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. We have a lot to get to, but we also have decency and order. And our methodology

of decency and order is that before we get to the news, we actually engage in a ritual. The ritual

is called a moment of gratitude. And the reason we have this ritual is because the work of Black

Talklandia can be very difficult. It can be a little depressing and demoralizing. And because

this is only a two-hour show and we got to squeeze a lot in, this show is considered all shot, no chaser. And that means that we really got to do the work of big in up our spirits and tapping into a sense of joy, gratitude and appreciation, because we know that when we do that before we tap into the news, that we cannot be trapped by fear, loneliness, and depression.

So as I said, the ritual is called a moment of gratitude and it goes a little something like

a this.

In just a minute, you're going to hear music.

That music is going to be an invitation to you to join the rest of us because when we hear

it, we are collectively going to take the slowest, the deepest, most lung capacity expanding, joyful heart invigorating, troubled mind cleansing, and weary soul-uplifting, the most amazingly juicy breath that you've ever taken with a couple million people at once as we kick off our most important segment of every single day. It is time for our moment of gratitude.

Thank you. Every day, folks, every day we got to do it and every day it matters. Shout out to the team.

Shout out to the Urban View family, the

newbie family, the YouTube family, the podcast family. Today for our moment of gratitude,

we are continuing our examination of cooperative work, collective action. Because despite

whatever is happening in the halls of government, we have decided or we have been thrust into a

reality where we recognize that our ability to survive, to navigate, to thrive is really dependent upon each other. It's dependent upon each other. Now, this is a challenge for a lot of us because, one, if you're like me, I don't like depending on other people. I don't like group projects. I'm the type of person who if I suspect that the group with whom I have been placed and we have a project and I suspect that my group members are janky, I'm just going to get it dumb and I'm going to tell you what you got to do. This is your part, this your part, this is your part. And it's all done. It's ready to go because I do not like to trust my outcomes, my grade or anything of that nature in the hands of people who I don't trust because I think they're janky, right?

So as somebody who's of that perspective, it's challenging for me to think about how to work for and with other people.

And when we're not talking about grades in school, but we are instead talking about something far more

serious, like, I don't know, the ability to eat, right? The ability to have access to fresh water,

the ability for people to get their needs met, group project dynamic is that much more

challenging for somebody like myself. And by somebody like myself, I mean, somebody who was

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