Episode 7: Confronting Hot Topics
with activist Mr. Jones X
Amy is joined by activist, advocate, and influencer Mr. Jones X to strategize around hot topics and confrontations, including DEI, Critical Race Theory, and bringing men into our movement for a more just future.
Our Guest
Mr. Jones X
Mr. Jones X is a well-known activist, political commentator, and courageous debater. His mastery of intersectionality and the importance of advocating from the bottom up distinguish him from the average content creator. These abilities have earned him numerous speaking engagements, invitations to panel discussions, and national attention for his debates. Jones is also an entrepreneur with TUFF (Transformative Uprising for Freedom), a socially conscious clothing company, in which his products are manufactured by a local minority women-owned business and the designs allow customers to wear their protest.
Amy Allebest: As listeners know, a part of this project's mission from the very beginning has been to be hard on systems, but soft on people. And I keep this maxim really close to my heart because I truly believe that very few people in history have actually formed oppressive systems on purpose. Rather, as historian Gerda Lerner says, “the systems of oppression often evolve quietly over many centuries through small decisions, and sometimes without realizing what the consequences will be.” And also, if we're serious about the work of breaking down these systems, then we're going to have to call in as many allies as we can from as many walks of life as possible to form a community and a culture of mutual liberation.
However, with that said, we do sometimes encounter people who are forming oppressive systems on purpose or who have such deeply ingrained patriarchal or white supremacist views that polite conversation becomes impossible, and confrontation seems to be the only path forward. So, how do we make space for these confrontations? Should we even try? In a culture where our ethics, our beliefs, and even our basic understanding of facts have become polarizing issues, how do we approach the people in our lives with whom we most bitterly disagree, and have a somewhat productive dialogue? I am still figuring that out, so today I am really excited to be welcoming to the show an activist, political commentator, and courageous debater, Mr. Jones X, who has made a name for himself both through his outspoken advocacy on social media and through his willingness to debate opponents on some of the most inflammatory topics of our day. I'm really excited to learn more about his work, his tactics, and how he approaches these super difficult conversations. I'm super excited to welcome to the show, Mr. Jones X. Or Jones, thank you so much for being here today, Jones. I'm so excited about this conversation.
Mr. Jones X: Thank you for having me. So am I. This is how I started my platform. I didn't really talk about politics a lot when I got on the platform. I mean, I would on occasion, but that wasn't really the crux of the things that I was trying to accomplish. Before TikTok, I wasn't really a social media person at all. As a matter of fact, after Trump got elected in 2016, I had deleted my Facebook, deleted my Instagram, and I didn't go back onto a social media platform until 2020. So for four years, I was completely off the app.
AA: Hmm. That's so interesting. I want to know about that. And I'd love you to even back up. Maybe before we dive into what you do on social media, set the stage for us by telling us where you're from, your family of origin, your education, and what brought you to do all the work that you do now.
MJX: Gotcha. So, I grew up in the D.C. metro area, Northern Virginia. People say I don't look it, but I'm in my forties.
AA: You do not look it, that is true.
MJX: My oldest children are in their twenties.
AA: Me too, actually! But you do not look it. That is very true.
MJX: So, I grew up in Virginia during the crack era. You know what I'm saying? Like, literally. Where I didn't personally know any interracial couples or interracial families. I didn't personally know them growing up. And the places where we lived, I kind of always stuck out like a sore thumb. So I guess I would say that I started being an activist and an advocate very early because I had to advocate for myself. I saw a lot of really bad things going on in Washington, D.C. during the crack era. Without diving too much into my familial life, I'm a huge advocate for people trying to escape domestic violence, because it was a major part of my young life and adult life. Like I said, I've always been an advocate. I was always heavy into reading the works of Angela Davis and James Baldwin and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin and Audre Lorde. I kind of buried myself in information.
I refused to stand for the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance when I was in fifth grade, so they said I was being a menace. And other kids started following my lead by also not standing and also not participating in these things. And back then I was kind of heavy into church. And so when they asked me, “Why are you doing this?” I said, “I can't serve two masters. I'm not pledging allegiance to some inanimate object. I'm sorry, I'm not interested.” I said, “This seems like brainwashing.” And in fifth grade, I spoke like that, which also bothered a lot of adults. I read at a higher reading level than most adults did by the time I was in fifth grade. I spoke with a larger vocabulary than they did, and it made them mad, even the teachers. So my mom told me that I need to learn how to meet people where they're at. I've, over the years, worked that into my repertoire, so to speak. But yeah, I spent most of my fifth grade year in what they call in-school suspension, and I just sat there and read, and read, and read. That's how that began, I guess.
But I went to school originally for biology and business management so I could be a pharmacist. And then working in the pharmacy, I realized that it wasn't for me after all that schooling. I realized this isn't me. So I went to work in the financial industry, mostly in the car business, for a long time. And a very wise man told me, when I was very early into it, early twenties, mid twenties, said that the easiest way to get all the things you want out of life is to help as many other people get the things that they want out of life. And that set the trajectory for how I have interacted, you know what I'm saying, in advocacy spaces and places of leadership. That nobody is better or worse than I am, even if I'm in charge of, you know, 30 employees. Without them, I'm not successful, and without me, they're not successful. So I was never like, “I'm your boss. Do this because I said so.” I said, “Hey, listen. I need your help achieving X, Y, Z goal.” And it's the same way with advocacy. “Hey, what can I do for you to help you get to where it is that you need to be?” Some people need more accommodations than others. We call that intersectionality. And it's always the mindset that if you make sure that the person who is marginalized or needs the most accommodations that their needs are met, imagine how much easier your life would be.
AA: Yeah.
MJX: If all of these other marginalized people, or all of these other people who need accommodations, are being taken care of, then your life would, you know, rising tide lifts all ships.
AA: Yeah, true. And appealing to people's self-interest, unfortunately, is often really effective, and sometimes that's what people listen to.
MJX: And then later on in life, in my mid-thirties, I studied sociology.
AA: Okay. And is that kind of what led you to do the work that you're doing now? Or not necessarily?
MJX: Not necessarily. Because understand that I understood these things in a book, right? But practical application of these theories and principles and ideologies? No, because I live in a very patriarchal society. And so even though I knew how to behave based on the literature, even though I knew, the practical application was very hard. It was very hard. Because society told me that as a man, I need to go to work and make a paycheck and pay the bills at home and that's it. That's what society tells me, right? But that practice is not sustainable for men. That's why men have the highest unaliving rates, because we put all of this pressure on ourselves to work, work, work and never have 1) a ballot, and 2) we alienate ourselves from our partners, our spouses, our significant others, so on and so forth. And people aren't necessarily meant to be alone. We're communal in nature. People are communal in nature. But we alienate ourselves by having this grinding, hustling mentality. And also, we make the people around us, our children and our partners, resent us because they are left to do all of the childrearing and all of the household work, as well as carry a full-time job.
AA: It seems like you had, it sounds like, the intellectual factors, you'd read a ton throughout your whole life, and then lived experience started to combine. And you've shared in previous interviews that you were first inspired to become a content creator after seeing some of the videos that your kids were sharing on TikTok. Is that right? Can I ask what that content was and how that happened?
MJX: Yeah. So, it's funny. I coached my son's basketball team from the time that he was 12 years old until the time that he was 17 years old. And then I said, “Hey, listen, you're not going to be successful constantly being under me, especially if you want to play collegiate level sports. So I'm going to pass you on.” But while I was the coach for him and his friends, we had a nonprofit where I taught young men how to behave in society, how to act professionally in all environments, how to build a business, write a business plan. Because I'm like, “Listen, the truth of it is that most of you aren't going to be able to play college sports. And the truth of it is that probably none of you are going to the NBA. So let's figure out how we can still be successful, knowing that this is what the data tells us.” So, like I said, I did that for about five years and I was constantly talking to these young men about how they speak to their mothers, how they speak to their girlfriends. How they speak to women in public, how they speak to each other and treat each other and so on and so forth. So my son, from time to time, he's on the app too, would send me videos of Black men, specifically, like, “Women these days are this and that” and so on and so forth. I'm like, “But son, that's not true.” This isn't true. People think that hookup culture is a big deal. It's not. It's actually gone down significantly since my parents’ generation. They think that women are out there getting abortions because Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. But they have all of these ideas and opinions because somebody else gave them to them, not because they went and researched it themselves, not because they went and looked up the information for themselves and educated themselves. They watched somebody else tell them on a YouTube video or a TikTok video or a Reddit or X post.
So, why I started is because I was like, “I have to combat this.” Because if men aren't seen speaking out against other men's behaviors, then rape culture is going to continue to be an issue, we are going to continue to isolate ourselves further and further from women, right? I mean, there's a whole thing. Choose the bear. Black women and white women, and they were serious. And men are sitting around baffled, and I'm like, “How do you guys not understand this? Do you see how you behave?” So that's what I spend most of my time doing, is trying to help men, because they unfortunately don't listen to women, if we're being honest. So, if we're going to survive this thing, if we're going to come out on the other side of how our society is currently operating, which is not good, birth rates are down, divorce rates are up, women are choosing pretty much everything over having a family, and I'm not saying I'm advocating for nuclear families because I'm not, but I think that the cultural divide between men and women has reached dangerous levels.
AA: Well, I feel really, really grateful hearing you say that. That's something that I'm always aware of as I'm creating content. I'm always trying to speak to men and it's tricky. Like I said in the intro, like, how can I craft this sentence so that it will be more palatable for a man to hear and knowing that there's a whole percentage of men that's just going to see my face, see I'm a woman, and not even click and not even listen to me. So that is, I feel like, why I do work so hard to call men in, to recruit men, because there are certain people who will only listen to men. I'm so grateful that there are men like you who are doing that work. Really, really grateful for it. It's really needed.
“we make the people around us, our children and our partners, resent us because they are left to do all of the childrearing and all of the household work, as well as carry a full-time job”
MJX: I think that it's the bare minimum. I think that the bar has reached Hades, right? The bar for men is so low that me doing what I think any reasonable man should do seems like I should get– like, people think that I should get some sort of gold star. And I don't think so. I think that the things that I do, speaking out against men's behaviors, is bare minimum. But it looks amazing because you don't see men doing it. But I shouldn't get any pats on the back or awards for doing the bare minimum. I don't need a participation trophy, I need my daughters to grow up in a country and a planet where they’re safe.
AA: Okay, here's a question for you. And as I told you before we started this recording, I'm really interested in this not only as a representative of my listener base and putting this out there into the world, but honestly, for me personally, Amy, as a human being, this is something that I'm really trying to figure out. Because, as I mentioned before, across social media, you've made a name for yourself, largely through having kind of difficult conversations and sometimes confrontations with people who hold opposing views. And I was watching your TikTok again this morning, and you do have a style that's really, really assertive and can be read even as maybe aggressive and confrontational. And for me, I feel like I struggle with that. And maybe it's fine, different people have different personalities and we bring different strengths to the work and we're all needed in the ecosystem, right? But watching you, I'm like, “I wonder what I can learn from this person?” I'd love to know about your process and what's gained by arguing with people that you don't agree with and having a really, really strong and assertive style when you do it.
MJX: So, to be honest with you, it has nothing to do with the person I'm talking to in the box, the vast majority of the time. I'm talking to the thousands of people watching.
AA: Mm-hmm. Okay.
MJX: I never made the videos so that I could gain a bunch of followers. All of the videos I made are so that my children could go back and say, “Well, who was my dad? What did my dad believe in? What kind of example would he have set for me as a human being?” That's what my content is about. But I am very passionate and very assertive about the things that I'm having these conversations with. Because here's the thing, if me and you were co-workers in an office building, and occasionally I would walk around and poke you, and you would laugh but you'd be like, “Could you stop doing that?” but you laugh, the way that most men process those thoughts is, “Oh, she laughed. It's not that serious. It's not that big a deal. I'm going to poke her again the next time I see her.” But if you're like, “Hey, yo, stop. Seriously.” Then you start to trigger a response. So, what I do is– I do understand, I'm very empathetic when you receive new information, especially men. It triggers an amygdala response that fight, flight, freeze, or fall, right? So what I do is try to mirror the energy of the other person. Hey, listen, I'm going to try to give you the information, but as soon as I recognize that amygdala response, and I realize that you're in that space, you're in that reptilian brain space, that's when I have to put my foot down and say, “Hey, look, this is what it is and this is what it isn't.” And go from there. And like I was saying before we had started recording, when I first came on this app, men, specifically, hated me. “Why are you trying to break up families?” No, friend, you guys have already accomplished that.
AA: Yeah, wow.
MJX: You've already accomplished that. I'm telling you that the nuclear family is not the only type of family structure and it's also not the one that's most conducive to raising a healthy child. Because almost all cultures prior to this American individualism had multi-family, multi-generational homes where mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, what have you, collectively would help to raise the children and make sure that everybody has time for themselves, personal time for themselves and things of that nature. And now you're like, “Nope, I need my wife. She needs to listen to what I tell her to do. My kids, they're my property, and then when they turn 18, they're in the street. My dog, my fish, and the white picket fence.” And then work until you're 67 years old, and then the average person dies within five years of retiring. And what do you have to show for it? You never got to experience the world. You barely got to experience your children, or your spouse. So essentially what I'm always attempting to do is say, “Hey guys, look, there's another way, there's another way. You shouldn't be the only beneficiary of whatever relationship or family structure you have. And that's what you're asking for.”
AA: You say a lot of men did not respond well to that message. What ended up happening?
MJX: I went on a panel of another content creator and he said, “Why don't women want to cook or clean anymore?” I said, “Because they're tired.” He said, “Because they're tired?” I said, “Yes. I don't even know why this is a question.” He said, “Tired from what?” I said, “Working. Working, bro. Don't, you work eight hours and then you spend, shit, some people spend an hour in the morning commuting in and an hour at night commuting in. So you spent eight hours at work, two hours in the car. Aren't you tired when you get home? Why don't you cook and clean some?” It should be, “Hey, I know what needs to be done in my house. I know what needs to be done in the house. So I'm going to take on this task and you take on this task so that we can get them done, and then we can spend time with each other.” But you're like, “Nah, man, she got to come home after busting her ass all day.” And here's what men don't understand is that all of these jobs, I don't even care if it's construction, all of these work spaces could not operate without women. They're the ones in there managing these men's egos, making sure that invoices are paid and that things get done on time. And there's a schedule set and all of that. And they're making doctor's appointments for their kids and for their spouse and managing the household in the same manner that they have to manage these businesses and corporations that they exist in.
And I'm not saying all women are secretaries, but even those on the C level, in the C-level positions, are the hardest working people in the building all the time, and they have to keep themselves safe at work from men's predatory behaviors. So when they get home, they're beat, mentally, physically, and you're like, “Nah, I need you to make me dinner, then clean up the dinner, then bathe the kids and get them ready for bed, tuck them in.” And then you're like, “Why doesn't she want to sleep with me?” Bro! What? She's had her fill! And I also have many times in my adult life lost sight of these very things, because society continuously shows us as men that this is what it looks like to be a man. And at that time I had over half a million followers and men started mass reporting my account. Saying the nastiest things in my comments, coming into my DMs and threatening me. It was crazy.
AA: Wow! Because you're threatening the structure that is privileging them, right? Oh my gosh, that's crazy. When did that happen?
MJX: 2022. The summer of 2022.
AA: Wow, that is wild. Did you close that account and start a new one?
MJX: No, TikTok took it away from me.
AA: Oh. Oh my gosh.
MJX: Because I had been reported so many times by so many different men. I couldn't even host a live without a man getting on there and saying something crazy.
AA: Just trolling. Oh, I hate that.
MJX: And it went on for months. It went on for months. I even had to move.
AA: You moved houses? You moved physical locations?
MJX: I moved towns, counties.
AA: Did someone dox you and post your– Oh my gosh! That's insane!
MJX: They swatted my house. I don't know if you know what that means, but they literally sent a SWAT team to my house. Undercover drug agents.
AA: What? And you have a family, you have kids. Oh, that's so infuriating.
MJX: But that's how fragile the male ego, you know what I'm saying, and people that believe in these toxic masculine traits, that's how fragile, unfortunately, they really are.
AA: Wow. Yeah, that is a crazy story. And this is reminding me, I had a conversation with a friend just the other day, and she's like, “I just want to believe the best about men. I want to believe that most men are really good, but then I see these bad behaviors over and over and over again.” And you're shaking your head like, “No,” tell me, how do you look at it?
MJX: Well, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. We spend too much energy in this country upholding these bad behaviors. Donald Trump.
AA: Mm-hmm. Yep.
MJX: I would say the vast majority of conservative men, we do too much upholding these bad behaviors. When a young woman is assaulted, “What were you wearing? Why would you go to this place by yourself? How much did you have to drink?” As if any of those are a reason for her to be physically accosted. And then the other issue is that men don't feel a duty to protect women whom they don't have ownership over, whether it be their daughters or their partners. “If it doesn't belong to me, then why do I have to worry about it? I need to worry about what's going on in my four walls.” No, you don't. Because if you allow it to happen out there, there's a good chance one of these times it's going to happen to somebody that you care about. So how about we all start being actively anti-misogyny, anti-rape culture, anti-patriarchal views. Why don't you want women to like us? That's the question that I always ask. Why don't you want the women to like us?
AA: How do men respond to that?
MJX: Typically by questioning my masculinity or questioning my sexuality or saying that I just hate men. Black men think that I hate Black men. White men think that I hate white men. Both of them question my masculinity like, “Oh, I can't take you seriously. You paint your nails.” I'm like, “What does that mean? Nail polish was made for men.” I said, “Do you have a problem with men that wear wigs and makeup and high heels and tights?” And they were like, “Yeah!” And I'm like, “Shit, so the Constitution then, throw that out. Throw that nonsense out, because they were wearing makeup and high heels and wigs and tights. So we certainly shouldn't take them seriously, right?”
AA: That’s awesome.
MJX: I really don't understand. I have a bunch of daughters. Once every week or week and a half or so, we go to the nail salon and we all get our nails done. They wanted me to get mine done, too. I said, “Okay, no problem.” I let them or my partner pick out the colors.
AA: I noticed your nails. They're awesome. I love your pink nails.
MJX: Thank you. I'm going to get them redone probably tomorrow, but yeah. So I'm like, why are you a seemingly self-reported heterosexual man more concerned with the fact that my nails are painted than the conversation being had?
AA: Yeah, for sure. Okay, switching gears a little bit, I want to ask you specifically about your DEI efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion. That's become a hot button topic, even more so over the last couple of years for a lot of people. Why is DEI so important to you personally, and why should it be important to us as a culture, as a country?
MJX: I often hear white people say, “I don't want to talk about race anymore.” And that's a privilege, that's a privilege to not have to worry about being anything other than who you are. And I often ask people, “How many days have you spent in your life being Black? Or a Black woman, or a Black disabled woman?” And the answer is usually, obviously, “None.” Right, right, so you wouldn't know what barriers they're facing at all. And so to just assume that they don't exist because they don't affect you is absurd. If you and your partner are having an argument, you don't just ignore them forever and hope that they forget about it. That's going to end your relationship. If there's a house on fire, you can't just say, “Well, maybe if we don't talk about the fire, it'll put itself out.” That's not how this works, right? And so we need to start this at an elementary level. From the moment the children enter school, we should be using culturally responsive methods. Here's just to give you a little background. When I was in kindergarten, my teacher was an 80-odd year-old white woman named Ms. Hatch. All the kids in my classroom were white. The principal was white, police officers were white, the president was white. Mayors, governors, senators. White, white, white. And all that we learned, in terms of who the founders of everything – science, arts, music, the country, everything – white, white, white, white. And I'm like, “What about people like me?” What about Indigenous folks? Latinx people? What about them? Spanish was the first non-native language spoken on this continent, hundreds of years before anybody ever spoke English on this continent. They have a history. Why does our history start with “savage” or “slave”? Were we not a people before then?
So starting there, and then looking at who else, what is the demographic of my school? Do we have children from Haiti? Do we have children from South America? Do we have children from India? Do we have children from Korea or Japan or China? All of those peoples did something to help create this country. All of them. Why shouldn't they be highlighted and represented by the staff members in the school and the principals and their local community, whether it be officers or social workers or mayors, governors, city council members, the school board? Everybody deserves representation. And if we started young, using culturally responsive pedagogy– And hey, if I know that my kids go to school with a bunch of children that are Latinx or Haitian and speak Haitian Creole and things of that nature, then why can't my children learn to say “hello,” “good morning,” “thank you,” “goodbye” in those other children's languages to make sure that that other child knows that they are seen and cared for and that they matter? Why should they have to strip away everything that they are in order to fit in, and you're still gonna look down on them? So if we start at a very young age, with those very simple steps, very simple steps. Hey, once a week we do a little potluck and you bring in a food from your culture and we sit down, or once a month, even, doesn't have to be once a week, once a month, right? Imagine those kids coming out into the world and being racist. It'd be nearly impossible. Why would you want to fight that? Unless you were trying to protect white supremacy and the social hierarchy. And that is why Trump is so dangerous, and it's also why he's followed by so many white Americans. Because his rhetoric and his behaviors protect this 600 year-old idea of white supremacy, of white men being the dominant force and at the top of the social hierarchical structure.
“[Trump’s] rhetoric and his behaviors protect this 600 year-old idea of white supremacy, of white men being the dominant force and at the top of the social hierarchical structure”
AA: I want to throw something in here, too. I'm in a PhD program right now and I just took a whole class on critical race theory. And a lot of my listeners will know this, I'm a big fan, like you actually referred to in this episode earlier, a lot of times we learn things, we absorb or inherit opinions via social media or who knows. And I'm a big proponent of going to original source material, taking that class on critical race theory and actually reading the original critical race theorists like Kimberly Crenshaw.
MJX: Kimberly Crenshaw, I knew you were gonna bring it out.
AA: Yeah. And Richard Delgado and a lot of those people who were writing about this. I was, first of all, surprised that this is not a recent thing. These theorists, Crenshaw and Delgado, have been writing about it for decades. And then to your point that you were just talking about, these very simple, practical things that we could do in our society that would literally change our culture, it would change our society.
MJX: Absolutely.
AA: Just reading their theory, I was like, “Who can argue with this? Who could argue with this?” So I think sometimes these topics, these words, have been hijacked for political ends.
MJX: Absolutely. And it's because somebody told them in a YouTube video, or on X, or in a Reddit thread, or wherever, Facebook, somebody told them that it was bad and it's all about hating white people, blaming white people. And it actually specifically says don't blame the people, it specifically says don't blame the people, dismantle the institutions.
AA: Yep. It does. So go read it. I am going to say this to listeners and people viewing DEI, CRT, all of these acronyms that are now super inflamed, just go read the original source documents. You will be surprised.
MJX: Here's the thing about intersectionality and critical race theory specifically, and this is what I try to help my white followers see, and I do it sometimes in the form of jokes. Some of them can be, you know, hard-hitting jabs and pokes at what whiteness is, but it's not at white people. I attack whiteness. Do you know what whiteness is? It's actually the absence of the culture. And let me explain why. Because in order for people to be white in the United States of America, they had to strip themselves of everything they were. If they were Scottish, if they were Irish, if they were British, if they were Italian, if they were Portuguese, if they were from Central or South America, if they were from the SWANA region, which you guys would refer to as the Middle East, they had to strip themselves of their names and their languages and their cultural practices and their religions and literally everything. You had to dismantle yourself in order to be white. Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to do that?
AA: To have an advantage and participate in the culture that privileges you.
MJX: Exactly, because you understood that it came with privilege. Irish people were never slaves, guys. So if anybody ever tells you that, it's not true.
AA: Yeah.
MJX: But they were treated badly. As were Italian people. As were a lot of people from the Eastern Bloc. German people, Polish people, so on and so forth. They had a name for everybody, and they were typically derogatory. Why would you want to join forces with the people who treated you so badly?
AA: Yeah. For power. And for advantage.
MJX: Because you understood that it came with privilege.
AA: Yep, yep.
MJX: So I attack that, not the person. You were arbitrarily born to your parents. It's not your fault you're white. But if you're going to actively participate in whiteness, that is something that you can control. That is something that you can control.
AA: Thank you. That's profound and super helpful, I think. Okay, how about another hot button topic and word? You talk about the word “woke” and that it's being misrepresented by conservatives. What would you say is the meaning of “woke”? What's it meant to be, and how has it been distorted?
MJX: So, “woke” was originally used in somewhat of a joking manner by people in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Like, “Stay woke, bro.” But it meant to stay aware. Pay attention to what is going on around you, to politics, because we were fighting for rights at that time, so you had to be informed. And that's the thing that I don't think a lot of people understand. A lot of white people did not get involved, in my age demographic and our age demographic didn't get into politics until Trump. They didn't have to. They didn’t need to because it didn't matter who the president was. It typically wouldn't change their material conditions very much. But Black people have always had to have their finger on the pulse of politics. It meant life and death for us. So that term was about being informed, staying vigilant, and now it's been whitewashed. It's been turned into a derogatory term. “Oh, they're woke.” And I always ask, “What is the opposite? Woke as opposed to what? Asleep?”
AA: Yeah. How do people answer that? It's a great question.
MJX: Yeah, nobody ever really has an answer. They immediately pivot to something else. The vast majority of people can't process these thoughts in real time, and the reason they can't is because these thoughts aren't their original thoughts. So people don't often have a response. Because it's, “I have to say this thing, and this thing, and this thing, because that's what I've been told to say. And so if I’m met with any barriers or any level of pushback, then I just change to the next thing. I'll never respond to that question. I'll never respond to any of these scenarios. I just, ‘Well, what about–? Well, what about–?’” Well, friend, can we break down these things one at a time? That's what I spend the vast majority of my time doing. But I can say that I have changed the hearts and minds of a lot of people who have come back and said, “Hey man, I've been watching you for two years and when I first started watching you, I hated your guts.” Literally. And then they would tell me this and then they're like, “Now I don't even understand how I ever thought or believed a different way.”
AA: That's amazing. That's why you do what you do, right? The goal is to change hearts and minds.
MJX: It's not for them. It's selfish reasons. It's so that my children and the people that I love and care about don't have to be harmed. That's just an added bonus.
AA: Yeah, but dismantling these oppressive systems one person at a time, one heart and one mind at a time, does make it a safer world for your kids. It all plays together. I was going to ask you, actually, as my next question, what are some strategies that you've seen work well to be able to change hearts and minds? Or do you just do it how you do it and some people will respond well and some people won't? How strategic are you about how you reach people, especially around really inflamed topics?
MJX: Right. It's hard to do parasocially, because often you can't see the person's face, you don't know much about them or their background, things of that nature. So, what you have to do is, and something I just became pretty good at, is just assuming that every single person is essentially the same person. Assume that this person is probably middle class, white American. And I know what it means to be middle class, so I'm just trying to find things that we have in common. What common interests would I possibly share with this person? Here's the thing. I worked in the financial field for a long time, like I said, automotive financing, mortgages. And one thing that made me wildly successful, and I was wildly successful, is that I would learn everything I could about a person in 10 minutes. And if I knew their name, if I knew something about their children, about where they grew up, I knew if they mentioned that they had just gone on a vacation recently. “I just got back from vacation.” “Oh, tell me about the vacation.” Because you brought it up because you wanted somebody to know. So, I’d learn as much as I can about them. And then the other thing is, I was never trying to sell anything to anybody. And that's the same way I operate in advocacy. I'm just going to give you enough information to make an informed decision. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm not trying to make you believe that what I'm saying is the truth. I'm just going to give you as much information as possible so that you can make the most informed decision. And whatever you do with that, that's on you. And I think that's the best approach.
AA: And I think people can sense that energy too, right? Versus shoving something down someone's throat, or making them feel like you think they're stupid, or that you have assumptions about them, but instead just saying, assertively and really confidently, “Here are the facts,” or “Here's one way of viewing this,” and just presenting it out there.
MJX: Well, that has changed a lot over the course of the three years that I've been on this app, significantly. I used to be super nice. I'm talking about so calm and so nice all the time and that is when I got the most hate.
AA: Really?
MJX: Mm-hmm.
AA: That's fascinating.
MJX: And now, you know, I still am patient. I still am calm most of the time and measured. However, I think that there has to be a little bit of theater in it because that's what draws people in, right? Because if you ask people about me in real life, I'm relatively quiet. I have to go to a lot of social events, and I'll say a couple of words and then I cast off into a corner somewhere. I don't really care too much for being the center of attention or any of those things. And I never intended to be a face for a movement, and it is a movement, as big as TUFF has become. We recently got our 501c3, 501c4. We're building a community garden in front of a school in an impoverished area, and got a whole bunch of people on board to help us with that. We are buying some land, hopefully we get these 11 acres that we were looking at so we can build temporary shelters for women and members of the LGBTQIA community that are escaping domestic violence or housing insecurities. So, just so much. So much is going on.
I just got back from Atlanta last Friday, and this Sunday I fly out, oh shoot, when did we get back? Sunday. Sunday, we got back from Atlanta. And then this coming Sunday, we're flying to LA, me and three other content creators are going to be having a sit down, red table type conversation about what it is to be a millennial dad and breaking down these patriarchal stereotypes of what it means to be a dad.
AA: That is so inspiring. That's so fantastic. And actually, I'm really glad you mentioned that. That was going to be my next question, was to tell us about TUFF.
MJX: Yeah, Transformative Uprising for Freedom.
AA: Yeah, tell us what you do. I mean, you just told us what you are actually practically doing, but tell us how this evolved, and also where we can find it. I'd love you to tell us specifically about TUFF and then tell listeners how they can get involved, how they can learn more, and where we can find your work across all of the platforms.
“I’m not trying to make you believe that what I’m saying is the truth. I’m just going to give you as much information as possible so that you can make the most informed decision”
MJX: Absolutely. If you want to learn a little bit more about TUFF, you can go to tuffinitiative.org. There's plenty of information on there. How it started was, I've always really been into fashion. Sneakers, mostly, sneakers and hoodies and t-shirts. But I worked in corporate America for so long and I had to dress up and I had to have a clean shave. My face had to be clean shaven and I wasn't allowed to grow my hair out. My hair was buzz cut and I did that for decades. I was also a volunteer firefighter. So in 2019, when I got out of both of those industries, I was like, “Yeah guys, I'm done. I've worked so hard for so long, I'm gonna go and do my own thing.” And I've been doing my own thing ever since. But it started out with me making clothes so people could wear their protest, essentially. Because this was the last year of Trump's presidency, and just the vile things that some conservative people say, and sadly, I don't even think that they understand how vile it is, but that's a topic for another day. But I just started making shirts with quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., from James Baldwin, from Angela Davis, from even Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. But anyways, the whole point was that I put striking images and then a quote with said striking image. And it was all about getting people's attention. And it was important to me that all of the clothes be made from recycled materials, and that there was a women-owned aspect. So the person who manufactures all of my stuff, it's a woman-owned facility, and that 10% of all of the proceeds would go to help women in these types of situations. And I've donated way more than 10%. It's always been more than, but that was the initial agreement. But I was like, because I have such a large platform, I can do so much more.
So that's what we've been doing. Working to do as much as we can. We got a bus, we're going to be retrofitting the bus for active community engagement. So if there's a situation, we're going to try to work out some agreements with the local police departments here in Central Florida. But if there's a domestic violence situation going on, police showing up often escalates these situations. If there's somebody who's being removed from their home because of their sexuality or gender association and stuff like that, having police involvement often escalates situations. So we're intent on hiring trained social workers to come out on the bus to triage the situation. And if they need to be removed from that area, then we put them on the bus and we take them to the community that we're looking to build and help them reestablish themselves. Job training programs, get them if they or their children need to be signed up for social programs, everything that we can do to make sure that their lives and their children's lives are disrupted as little as possible. Because oftentimes people will tell women, specifically, “Just leave.” Just leave and go where? Just leave and go where? So we want to make those situations less stressful, especially for the children. Especially for the children. But that's pretty much the groundwork. We're big advocates in the LGBTQIA+ community, in the low income and unhoused population. So we're going to be doing a lot of that using the bus also to help serve. I don't know if you know this, but it's illegal in the state of Florida to be unhoused.
AA: Oh my gosh.
MJX: And we have 30,000-odd unhoused people just in Central Florida.
AA: Oh my gosh.
MJX: But you can be arrested for what they call “urban camping.” And they put them in facilities that are managed and guarded by sheriffs. What would you call that?
AA: Yeah.
MJX: A jail.
AA: Yeah.
MJX: And if they refuse those services, they go to jail. The same people screaming about having vaccines forced on them are okay with unhoused people being forced into treatment facilities. And I was like, “What are you treating them for, for being unhoused?” They don't even understand that people don't typically become unhoused because they have a substance use disorder, they develop the substance use disorder from being unhoused. So we want to try to do as much as we can here in the state of Florida, and to be honest with you, once we're well established here, we plan on moving from city to city across America and trying to make this as big as possible. Sorry that that was a long, drawn out explanation.
AA: No, this is the most hopeful I have felt in a long time, to be honest. And it's interesting because your answer about how bad things are, how bad patriarchy is, the majority– Maybe not the majority of men, but the pervasiveness of the problem. You're really up front about it, and then I'm leaving this episode feeling actually encouraged and hopeful. And I think that confronting, acknowledging how bad it is and then making an actual plan about what you can do in your own community is just so heartening for me. I'm honestly so grateful for this conversation, so grateful for the work you're doing. And just really quick, as we wrap up, the last thing I'd love you to do is to tell listeners where they can find your work so that they can get involved and support you.
MJX: Okay, cool. You can find me on YouTube, I'm @Mr.Jones_X. On TikTok I'm @mr.jonesx or @mr.jones_x, both of those are my accounts. And then on Instagram, it's @mr.jones_x. You can find me just Mr. Jones X pretty much everywhere. And then on all of the platforms that it's allowable, there's a Linktree that you can click on, Instagram, TikTok, and it gives you a link to everything else that I do.
AA: Amazing. Well, I can't wait to see all of that stuff. I'm already subscribed and I'm just so excited and so grateful to be connected. Thank you so much for this episode today. I learned so much from you. Thank you.
MJX: I appreciate you. Appreciate your time.
