Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay, thank you so much. Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. So every day on my show, I talk about the fact that we sit in a space that I like to

call Black Talklandia. And Black Talklandia is the name of this space where we do our best to embody

the best in the Black Talk radio tradition. And that means that on my show and on this podcast,

we have very difficult conversations about how our world's got to be so very messy when it

comes to issues of race, gender, culture, identity, politics, and the law.

And these conversations really matter because, as I say, every day on my show, difficult though

they may be. They help us all learn how to be better people who then learn how to build

better communities. And as a result, we are then able to shape a better world. And for us,

that is how talk empowers and B comes action.

And today's conversation is firmly within that vein. Because as my mother says and as my

grandmother used to say, first comes warning, then sudden destruction. Or in the case of the

devastating tragedies that we saw coming out of Texas over the weekend, first comes warning,

then come the floods and sudden destruction will soon follow. And let us be clear, this is going to be a

difficult discussion, because whenever we're talking about death that has happened as a result

of preventable policy decisions, it always feels inherently challenging. This is one of the

reasons why Americans never get around to

talking about gun violence because as soon as a gun violence incident takes place, we're all told

we're supposed to send thoughts and prayers and not talk about any of the politics that led to it

because it's just too soon. Unfortunately, we have so many incidences of gun violence in this country

that it is always too soon to have the conversation because as soon as you start to have the conversation, there's another issue of gun violence.

And so it ends up being this really bad cycle. And that is not a cycle that I'm willing to participate in, particularly when it comes to the predicted and predictable nature of the devastation that we saw over the weekend.

...