You guys set?
I'm good.
Reverend Greg Lewis, Soul to the Post, thank you for being here.
Hey, thanks for being here with me.
I'd love to start with just, how did you get into the ministry?
Why was this the right career for you?
Well, you know, I haven't always been a minister.
But I've always gone to church.
And, you know, when I was young, I really had a lot of faith
to really know about because I just felt like I had some kind of
eternal thing going on inside.
But when life went on, you know, and you start to do things on your
own and your mom's not making you go to church and you could do
whatever you want on a Sunday morning, did I stop?
And I got into a lot of things that probably weren't good for your
mom to know about.
And that's just the, I was the guy of truth.
And I finally, you know, I woke up one day and I said, you know what?
I don't want my mother to see me like I am.
So I just really, just really started getting back into church
and reading the Bible and, you know, doing ministry, you know, at
the church.
And I just spent my whole days in the church after, you know,
a rough road to my enlightenment.
And I said, you know what?
I'm sick of all this other stuff.
So I'm just going to really concentrate on my relationship with
God.
And it got so interesting just going back to your roots and
understanding, you know, the Bible.
And I kind of read that Bible backwards forward, backwards
forward.
And I just said, you know what?
This is it.
This is it for me.
You know, this is the life.
And I got to try to help everybody else see what I have seen so
that we can all be, you know, helping build kingdom together.
And that's basically what happened.
I said, man, that's it.
I'm done.
And the pastor said, hey, man, you know, I see an anointing on your
life.
He indoctrinated me into the ministry.
I have not turned back.
What do you see the role of the church today?
What is the role of the church?
Well, you know, actually the church's role is to help people
understand true strength, true power.
And the minister of God is actually a place where for me,
it became a place of survival.
See, because here in this country, you know, as a black man,
you know, one thing that I understood is that I was treated
like an outsider.
And it always seemed like there was some point where I was going
to be eliminated.
But it never happened.
And I asked myself, why?
Because I don't have an army, a navy, an air force,
marine, a CIA, FBI, sheriff department, police department.
And I'm treated like an outsider, but I was always protected.
And that was, to me, God, protecting me, protecting folks like me,
protecting, you know, black folks, brown folks, red folks,
protecting us from a system that really treats us like outsiders.
And that's what the church ought to be instilling in people,
the true power of God.
So no matter what your situation, you always know that you can
succeed.
Because if you let other people tell you when you can have success,
how you can have success, all those things,
if you let other people tell you that, they may not tell you
something that's going to be productive for you in your life.
So you have to know for yourself what, who you are,
and understand that, you know, you can do something,
you can be something, you can go places, you can do all these
things that you want to do, but it's going to take a lot of
perseverance, and it's got to take a power that you really can't
find in a neighborhood, in a community, in a city, state,
or a nation.
It's got to take a superpower in that power of God.
And that's what the church ought to be instilling in the people
who have been downtrodden, you know, what has been
inculcated, and their systems, its failure.
You know, I remember having this thought about history when I
was going to school.
And every time I looked in the history book, you know, all I saw
about myself is that I was a slave.
And then I saw Benjamin Bannaker, and I saw Frederick Douglas
and Harriet Tubman, and I saw these people, but it never was a
true reflection of who I am.
I mean, even in Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas,
we really never got a true story about those people,
how they were courageous and fought, and had this bravery that
you really can't explain it as something that came from the world.
It had to be something very special that they felt,
that they knew about, that they felt inside, that really gave them the
courage to stand up and be counted as a human being.
And that's what the church ought to be doing.
They ought to be helping people stand up and understand that,
look, you're more than a conqueror, if you will.
And that's what our church, I think that's our duty right now,
because we have so much what I would call...
The blemish is failure in our communities that, you know,
it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We'll go ahead, I'm sorry.
No, no, I was going to ask you in terms of historically the black
church has been the pillar of the community.
How do you see that these days?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, when I started the group, Pastors United,
I was coming out of my friend's store, a very, very interesting store,
and it has everything about black history and Afrocentric,
you know, clothing and bags and books and all those kinds of things.
I was coming out of his store and he asked me, he said,
where are you going?
I said, I'm going to vote.
He said, man, what are you going to vote for?
I said, man, I always vote.
He said, man, why are you going to vote?
You don't have a block.
You know, you're just going to vote.
So I looked back at him, I said, you know,
hmm, I'm going to give me a block.
And then I thought about the church.
The church is where all the organizing goes for our community.
That's where people will sit down, talk to each other,
and you can strategize and organize and then put things into action,
you know, not a whole lot of arguing and fussing and fighting and,
you know, sometimes you may not want to go along with the situation,
but in the church you go along because this is what we're going to do together
kind of attitude.
So I started, you know, working with the church.
And now we have about 14, 416 pastors, not churches,
pastors who work together when it's time to get out to vote.
And that could not happen without the church.
That's where we organize our communities.
That's where we organize our business strategies.
That's where we organize our politics.
It's in the church.
And that's what the church is certainly, certainly a value to me,
to me, of more than anything else in our community because that's the place
where we can organize, organize, organize.
And you bring up voting.
You have the organization's souls to the polls.
Give me a quick snapshot of what that organization does.
Well, you know, back in 2013, Valerie Jarrett came to one of our meetings
in one of our church basements.
You know, Valerie Jarrett was the lead organizer for Barack Obama.
And she said, you know, you can vote on Sundays.
I said, wow.
I said, yeah, souls to the polls.
And then we started talking to people about voting on Sundays,
but not only that, we started giving them information about what candidates were running.
We started giving them information about where to go vote.
We started giving them information about early voting.
We started to talk about registration.
We started to talk about telling each other and making plans to get your family
and friends to go vote.
We started doing these radio spots where we just really encouraged people to vote.
All things voting is in souls to the polls.
And now we've become the folks in our community that people come to
when they want to know anything about voting.
You know, are you making a difference there?
Are you moving the needle?
Yeah, I mean, it was three specific elections that we really saw our work.
First of all, early voting.
You know, we really impress upon people to vote early.
We had a voting site, and we call it the Midtown Voting Site.
It became the most potent early voting site in the Midwest because we pushed people
to go vote early, and then there was souls to the polls Sundays,
where we asked folks to get out of church and go vote on this particular Sunday.
We all go in the vote, so we would have buses and everything.
But let me ask you this.
The importance of voting really, why is it important?
Because, you know, people already, you know, have a very, very skeptic view about voting.
And people aren't excited about voting.
You know, they don't get up and say, hey, man, this voting day, you know, like Christmas.
You know, they're going to be like, man, I might go vote and I might not.
So if we encourage them to go vote early,
there might be one of those days when they say, man, I feel like voting today.
I'm going to vote.
But if you wait until the last day, that opportunity does not come
after you missed that last day.
I just think that people should have the comfort of not being pressured
to go from seven to eight o'clock at night on this day.
Man, make it comfortable for yourself.
Man, you can go on Saturdays, you can go on Sundays, you can go during the week.
Man, just stomp in and vote.
And I think that's important for a population that is really skeptical about voting,
especially a population that has been so suppressed when it comes to voting.
And what I mean by that is, last year, I found 62 suppression obstacles.
This year is 72.
It's not just one obstacle for suppression.
What kind of things have we talked about?
First of all, in Wisconsin, it was this voter ID, or we call it voter ID,
but actually it's just a photo ID that you need to show when you go and vote.
That really kind of put a serious issue in communities of color.
Because some folks don't have an ID.
Some folks can't get an ID.
And I'm not just not talking about young folks.
I'm talking about older folks because in order for you to get an ID,
you've got to have a birth certificate.
Some folks don't have a birth certificate.
Some older people did not have their birth in a hospital.
Lots of them didn't have birth in a hospital.
So it was very difficult for them to get the IDs.
That was an obstacle.
Then we have these drop boxes that we talked about using for people who want to get those
ballots mailed to their homes, and you fill them out, and then you have to mail them back.
Well, sometimes you don't mail them back in time.
But the drop boxes would give you an opportunity to drop those ballots into a box and people
would come and pick them up.
That was cut out.
And in communities, those two things in a community of color really make a difference.
Because first of all, this system is so...
Let me say, it's so counterproductive to what needs to happen for people of color.
I mean by this, man, it should be easier to vote.
We should make it easier.
I ought to be able to go to McDonald's and say, hey, man, let me get a big Mac.
And by the way, now give me one of them ballots.
While I'm meeting, I'm going to fill it out.
I'm going to put it in that drop box.
Somebody can come and get it later.
That's how easy it should be.
In the Netherlands, do you know that if you don't vote, they give you a ticket?
Here, man, if you do vote, you might get a ticket.
Now, my point is that they make it very hard for folks to be encouraged to engage into the
process here in America, especially for people of color.
Let me ask you about the current level climate where you know you've got the left versus
the right and conservatives versus the liberals.
Does this current environment encourage people to get involved in voting?
Or is it driving people away from getting involved in voting?
You mean the viciousness of politics?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, definitely it's discouraging because it makes no sense.
I mean, we have gotten away from what we call common sense.
You know, now is scorched earth politics.
Well, where people will burn up everything, they'll destroy anything, just the whole power.
And people vote against their own self-interest just to make sure that others don't get the
same opportunities as they do.
And I'm putting that kind of nicely, but this is a bad time for politics and people
engaging in the process that is certainly equalizing more than any other process in this
country.
And the reason I say that is because, man, I don't care who you are.
If you're rich, if you've got land, if you own television stations, if you live in a mansion,
you only get one vote.
Voting is the great equalizer.
And we have not taken advantage of that as people in our community because we just don't
believe that our votes count.
And I'll always tell folks, listen, man, if your vote didn't count, why do you think there's
so many people making sure you don't vote?
Why do you think they spend billions of dollars convincing you that you ought to be frustrated
and not even deal with a system that you live in every day, that you should make decisions
about it?
Why do you think that's happening if your vote didn't count?
See, we have a lot to overcome.
We really do.
We don't believe we have power, but you asked me a question earlier about, you know, what
effect do we have in these communities, in this state, in the country?
The last presidential election was won by 20,000 votes.
And President Biden won.
Well, at the-
That's here in Wisconsin?
Yeah, in Wisconsin.
Yeah, thank you.
Well, at that midtown early voting site, early voting site, there came 18,500 votes, early
votes.
The election was won by 20,000 votes.
If we had not pushed and prodded people to go to the polls, that election could have
been a lot different in Wisconsin.
And the same thing for the governor's election, even the last-
Do you have any idea how many people you've maybe driven to the polls or even gotten to
get registered to vote?
Any idea over the years?
Well, you know what?
This is what I do.
All year round, I count votes.
I call pastors, and I have these conversations.
I say, look, you know, we're getting off the vote, man.
We need everybody to work together.
And, you know, do you have somebody who will represent your church and help us do this?
And finally, after I ask all the questions, you need help.
Can you help?
Can you canvas?
All those kind of things.
The last thing I ask, I say, how many votes you got in your church?
And, you know, they kind of tell me these numbers that probably are too many.
So I have to break it down.
I say, look, man, I don't want to know what you think you've got.
I want to know what you know you can have in your church.
So if you say you've got 200 votes, you know, I'm going to say, listen, I don't want to
know what you think you have.
I say, what do you really have?
And then they'll tell me, man, I know we can get 75 votes out of here.
You know, so we went from 200 to 75, and I count those votes.
And, you know, I tallied that, you know, we'll probably be in the church here in Milwaukee.
Well, we'll probably be responsible for probably about 50 to 60,000 votes, for sure.
Now, I don't know, you know, that's what I'm talking about with me counting.
But I don't know what else happens with word amounts, with getting people to the polls,
with getting family and friends and those kind of things, because I don't count on those.
I count on what I can count when I talk to the pastors at these churches year-round.
So I think between 50 to 60,000 is a solid number for us getting out the vote.
Yeah.
Let me ask you about the state of black Milwaukee.
What is the state of things here in the city?
And what are some of your concerns about the black community here in Milwaukee?
Well, Milwaukee, if you look at statistics about our city, you'll find that we're probably
at the bottom of the list on every important category for success in the world.
Milwaukee, jobs, education, family structure, finance, economics, health.
That's where we are.
It's really sad.
It's sad.
I hate that question.
That's who we are.
Because we've given up.
We've given up.
People don't want to fight.
They're tired.
We've given up, but I won't let them.
Man, I know you're tired, but you can't stop now.
See, that's where we are.
We have been so downtrodden here.
And it's so sophisticated and subliminal, man.
People don't even know.
It's like here in Tubman said, man, I could have freed a lot more slaves.
But I couldn't convince them that they were enslaved.
I couldn't convince them.
That's kind of like it is here, man.
We don't know that we're not free because we don't stand up and fight.
What I mean by that, I could do it by the numbers when we talk about voting, especially in local elections.
You know, the last local election, man, we had like, I think 11% of eligible voters go to vote, man.
That's crazy.
And that's where it's at.
That's where we can have full control.
Milwaukee is 40% black, 18% Hispanic.
And then, you know, the other percentage points for Indian, Asian, or maybe 3% to 4%.
But that's a huge, huge advantage if you use it right and we won't because we don't understand the power of the most significant equalizer in the world, the vote.
I heard you say one of your sermons here when I was visiting, that people in the community are walking zombies.
Yeah, man.
What do you mean by that?
You know, they're not paying attention to what their true power could really be.
They're not paying attention at all to the strategy of a system that we can engage in and use it to our advantage.
You know, I always say, you know, our folks, they're walking down the street and whistling Dixie.
Why would you be whistling Dixie, man?
You know what Dixie represents?
I mean, we're walking down the street.
We don't know.
I bet I could go out here right now and I could see people walking down the street and I said, man, who's president?
They may not know.
How could that be?
How do you fix that?
Well, it's a lot of hard work and you just got to keep going at it.
I mean, see, that's the problem with what I do.
It's so frustrating.
I quit every day.
I'd be like, hey, man, I'm quit.
I quit.
This is too frustrating.
People just don't really get it.
You know, they don't care.
I'm doing all this work.
Nobody really cares.
Nobody's paying attention.
Nobody appreciates you.
You'll die and then they'll go on to something else, that kind of thing.
And then I get up in the morning and take a shower and say, yes, let's get back to it because there is no easy way out.
You got to keep, you know, pressing the issues.
And that's really the deal.
You got to keep...
What you see is the biggest challenge out there in terms of the work you do and the kinds of things you do.
It's getting people to understand that they have power.
That's the biggest challenge for me.
Man, you got power.
See, because in America, our white population is basically split.
Right now, the polls are showing Biden and Trump split right now.
And we make the difference.
How much more power do you need if you know that?
But if you don't think in those terms, you really can't participate in a reality that's there.
You know, you let all those opportunities just pass you by.
That is so frustrating, man.
Man, that's incredibly frustrating for me.
I'm like, man, you don't know what's going on here.
Man, you got serious power right now.
God has already set it up for you to make decisions about you.
And you won't even take that opportunity to do it.
That's frustrating for me.
You don't understand your power.
And we think we don't have any at all.
And that's just nuts, because I can tell you, if you look at a situation like Milwaukee,
and you can't see that you have power, where would you have another situation like this
and people wouldn't understand that you can make decisions about your life?
I mean, it's just that is totally frustrating.
You know, we have a 120,000 unit shortage for housing.
But the money is there to do housing.
Why won't we fight?
Somebody tell me, why won't we fight?
Why won't we get together and why won't we fight?
It's because we're not thinking strategically.
We don't focus on what could get things accomplished.
You know, we still worry about the nonsense.
We're still worried about other things.
But if you take care of one thing, it'll take care of other things.
And then for me, you know, it's like, man, you've got to understand, I hate to put this
so simply, but you've got to understand the power of God.
When you get finished doing everything, understand who's in control.
It's not you, because it's already been proven that you can get things done.
It's God.
I mean, but you've got to have some type of get up and go.
Even under strong resistance, you've got to have some get up and go.
Let me ask you this, Greg.
And this was a question I'd say for presidents, but I'm going to ask you.
Yes.
What keeps you up at night?
Well, I tell you, the fact that knowing all these things and knowing there's a solution
that you would fail, that you won't get it across, that people don't hear you, that you won't
make a difference, that keeps me up at night, that man.
As hard as you might work, you still haven't done enough.
That keeps you up for me.
Nobody's listening.
Nobody's paying attention, man.
That really keeps me up at night.
I mean, we've got the answers, man.
I mean, the answers are there, but you know what?
Populations of people have to force the issues.
I remember when Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the chairman of the conductor's union where
A. Philip Randolph, he said, make me do something.
He gave us the answer.
We won't make anybody do anything.
We pledge our allegiance to a party, but we get no results for our pledge of allegiance.
We get no accountability for our loyalty.
We need to understand that, listen, if you're going to continue to back a situation, a person,
or whatever, you ought to have some repercussions on there, and there shouldn't be negative.
And so far, it's not been as positive as it needs to be.
That is, you know, incredibly unfair to ourselves, but we do it to ourselves, because we're still
waiting for somebody to ride in on a white horse and save us.
I can tell you, the cavalry ain't coming.
We got to circle the wagons and save ourselves.
That's what's got to happen.
People have got to understand that if you don't do anything, nothing's going to happen.
I mean, if you sit there and just feel sorry for yourself, that's what you're going to get.
Somebody's sitting there feeling sorry for themselves.
Get up, get it.
You got to get up and see, here's the other thing that we have a serious problem with.
And that is patience, because now we're kind of at the bottom of the totem pole.
Everybody's got in front of us now.
Is there some, there was some clean mix somewhere, man.
I got a problem, man.
You got me all emotional.
I mean, I ain't going to use a big cry, baby.
Yeah, I am, man.
I thought that was left up to me.
I think it's over there, man.
She set it down over there, I believe.
Where did you set that clean mix?
The clean mix.
I'm sorry.
We about to wrap it up in here.
Yeah, I'm interrupting stuff just so I can give me some clean mix, man.
Jeez.
This ain't over, man.
Tighten it up over there.
I know, man, but you asking me some real...
Well, that's the whole idea of it.
Pooping questions, man.
Yeah, that's the whole idea.
Yeah.
So, man, I like, you know, I like to tell, you know, the honest to God truth, but you can't
always do that either, because everybody can't handle the truth, man.
You mean, that's not just a saying from a movie?
No, that's not just a saying for a movie, man.
Everybody can't handle the truth, man.
The truth is tough.
And I don't mean just black folks.
I mean white folks too, because...
Why can't they handle it?
Because the truth kind of hurts, man, and people are trying to hide the truth so much, man.
You know, this lady, Dr. McGraw, she had this term called...
What was it?
I don't think of it, but anyway, what she was saying is that people put you in circumstances
to justify how they treat you.
They make up stories to justify how they treat you.
Cognitive dissonance is what she called it.
You know, you talk about folks and you tell, you know, and you tell a population, you know,
black folks are lazy.
Black folks don't want to work.
So that you can justify not giving them an opportunity.
You know, and, you know, used to say things like, you know, black folks smell.
Black folks, but you have them cook your food.
You have them take care of your children.
I mean, that doesn't make sense and it doesn't correlate with a reasonable analysis of your
situation where you need someone to cook or you need somebody to watch your children.
I mean, but you make up these stories so that you can justify treating people the way you do.
She called it cognitive dissonance.
It's a lot more complex than what I'm explaining, but, you know, we have a...
an opportunity to do something for ourselves right now, man.
And the time is now because it's a great time because if you look at things, you know, our culture, our
traditions, they're all over the place and people appreciate them, but we don't.
Always say, man, but we have a party.
We don't know what we're going to eat.
If Italians have a party, they know they're going to eat Italian food.
If Polish people have a party, they're going to eat Polish food.
If Chinese have a party, they're going to eat Chinese food.
If we have a party, we don't know what we're going to eat.
You're going to eat them ribs?
Yeah.
Stop playing.
No, man.
They're going to argue about that too.
They're like, oh, he porked.
Yeah.
I'm like, okay, man.
Because, you know, I'd have chitlins and greens.
Don't be in production.
Pinto beans.
Yeah, that's what we're going to eat.
No, man, we ain't eating that.
I said, okay, well.
But my point is, is that we just don't understand how important we are.
And we don't understand our word.
And that is such a disheartening way of living is not knowing your word.
We don't have a true history.
They won't even let us treat ourselves to a true explanation of our past.
And a school environment.
You know, I can't tell the true story about what we've done over the years and how we've
contributed to a society.
I can't talk about the moors.
I can't do that in our public school system.
Because that would go against everything that our children have been taught over centuries.
And they make sure that, you know, we don't understand our value and we won't fight back.
I've got time for one more.
Yes.
I'm going to give you a superpower to do whatever you want to do to change your community, to
inspire your community.
What is that superpower?
Well, the superpower would be for everybody to understand their true genius.
And when I say that, I really mean it.
Because our young people are really bright, intelligent, and genius, if you will, when
they're young.
But when they engage in this system, all of a sudden they become dumb.
They become incapable.
They become weak.
Why is that?
If I had one wish, I would make sure that people really would understand how truly gifted
we are.
And that would be certainly a huge, huge opposition to what we face today as far as people telling
us who we are.
Pastor Greg Lewis, I'm going to have to leave it there.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you, man.
I hope everything is changing for you, my friend, because I know you've been through some stuff,
man.
And we're going to be praying for you.
And I really thank you for giving me this opportunity just to express some of the truth that people
really need to realize for us to stand up and have the strength and the energy and patience
to deal with our situation, which is just so, so depressing right now.
And we need to stop letting people tell us who we are and stand up and make sure we understand
who we are.
Stop letting things happen to us and start making things happen for us.
That's what needs to happen.
All right, Pastor.
Thank you again, sir.
No, thank you.
You know, when I say thank you like that, that means you say okay and bye.
We had no extra stuff on top of us other than...
Now I got to tell them what happened to me and get all personal and get emotional.
They chopped my leg off, man.
They took the whole leg.
They took it.
They took the leg from me.
Not the whole...
Amen.
No, that was awesome, man.
I appreciate your brother.
No, I appreciate you.
I'll be able to do the...
No, man.
You know what, man.
I'm sorry.