Big Tech and Broken Schools collide in this hard-hitting conversation with host Peter Vazquez, Tom Olohan of MRC Free Speech America, and Jovani Patterson of Project 21. The show begins with the fight over information itself: who decides what Americans see, what gets buried, and why institutions like Google, AI platforms, media watchdogs, and activist organizations now shape public reality instead of simply reporting or organizing it.
Tom Olohan exposes the machinery behind modern censorship, including Big Tech bias, Google’s elevation of the Southern Poverty Law Center, AI systems shaped by flawed sources, and the danger of letting algorithms become America’s unofficial truth ministry.
The conversation cuts into SPLC labeling, attacks on conservative and Christian organizations, the pressure to apologize, self-censor, and surrender, and the urgent need to defend the First Amendment before speech becomes something managed by elites instead of protected for citizens.
The discussion then moves from digital gatekeeping to the human cost of broken institutions. Peter and Bob Savage challenge government dependency, public-school indoctrination, the dumbing down of students, and political leaders who promise to “fight for families” while their policies leave families more managed than free.
Jovani Patterson brings the issue home through Baltimore’s school crisis. As a Project 21 Ambassador, father, cybersecurity engineer, and former Baltimore City Council President candidate, he argues that the family is the first form of government. His lawsuit against Baltimore City Public Schools sought transparency around promotion, attendance, enrollment, and grading, especially after discovering students were being advanced despite missing 30, 60, or even 120 days of school.
Big Tech and Broken Schools. No Sidelines: Rebuilding America
America is not merely arguing about politics anymore. We are arguing about reality.
Who decides what is true? Who gets buried? Who gets labeled dangerous? Who gets protected? Who gets smeared? And who gave the gatekeepers permission to stand between the American people and the truth?
That was the fire at the center of today’s conversation with Tom Olohan, staff writer for MRC Free Speech America, and Jovani Patterson, Project 21 Ambassador. Two different guests, two different fronts, one same battle: a country being told to trust broken systems while those systems keep producing broken outcomes.
The first fight was over speech.
Tom Olohan walked us into the machinery behind modern censorship, where organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center still get treated as moral authorities by Big Tech, even as their record demands serious scrutiny. The old promise was that the internet would open the public square. Instead, we now live in an age where search engines elevate some voices, bury others, and pretend the algorithm is neutral because apparently machines are now where bias goes to wear a lab coat.
The question is not just whether Google or AI tools lean left. The question is whether Americans are being trained to accept curated reality. When a Christian organization, a family advocacy group, or a conservative voice is placed beside actual hate groups, that is not information. That is reputational warfare. That is how public trust is poisoned. That is how citizens are taught who they are allowed to hear.
And yet, there is hope.
More Americans are waking up. The First Amendment is not dead. It is bruised, mocked, challenged, and treated by some elites as an obstacle to management, but it is still standing. Tom reminded us that Americans are beginning to see what censorship really costs. When one side is pressured into silence, the other side does not win. The whole country loses oxygen.
Then the conversation turned to artificial intelligence, and the same old problem appeared in a newer costume. If AI systems are trained on biased sources, they do not become wise. They become faster at repeating the bias. Garbage in, garbage out. A machine that cannot plainly identify terrorism, cannot fairly represent conservative thought, and cannot distinguish truth from fashionable hesitation is not neutral. It is a mirror held up to the institutions that trained it.
That is part of the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis: the constant inversion of truth, where the obvious becomes controversial and the manipulated becomes official.
But censorship is only one front.
The second fight was over family, education, and the future of our cities.
Jovani Patterson brought the conversation down from the cloud of algorithms and into the streets, classrooms, and homes of Baltimore. He did not speak as a distant commentator. He spoke as a husband, a father, a Baltimore native, a cybersecurity engineer, a former candidate for City Council President, and a man who believes that the first government is not City Hall. It is the family.
That truth should not sound radical. It should sound ancient. It should sound normal. It should sound like something every civilization used to know before consultants got paid to complicate common sense.
Jovani’s message is simple: if the family breaks, everything downstream begins to fracture. Schools struggle. Streets grow unstable. Young people lose direction. Government expands to fill the gap, but it cannot replace a father. It cannot replace a mother. It cannot replace discipline, faith, love, order, or the daily formation of character inside a home.
His lawsuit against Baltimore City Public Schools was not about money. It was about transparency. It was about the thousands of children being moved through a system without the preparation they need to live free and responsible lives. Students missing dozens of school days, even 60 or 120 days, yet still being promoted. Children treated like numbers inside a machine that knows how to process failure better than it knows how to stop it.
That is not compassion. That is institutional abandonment with paperwork.
Education can be liberation, but only if it teaches children how to think, not what to chant. A true education does not produce dependency. It produces discernment. It gives young people tools, not slogans. It prepares them to read, reason, work, build, serve, lead, and resist manipulation.
And that is where both conversations met.
Tom exposed the gatekeepers controlling information. Jovani exposed the institutions failing children. Both pointed toward the same deeper wound: America has too many systems that demand trust while avoiding accountability.
We see it in media. We see it in schools. We see it in government. We see it in welfare dependency. We see it in one-party cities. We see it when leaders promise to fight for families while their policies weaken the very families they claim to defend.
When millions depend on SNAP, when grocery prices crush working families, when homelessness rises, when veterans still sleep outside, when students self-censor, when young people are taught that speech is violence, when elected officials speak in polished compassion while neighborhoods decay, we are not dealing with isolated policy failures.
We are dealing with moral disorder.
The Vanbōōlzalness Crisis is what happens when a nation trades fathers for agencies, faith for comfort, courage for compliance, and dignity for red tape. It is what happens when government becomes the permanent manager of brokenness instead of helping people rebuild independence. It is what happens when citizens become clients, schools become excuses, speech becomes dangerous, and truth becomes whatever powerful people can get trending by noon.
Psalm 11:3 asks, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Today’s answer was clear: rebuild them.
- Rebuild free speech.
- Rebuild honest schools.
- Rebuild the family.
- Rebuild civic courage.
- Rebuild accountability.
- Rebuild the habit of truth.
- Rebuild the confidence to say no when institutions demand silence.
And Proverbs 22:28 warns, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
That is not nostalgia. That is instruction. Some boundaries are not chains. They are guardrails. Some traditions are not oppression. They are inheritance. Some truths are not outdated. They are the foundation beneath our feet.
America does not need more managed decline. It needs moral renewal.
No more sitting quietly while Big Tech decides what reality looks like. No more pretending broken schools are working because the report was written in softer language. No more calling dependency compassion. No more treating parents like obstacles. No more allowing the next generation to inherit fear, confusion, and lowered expectations.
The road back begins where it always has: faith, family, freedom, truth, and courage.
No sidelines. No surrender. No polished lies.
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“Mira la izquierda, mira la derecha, ¿qué ves? ¿Dónde estás?” In a world that seems to change daily, what will you do next? Welcome to The Next Steps Show with Peter Vazquez, a starting point for discussion y un poco de dirección.
Yep, ladies and gentlemen, sí, un poco de dirección. You know why? Because America is not just fighting over politics anymore, ladies and gentlemen. It is crazy to me because it really feels like we are fighting over reality itself.
Think about it. We have to ask questions in 2026 in the United States of America like: Who decides what information rises to the top? Who decides which voices get buried? Which organizations are treated as trusted authorities? Because, Bob, should not all our institutions be trusted authorities in the United States of America?
That is kind of wishful thinking, I am afraid, but yes, that would be nice.
You would think so.
So check it out, ladies and gentlemen. To have this discussion in detail, we have invited another phenomenal individual from MRC Free Speech America to highlight what is happening.
Even Google, right? It is in the dictionary now. You Google things. Even that organization promotes far-left groups and bias inside AI chatbots. They do. Their continued push supporting places like the Southern Poverty Law Center is part of this crisis.
Como digo todos los días, our guest has been at the front lines documenting this fight. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, has a master’s degree in political philosophy from Boston College, and previously worked with America Rising and Heritage Action. In 2023, he joined the Media Research Center, MRC.org.
It is my honor to bring back on The Next Steps Show the honorable Tom Olohan, staff writer for MRC Free Speech America.
Tom, welcome to The Next Steps Show, sir. Bienvenido.
Thank you. Great to be back.
It is always my pleasure to have you guys on, exposing the media. I have to tell you, I coined this phrase describing a constant moral rot where everything else seems more like a distractor than anything else.
Back after 9/11, when they said they were going to destroy us from within, I think that is what we see in action now. We see it really through the media, TV, and in some cases music and radio in general.
Absolutely. What we have recently is that over time, reality is peeling back all the layers of manipulation that the media has been responsible for. One of the cornerstones of this has been the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now, with this grand jury indictment, we are seeing a lot about how the Southern Poverty Law Center operates, and then seeing how the media, Big Tech, AI, just everyone goes all in to promote the Southern Poverty Law Center despite all they are doing.
On April 23 of this year, just a few days ago, you had an article out titled “Google Still Wielding Far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center Against Stephen Miller.” You noted that Google propped up links to the disgraced SPLC. What led you to write that article? Does it really matter? Are they just protecting somebody who is giving them money? Why is this relevant? Help me understand.
When people think of a hate group, which is a big part of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s mission to label and write about hate groups, they think of, say, the Ku Klux Klan, which pretty much everyone agrees is an incredibly awful group that deserves to be called a hate group.
But what people might not know is they also label Christian organizations like the Family Research Council as a hate group, or pro-free speech organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom. And they go after individuals too. Charlie Kirk, before he was shot, Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik, she exposed transgenderism, and they went after her too.
They go after all these people and organizations, and they put organizations on a hate map. What is really incredible and awful is that one individual found out about the Family Research Council from the SPLC, and then he actually went to the Family Research Council office with the admitted intent to shoot it up and rub Chick-fil-A sandwiches on their faces after they were dead. Luckily, a heroic security guard stopped him.
But the point is, they are putting a target on these people and putting them on the same map and treating them the same way as the Ku Klux Klan.
In this article, you also pointed out that the SPLC spent over $270,000 on something called a Unite the Right rally organizer. What gets me is they are doing this under the pretense of equality, unity, and the idea that if you are Black, you need us, if you are brown, then you must need us. All this nonsense.
Yes. The support for the Unite the Right organizer was a really awful attempt to divide and an attempt to make this into a PR crisis for Donald Trump, where they twisted his words and used a relatively small gathering to treat the whole Republican Party as a bunch of racists. Finding out that one of their informants helped organize the event is very illuminating.
So, Bob Savage, if I am reading this right, what the SPLC devolved into is basically the fire department where business got slow, so they started buying gasoline.
That is definitely one way to interpret that. In some cases, the grand jury indictment is alleging that they have gone way beyond ordinary informants and are actually bringing in leaders of some of these groups.
We can see mission creep and running away from an exhausted supply of racism in other areas too, like the decision to go after people protecting families or kids, like Chaya Raichik. You can see it on their map and pages. Stephen Miller and the Trump administration, he has a whole page which Google was also promoting.
Bob, do you have any follow-up? I tell you, these conversations leave me speechless sometimes.
Mission creep, I give Tom a lot of credit, is a very polite way of characterizing what the activities of the SPLC have become. You have to look at a continuum, a scale from innocuous to indefensible, and I see it swinging from one extreme to the other, motivated by the usual two corruptors of people in public policy: money and power. Have I got that right, Tom?
Absolutely. Picking targets that allow them to delegitimize people like Stephen Miller, and by extension, to go after even bigger fish like Donald Trump, because of guilt by association.
The responses are not scaled to the stimuli at all. You are talking right now with a victim of ActBlue, which infamously back in 2016, because of one innocuous comment I made on this radio station, put my photograph, stolen off our website, on their splash page with a giant red rubber stamp saying “racist” across my face. So I get how they operate.
That is very heinous. They have a long legacy of using the skin suit of an organization that has past accomplishments to pursue a wildly partisan agenda where they defame people. It is really awful.
That seems to be across the board. I had applied for an executive director job at a local nonprofit a few years ago. This was not anywhere in the job description, but at the interview they said they wanted the organization to use grant dollars they had, Soros money, to support things like the Black Lives Matter movement and whatever other stuff they had going on.
I said, that is not even close to the mission of this organization. The money dictated where they were going, and the narrative did not matter. We were supposed to paint a picture that we were doing all this under unity and all that other progressive nonsense.
Real quick here, Tom. Right before ActBlue put my likeness on their website, I was contacted by a Chinese national from California exerting every possible trick and pressure device to get me to go on the air and apologize for this innocuous comment I made. I said no, I am not going to apologize for anything. It turned into wheedling: “It would just make everybody feel so much better, Mr. Savage,” that kind of stuff. I did not fall for it.
Because you know what happens, Tom. If you cop to anything, if you say, “Yes, I guess I should not have said that,” you are never going to hear the end of it.
Right. Do not give them power over you. I really respect that you did that. Do not give them a hostage video. Do not give them an apology. It discourages others too. If you self-censor yourself and apologize there, that causes other people who might have spoken up to be quiet.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is Tom Olohan, staff writer for MRC Free Speech America. Go to MRC.org. Ladies and gentlemen, do not capitulate. Do not hand them over exactly what they need to tell you that you are wrong. Do not buy into it.
We will be right back, right here on WYSL, WLEA. This is Peter Vazquez, The Next Steps Show, and The Voice of Liberty.
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Here is Peter.
Psalms 11:3 says, “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
That good book gives you everything you need. It gives you direction, authority, and more importantly, the weapons you need to fight the battle we are seeing. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not believe me, just try it.
On the telephone, I have the honor of having Tom Olohan, staff writer for MRC Free Speech America, MRC.org.
Tom, thank you again for your time today.
It has been great so far.
I appreciate that, sir. Let us talk a little bit about your October 24, 2025 article titled “Free Speech Win: Americans Are Turning Back to the First Amendment in 2025.”
The Voice of Liberty is here at WYSL, WLEA. This station has been around for 37 years plus. Bob, the station is going to 40 years next year?
And I am going to celebrate 60.
Sixty years. Everything I learned about Bob is the main reason I chose to do this show here. He is one of the few people willing to say the Constitution, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, those things still matter. So many other radios and TV stations have capitulated to that.
We are in a unique situation here in that I am the owner of the station. There is no board of directors, and there is no stock falling that I have to worry about. We have the freedom to speak a little more freely, I guess, than a lot of outlets. I think that is a responsibility we have to seize.
And all boards of directors, if you are listening, stop getting in the way of freedom and the First Amendment.
Sir, you reported in that article that a 2025 poll showed that over half of Americans strongly disagree that the First Amendment is too broad. MRC Vice President Dan Schneider attributed the change to activists who have exposed Big Tech censorship and to policy shifts in the second Trump administration.
You also noted that MRC has documented nearly 8,500 cases of social media censorship, exposed 57 censorship initiatives involving 93 agencies, and the National Speech Index found that only 9 percent of Americans believe the First Amendment goes too far.
With all that information, why is it that politicians, especially in places like New York State, are not fighting harder against this?
Well, primarily because they are afraid of where artificial intelligence might go. They are afraid of free speech on social media, and in some extreme awful cases, they are afraid of free speech in general.
We can see in foreign countries like Germany just how far that can go, where even insults or ordinary political speech can result in fines, confiscated devices, or even arrests. We have also seen it in England, and that can come here. Primarily, I would say it is fear of the people they govern.
You mentioned AI, artificial intelligence. Many citizens are now relying on AI as their source for news, in addition to social media, especially young people. The president of the United States is promoting AI. But on April 17 of this year, you wrote a piece titled “US Labeled Hezbollah Terrorist Group Decades Ago, and Gemini and Claude Won’t Say So.”
Gemini is an AI bot, and Claude is another one. They refused to do that, saying things like, “The answer depends on who you ask,” and Gemini says there is no single global definition, while others like Grok and ChatGPT are more accurate.
Is AI a problem? Should we be following the president’s advice? How do people stay vigilant?
I believe it is primarily a source issue, both for the training data and for how things continue after that. AI trains on sources like Wikipedia, which also has a documented history of not wanting to refer to Hezbollah terrorists as terrorists. There are videos of their editors discussing their opposition to using the terrorist label on YouTube.
If you have bad sources coming in, you have bad answers coming out. I think that is the huge problem.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Exactly. You phrased it better than me, although I have used that expression.
The one I heard, and it is interesting because had I known back in the early 80s what I know today, I would have followed the computer industry long before. Back then, we were learning terms like garbage in, garbage out. That was an actual computer term already. Our teacher told us in the fourth or fifth grade.
I have a caller, Mark Turner from the West Coast, from California. He asks: What is the ultimate goal of the forces behind these extortion entities, and who are their masters? I have to assume Soros is one of them, the swamp.
Obviously, I do not have any secret knowledge of SPLC board meetings, but it does seem fairly transparent that they have some very partisan goals when they target organizations like the Family Research Council or try to damage Trump by going after Stephen Miller and painting him as a racist.
As far as their masters, I would look at their donors, who is donating massive amounts to them. You can find a ton of major leftist foundations.
I want your opinion on the 2026 election. I am going to reference an American Thinker article. What I want is your opinion, knowing what you know, the work you do, and the people you have talked to, about the twisting of the truth and the way news seems to side with one perspective or the other.
This article was written by Jack Gleason on May 2, 2026, titled “America, It Is Time to Pick a Side and We Conservatives Can Help.” I understand MRC.org is not a politically aligned organization, which I think is a great thing. However, you guys have highlighted the hypocrisy of the left quite a bit.
This article argues that ultra-polarization means compromise is no longer possible. It says the election is a choice between Democrats and Republicans, and that is insanity. It points out Trump’s master plan to take the world from the brink of globalist domination to one of peace and prosperity. There is a Harvard poll showing the congressional ballot tied 50-50 with a slight Republican edge.
What are you seeing across the board in the work you are doing, and maybe as a result of some of the nonsense the media is putting out, twisting the truth? Do we have a chance in 2026?
I have seen that 50-50 poll and some other polls, some more encouraging for Republicans, some not.
It is absolutely true that we keep coming across examples of Google search pages, artificial intelligence, and other parts of Big Tech putting their thumb on the scale during news cycles in a way that favors Democrats.
What I am extremely grateful for, for our country, is that we no longer have nearly as much of social media companies putting their finger on the scale by censoring one side.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, we would never have a fear of having what happened in 2020 happen again in 2026, where a major scandal could break about the Hunter Biden laptop story and all the links to it could be censored across a whole website.
I am very grateful that this is not a thing we have to fear in the present on X, and that other social media companies are disincentivized from doing it.
Ladies and gentlemen, radicalized liberals stir up the frenzy in the left-side media. If you are not praying for discernment and emotional intelligence, you are going to get caught up.
Tom, it was an honor. Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Olohan, staff writer for MRC Free Speech America, MRC.org.
Tom, may God continue to bless you and continue to bless the work you do.
Thank you. God bless you too.
Likewise. I will see you guys soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, no cambies esa dial. We have a lot more to talk about. We will be right back with lines open on The Voice of Liberty. Do not go anywhere. It is me, Peter Vazquez, and The Next Steps Show.
Peter Vazquez, The Next Steps Show on The Voice of Liberty, WYSL, WLEA.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Soy yo.
In the 2025 State of the City address, Mayor Malik Evans said Rochester is moving forward in a new momentum. I start looking at articles like the one that I brought up in the last segment, and I think, wait a minute, are we really moving in the right direction?
When you look at 41.7 million people per month on SNAP benefits, Bob, I do not think that is moving in the right direction.
You had this massive recruitment of SNAP benefits people during the Biden administration, and before that, even the Barack Obama administration. They wanted more people dependent on government. At one time, you saw outdoor advertising in New York State telling people to sign up for EBT.
I still see billboards out there. That gets me. This is why I love having the guys from MRC.org on the show, because they point out the nonsense.
When the media lies to you, it is not simply just CNN, CBS, Fox, or whatever. It is the nonsense coming out of these people’s mouths. When I have students, college students, telling me they put elected people on a pedestal, I ask, where are we going as a nation?
This is the byproduct of being dumbed down in what I do not call public education anymore. I call them government schools because it is not education. It is indoctrination. When you have teachers out there telling kids we should take May 1 off, May Day, to protest Donald Trump, teachers should not be putting those thoughts into the heads of young impressionable minds.
May Day is a communist holiday. The first of May is the commie Fourth of July. Also, why are we protesting the president of the United States, elected by 71 million people? Because what they want to do is poison their minds toward conservative thought. They are not being taught how to think. They are being told what to think, and that does not bode well for the country.
We see it in every single program, especially when you walk through nonprofits in Rochester. There is zero 360-degree view, biblical view, conservative view, or any kind of view other than the mantra they are trying to push.
This is how they fill the minds of young people and some old people to believe that God, country, and family do not exist anymore. That God is not alive.
How about 2025 State of the State by the magician over in Albany, where she says, “We are fighting for your family.” To quote her words, “Your family is my fight, and I will never stop fighting for the people of New York.”
Yet everything we are dealing with here is a direct result of that administration’s policies, the administration before hers, and the one before that.
Middle-class tax cuts proposed for more than 8.3 million New Yorkers, inflation checks being returned to you. Think about that. We have a communist holiday, a disregard for our veterans in this great nation, and a governor who says she is fighting for your family.
She wants to be your apostle.
That gets me. Let me ask you that question again: 41.7 million people per month on a welfare program, but they call that putting money back in the pockets of New Yorkers. I do not understand that.
They fight everything logical. They fight every immigration law. They call sanctuary cities the best thing since Swiss cheese, but now even in rural America, where crime was almost nonexistent, they are breaking into cars all over the place.
Any time government says they are fighting for you, be immediately suspicious.
Can I just take a minute here and talk about Spirit Airlines for a second?
Yes, we can go there.
This is from the Old Soldiers newsletter, Colonel Paul Simonelli. He has a great Substack. You should check it out.
Spirit Airlines died at 3 a.m. Saturday morning, May 2. Lights out, planes grounded. The ultra-low-cost carrier that gave millions of working families a fighting chance to fly is now another yellow ghost in the aviation graveyard.
Fourteen thousand direct jobs vaporized overnight. Another 30,000-plus in the broader ecosystem, catering crews, fuelers, baggage handlers, gate agents, airport diners, hotels, and rental cars, will feel the ripple.
Dozens of smaller airports lost service entirely. Fares on the 90-plus routes Spirit was forced to abandon during its death spiral are already up an average of 14 percent. Oakland to Newark, $135 to $288. Fort Myers to San Juan, $92 to $219. Kansas City to Newark, plus 66 percent.
That is not theory. That is the butcher’s bill.
This was not market failure. This was government murder, slow, deliberate, and signed off by the high priests of progressive antitrust.
Back in 2022, JetBlue offered $3.8 billion in cold cash to buy Spirit. Shareholders said yes. The flight attendants union said yes. Every single person who worked there or owned a piece of it voted to live.
The combined airline, JetBlue and Spirit, would have held a measly 9 percent of the U.S. market against a Big Four cartel that already owned 80 percent. This was not a monopoly. It was a rescue mission. JetBlue’s scale and cash would have given Spirit the oxygen it needed to survive post-COVID hell, sky-high fuel prices, and cutthroat competition.
Enter Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Biden DOJ’s socialist crusaders. Warren did not just cheer from the sidelines. She wrote the hit list. Pressure campaigns. Public grandstanding about imaginary $1 billion annual consumer harm. The DOJ sued. A federal judge, following the script, blocked it in January 2024. Game over.
The merger did not die because it hurt flyers. It died because Warren and her ideological clones cannot stand the sight of a free market solution. They worship consolidation only when it serves their cronies. Otherwise, it is anti-competitive heresy.
Now look at the smoking wreckage they left behind and tried to sweep under the rug: hundreds of pilots axed in the immediate aftermath, 1,800 flight attendants furloughed, route after route slashed. Spirit staggered into bankruptcy twice because the one lifeline the market offered had been strangled in court.
The human cost: 14,000 jobs in 2023, 7,500 more last week, and the final guillotine tonight. Every Spirit job supported three more in the supply chain. Forty thousand Americans, real people with mortgages, kids, and car payments, now staring at termination letters because one senator who has never signed a paycheck decided she knows better than the entire airline industry.
Warren called the merger block a “Biden win for flyers.” She is still out there today, chest-thumping while 14,000 families read pink slips. This is what victory looks like in the church of the state.
That is cheapish.
Lorraine, thank you for calling The Next Steps Show.
Hi. I have a topic that I am always somewhat thinking about, whether I am a contestant or not, and that is how can we get more people to hear your show and the other WYSL shows? WHAM is great too, but I had some thoughts if you have a minute or two.
One thing that occurs to me would not take much effort, just money, I guess, would be a big bus ad that said WYSL rocks, try listening, or something like that.
But here is my main idea. Why not get people involved, and I am thinking of students, maybe high school and older or even younger, and have an ongoing competition advertised in all the schools to write different essays about the greatness of America? Maybe a chronology of one type of thing we have done well over many years. Or have another topic be things about our concept of liberty or individualism. Have kids write or make videos, anything.
Lorraine, thank you again for calling. I will definitely take that into consideration, at least for The Next Steps Show, and I will run it by Bob to see if it is something we can do. Engagement is definitely important.
When the government says your family is my fight, do we really feel fought for, or do we feel more managed?
We will be right back right here on The Voice of Liberty with Peter Vazquez and The Next Steps Show.
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The youth of our city are in a new crisis. Criminal justice reform has created the consequences of no consequences and generated a whole new generation of 12-to-17-year-old kids committing serious crimes. Never before have we had this level of youthful offenders. But 90 percent of these kids are just trying to do the right thing and need a safe sanctuary to retreat to. That is Rochester Youth for Christ.
You can be part of this solution by giving generously and regularly at YFCRochester.org/donate.
Peter Vazquez, The Next Steps Show on The Voice of Liberty, brought to you by Youth for Christ Rochester, YFCRochester.org.
Back to the program. Here is Peter.
Muchas gracias, Emmanuel. It is always my pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to be here at lunchtime contigo.
Lorraine, I really do appreciate your call. I really do.
I think that was a good idea, Lorraine. Sorry, we had to go to break so we could not keep chatting with you, but yes, I think there is potential there.
We are going to look deeper. Rosemary on social media, thank you for watching. She says, “My show is being censored,” which would not surprise me. That is exactly what we were talking about with MRC.org.
When the government tries to convince you that they should be your apostles, like the New York governor tries to do, or the former New York governor who says if you believe in God, country, and family, you do not have a place in New York, you have to ask what happens when cities rich in history, talent, and grit are slowly buried under broken institutions and failed schools.
We see that here in New York State, in Rochester specifically, which has one of the worst school districts in New York State, while having one of the highest paid school boards in the country. Is that something?
My guest coming up has a simple but powerful message. He says if we want to rebuild our cities, we must start by bringing families back, restoring accountability, defending honest elections, and giving young people a real path forward with all the tools, including true information.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to bring on yet another phenomenal Project 21 Ambassador and Baltimore community leader, sir Jovani Patterson. Bienvenido to The Next Steps Show.
Good afternoon, good morning, whatever time it is where everyone is. Man, thank you, Peter, for having me on. I appreciate it.
I appreciate you, sir. You mentioned the salutation. We have people as far as California, as far as the state of Israel, down in Texas, and a few other countries that enjoy listening and understanding that there is a path forward for freedom and liberty, regardless of wherever we are, especially when God is in control.
Sir, tell us all about you.
I like to say I am a pretty simple guy. I was born in Baltimore, grew up in South Carolina, but came back to Baltimore at a relatively formative age. I was 19, so I became an adult as a result of my journey.
I got involved with the political process and ran for office back in 2020 as a Republican in Baltimore City. I got about 42,000 votes at the time, which was almost 20 percent of the voters, almost unheard of to receive that many votes in Baltimore City.
That led to a lot of other activities when it came down to civic engagement and civic involvement, whether it was suing the school system. We also got term limits passed in Baltimore City.
Really, it revolved around the idea that the basic unit of restoring government, restoring all hope for the future, is getting back to family. Family is the first order of government. Family is where you learn order, discipline, overcoming adversity, and those types of things.
If we have more broken families, there is no way we can expect order in our streets and our communities. The way we have to go about this is going back to fixing our family.
You are a Project 21 Ambassador, and it may sound a little funny, but I am going to assume you are a Black guy in America, right?
Allegedly.
Allegedly, right. At least if you listen to most progressives and their mantra, people who look like you and me need government help. They say you do okay by yourself, but without us, you cannot. But the “us” always seems to be the progressive left with agendas and policies and words like minority.
Here in Rochester we have a young lady, a previous schoolteacher with a master’s degree in education, who runs local education programs. She says education is liberation. Is that true?
I think it is a loaded question because first off, what is education? A lot of people define that nowadays as being able to regurgitate the facts they want.
When you look at our schools nowadays, they have kids taking kids out of school to protest. That would be considered by some people a good education because they know what to care about, they know what marches to march in.
I believe the best education is self-education, and that was the education people like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington talked about. That is the kind of education I believe creates liberation, because when you know how to think for yourself, you are no longer a slave to what is being told to you.
A lot of phrases have to come with context. I believe education is liberation because when you know how to think for yourself, which is a true sign of education, then you are a free person.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is Jovani Patterson, Project 21 Ambassador.
Sir, in January 2022, you filed a lawsuit against Baltimore City Public Schools for allegedly violating laws on promotion, attendance, enrollment, and grading. What systemic failures have been corrected as a result of that lawsuit?
We embarked upon that lawsuit to try to prove everything that was illegally going on, especially things like social promotion and grade changing. The reality is that many of these things are not necessarily against the law, and that is the frustrating part when it comes to our education system in urban areas like Baltimore.
They demand more money, and because they say it is for the kids, generally people want to get behind it. Who does not want better outcomes for kids? But a lot of things they are doing are not necessarily against the law.
As a result of this, they said they are going to be more transparent on how they are doing things like grade changing, or sharing the number of students being promoted despite missing 30, 60, or 120 days of school.
Through our lawsuit, we found that thousands of kids were being promoted despite missing 30, 60, or 120 days of school, when by the school’s own standard, missing 10 percent of school days, or 18 days, puts a child at a severe loss of learning. But they are promoting kids who have missed 30, 60, or 120 days of school. It was not just a few kids. It was thousands.
We are getting more transparency in that element. The first report is supposed to come out this year. The lawsuit settled in 2024, but the first report comes out this year about what that additional transparency looks like.
Sir, time flies when you have a great conversation. I am down to about a minute and a half. I did want to ask if you can clarify this quickly. Your agreement states that you do not contend the city school policies are deficient, but you seek transparency. Is that statement 100 percent true?
It is true in the sense that my biggest thing with regard to the law was not monetary gain for me or anyone involved. It was to be transparent, because the only thing I care about is kids being able to succeed.
Our next generation is supposed to be doctors and lawyers, and where will the opportunities come from if they are not prepared to even count their own money? We really need to demand transparency. It was not for financial benefit for me or my family. There was no money to be had for us. It was really just to get transparency and accountability from our public schools.
The honorable Jovani Patterson, Project 21 Ambassador. Sir, is there a website where people can learn more about you and get involved with you?
You can go to JovaniPatterson.com. I have also started a podcast on YouTube under Jovani Patterson and the School Board. I am going to be focusing on education and the importance of our school boards in our school systems across the country.
Jovani, may God continue to bless you in the work that you do, and everybody over at Project 21.
Thank you so much. Great to talk to you.
Likewise. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Do not forget Proverbs 22:28: “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.”
Be a leader. Be a leader. Be a leader.
God bless these United States of America, and do not let a second go by where you are not a voice for liberty.