.A. TheatreWorks.
2. A parish priest undergoes a crisis of faith with potentially devastating consequences.
3. We were discussing how much we should be pushing Christ at people and how much they should be left to find him for themselves.
4. It's like a nail bomb. You touch that subject, it goes off. Are you crazy? In every direction.
5. Racing Demon by David Hare. Next time on L.A. TheatreWorks.
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25. Oh, yeah.
26. What's the money to do?
27. Yeah.
28. The program is about to begin.
29. Hey, hey.
30. Radio.
31. Radio.
32. For the people.
33. For the people.
34. Come on.
35. For the world.
36. Hour of Power!
37. Man, I'm in the middle of the radio.
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39. Olale! That's right, and it's for the people.
40. Live in effect, the Pocho Hour of Power, homes!
41. What's up, Jeffrey? How you doing?
42. Yeah, man. Pocho Hour of Power, KPFK 90.7 FM.
43. I'm Jeff Kelley. What's up?
44. USA.
45. USA.
46. USA.
47. You know what, Jeff?
48. We won two nothing today.
49. Jeffrey, I'm going to tell you a story another day.
50. Oh, Lord.
51. I have a story about this.
52. About what?
53. The World Cup?
54. No, man.
55. It's just like the other day, man.
56. Well, it happened.
57. Look, man, this happened.
58. I say the other day, but it was back in the day.
59. Back in the day.
60. All right.
61. What happened?
62. I was traveling.
63. I was on this road trip right through the south.
64. I went into this bar.
65. Some redneck was staring me down.
66. What?
67. Staring me down.
68. Not staring you down.
69. Yeah.
70. Who do you think he is?
71. You know what he told me when I was leaving?
72. Coming in.
73. Coming in.
74. He's like, hey, man, Mexico is that way.
75. Oh, damn.
76. Did he at least point the right way?
77. I have no, you know, I'm directionally challenged.
78. I don't know.
79. If he was pointing the right way.
80. And I said, who are you talking to?
81. And he said, I'm talking to you, S.A.
82. And then the whole bar erupted.
83. U.S.A.
84. U.S.A.
85. U.S.A.
86. And then I had to basically get back in my rig and run the bar down Why would you drive in a rig Because I used to be a trucker
87. No, you didn't.
88. Stop it.
89. Well, I just noticed that Alex Freeman and USA won today against Australia,
90. so they advanced to the knockout round.
91. Yeah, USA won, but not USA.
92. That's funny.
93. No, it's not.
94. USA.
95. If you have to say it's funny, it's not funny, Jeff.
96. I do, though, want to send my condolences out to the Tom Dreesen family,
97. comedian extraordinaire, 82 years old.
98. Him and Tim Reed from KKRP, is that what it was?
99. Station, the sitcom?
100. WKRP in Cincinnati?
101. Yeah.
102. That's Tim Reed.
103. He played Venus Flytrap.
104. He is.
105. Those two were the first black-white comedy team ever in the 60s.
106. They would do the Chitlin Circuit.
107. And we actually had them on this show, and I interviewed them.
108. You mean way before Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr.?
109. Yes.
110. Salt-N-Pepa, they called themselves the original Salt-N-Pepa?
111. Yes.
112. Well, they put the hard R on pepper.
113. I'm sure they did.
114. but um they were actually on our show because they wrote a book about it
115. so i had a chance to interview him about it yeah that was some years back yeah and it was great
116. interviewing but tom has passed he was on the tonight show 61 times he also opened for frank
117. sinatra and i used to love just sitting down having conversations he was a big dodger fan
118. and every time he came into the club we would sit down and talk and and have conversations about
119. that and frank uh sinatra and and you know sammy davis they all had stories about about frank and
120. he's gonna be missed man uh he passed away a couple days ago so you're you're a miss uh tom
121. dreeson love you man all right well yeah well you know it's it's like it's the season of the
122. it's the season of those boomers man it's like we're losing all these uh icons that we grew up
123. with. I mean, the
124. ages pass and
125. people are getting older. And Jeffrey,
126. it's going to happen to us.
127. One day, it's going to happen to us.
128. Man, don't put that out there.
129. How you putting that out there?
130. That's cold.
131. They might find our skeletal remains
132. in these chairs one day.
133. That's funny. And I still want to
134. shout out to my high school coach,
135. Tony Zane and Ty Pagone.
136. If you live in Ballpark, please
137. email the school board because we do want that field name after
138. Ty Pagone and Tony Zane. They did a lot for the community. They helped a lot of guys
139. like myself and others, not just on the football field but off the football field.
140. Tony would always call and check on me. Lawrence Phillips
141. who was in the boys' home, they got him to play. He ended up going to Nebraska
142. playing with the Rams. So they put out a lot of guys there. Was that like your first
143. football coach? Or one of your early football
144. Well, you know, I played flag football until high school.
145. Okay.
146. And then, okay, I'll tell you a little story before we get to Patricia.
147. I was banging, right?
148. I got jumped into a gang.
149. And so I wasn't going to play football.
150. I was just going to play baseball.
151. And this guy named Mr. Smith, Jerry Smith, I'll never forget it.
152. You can't do this today.
153. He grabbed me threw me up the guests of locker and said you gonna be playing football. I want you out there tomorrow
154. And I like okay And he actually saved my life you know cuz my brother got stabbed almost bled out on the front yard He had 187 stitches We would have just waited like two more minutes
155. He would have bled out.
156. We had drive-bys.
157. It was crazy at a high school.
158. So, actually, they saved my life.
159. And so that's why I feel it wasn't just my life but a lot of other people's lives
160. that the field should be named after Tony Zane and Ty Pagone.
161. And that's why you in ballpark, you need to email, call the school board,
162. and tell them you're down for that.
163. Dang, that's cool.
164. But speaking of football, there's a whole other football title ship going on
165. with the World Cup.
166. Are you watching that?
167. Oh, yeah, I'm watching it.
168. Yeah, man, come on.
169. Oh, is that why you scream USA, USA?
170. Yeah, that's why you're on USA, USA.
171. Yeah, but I'm screaming Mexico, Mexico.
172. Because they're already going twice.
173. They're going to protest out here now saying that we aren't.
174. We don't feel America.
175. We're not Americans.
176. Go back to Mexico.
177. I got to hear.
178. God dang it, you need to go back.
179. Yeah.
180. Redneck bar.
181. Well, they thought you was a redneck because you pulled up in a truck.
182. He's one of us.
183. All right.
184. Can we start the band, please?
185. Enough of this madness.
186. Hail to Patricia, Patricia Guadalupe,
187. Bolcho Correspondent from Washington, D.C.
188. Hail to Patricia, she comes to spread the chastisement.
189. She comes with all the gossip.
190. She's here to spill the tea.
191. Yes, yes.
192. Hey, guys.
193. Spill that tea, girl.
194. Spill that tea.
195. Another Friday.
196. And, you know, I got to start with World Cup,
197. since you've been talking about that,
198. because I was watching the U.S.-Australia game in Spanish.
199. And, of course, the feed is American, you know, U.S. feed.
200. So they were showing Russell Wilson and Marshawn.
201. Lynch.
202. Yeah, Marshawn Lynch and a few other Seattle Seahawks
203. and some other folks out there.
204. and Andres Cantor who as you know is the famous goal guy in Spanish he was saying who are these
205. people why do the why do we keep showing these people nobody cares about them let's focus on
206. the world cup I'm really annoyed that they keep showing these people and one of the other
207. announcers well that's Marshawn that's Marshawn he's like who who's that and who's Russell Wilson
208. If you didn't see it, it was hilarious because it just goes to show you how the World Cup is definitely the world.
209. But when you're showing it in the U.S. with a camera controlled by an American feed,
210. they're going to go over to these celebrities that the rest of the world may not know about.
211. So I thought that was kind of funny.
212. And then, of course, we're coming back to the other Washington.
213. because that that was in seattle washington so here in washington dc the big thing is the reflecting
214. pool people oh yeah if you've been following that the reflecting pool is that nice body of water
215. between the u.s capital and the washington monument and it's called the reflecting pool
216. because you can when the sun shines on it in a particular angle you can see the Washington Monument and even the Lincoln Memorial reflected in the water up until Trump decided to empty it out and paint it dark blue
217. And what happens with that? When the sun shines on standing water, it creates a lot of algae. And so
218. So now the reflecting pool is basically all green and they've been spending
219. Buku dollars trying to fix that.
220. And here's the wild thing about it.
221. This was a no-bid contract with a Trump supporter.
222. Yep.
223. And the company name, check out the name of the company, Greenwater Services.
224. So they're living up to their name.
225. And this guy, his name is John Carafo, he had pled guilty years ago to bribery charges and campaign finance violations where he was trying to bribe some members of Congress.
226. Yeah, Senator.
227. This is, yeah, this is a guy who was in charge of doing that.
228. So you might say like this, this, this job was like his ultimate goal.
229. Pretty much.
230. Like to get in there, let me get one of these big multimillion dollar contracts.
231. Yeah, because it's now up to $15 million.
232. Oh, my God.
233. It was supposed to only be less about $800,000 to fix it.
234. That was the original contract.
235. But here is the slick thing of it.
236. this company added a caveat to it that if they had to keep working on it, that the government
237. was going to continue to pay them extra on top of everything else. So right now the government
238. has paid that company more than $2 million and the paint is peeling. There's algae all over the
239. place. It's completely green. As you can imagine, social media is having a field day with this
240. because they showed one of the workers out there pouring a gallon of hydrogen peroxide into the
241. water. So now the social media shows ducks with blonde hair. And a scientist going on and saying,
242. you know, that one gallon of hydrogen peroxide isn't going to do a damn thing. You need about
243. 800,000 gallons of hydrogen peroxide if you're going to be doing that. Meanwhile, the tourists
244. are going over there and taking pictures and they're kneeling into the water because it's not
245. too deep because the water goes up to your ankles pretty much. They're kneeling into the water and
246. taking pieces of that paint as souvenirs. Well, you know, Trump is the great negotiator, right?
247. He negotiated the heck out of that deal. Yeah, he sure did. You know, and he's saying, you know,
248. Well, we're going to fix it.
249. And so what they're doing now is draining some of that water right into the sewer system in D.C.
250. which people are not happy about.
251. So all of that green and hydrogen peroxide and whatever other chemicals are in there,
252. including a very funny meme of RFK Jr. pouring some ivermectin into the water to, you know, that COVID medicine.
253. And it is, it is an unbelievable boondoggle.
254. Maybe, maybe he did this on purpose because he wanted to at least own up or, or, or deliver
255. one of his campaign promises, which was to drain the swamp.
256. Yes.
257. Well, yeah, he did that, but you know, he created the swamp and then drained it.
258. Well, you know, that could be true, but you know, there is a very, uh, a really good
259. social meme that says this guy can't even win a war against algae you know
260. everything he touches turns into a mess that's the craziness and and that's why he has to have
261. so much surround himself with painted gold because and and this is the other thing speaking of war
262. where you know that we've been following this whole issue of the war with iran and a deal
263. that he signed while he was over at the G7 summit a couple of days ago over in France.
264. But it's not really a deal.
265. It's more of a memo of understanding to kind of start negotiations.
266. But here's the deal, folks.
267. The memo of understanding.
268. This is one of the most complicated descriptions of some kind of peace deal I've ever heard.
269. Well, it's basically we're going to sign this piece of paper
270. so that we can start talking about continuing to talk.
271. That's basically what they're doing.
272. Because there's no promise.
273. It's like he got a peace agreement from Costco, a little taste.
274. Pretty much, pretty much.
275. He went online and is, okay, you signed this,
276. and then that means that we're going to start talking about something
277. that we need to talk about.
278. And Iran is like, uh-huh, you know,
279. because this particular agreement that they're going to supposedly come to,
280. there's no promise that Iran is not going to have any nuclear weapons, which is the opposite of the
281. agreement that Obama had with them. Iran is going to control the Straits of Kormuth, which they
282. didn't before. And for the first 60 days, it's free passage. And then come and get your credit
283. card because Iran is going to start charging any shipments that go through that strait,
284. which in the original agreement under Obama that Trump tore up, it was all free passage and Iran was not controlling it.
285. And here's the thing that is pissing off a lot of people in Congress, including Republicans,
286. $300 billion, billion with a B, a rebuilding fund to Iran that was not in the original agreement
287. and a lot of members of Congress, including some hardline Republicans,
288. have said, oh, we're not going to do this.
289. This is not happening.
290. We're not going to give $300 billion to Iran.
291. That's not going to happen.
292. But normally when the United States does these kinds of incursions
293. and causes all this damage, even in the Iraq War,
294. Bush did do and agreed to rebuilding and helping, right?
295. Yeah.
296. And it's kind of like a you break it, you buy it policy, right?
297. Well, yeah, but you didn't have to break it in the first place.
298. Exactly. That's the problem. The problem is there was no need for all this.
299. I mean, if you're going to compare it to Iraq, Iraq was actually pretty belligerent at that particular time.
300. Iran didn't do this at all.
301. Of course not.
302. Yeah. And then you have, you know, 13 U.S. troops that died, you know, unfortunately for looks like for nothing.
303. and thousands of Iranians, including more than 100 children.
304. And going back to the World Cup, the Iranian team showed up with photos of some of the girls that were killed in that attack.
305. That was a drone, a U.S. drone attack.
306. It's just an absolutely pathetic agreement that's really not an agreement.
307. And the President and Trump is saying oh well we won and what did we win We didn win anything We didn get any concessions from Iran This deal does not include Israel And Israel can continue to do
308. whatever they want over there. Including to continue to bomb Lebanon. And everybody,
309. you know, all the conspiracy theories are, and we've talked about this, that this is all about
310. the Trump people and the rest of his cronies going over there to put up hotels and golf courses and all of that.
311. You know, it's just, you know.
312. Because Netanyahu does not want this to be over.
313. And he will continue to bomb.
314. Let's make no mistake.
315. He already has.
316. Yeah, but he's bombing with U.S.-funded bombs, right?
317. We're giving them the bombs.
318. Yeah, that's part of the problem.
319. He doesn't want it to be over because then people will start focusing on his horrendous legacy in Israel right now.
320. And so this way he gets a lot of support because, oh, well, Israel is under attack.
321. And who in Israel is going to not support that?
322. That's his whole idea.
323. Right.
324. You know, and it's costing U.S. taxpayers tons.
325. I mean, you know, it's the amount is already astronomical.
326. Yes. And Obama's deal, that was it was the USA didn't spend a dollar because it was all Iran's money that we owe them.
327. Correct. That's correct. And so when when when people say, oh, well, you gave Iran all this money.
328. Actually, no, it was money assets that were frozen in the 70s in the 1979 revolution where we froze some of those assets.
329. and Obama unfroze them because it was Iranian money.
330. We had really no right to keep that money,
331. whether we liked the Ayatollah or not was not relevant at the time.
332. It belonged to them, and so we needed to give that back to them.
333. So you have a lot of people in the administration now saying,
334. oh, this deal is a lot better than the one that Obama made.
335. But Patricia, I have a question for you from left field.
336. Who's the better scam artist?
337. Ronald Reagan with the Iran-Contra scam, where he sold fake weapons to Iran to fund the Contras, or Trump in this debacle?
338. Oh, well, definitely this one, because a part of the issue is that Congress is missing in action.
339. You know, during the Iran-Contra whole idea with Oliver North, if you remember him, saying, yeah, he told me to do this.
340. Remember, there were a lot of hearings about that, just like there were a lot of hearings with Watergate.
341. And it was the Republicans who were pressuring Reagan and pressuring Nixon at the time.
342. hey, we need to do something about this. This is not good. And the whole thing blew up in their
343. face with some really incredible reporting from Seymour Hersh at the New York Times at the time.
344. Now you have a Congress that has basically fallen down on the job. They're getting their backbone
345. little by little, but they're still missing in action on a lot of things, including not
346. criticizing the president directly or any of these kinds of things until they come up
347. with these ridiculous things of let's give them $300 billion.
348. But he been able to get away with a lot of this stuff because you have a Congress that is not paying attention not doing their job not doing their job that the Constitution requires them to do with the
349. whole checks and balances thing. They're basically letting all of this happen. And that has caused
350. an enormous amount of consternation. But the Democrats, if they're smart, are going to take
351. advantage of a lot of this stuff for the midterms. But there's a lot of things that he continues to
352. do that fall right under the radar, such as, you know, telling the U.S. Postal Service to
353. not treat mail-in ballots better than regular mail. All of these little things leading up to
354. the midterm elections that if people are not paying attention to, that's how he's able to do
355. this because like is there any blowback from from the republicans across the aisle on on this uh
356. payout to uh yeah no she just said earlier that there was yeah yeah they're yeah they're that
357. that but how significant is it that's the second follow-up well well that's the thing is that you
358. know well they're probably you know since this is an agreement to agree to talk there's nothing
359. that's really permanent or written down anywhere.
360. But you better believe when they come back,
361. when Congress is in session for a few more days
362. before they go off on their July recess,
363. that's going to be one of the big issues right now
364. is that that agreement cannot happen with those $300 million
365. because all of, or billion actually.
366. And you have the White House saying,
367. Well, gasoline prices are already starting to go down.
368. Yeah, but what happens when the shipments that used to be free to go through the Straits of Hormuz,
369. now you have to start charging people.
370. And Iran is saying we're going to charge people up to a million dollars a day.
371. Is there any similarity with this payout to Iran and this other payout that they're standing by right now
372. with the, what do they call it, the weaponization or the insurrectionist funds?
373. Yeah, that was that $1.776 billion that they were going to be paying out to people that the Trump administration said felt used and abused by the administration, including all of those January 6 people that tried to overthrow the government.
374. And if you look at the Constitution, it says in one of the amendments that traitors, because that's what you are when you try to overthrow a government, cannot be paid any kind of money.
375. And so the Justice Department decided to kind of put that aside, but they didn't completely put it away.
376. So it's still floating out there.
377. And the Republicans, a few of them, including Lindsey Graham, who's been carrying water for Trump since the beginning, says, well, we still have to look at it and see because some people felt that they needed to be paid, which is just a ridiculous thing for him to say, especially considering that he used to be a lawyer.
378. But you still have a lot of Republicans that are carrying water for the administration and not wanting to get involved in things because they're afraid, a lot of them, of losing their job, of getting primaried out and getting kicked out.
379. Because look what happened to Senator Cornyn in Texas.
380. Right He lost the primary after he even was bootlicking the president by saying I going to name a major highway in Texas after you the Donald Trump Highway And then after he lost he said
381. oh, well, I guess I'm not going to do that.
382. Yeah, the crazy thing is, just a couple of side notes.
383. With the Iran-Contra,
384. people forget about Reagan and the crack epidemic that he created.
385. Yeah.
386. We had reason for it.
387. We had Rick Ross on this show.
388. Yeah, that's right.
389. And I asked Rick Ross, Freeway Rick Ross, I said, I didn't think he would go for it.
390. I said, how, what happened with the whole crack epidemic thing?
391. He told me he would fly, they would fly him to Nicaragua, right?
392. Sell him the cocaine, ship it back for him.
393. Yeah.
394. And let him distribute it through the black and brown neighborhoods.
395. Oh, yeah.
396. I mean, so.
397. And not only that.
398. But let me just finish this.
399. Yeah.
400. Then I said to him, how come they busted you?
401. He said because they felt like I was making too much money, getting too much power.
402. He said the same people that sold it to him were the same people that came through his front door and arrested him.
403. Of course.
404. But it was all set up because even when they were doing that, remember he was talking about how just mysterious trucks would be parked in the hood and they were full of guns.
405. Yeah, dropping guns off by the railroad tracks.
406. And they'd just leave them there.
407. Yeah.
408. And then people would break in, steal them, and this is how this all started.
409. Well, and look at the sentencing for crack versus the sentencing for cocaine.
410. There's no coincidence that if you're caught with crack cocaine, that's usually a Black or Latino person.
411. Your sentence is a lot higher than a white person with cocaine.
412. And that is still going on right now, even though the crack epidemic has largely disappeared.
413. But, you know, it's disappeared because a lot of those neighborhoods are now gentrified.
414. Well, they destroyed a whole generation.
415. And because of the crack epidemic, that's why they got the crime bill.
416. You would have never had the crime bill if Reagan never created the crack epidemic.
417. So job completed.
418. That's why you see it all, like, filtering out.
419. It's because the job has been completed.
420. The objective has been achieved.
421. yeah and like the three strikes and you're out in new york the rockefeller laws which is basically
422. the same thing yeah and and that you have people serving life sentences for small amounts of drugs
423. in the same jails with people who go on on a murder spree and it's funny how you see these
424. things like when you're living through them you don't see what's happening but in retrospect when
425. you look back you realize oh maybe i wasn't such a crazy conspiracy theorist because something
426. was going on. Oh yeah, and it's still going on. It's still going on. And unfortunately,
427. because there's been so much media consolidation and layoffs, et cetera, you don't have a lot of
428. people that are able to report on it. If you think about it, Woodward and Bernstein spent three years,
429. three years on one story. That just doesn't happen anymore. And so you have a lot of folks who would
430. love to report on some of these things, but they just don't have the personnel to do it.
431. because they're juggling so many different things.
432. I mean, there are some outlets that do an excellent job
433. of reporting some of these things, such as ProPublica and the Texas Tribune,
434. for instance, and even The New York Times and some of the smaller outlets.
435. But you don't see a lot of these stories that you would in the
436. before because there's just not that many people doing that.
437. And combined with a Congress that's basically letting the president
438. do whatever the hell he wants, then then that that becomes a big
439. issue. And anybody who says, well, the Democrats aren't doing anything either. Well, they're not
440. in the majority. They can't do anything. I mean, it may change if they take control of at least
441. one of the houses of Congress in November. But right now, their hands are tied.
442. That's great. Patricia, we're going to go to break. We'll come back with you
443. after this break on KPFK 90.7 FM, the Pocho Hour Power.
444. Happy Juneteenth, Southern California, from your family at KPFK.
445. Thank you for listening, and thank you for being the heart of this people-powered radio station.
446. Today we celebrate black liberation, culture and resilience
447. In these particularly challenging times
448. Juneteenth carries a deep meaning for all of us
449. It's a reminder that hope is a fierce action
450. And that true freedom requires constant collective care
451. To our wonderful listeners
452. Thank you for standing with Independent Community Radio
453. KPFK stands with you today and every day
454. Let's celebrate freedom, protect our collective rights, and keep pushing forward together.
455. Happy Juneteenth.
456. Hi, this is Lonnie Jordan from the band War, and you're listening to the 4 Show Hour of Power.
457. Oh, yeah, we're back.
458. KPFK 90.7 FM.
459. I'm Jeff Keller.
460. I'm here with Patricia.
461. Hey, hey.
462. What's up, man, girl?
463. Hey, you know what's crazy is when we talk about oil prices, you know, we should all,
464. gas prices, we should always mention refineries, right?
465. Yeah.
466. Because they control how much gas goes out there and how much doesn't go out there.
467. Yeah. And you remember, too, that the summer petroleum is different than the winter one.
468. Yes, different blends.
469. Yeah. And it takes a little bit longer to refine.
470. So when people say, oh, well, gas is going to go down right away, it has gone down a little bit.
471. But a lot of it has to do with how many, you know, what's available out there.
472. And the Trump administration has actually tapped into those reserves, which a lot of people really didn't know too much about.
473. And that's why the prices have been able to go down a little bit faster than usual.
474. But again, because this is just an agreement to talk about, you know, continuing to agree on something, maybe, maybe not.
475. There's too many things that are up in the air about that particular thing.
476. And the craziness is we this is the first time we've exported more oil than we brought in.
477. Yeah. Yeah. And remember that a lot of the oil that comes here to the U.S. is from Canada.
478. Right. Not from the Middle East.
479. So and you also have to remember that a lot of the suppliers are just being outright greedy and just.
480. Say that again, girl. Say that one more time.
481. Flyers are being outright greedy and just jacking up the price just to jack up the price because they can Yep Yep Yep Refinery quick to jack up their price and the gas station owners couldn jack up their prices and the people are the ones that get jacked
482. That's right.
483. And we all know that Trump doesn't spend any money on suntan oil.
484. He gets it sprayed on.
485. Sprayed on.
486. Yeah.
487. Poor Trump.
488. And, you know, and he looked especially tan during that UFC fight at the White House grounds last weekend, which if you remember one of the fighters and I can't remember his name and it's not even worth naming him.
489. But he got up and said, you know, oh, God bless America and some other crap.
490. And he said also, well, you know, and Michelle Obama's a man.
491. And people started laughing.
492. There was nothing out of the White House that contradicted what he said.
493. And the UFC CEO, Dana White, said, well, it's a freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah.
494. Contrast that to yesterday when the Obama Center, which was more than just a library, opened up in Chicago, four hours of some top stars, celebrities, regular folks coming to honor the former first family, Michelle and Barack Obama.
495. And if you haven't heard Michelle Obama's speech, it was she was on fire and didn't name Trump by name, but basically trolled him in a few spots, including and, you know, my husband who won a Peace Prize.
496. And, you know, basically saying we don't have to, you know, a real man doesn't attack women, those kinds of things.
497. And Obama's speech was was also on fire, too.
498. You contrast that to what we have in the current White House, where the Georgia Senator, John Ossoff, is called by Trump, John Os-jerk-off, you know, so really infantile, childish kind of insult.
499. Is that because he's of Russian descent?
500. Well, yeah, probably, no.
501. That was the first thing I thought of, definitely.
502. Oh, my goodness.
503. And so, you know, looking ahead to what's going to be happening, we have the Supreme Court with some major decisions coming up, including the birthright citizenship case and the case involving mail-in ballots in California,
504. which would definitely affect mail-in ballots in the rest of the country.
505. And this is one thing that, and we've talked about this before,
506. that the president has talked about how mail-in ballots,
507. there's a lot of fraud and waste, which is not true at all.
508. In fact, he himself mails in his own ballot.
509. Many Americans living overseas mail in their ballots.
510. the military serving overseas, mailing their ballots.
511. So the cases of fraud in mail-in ballots are minuscule.
512. I think they found two cases of fraud last year, and both Republicans, basically.
513. But this is the type of thing that the Trump administration tries to do to inject fear into what people are doing You know just like they do fear with immigrants fear of mail ballots
514. fear of, you know, people who are not citizens.
515. Oh, my God, birthright citizenship.
516. Even though four of his five kids were born to immigrant women.
517. But he doesn't, you know, that doesn't mean anything to him or anybody else in the White House,
518. especially somebody like like stephen miller who's been pushing very hard uh to uh to continue with
519. these immigration raids and the tensions that even though we don't see too much of that on the
520. television these days they're still going on they are still going on there's people that are still
521. detained in squalid horrible conditions in new jersey in texas all over in these in these private
522. detention centers that are run by companies that are making uh money hand over fist on these things
523. in in squalid horrible conditions they're almost like like detention camps yep um and and that and
524. that's still continuing well you know the one thing the beauty of seeing obama uh speech it was
525. like you know what this is what presidential used to look like yeah yeah you know you know
526. If you weren't watching it and you were listening to it, you almost forgot that you were in 2026.
527. You thought that you were back during the Obama administration.
528. Yeah, it was beautiful.
529. Because he sounded very presidential.
530. And there were several members of the public that showed up in tan suits.
531. Hilarious.
532. If you remember that whole ridiculous controversy when Obama was president on a hot summer day one time,
533. He showed up in a tan suit and the conservative, the right wing crazies.
534. They weren't the they weren't maggots back then.
535. They were just right wing crazies, went nuts about it.
536. Well, Patricia, we got we got it.
537. We got it. We got to go.
538. But it's always a pleasure to speak with you and have you on the Pocha Hour Power.
539. We're so lucky to have you in D.C. with your thumb on the pulse, so to speak, of what's happening.
540. and I look forward to it every
541. weekend so I'll be back
542. because I know that you've got to do
543. the rest of the show with my friend Russell Contreras
544. that's right
545. well happy Juneteenth
546. happy Juneteenth to everybody out there
547. and if you don't know what that is
548. please Google, come on folks
549. I'll explain it to them later
550. we're going to do a crash course
551. before the show's over
552. they didn't have email backed in
553. I was sitting in Galveston
554. I had no idea that this was going on
555. Oh my god
556. Yeah that's basically what happened folks
557. I've been working for free an extra two years
558. What the hell man
559. Alright have a great weekend
560. Thank you Patricia
561. Alright we'll talk to you later folks
562. And you know what
563. We're going to talk to one of our favorite correspondents
564. Out of New Mexico
565. But before we do that
566. There's this salsa band who just crowded their way up in the studio
567. What are they doing here
568. What's that smell
569. Oh they're whistling now
570. Oh.
571. Hey hey hey hey hey hey Russell Contreras live
572. on KPFK 90.7
573. FM the Pocho Hour
574. Power what's up brother
575. Pochis and Pochex
576. happy Juneteenth to all of you and happy
577. Juneteenth from New Mexico
578. as a product and son of Houston.
579. Juneteenth was really important for us.
580. And this week we did a deep dive.
581. I'm going to get the pulse of what Juneteenth is around the country.
582. As soon as the president came in, you saw kind of a regression of Juneteenth.
583. He even said last year that we had too many holidays as we approached Juneteenth.
584. I tried to attack it, but we looked at it and you know what?
585. You cannot get rid of Juneteenth.
586. It was passed by law.
587. It was signed by President Biden.
588. So it is now a federal holiday.
589. We looked at about 33 states do offer some sort of holiday time off, and the rest of the states do not.
590. Some corporations have gone back when initially Juneteenth was celebrated, did honor Juneteenth, and continue to do in ways while they're pulling back DEI and all sorts of other initiatives.
591. One company we looked at, Target, is sort of a – and this is a business of what's going on here is Target has pulled back a lot of its DEI initiatives, but at the same time keeping Juneteenth.
592. They do offer Juneteenth as a paid holiday, time and a half off, and their distributions are closed.
593. But they do have – their companies are open.
594. I mean, their distributions are open.
595. Sorry about that.
596. But a lot of companies are doing that.
597. One company in particular, Nike, is giving everybody off.
598. The retail stores are closed and their headquarters are closed on our Juneteenth.
599. So it's going back and forth all over the place.
600. Denver last week actually had to reduce their Juneteenth from four days to two days celebration because sponsors pulled out.
601. This year, sponsors have returned.
602. So it appears that Juneteenth is not going away.
603. In fact, it is resilient and going across the country and continues to rise and spread despite backlash.
604. Yeah, I was going to go swimming today.
605. There's a pool over by my house, and I swim over there.
606. And today I went to swim.
607. It was closed.
608. And then I go, oh, yeah, it's Juneteenth.
609. Got me.
610. That's right.
611. That's right.
612. And really interesting thing, as I mentioned, Juneteenth.
613. That's kind of ironic, though, if you think about it.
614. That's what I thought.
615. Yeah.
616. Closed on June 2. You know, an interesting note, I wrote about this a couple of years ago as someone who has found a descendant of someone who was connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico.
617. You have to remember, enslaved people in Texas, where I came from, did not go north for freedom, but south.
618. This next month, the descendants of those who are part of the Underground Railroad will get together with the descendants of Sylvia Weber.
619. Those who don't know Sylvia Weber was the Harriet Tubman of the South.
620. We'll be getting together for the first time ever in the University of Texas, the descendants
621. of the Underground Railroad with the freedom, those who led those to freedom.
622. We're going to get together, share stories, we'll be connecting.
623. Juneteenth is where we're starting our conversation.
624. We'll be ending it in Austin, Texas.
625. First time descendants together talking about trying to recreate the history that has been
626. because a lot of times when descendants went to Mexico,
627. they were not literate, they changed their names.
628. We don't know their story.
629. We're trying to recapture them.
630. Yeah, I love that because I just had this conversation with some people
631. People the other day, some black folks, I was doing a show, and I talked about the Underground Railroad going into Mexico.
632. And they're like, no, that ain't what I'm saying.
633. Dude, I'm telling you.
634. I said, not only was it they fought for those black folks to be free, and they gave them some land.
635. They did.
636. Wasn't that a large part with what happened with the Alamo and the Texas settlers?
637. They had slaves, and that was a big issue with Mexico, right, when they came down?
638. That is right.
639. someone who had to learn Texas history, they didn't teach us that, that this war was actually
640. about the Texas Revolution. It was largely about enslavement
641. and those fighting it. And that's the discussion. Interesting fun
642. fact, for those who have been watching the World Cup and we saw
643. Mexico, have been watching the Mexico team, some people were kind of
644. thrown off. The first person who scored the goal
645. was a brother. That's right. Come on now.
646. I got like 10 text messages from my brothers.
647. They're like, hey, hey, what's up?
648. What's going on with that?
649. Yes, he is a player from Colombia.
650. And a lot of Colombian players do play in La Liga de Mexico.
651. So that is not unusual.
652. And what Mexico is enduring, as the United States,
653. is its own reckoning with race and its own reckoning with Afro-Mexicanos.
654. That sparked another discussion.
655. Yes, his brother was Colombian, but guess what?
656. We've got about 3 million Afro-Mexicanos who live in Mexico.
657. That is about the size of Houston.
658. We need to have that conversation and talk about the story of these people, where they're from.
659. And it's a diverse story.
660. And finally have that reckoning in the country of Mexico, but also in the United States.
661. So you look like I didn't have your phone number.
662. Boy, I was going to call you.
663. And speaking of pride, the other thing we looked at this week is America 250 is coming up, coming up in two weeks.
664. Yeah.
665. We had two polls come out, one from the Public Religion Research Institute and from Pew.
666. And it took a pulse about what America is at 250.
667. Two things emerged.
668. Americans are not as proud as they were back in 2013.
669. Back then, if you ask people, 80% of Americans said they were proud to be American.
670. Today, it's around 50%.
671. It's split around race.
672. it's split around religion. Those who are white evangelicals, about 73% say they're proud to be
673. American, but if you ask Black Protestants, the number goes around 30%. And so those who are
674. religiously unaffiliated, 30%. It shows that the pride in America are split based on race
675. and religion. And as we move closer to the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding,
676. You see a big split among race and religion.
677. We're not being connected.
678. Also, the criticism at the Trump administration, that is, it's freedom 250 organization, kind of like the political arm of the celebration, more aligned with the Trump administration, seems to be telling a narrow story about the country's past.
679. And the next week we'll be looking at, actually we'll be looking at alternative 250 celebrations going on with Asian Americans, Latinos, Black Americans, and also Jewish Americans.
680. How they're telling a different story because they feel they're being excluded.
681. Wow.
682. Now, I created a page on Facebook for an experiment and I put up this pro-Trump stuff.
683. It got like 150 followers in one day.
684. and then today I put up the Obama speech,
685. the hate that was put under that speech by these people you like no wonder this country is so jacked up I just wanted to see what they would say And they were going off He should die They should arrest
686. him. He's a divider.
687. I'm like, oh my God.
688. This country is
689. divided. It's jacked up.
690. That's right.
691. And the other thing that's divided on it is also
692. the religion. A couple of
693. weeks ago, there was the
694. Rejection 250. A lot of white
695. evangelicals had an event
696. at the National Mall where they were reclaiming the country for Christ.
697. And a lot of the speakers were arguing that this nation was founded as a Christian nation.
698. Well, there's a new group called Faith 250.
699. They're forming their multi-faith organizations, they say.
700. Uh-uh.
701. Actually, we're going to go around and educate people on religious liberty.
702. And we're actually going to look at the text of some of the founding fathers.
703. Would you know that if you know more about Thomas Jefferson or John Adams or George Washington,
704. if you knew what they wrote you might actually cancel them right Washington for example talked
705. about providence but rarely mentioned Jesus and Thomas Jefferson this is my favorite rewrote the
706. bible he went into the bible and cut out parts of the gospel that he thought were uh did not he
707. could not prove that Jesus committed miracles and he said oh can't prove it I'm gonna cut it out
708. imagine doing that now and post it on social media uh that particular uh founding father would be
709. canceled right away.
710. And these
711. members of the
712. America 250 groups are saying,
713. let's have that conversation.
714. Well, it sounds like Jefferson would have been
715. really had his Bible put on
716. Pinterest. I only like these parts
717. of the Bible.
718. Exactly.
719. Not only would he put it on Pinterest,
720. he would have published it.
721. And said, look at this, what I did.
722. And so that's what's
723. really unique on this, the America 250.
724. is that it is coming across as having these discussions about religion and race,
725. that it's bringing in the Faith 250 folks.
726. It's a coalition of Jewish, secular, Catholic, and Black Protestants together.
727. Let's have a discussion because we're going to look at religion in the United States
728. and its diversity.
729. That's the conversation.
730. Yeah, it's amazing because they say they're religious,
731. but they don't want to feed the poor or help the homeless.
732. But, you know, what's amazing about this country
733. and in the 250 years of this experiment
734. is that there are so many different Americas.
735. There are so many.
736. I used to say there are two Americas,
737. but there's way more than two.
738. There's just like, you know, you have the rich affluent,
739. you have the people who don't give a damn
740. about anyone who has no money.
741. You have this classism.
742. You have these racial divides.
743. You have cultural divides.
744. You have religious divides.
745. And it's really becoming something that's been used to separate us
746. rather than bring us together.
747. And it's crazy that after 250 years,
748. this is what we've, the boiling pot has come down to this scientific petri dish
749. in which we've been like separated.
750. I don't know.
751. Do you have any thoughts on that, man?
752. Because I don't.
753. It drives me crazy.
754. I do, but go ahead.
755. Go ahead.
756. Am I asking?
757. Interesting.
758. Pew came out with this report and said,
759. look, one of the studies said
760. America is a divided.
761. However, they're not very keen
762. on the America 250,
763. but they very hopeful about America 2050 They believe a lot of these divisions will go away They believe that we moving into a more multiracial society
764. They believe things will get better.
765. Essentially, what they're saying is that
766. some people have to die first
767. before we get there.
768. That's what they're saying.
769. What was the age range?
770. What was the age range of the study?
771. Do you know?
772. Yes.
773. Gen Z were the most optimistic.
774. They were the most pessimistic
775. about its current days,
776. but they're more optimistic about the days ahead.
777. They're basically saying, look, guys, when we take control,
778. we're going to be good.
779. We got to wait for somebody to go.
780. I don't know what they're, who they're saying to somebody.
781. The boomers.
782. They're waiting for the boomers.
783. I have a feeling it's the boomers,
784. and I have a feeling that some of the Gen X folks,
785. you know, our generation, right?
786. But in many ways, they actually appreciate Gen X
787. because they love our music and everything.
788. But, like, maybe y'all should get involved.
789. You know, the boomers have been along too far.
790. Maybe it's time for them to step aside
791. This is what the poll is saying
792. But they're much more optimistic of the future
793. America as I look at it
794. You know as we look at the next 250 years
795. It's going to have to have a discussion
796. How it uses race as a category
797. Because the way we categorize race today
798. Is going to be fundamentally different
799. In the next coming decades
800. Because we don't really have a good grasp
801. Of multiracial Americans
802. We don't look at them
803. We don't categorize them
804. our categories are antiquated and gen d is saying you know what when we get involved step aside
805. we'll take care of it much more optimistic view of the nation yeah because right now i don't care
806. if you're uh if you're a white guy from africa and you come to america you're just a white guy
807. if you're a black guy from switzerland you're not swedish you're a black guy in america
808. Yeah, that's right.
809. And it has confused us when we go overseas.
810. I've gone to London, and I've been lost, and I don't know where to go.
811. Naturally, I'll go to someone who's a brother, a guy like, hey, can you help me out?
812. And it always throws me off when the brother with dread starts talking like Hamlet.
813. I was going up there trying to talk to Jeffrey, and here comes Romeo up in here.
814. And it always shocks me because that's my American speaking.
815. I'm making assumptions.
816. And I don't really, it takes me a while to say, oh, this brother is a descendant of the Windrush generation from Jamaica.
817. Or this is a Nigerian immigrant, you know, the son of Nigerian immigrants.
818. I automatically assumed in putting my own American-ness on race and not taking account of how race is viewed in France or Germany or England.
819. It's a fundamentally different thing.
820. And I think eventually the United States is going to have to catch up.
821. They know so much more about us than we know about them.
822. Yep.
823. See, we judge each other on color.
824. They judge each other from where they're from.
825. Exactly.
826. And class.
827. And class.
828. So when that brother was like telling me, I had to tell him to stop because I didn't understand him.
829. And he was speaking English.
830. I was telling me, sir, did you say you're from?
831. You're like, what?
832. Exactly.
833. He was like telling me to go here, turn there.
834. And how many meters?
835. I was like, what meters?
836. What do you mean meters?
837. Meters?
838. That's what I'm talking about.
839. You must be from America.
840. Yeah, exactly.
841. He said, you're American.
842. And he kind of rolled his eyes.
843. Right?
844. And then when you say nationality, and then when you go to any kind of British government thing, when they say nationality, I'm like, oh, Latino?
845. And they're like, no.
846. Are you from a country?
847. Oh, US.
848. Yeah.
849. They're like, just roll their eyes.
850. Like, y'all do some weird stuff over there.
851. And they're right.
852. We do do weird stuff.
853. But that's how we keep the elites the elites and the poor the poor.
854. You have to say you're from the Republic of New Mexico.
855. Right And then they be like oh yeah no bro Oh we feel for you it crazy because when I travel and you travel outside they like Californians
856. in New York because they know that we have
857. I always say I'm from California
858. the rest of the country they can't stand
859. right exactly
860. but you know how many times I had to explain
861. to foreigners that there's
862. two different Americas
863. is what I always say
864. there's the America I'm from
865. and there's the white elite America.
866. All right.
867. Well, we got to get out on time.
868. Anything else that you want to hit us with before we go?
869. Before we leave, the next story we're looking at,
870. we're looking at the alternative celebrations of 250,
871. what other groups are doing.
872. We'll have that in Axios.
873. Go to axios.com slash newsletters.
874. Get your AM newsletter in your inbox for free every morning.
875. Until then, we'll see you.
876. Bye.
877. Ole.
878. Thank you, man.
879. It's always great to have you with us.
880. Thank you, brother.
881. You too, brother.
882. Yo, I want to thank my man Contreras out there.
883. He is the man.
884. I don't care what anybody says.
885. I'd like to thank Patricia.
886. Patricia Guadalupe.
887. Thank you, our Washington correspondent.
888. I want to thank Lalo.
889. I want to thank you, Jeffrey Keller.
890. Well, thank you, brother.
891. I want to thank you, Zul.
892. Eso.
893. I want to thank the Wizard of Oz.
894. Oz!
895. Working the board.
896. Working it.
897. And this weekend, I'll be at the Comedy Chateau.
898. Come on out at 8 o'clock.
899. It's North Hollywood on Lancashire.
900. Say my name.
901. Get in free.
902. I'll be causing problems out there.
903. Oh, we got to thank Gary Baca, the producer.
904. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
905. And guess what, people?
906. This is the Poach Hour of Power.
907. We out of here.
908. Stay safe and be cool.
909. Go, Mexico.
910. Go, Mexico.
911. Our views who haven't done nothing
912. Happy Juneteenth, Southern California, from your family at KPFK.
913. Thank you for listening, and thank you for being the heart of this people-powered radio station.
914. Today, we celebrate Black liberation, culture, and resilience.
915. In these particularly challenging times, Juneteenth carries a deep meaning for all of us.
916. It's a reminder that hope is a fierce action and that true freedom requires constant collective care.
917. To our wonderful listeners, thank you for standing with Independent Community Radio.
918. KPFK stands with you today and every day.
919. Let's celebrate freedom, protect our collective rights, and keep pushing forward together.
920. Happy Juneteenth.
921. Lord, what's supposed to be
922. Emancipation Day
923. Hi, this is Michelle Coltrane.
924. Join me every Saturday at 4 a.m. for my show, Awakenings.
925. We will be taking a musical and spiritual journey
926. into the world of Alice Coltrane and beyond.
927. That's Awakenings every Saturday, 4 a.m. on KPFK,
928. 90.7 FM Los Angeles and online for the world at kpfk.org.
929. You're tuned in to Pacifica Radio,
930. KPFK, 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara.
931. Streaming around the universe.
932. on kpfk.org
933. where you can check out
934. our past shows,
935. podcasts,