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 2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **I’m here with rapper and punk musician, Vic Mensa. Today we’ll be talking about what is going on in this country in 2020 and how we can improve it. So let’s go! You’re pretty political with your music, is all your music political?** No I wouldn’t say all my music is political. I am political as a person. So my music is going to be a reflection of that. It’s going to be a reflection of me. **If you exist within a certain facet of society, your life ends up being inherently political.** Existing in any way is pretty much political because we’re in a space that’s governed by that.  **So you grew up in Chicago, what was it like for you growing up there?** I grew up in the middle of two very different worlds. In a lot of ways. I live 5 blocks from Obama’s house, I live 5 blocks from a notorious project building, and across the street from a section 8 building. So people have been killed on the corner, and millionaires live next door. You know what I mean? So it’s kind of a dichotomy of experience and the fact that I was so aware of the haves and have-nots. Because I’m on one side, and we’re comfortable. Across the street, niggas is selling drugs out the window. And I’m just peeping game and trying to figure out why things are the way they are.  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **Why do you think things are the way they are, why do we have so much disparity in this country?** In order for that to happen you have to have people that are at the bottom of the barrel. Because the rich people gotta stand on something, you know what I mean? I mean and it’s also, America was built in this way. That you don’t escape building a nation with slave labor on Indian bones. You can’t just reach the 21st century and be like “Oh we’re over that. That was the past. You know what we learned our lesson!” That’s not how shit works, at all. **It’s hard to imagine functioning in this society politically the way that it’s set up, or how it’s set up in general. It is changing from the inside. Do you think that’s possible or do you think it needs to be from mass uprise from the outside?** If you watch history it appears that radical change happens when people demand it. It’s a lot of shit that hasn’t changed. A lot of things have changed, I mean I don’t mean to take away from the fucking, the progress that’s been made around us, in this fine country of ours. I ain’t gonna lie this shit is pretty good. **Do you feel like there’s enough people aware and paying attention to start creating that movement?**  I feel like there are, but also there’s so much distraction. And we have access to more information than ever before, and that’s powerful. But the potential for mass manipulation is also at an all-time high.   2020 Vision | Vic Mensa  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **Exactly and also just mass consumerism. “Oh I need to look like this, I need to be like this.”** It’s definitely not an enlightening point of view, it’s not an enlightening place. I think Donald Trump is hilarious man. I think he’s the funniest president of all time. I swear to god the nigga is so fucking funny. It’s ridiculous and I can’t help but be transfixed by it. I was already aware that America was misogynistic, racist, and xenophobic. **Do you think that it pushes people to do more? And to pay more attention?** We’ll see right? 2020 is when we’ll really see about that. Because on some real shit though when I look at it, ain’t shit really changed in my hood like that when Obama was in office. It got more violent. **Really?** In Chicago yeah, shit. It was going up. It’s actually a little bit cooled out now, which I’m obviously not going to attribute to the presidency or anything, it’s just kind of like the cycle of shit. But you know from that perspective, things in the inner cities of America and in this city that Obama lives in did not improve. And it didn’t change when we were under progressive presidency and people thought we were in a post-racial America. I just mean to say whoever is in that spot, the way that this machine works is still rigged to leave us high and dry. **You were talking a little bit about before about this country being built on Indian bones and slavery. You went to standing rock, can you talk a little bit about that?**  Yeah, standing rock was amazing man. Standing rock was like a love movement. You know what I’m saying, and I made a lot of connections, personal and ideologically that were just so valuable to me. You know, I didn’t really realize the extent of the parallel between the Native American experience and the Black experience, before standing rock. I just saw how hand in hand we are, Black people and Native people, you know what I’m saying? Rape statistics in Native American communities, which, yeah they make you take a deep breath like that. And if you look at what happens in their community with rape, and then you look at what happens in the African American community with violence it’s very parallel. It’s like you have this generational trauma that lives inside of your actual selves. In your DNA, where your people have been subjected to these specific forms of abuse for so long that at a certain point you don’t even need the oppressor anymore because you’ve got their DNA and their ideology inside of you. So we just keep that cycle perpetuating, we’ve been brutalized for so long like “Fuck it. This is what we know now, violence.” We do it to each other now and the same is to say for rape in the Native American community.  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **I think a lot of people don’t understand that.** See, a lot of people don’t understand it others do understand it and they just like to, turn a blind eye and pretend that all of the responsibility is on the oppressed people because that’s a good way to keep the ball rolling. Sean Hannity and the rest of Fox News, are completely aware that these oppressed people have been brutalized in these ways for this long, but they just like to say “That was a long time ago, I didn’t do it. What’s up with these criminal blacks?” When it’s like, they’re not that dumb. That’s just how you keep white supremacy going, is you revise history.  **That’s the thing, I feel like they are very aware…** They know what's going on,   **Like regular people, I feel like are more ignorant to it. Understanding the cycle of trauma, like you’re saying.** No they dont. They just wonder why it is that Black people, you know, are so violent. I can’t even walk around being upset with people for being ignorant, you know what I mean? For not knowing any better than what they’ve been taught by generations of their families.That’s how, that’s the crux on which White supremacy lies, is this American White exceptionalism that points a finger and says everybody else a problem because of this. That’s the only way that you convince poor White people that they should be upset with poor Black people, instead of being upset with rich White people.  **Exactly.** I mean that’s the only way you can do that. That’s why I fuck with a nigga like Bernie because although Bernie does address race, he leans heavily on addressing class which to me, I mean that’s the way that we actually shake shit up and we move forward. Obviously we got to be real about race, but at the point in time when we can make poor White people realize that corporations don’t have their best interest at mind and billionaires don’t have their best interests at mind, and those same people are victimizing them, then they can come up and they can realize that everybody Brown is not their enemy.  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **I feel like the people that who are at the top, at the end of the day are trying to polarize us that way. So that we don’t ..** Separation. **Exactly**. Separation is key. That’s that divide and conquer. And you know what makes people really dangerous to the power structure is unity. So if you look at when they killed Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King had a bug in his ear to do a poor people’s march on Washington. When you look at the killing of Fred Hampton, Black Panther in Chicago, Fred Hampton had a rainbow coalition where he was uniting Puerto Ricans with the poor Irish Whites with the Black nationalists, assasination. Even … even Malcolm X although he was assassinated by the Nation, Malcolm X had a new lease on life. He was like, “You know what, all this, ‘all White people are the devil and I can’t work with any other races,’ this is not the way to move forward.” And the point of time at which you start to put the pieces together and unite poor people, and just unite people from across the spectrum, that’s when you become a real fucking threat.  **I think that’s why so many establishment people are against Bernie because I think he can do that.**  Oh, fasho … Joe Biden man, Joe Biden really fed this whole beast and not only did he feed the beast, he was instrumental in building the beast. In the late 80s and the early 90s, Joe Biden was one of the politicians that was writing legislation to construct this robust criminal justice system we have now. That’s probably the law right there, coming to get me. **Did you just say something bad about Joe Biden? That’s it! I’m done!** Joe Biden went as far as to criticise George Bush Sr. in a tough on crime criminal justice bill that he passed because Joe Biden said it wasn’t tough enough. That it didn’t incarcerate enough people for long enough. That it didn’t put enough police in the streets and that it didn’t put enough prosecutors in the courts coming from communities that have been ravaged by that.  2020 Vision | Vic Mensa **I don’t know why that’s not talked about more. Why is there not somebody in a debate saying like, “Hey, but you did this,” you know?** I feel like they be calling him out every once in a while, but yeah, I don’t know. I’m not feeling it though. These are the reasons I support Bernie because his receipts, say it all for me you know what I mean. His receipts, photographs of him in the 60s being dragged for sitting in with Black protestors.  **Literally, chained to Black women.** Chained to Black women, the receipts they tell me a lot. Joe Biden and them, Elizabeth Warren and the rest of them, the receipts, they don’t add up. They don’t add up! **That’s the thing, I feel like somebody doesn’t come along especially a politician, somebody doesn’t come along who you can look at their record for how many years.** And they been talking about the same shit. **It’s the chance. If we’re going to rebuild it from the inside like we were talking about, this is the opportunity because who else is going to lead us to do that, you know?** Nobody. Definitely not any of these guys. I’m on that free healthcare for all wave. I mean I remember being in London some years ago, and I happened to get sick on tour and I had to go to the hospital man. I went and you know, was at the emergency room and got checked out by these doctors and they prescribed me some medicine and I walked out and they didn’t even ask me for my ID or insurance or anything. And I was like “what the fuck?” I felt like I’m stealing you know what I mean, I felt like I’m stealing the medical care. I was like I'm just look straight and just keep walking, you know what I mean, and hope nobody says shit to me. They didn’t say shit to me. I had an x-ray and everything you know, that shit could have cost me $10,000 in America easily. It just doesn’t have to be that way. Too many families just completely tanked because someone gets sick and I just think that’s wholly inhumane.  **Yeah, I’m from Canada.** You guys got it popping over there right? **Yeah, it’s amazing. And when I moved here I was so anxious, still anxious, all the time and just sad because I couldn’t believe I, anybody had to go to the doctor and pay like astronomical, like profiting off people; profiting off of people’s bad luck or misfortune. It’s honestly disgusting.** Straight pain pimping. Pimping the pain, that’s what they do real talk. And it’s really the insurance companies cleaning up. **If you could say something to kids or just people honestly who are just kinda like -**  Get money! Fuck bitches … I would tell the youth of America and elsewhere, educate yourself man. Don’t let these people send you off. Because that’s what this whole game is, this is a big send off game. And if you’re old enough to vote 2020, don’t play yourself. You know what i mean? Don’t play the rest of us. It’s like you got to take power in the autonomy and the opportunity that you do have to be apart, to be heard, to make your perspective matter, to make your voice heard. And get money and fuck bitches too though, you know. **Do you think people should vote in the democratic primary?** Yeah, hell yeah. Vote for Bernie shit. * * * For more information on where to vote | [www.vote.org/polling-place-locator/](https://www.vote.org/polling-place-locator/) * * * Talent: Vic Mensa Creator/Host: Juliann McCandless Director/Producer: Danielle Oexmann Cinematographer: Han-Su Kim Photography: Sophia Schrank Editing: Sofia Kerpan Digital Editor: BJ Panda Bear Design: Sandro Grison