2 Men In Black and White: An Honest Conversation

Mark Hayes (00:00.694)
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are still waiting. It is what five, four days and counting now, since Nolan Wells disappeared, and his body turned up lifeless, dead in Mississippi. Now the latest is Ben Crump, has entered the conversation. and apparently, as Brock as you reported yesterday, his girlfriend is allegedly working with authorities to try to figure out exactly what happened with Wells.

And why a young African American man hanging out with a crew of white guys turned up dead, his cell phone made it back, but he didn't. A lot of partying on Horn Island, and that's our focus as we begin the show today, two men in black and white and honest conversation. Brock, honestly, you know, how do you live with yourself if you watch someone die and didn't do anything, number one, to save them? but number two, how do you even call that person a friend?

Brock Ganeles (01:01.668)
I have no idea. I can't I mean let's talk about the friendship, right? What what is the friendship here between a bunch of southern white teenagers, you know, late teenagers but still teenagers, right? And and a black guy. Is this an equal friendship? Like what do they really think of each other? What are those what is that group of white kids really think of their black

Mark Hayes (01:08.429)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (01:31.086)
Friend? Do they view him as equal? Do they value him in the same way they value their white friends? Is he a token black friend that's cool and fun to hang out with? Like how deep is the friendship?

Mark Hayes (01:47.82)
Well, you know, Brock, we might have been able to get answers to those questions if their social medias hadn't been all erased. Everyone involved seems to have deleted their social media account. Hmm. I think me smells a rat. because those pictures and those images and those posts would have told us a lot about what they thought about each other. And

Nolan Wells and what was happening on that island, right? Because these kids these days, if it's not on social media, it didn't happen. Right? So that's the reality check. But now these accounts have been have all even the parents of the kids who were hanging with Nolan Wells have deleted their social media stuff. So, you know, Brock, look, there's there's a lot of smelly fish here.

I don't know how we get to the bottom of it unless somebody comes forward and starts telling the goddamn truth. but again, you know, we're hearing calls now from both black and white Americans saying, Hey, you young black guys, stop hanging out with groups of white kids. And we even found a video that said groups of rich white kids. Wha

What's what's the difference between a group of white kids and a group of rich white kids, Brock?

Brock Ganeles (03:18.392)
Yeah, I found that really interesting that that was part of the messaging is that you really can't trust affluent white kids. Maybe 'cause they feel more entitled, maybe because they're, you know, in essence, you know, reared more to be more selfish and they're just more likely to to disappear on an island and leave someone behind dead. Is that was that the messaging? Just the, you know, toxic selfishness?

Mark Hayes (03:27.432)
No.

Brock Ganeles (03:47.456)
of affluent white people.

I mean so that's the warning. So I'm I'm looking at as an older white guy, I'm looking at this younger generation, your son's generation, and I'm viewing them as a much more integrated, less racist society. That's my view, looking down and looking back. But am I am I wrong? Is it only a less racist society on the surface? in in in is it only Instagram worthy?

Mark Hayes (04:08.429)
Mm-hmm.

Brock Ganeles (04:21.388)
Integration, but deep yeah at the deeper level there's still a chasm, it's still a lot of racism. Is d in my have I misread what's going on out there?

Mark Hayes (04:33.077)
I I I think we're misreading the fact that this happened and we're assigning it to all of America. This is the Deep South, still. I went to just a year or two ago, I went to one of my my older sons. his best friend was having a baby shower. So I went to the baby shower. They had the baby shower was being hosted by an Asian doctor.

Who they all went to high school with, they were all teammates. They there were a couple of white guys there. There were four or five African-American guys there. There was a Hispanic guy there. I mean, they had their own little rainbow. They had white girls, Latino girls, and African-American girls. So, I mean, I think our I to me, our young people were gonna be our saving graves. Now.

I tend to watch a lot of you know Netflix and what have you, Prime. I don't know if you've seen the show Love Island. it's interesting because you know they started off this new season, I think. I think it's season eight. But they started the season off with five men five, yeah, five men, five women.

Four of the guys, I couldn't tell what race they were. And the same for four of the girls. So there was one white woman and one white guy. The rest were all you know multiracial. one was even a Paralympian. So you had this diverse.

mix of people who ended up all kissing each other throughout the show. With no hesitation. Like nobody says, I don't I don't you know I don't kiss those people.

Mark Hayes (06:37.227)
I mean who knew? I mean, everybody there was a combination of something. And I think that because the South is what it is, and because the the the wheels of progress have been so clogged with the sand of of racism, they can't they can't move past it. I I really think kids hate Naps, Broccoli, the end of recess.

Brock Ganeles (06:41.422)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Hayes (07:07.477)
I think they're taught how to hate. And I think I think that teaching comes from the dinner table, comes from home, comes from watching football games when when, you know, Grandpappy, you know, blows out the N-word a hundred times while the game is on.

Brock Ganeles (07:11.01)
What?

Brock Ganeles (07:24.494)
You know, so on on one side of the coin, we've been celebrating for like a month about this multicultural, multiracial, just joy fest that's going on throughout America with the World Cup and how these cities and even small towns are embracing all these barn people of all creeds, colors and and the like traveling through the US talking about how nice the American people are, right? And we've been talking about how there appears to be like a movement going on and a change in America.

Mark Hayes (07:51.714)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (07:53.931)
and and some more pride about being American again by a good chunk of the country that's been really disillusioned. Now that's always left a twin you know, whatever it is, a quarter to a third hardcore MAGA that wants no part of this shit. And the problem with America right now is that they're the group in power. That's the minority rule. So at the top levels we have racism just to the nth degree, like we've never seen in broad daylight out in the open.

Mark Hayes (07:54.21)
Right.

Mark Hayes (08:14.422)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (08:23.672)
working its way through government, right? Government used to tr you know, for the most part, in our lifetimes, was trying to be more fair. Or it was pushed to be more fair. But now it's just blatantly unfair and says it doesn't give a shit. It's Project 2025. This is the way it is. It's a white supremacy movement. So you had that that element, but then I juxtaposed that about my recent trip to Mississippi, right? I was just down there and

Mark Hayes (08:26.412)
Right.

Mark Hayes (08:31.949)
Right.

Mark Hayes (08:37.325)
Right.

Mark Hayes (08:47.765)
But I was yeah, it's expressed now.

Brock Ganeles (08:50.69)
Right, I told what did I tell you for when I was in Jackson, Mississippi, it was it just felt like segregated societies. Like I was at a hotel, I was there was a restaurant in there, and it was there was no interracial groups. There was black people dining, white people dining. All the workers were black, most of the patrons were white. It was a expensive restaurant in the hotel, so you could see the wealth gap and for the and you saw a chasm of a racial gap.

Mark Hayes (08:57.761)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (09:15.362)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (09:18.734)
There was no integration. I didn't see any intermingling. And it was just so noticeable me for me coming from someone who spends most of their time in New York City. And you walk into New York City and it's just the melting pot. Everyone's in integrated and the like. So when you go to another part of the country and s you just notice that difference right from the get-go. So it even surprised me when I heard that about three w white friends and a black kid hanging together.

Mark Hayes (09:18.988)
That's

Mark Hayes (09:28.459)
Right. See everything. Right.

Mark Hayes (09:40.055)
Right.

Mark Hayes (09:45.377)
Together. Right.

Brock Ganeles (09:46.821)
I was like, wow, that was that's more integration than I saw in my entire three days in Mississippi. Except for this one art event I was at, which was like an oasis amongst the segregation that I saw. So except for that event, it was segregated. So I feel like we do have like almost multiple countries operating at the same time.

Mark Hayes (09:53.665)
Right. Right.

Mark Hayes (10:12.258)
Sure. Sure.

Brock Ganeles (10:13.548)
And I find it sad that the warning from black parents now to black kids is like never be alone with a group of white friends. It's basically like a a you flat out can't trust white people. They won't take care of you. Maybe they won't all kill you, but they certainly won't look out for your best interest ever. And that's what my feed that's what my social media feed is flooded with, those warnings.

Mark Hayes (10:28.642)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (10:34.262)
Right. Right. And I don't

Mark Hayes (10:41.282)
Right. Right. And you know, I having been in that situation so many times in my life in high school and college, you know, it never crossed my mind that you know the guys that I was hanging out with may not render me aid should I need it. I never really thought about I always thought they would. you know, I thought these were my boys, they got my back and you know.

Something happens, I got theirs, they got mine. You know, we didn't get into anything too ridiculous, but you know, you just you it's you're right, it is it is really sad that as we move forward, you know, again, this is what eleven years of you know tomfoolery and fuckery from Trump has produced. Right? The fear of others again.

Right? Like the media had done such a remarkable job of stoking fear, right? In black neighborhood. don't go in a black neighborhood, you'll die. Brock, I went to college in in in the District of Columbia, which is supposed to be, you know, Dodge City was the nickname for it. Right? I didn't die. I didn't almost die. And things were pretty bad, you know. If you looked at television, you know.

I'm sure we had a couple of incidents, you know, on or near campus, but it wasn't like droves of people were leaving Howard University to go somewhere else because it wasn't safe, or Catholic University, or American University, or Georgetown University, right? But you would have thought, by the way DC was portrayed, that it was a war zone.

And unfortunately, that was one portion of the city, a couple of portions of the city, Northeast, Southeast, had some real issues there. Yes, they did. But again, it was a microcosm of what you see around the country, right? Urban schools, underfunded, underutilized, underappreciated, you know, understaffed, and over policed.

Brock Ganeles (12:55.17)
Yep. But the the other distressing and this is as a white guy, these like this storyline is distressing, right? 'Cause I s we've we never had an incident happen, right? I would hope that if three white guys and you back in high school were hanging out and shit went down and you got into a bad spot that we wouldn't have just fucking ran to the car and hightailed it out of there, gone to bed and wondered what happened the next morning. Right? We didn't have social media back then, so we wouldn't have had anything to scrub.

Right? So I hope that wouldn't have been me. So it's distressing to think that that's what, in essence, you know, that's black America thinks that. But I understand why. I'm not oblivious to it. It makes sense to me. So but the fact that that guy was that one particular guy was warning against affluent white people, and it gets me to thinking. If I'm out with three black guys and

Mark Hayes (13:25.454)
Right.

Mark Hayes (13:36.471)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (13:53.679)
S you know, whatever, black neighborhood shit's going down. I'm not worried they're not gonna look out for me. Maybe because they know that if shit happens to me, holy hell is gonna rain down on them because a white kid got left for dead under their watch. But for laughlet white kids down in Mississippi who are out there with a black kid, maybe they're not worried they're not worried that holy hell is gonna rain down on them.

Mark Hayes (14:06.273)
Yeah. Right.

Mark Hayes (14:11.273)
Right. Right.

Brock Ganeles (14:23.256)
Because a black kid died out at that island. Because that black kid's not valued as much and the government, the state, the authorities aren't gonna crack down on them. In fact, it appears as though they're immediately gonna go into cover up mode with them. Like, will there even be an investigation? A proper investigation? There'll be

Mark Hayes (14:26.794)
Right.

Mark Hayes (14:43.755)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (14:52.736)
a show pony of an investigation, but will there be an actual let's truly get to the truth of this matter and punish those if necessary

Mark Hayes (15:09.835)
Well, we've we've got a a a a Gene Hackman scenario all over again in Mississippi burning. Right? What happened to the black kid? You know? And and it's just like what happened to the the missing civil rights workers. Remember the great lengths that police went through to cover after they murdered those civil rights workers? I mean you know, Brock.

We're not that far away from that time. Right? Like that's that was slightly before you and I were born. Right? The early 60s. So I mean, it's not like people who were around that time are dead and gone. They're five years older than us, ten years older than us.

Brock Ganeles (16:00.483)
Okay. So the authorities the authorities want video, right? They're they're asking for video, which we know everyone takes on their phone incessantly, especially in like a party atmosphere, right? There's probably thousands of hours worth of videos on all the different phones of all the people hanging out around that island. Are the white people who have something that could be incriminating on their phone?

Mark Hayes (16:12.054)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (16:30.548)
Are they going to send it to the authorities or are they just gonna delete it and move on in life because they don't want to be a party to delivering evidence? They don't wanna be turning on their white brethren.

Mark Hayes (16:43.445)
Could justice?

Mark Hayes (16:48.641)
Well Brock, let me ask you something. getting back to my point that starts in the home.

The parents are gonna make that decision, aren't they? Parents are gonna say, we're not getting involved. It's only a black kid. Right? And what are you teaching your child?

Brock Ganeles (17:08.6)
Yeah, they tell you don't wanna get involved in this. And they're already thinking about the Austr being ostracized from their white community. Yeah. It's like it's like they're, you know, no snitches, right? So they're you don't want to be a party to anything that's going to derail the futures of these, you know, nice white kids who deserve to have a great future. And I worry about the fact that the evidence isn't gonna

Mark Hayes (17:11.307)
Right.

Mark Hayes (17:16.951)
by the rest of white society. Right.

Mark Hayes (17:34.327)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (17:38.55)
Isn't gonna materialize.

Mark Hayes (17:40.166)
Evidence won't show up. You know, you can't make people talk. What about the young lady that was dating him? Is she gonna be universally shunned by white Mississippi? You know, who knows? Right? Who knows what happens to her and her family? She may have to move. Right? Like we don't we don't know what this community is like, what it's made the the makeup. Like it's weird, I like like you said, just to hear.

that you know three white guys were hanging out with a black guy. Right? And it it it just like you just don't hear that in Mississippi. You know, you hear about segregated proms and, you know, the fact that there is no representation for black Mississippians. even when the state is demographically blue. You got more like the black population, I think Mississippi is the highest

you know, per capita state in terms of black population. So, you know, Brock, I you know, and what does this say again, over and over again, as black Americans, we already got the message. We know our lives are not valued. We know that, you know, when something happens to us, it's not like the missing white woman syndrome. Right? You know, when mis when a white woman goes missing

Man, look, when I worked in newsrooms, I mean it was all like hands on deck. Sound the alarm, a white woman is missing. Like it was when Susan Smith's children were taken. you're old enough to remember that. I mean, that was one of the remember we had a string of polarizing events right around that time. We had Rodney King.

Brock Ganeles (19:27.769)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (19:38.328)
We had OJ, right? And then we had Susan Smith as well. Right in that same like five year period. And it was the worst thing that ever could have happened to the United States. With the riots, with the with the Simi Valley trials of the LAPD police officers accused of beating Rodney King, with OJ being you know, acquitted of a double murder. it was the worst t it was the worst thing.

You couldn't you couldn't have made a better powder keg. You couldn't have put more dynamite i in a powder keg.

Brock Ganeles (20:11.897)
Yeah.

Look at look at just yesterday when I'm trying to be all optimistic and excited once again about the fact that the world is here visiting us and we're having this this you know great cultural awakening, ice agents gunned down, a Mexican national at a traffic stop, unarmed. Like why did weapons come out? How how did that happen? What what was the fucking series of events? They're not wearing where's the body cam footage? There's no body cams, right?

masked agents. We probably have no idea who even fired the gun. We have a government that's really not even gonna look into it, right? They given a they've already put out the story, right? They're under threat, you know, just the total the typical bullshit that we see every time that gets refuted if there's video footage. Because then the video footage just shows it's an absolute lie. Like in Minnesota when they broke the guy's leg, right? Pretended like

Mark Hayes (20:56.395)
Right.

Mark Hayes (21:06.21)
Yeah.

Yep.

Brock Ganeles (21:12.088)
You know, they were all under threat, right? They know exactly what to say to say the lie that gets it to go away. But from the top down, there's gonna be no pressure to get an answer. Like i in Mississippi, is there gonna be press pressure from the governor on down and the attorney general of Mississippi to get to the bottom of this death? No, they want it to go away as quietly, quickly and quietly as possible is their goal. They don't care about justice.

Mark Hayes (21:33.258)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (21:40.195)
No one cares about justice or the shoot the ice agent shooting. So we're still in a massively racist society that is also very violent and that is also pretty much entirely unjust. We have a corrupt Department of Justice and it starts there and works its way on down. Right? We have a Department of Justice that's still refusing to release anything on the Epstein files.

Mark Hayes (21:56.533)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (22:09.046)
And that was a bunch of white kids. That was a bunch of young white girls getting trafficked and raped through an international ring. So we're not protecting them. We're certainly not protecting the Mexican nationals who is happened to be driving in Louisiana, was it? And we're certainly not protecting the black kid who's hanging out off the Gulf Coast.

Mark Hayes (22:09.601)
There are you.

Mark Hayes (22:15.595)
Victimized.

Mark Hayes (22:27.19)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (22:32.961)
But we're protecting the the power structure, the one percenters. Or the one percenters' kids. I mean, look what happened in Frisco, Texas. Right? I mean, they threw the book at that kid. They never talked about self-defense. They never talked about the six kids that surrounded him. You could see it on the video. They just filed an appeal in the Carmelo Anthony case. So, you know, look.

Justice is is fucked up in the US. You know. And and and people say, well, you know, it it it ain't a perfect system, but it's it's the best in the world. I don't know. Is it is it the best in the world when we only target certain communities? Is it the best in the

Brock Ganeles (23:19.522)
Why is the best in the world? Because we throw more people in jail? What makes it the best in the world?

Mark Hayes (23:24.502)
Exactly. Exactly. We one in five of the world's prisoners lives here in the US. One in five

Brock Ganeles (23:31.545)
Because on because on paper, in verbiage and on paper, the words seem to be the most fair, the rules as written appear to be the most equal and just of any other country in the world. But w you know the that

Mark Hayes (23:40.609)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (23:53.849)
That would be true if that's where it ended. But we know that we have such an unequal enforcement of the law that really those words on paper just become justifications for actions in a society that they can just be manipulated to get the outcome that anyone wants. Like we're just seeing it. you want to take away somebody's rights? call them a criminal. once they're a criminal, then they lose their rights.

Mark Hayes (23:55.767)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (24:12.823)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Hayes (24:23.628)
Right.

Brock Ganeles (24:23.734)
Okay, so now right that's what the that's what the South learned after the Civil War. Just change the definition of things and therefore you can circumvent these grandiose words that are down on the page. This was all like why so many people didn't wanna celebrate July fourth, right? 'Cause like, wait a second, we didn't really create this gr nation as great as everyone is saying. It sounded great, but in practice

Mark Hayes (24:29.462)
Right.

Mark Hayes (24:45.045)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (24:51.659)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (24:52.47)
It hasn't reached greatness. And we're just seeing it at the at the street level with these de these really these unnecessary deaths that we just see that that human beings aren't protected equally in America. And we're not even we're not even close. And I think that in its own right is the argument for why so many of us don't feel quote patriotic.

Mark Hayes (24:54.549)
No, not at all.

Mark Hayes (25:11.316)
No. No.

Brock Ganeles (25:22.296)
Though we were trying to feel that way with the excitement of the World Cup, we are starting to see ourselves as being better. I feel like these incidents have dragged us back. It's dragged me back.

Mark Hayes (25:35.645)
no doubt. No doubt. And and and Brock remember, we want it to be

We wanted to feel like those un other countries felt about their homeland. Right? I think a lot of it was kind of a little bit of jealousy there, a little bit of green-eyed envy. You know, when we saw people rowing up the escalator, the the Norwegian road. Like, you know, we sa we s we saw the the Irish folks drinking the beer out of Boston. You know, the Boston Beer Party is as it shall forever be known. you know, we saw

Brock Ganeles (26:12.802)
By the way, I just want to jump in. It was Scotland. I know the Irish get pegged for drinking a lot, but it happened to be the Scottish that drank boss that had both fear. The locals the locals were the Irish serving it. It was the Scottish that drank it off.

Mark Hayes (26:16.331)
Right.

Mark Hayes (26:21.224)
Oops!

Mark Hayes (26:26.847)
Right. My bad. My bad, Ireland. You're good with me. Hey, I hung out in Belfast. I love the Irish. Yeah, the Irish. yeah, but we I think we had a little bit of green eyed envy that people, you know, could come from so far away, be so excited, you know, for their home team, and you know, they would follow them to up and down three continents.

You know, or is it one continent, whatever it is, from from Canada to the US to Mexico, you know, to cheer their team on. And you know, I I think if you had asked a hundred Americans if they're willing to do that prior to their arrival, you'd have probably got ninety nine no's.

Brock Ganeles (27:16.452)
But leadership matters and w we w things can't really change till we get rid of Trump and Stomp MAGA. 'Cause he's overseas, he's at NATO, he's falling asleep at meetings, he's calling Zelensky Putin, he's talking about annexing Greenland again again, right? He's disparaging all our NATO allies and by the way, the ceasefire or the peace talks or whatever bullshit that's been for like

four or five months now fell apart yet again, so we're still at war for no reason with Iran. So now we're just bombing indiscriminately again, killing innocent people, and really nothing has changed since the day that we went in. But we've been lied to at least a hundred times along the way.

Mark Hayes (28:02.828)
Nope.

Nope.

Mark Hayes (28:10.453)
A hundred and one if you're counting today. But, you know, yes it does. All right, quick hit me. What do you got?

Brock Ganeles (28:14.306)
Leadership matters.

Mark Hayes (28:21.889)
Yeah.

Brock Ganeles (28:22.05)
I w I don't have one for you today. I don't I I don't have a good hit quick hit for me today. What do you got for me? No, I didn't have one today. I mean okay, all right. I you know what I do have one. Have we talked about the DEI yet with the schools? Okay. So now now we're realizing that in the stripping away of DEI, it's actually changed a the

Mark Hayes (28:27.797)
Nothing today. I thought you had I thought you'd have blue something.

Mark Hayes (28:38.143)
No, no, we need to though.

Brock Ganeles (28:51.394)
The group that has gotten hurt the most in higher education by the stripping away of DEI has been white men. And it turns out statistically that DEI was protecting white men. Number one by colleges having gender equity. Because young girls are so much more educated than young men. They get much better grades. So when you take away the school's desire to have fifty-fifty men women,

Mark Hayes (28:59.981)
Mm.

Mark Hayes (29:21.324)
Mm-hmm.

Brock Ganeles (29:21.476)
'Cause no DEI, so we're not feeling the need to include anyone. More women are getting accepted to colleges, more white men are being carved out. The second thing that's happened is people of color get carved out of the ability to go to some higher level independent colleges. They're now applying more to state schools and they're squeezing out a lot of the local white men who are going to those schools. So the biggest decline

Mark Hayes (29:26.422)
Right, right.

Brock Ganeles (29:50.135)
in secondary education enrollment in the last couple years has been white men. Who would have thought that that would be one of the outcomes of the stripping away of DEI that was so unfair reverse racism for white people.

Mark Hayes (29:56.182)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (30:10.44)
And yeah. That's an interesting one, Brock, and that's gonna that's gonna leave a mark. I mean, people are gonna be annoyed about that when they hear that news. because look, you know, this this AI revolution hasn't taken over yet. I heard somebody, you know, giving out the advice on a YouTube video saying, Hey, you know, if I had to do it again, I would scrap college and go straight to AI and build a multimillion dollar business. All right.

You know, we're not there yet. We might be there in five years because they said AI is gonna create more millionaires in the next five years than the dot-com bubble did in twenty. So we'll see. But yeah, I d I don't either. I don't I don't get it. But you know, the fact of the matter is, you know, white men have been so revered and and just worshipped in our society that

Brock Ganeles (30:48.216)
Don't believe it. I don't believe it.

Mark Hayes (31:08.866)
You know, how do we get past the fact that they can't get the kind of education that they'd like? That's gonna be a tough sell. They're gonna have there there's gonna be some lawsuits, there's gonna be some issues behind that.

Brock Ganeles (31:21.42)
Yeah, the at the bigger picture is like they thought they were getting screwed and they were wrong. They changed all the rules because they thought they were getting screwed and didn't realize that in the end, if it is a more even playing field, they're actually losing out. Particularly on a gen particularly on a gender basis more than anything else.

Mark Hayes (31:44.983)
Right. so we've got a radical idea going on in Atlanta Public Schools where Atlanta Public Schools have announced like community eligibility provision for schools for free breakfast, free lunch, right? Recognizing the need that you know children need to be nourished in order to learn. There's a radical concept. So somehow

We've got a workaround in Atlanta public schools. I'll give it to Mayor Dickens. you know, he has done a remarkable job working for the people in the city of Atlanta. he should be a shoe-in for a second term. but yeah, he he's got a bunch of schools that are participating in the alternative provision that provide meals at no charge for the 26-27 school year. So there are one, wow.

Wow, at least twenty, at least wow, almost thirty schools here, at least. which is most of the city. So that tells you, you know, what kind of you know desperation we see in our city. Because if if Brock, if you if you weren't aware, like we've got a bunch of Fortune 500 companies in the city of Atlanta, right? We've got beautiful buckhead

Northwest Atlanta, just beautiful neighborhoods, sprawling. None of those kids go to the public schools. They all go to the amazing, well-manicured private schools around the city. You know, that started about thirty thousand for commuters. You got an extra ten you got an extra three grand a month for ten months, right? And that's not including the activities fee. So, you know, the the education gap.

Brock Ganeles (33:33.977)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (33:41.217)
In the state of Georgia is a mile wide. And this just illustrates the point. You should see this list of elementary, middle, and high schools. I mean, you know, here's one, two, three. Maynard Jackson High School is on the list. Maynard Jackson High School in an area of town.

That has been re revitalized and is being revitalized right off of I-20 there, right near the zoo, right near Grant Park, where people are, you know, big footing homes, they're buying a home, knocking it down, and then building a monstrosity on there. You know, running up the tax base, but it's not getting to the places that need it. It's not getting to the schools, the jobs aren't coming. Where like what is going on? That, you know, there is and and and our states.

Billions and billions of dollars in surplus. Why? Because we have food deserts, we have medical care deserts, all around the state. And you know, Governor Kemp doesn't give a shit about that. Right? Right.

Brock Ganeles (34:47.224)
Yeah, policy can change things though, right? And you're just talking about like the low the lowest common denominator of just making sure kids aren't so hungry that they can't even focus, right? You're just trying to get fed so that they can actually even pay attention to what's going on in on the blackboard or what the teacher's saying. But policy matters, right? It's not it's not that crazy a notion that some of the tax dollars get allocated to this instead of

Mark Hayes (34:55.0)
Yeah.

Right.

Mark Hayes (35:03.775)
Exactly, bro. Exactly.

Yeah, man.

Brock Ganeles (35:16.694)
Something else. It's a choice. So yeah, and

Mark Hayes (35:18.092)
Right. Right. Right. And it's always a choice. And that's what we have to remember as we go to the ballot box.

All right, bro. Great place to wrap it up. We'll rack it up and do it.

Brock Ganeles (35:29.604)
All right, Mark. Always a pleasure. I will talk to you tomorrow. Grant Platiner still in the race. Mitch McConnell still apparently alive. Follow those stories closely. We'll talk tomorrow.

Mark Hayes (35:32.652)
Revolution.

Mark Hayes (35:45.206)
Sounds good. Days.