- Welcome back everyone to the frontline with Joe and Joe. Joe Basilow and Joe Recinello, you're exactly right Joe. - We work for the man upstairs as you do. - You're setting me up quite well. You just gave me an alley youth. - The greatest revolutionary act to commit right now is to open your mouth and speak the truth. - Whether you're an academic or you're a regular guy, you have to be fearless. - And once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello again everyone and welcome back to the frontline with Joe and Joe, Joe Basilow, as always joined by Joe Recinello. And once more, dear brothers and sisters, let us go into the breach on the Veritas Catholic radio network, 1350 on your AM dial, 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faith to the New York City metropolitan area. Download the app, share it with your friends and please wherever you see Joe and I on social media, please help us out. We don't ask for much, we don't ask for money. We just ask for a click, like, subscribe, share, do all that fun stuff. Hey, that's if you like us and what we do, hopefully you do. And we'd really appreciate that today. We're very excited about this conversation with Jack Cashhill. We're gonna be talking about the rise and fall of an American city. Now Joe and I, everybody knows it from Newark, New Jersey. Okay, Jack, back in the day, is from Newark, New Jersey. Okay, but we wanna have a broader conversation about, well, you know, everybody talks now with days about blue cities, blue cities. That's a city that's run by the Democrats and all that. Well, it didn't just happen overnight and there's a cause of the breakdown of these once great cities, whether it's Chicago, whether it's Newark, whether it's Philadelphia, all right? These places are desolate now, okay? They're destroyed and a lot of it has to do with the fact that ethnics, not white people, okay? Ethnics, okay? We're, and we'll get into the conversation. Left those places, okay? And then those who were in charge decided that they weren't gonna do anything to improve those places and that's what you get now. You have once great cities that are now, like I said, Wasteland. So Jack Cashhill, welcome to the front line with Joe and Joe. - Hey Joe and Joe, welcome. Thank you for having me. And by the way, it's gonna get too far. Tell me about your Newark experiences where you would part of town you're from when you were-- - Mine is very simple. From 1967, when I was born to 1991, my parents were amongst the last of the families to leave. We're talking about leaving Newark. We left in 1991, our Italian-American neighborhood had already been, a lot of people had already moved to the suburbs, whether immediate suburbs like Bloomfield, or further out West Orange, Roseland, places like that. But I grew up in Newark, I'm a product of the Newark public school system in grammar school, then went to Seton Hall Prep and Seton Hall University, like a lot of other kids from Newark, and Bellevue and that immediate area, all right. And we were all, again, I'm not just, let's say, blindly nostalgic. My brother and I used to talk about it all the time. I wouldn't trade my upbringing, Newark, for all the suburbs in the world. We loved growing up there, okay? - Was that in North Newark or-- - North Roosevelt section. I grew up, my father was from the first ward, and then after I was born, my brother was born, we moved up to the Roseville section, which is closer up going out further West on Bloomfield Avenue up by St. Francis Church in Newark City School Stadium. And then, yeah, and then after a while, I know we're gonna get into it 'cause one of the questions, after you get mugged once too often, or your car gets robbed once too often, or your house gets broken into once too often, it comes a point where you say, all right, it's time to go. It's a shame, but that's what it is. Joe Recinello. - Yeah, my family came from that same area. My father was baptized at that same church, St. Francis Xavier. They left immediately after the riots. My grandfather passed away. My father went to Barringer High School. He was a basketball player, actually. Second team wall city, pretty good basketball player. He went to high school, believe it or not, with Joe Pacillo's dad. The riots happened, he took his mother, moved to Southern Bergen County, and that's where I grew up. But we would always go to dinner there on Bloomfield Avenue, still do, in fact. So we have those connections. My family, I still have family from there. My parents, my grandfather grew up down the street from Columbus Hospital, in his house, by born through a midwife. Hospital, through stone, hit the head from his house. He was in the house, he was born. My grandfather's probably eating pasta at the other side of the table, but that's how Italians roll. - No, right, my neighborhood high school was Barringer. And I didn't go there, but I grew up Catholic, so all my siblings and I went to Catholic high schools. But the Barringer was an interesting part of the world, and a lot of the people I spoke to, from my book on Tenable, went to Barringer. And most a lot of my Italian, obviously, Barringer is a pretty heavily Italian high school at the time. And you're right, it's a tale of not about white people, 'cause we, it's not like we didn't think we were white, but we identified with our ethnic group, not with our race growing up. And I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, Irish household, Irish block, in a largely, largely Irish Italian neighborhood, Roseville, and the Catholic church played a large role in breaking down those ethnic barriers, 'cause when my mother was a little girl and she was born in 1923, she wasn't allowed to play with Italians. When my uncle married an Italian in 1950, it was more, I would say that scandalous, a little strong, but more controversial than when my niece married a Haitian a few years ago. So it's, we overcame a lot of our ethnic differences through, or shared Catholicism, one thing, but also our shared sense of victimhood as we moved into the '60s and '70s, right? We were all facing the same, not enemy. And the enemy wasn't, we knew it wasn't black people. We knew the enemy was larger than that. It was the, it was the state, our enemy was the state. I mean, the state took my house, I mean, I guess it's really pretty personal when I do that. And by the state, I mean here, the government in general, which was almost seemingly consciously trying to destroy our neighborhoods and destroy our cities. - Well, well, real quick, Jack, let's stay there for a second. If you're just joining us here at the front line with Joe and Joe, Joe Pasolo, Joe Rasanello, we're gonna go way in the breach today. We're talking about the destruction of American cities. Joe and I are from Newark, New Jersey. Jack was born in Newark, New Jersey. Jack, I had to stay along the lines of what you just said. Okay, it's funny you mentioned Haitians. Joe and I are married to two Haitian sisters, okay? Now, we say all the time on the show, okay? We don't have our head in the sand. We don't think everybody just holds hands and sings kumbaya, okay? We recognize that our wives are black. We married our wives because our wives are Roman Catholic. - Yes. - That's why. If my wife was Protestant of some kind or whatever the kids had been, I don't know if I would have married, I don't even know if I would have dated her, okay? 'Cause at the time, I was trying to find a nice Catholic girl I went later in life, okay? We know they're black, but they're Catholic. When I went to Seton Hall Prep, I didn't know there were some, there was like, all white people in Newark, New Jersey, they were all Irish. Didn't matter if you were German. No, right, didn't matter what you, well, he's an Irish, he's Irish, okay? I got the Seton Hall Prep, you know how many within the first six months I was there? I found out that our friends with a lot of these Irish kids, 'cause they were all from South Orange and Maplewood and going to Seton Hall Prep, West Orange, all right, and they're Irish Catholic. And their parents are working, parents just like mine were. And he said, and then you start to learn, it ain't about, it's not forget about the racial part. It's not even about ethnicity. We were all Catholic, every one of us. And that was what binds us. And I would ask you this. Do you think that, do you think, okay? And I mentioned it to you before the show, I'll throw it out there, okay? A lot of people build Donnie Hu from the Catholic League, okay? I don't think that he's an extreme example. He called Paul Blanchard's book, which was written in 1949, all right? American freedom and Catholic power. He rightfully called it an anti-Catholic screed that targeted Catholic power in America, which was concentrated in the cities. Whether it was Newark, whether it was Philadelphia, whether it was Chicago, whether it was Detroit. No, there was ethnic power amongst Catholics, okay? And that was a deliberate target. And a lot of people say, a lot of the people in what we call now the deep state might've been involved in that. And again, I know that was a little bit of a diatribe, Jack Cash will talk about that if you don't mind. - Well, you know, I've heard that thesis and based on my own experience, my own research, I don't buy it. And just like I see like Newark, for instance, they put two highways through, two interstates, 280 took my neighborhood. But 78 took out weak wake, the Jewish neighborhood. - That's right, yeah. - In fact, the Jewish neighborhood, weak wake, which was one of the most powerful and productive Jewish neighborhoods in the world, let alone America, it produced, you know, 20 people we both heard of, we've all heard of. But it was vulnerable in ways that Catholic neighborhoods weren't because Catholic neighborhoods had Catholic schools. Jewish neighborhoods, Jews never thought to build their own schools 'cause they depended on public schools, which in under their purview were good because they were filled with Jewish teachers and they had a very high standards for their students. So at Barringer, you know, I don't mean to insult our Italian American friends, but your educational standards weren't as high as they were at weak wake, you know what I mean? So your parents were willing to tolerate more than they were in weak wake where once the schools started going down just a little bit, those neighborhoods empty. And the irony is, is that the Jews in weak wake were far more accepting, at least theoretically, of interracial relations in the '60s and '70s than were Italians or the Irish, right? But they were the first ones to leave and they vacated that neighborhood remarkably quickly. And so I, for instance, in 1958, there were only a handful of blacks in weak wake high school. By 1970, there were only a handful of Jews, literally a handful, that's how quick that was. - I wanna explore, Jack, what you said about the state, you said the state, that's interesting, because I do think that there are policies in place currently, not just in Newark, but across America that are hurting the people, for instance, the lack of charter schools, Newark graduates three out of 10 kids. The school system, I mean, if you're in business and you have a 30% chance of success, you're out of business. - Hey, listen, the only business where you could go three out of 10 and be an all-star is baseball. - Yes. - The cost per student is well over 30,000. - Right. - And that's across the board through many cities, Baltimore, Memphis, we could go on and on and on. These kids have no chance of getting out of poverty. It's the greatest example of systemic racism out there. Tim Scott even addressed it in his recent presidential run. He said that the NEA has to be abolished. That is a radical statement. But at the end of the day, that is a state instituted policy. Across the board, in Newark, it's a failure. It's gone on for decades. What are your thoughts, not just on that policy, but other policies that the state have put forth that have absolutely devastated people in these cities? - Well, you know, some, you know, in looking at it, what happened in the city like Newark and happened in cities all over the country is that dreamers sort of unwittingly colluded with the schemers, right? So for instance, the dreamers actually believed in high rise public housing. The schemers were looking at demolition contracts and building contracts and, you know, and they were willing to bulldoze their own neighborhoods as they did in Little Italy, which is a shocking, you know, bit of ethnic self-destruction there. And so there are various policies in place that unwittingly sort of came together to destroy the cities. One is to control a public education by the teachers union. You're absolutely right. We were not allowed to reform the schools. The reform in the schools would have come through allowing them to be privatized, be charterized, have kids go to Catholic schools on, you know, in vouchers or scholarships. And that's the first thing that they showed that. First thing Obama did when he took office in 2009 was to end the policy in DC, that the Republicans had implemented where kids could compete for scholarships to private schools. First thing he did, 'cause he was beholden to the teachers unions. Boom. They were the single largest and most powerful constituency within a democratic party. And Newark, the probably the most destructive and across the country of public policy was the subsidization of fatherlessness, the encouragement of fatherlessness and black homes were hit particularly hard by this. I mean, some white homes haven't hit too, and especially even in rural America. But the, that was the catalyst for the quick destruction of cities like Newark. Was that. Go ahead, Jack, I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, wait a minute, here's my thing though. Now I want you to correct me if I'm wrong. A lot of black people left Newark. Of course you did. I mean, Newark had all union jobs. When you talk about Newark, my father used to tell me Newark had 16 breweries. Those were all blue collar jobs. You have a major port. A important port of Newark. All the longshoremen that work down there. All the teamsters, okay. What would they all, white guys working for these men? A lot of black guys worked in these unions too, making at the time 20, 30 and $40 an hour with health benefits and everything. Well, they left too, correct me if I'm wrong, Jack. They went to East Orange. They went to the suburbs. They went to other places. Am I wrong about that? 'Cause a lot of people will always want to make this all seem about race. Michelle Obama. Did that. I mean, you know, it's all about white flight. You racist white people. Well, a lot of black people left. Newark and other cities too. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jack Cashill. - No, you're absolutely right. In fact, Michelle is the greatest hypocrite on this subject because her family fled the neighborhood where she was born because of the projects, the housing projects came. So they fled to a neighborhood that was still transitioning out of being Jewish and then transitioned very quickly. And then when they were ready for high school, Michelle's mother took a job so she could send her son to a Catholic high school, right? And then she sent Michelle in like an hour plus bus ride downtown to a magnet school that the mayor of Chicago now wants to close because it's selective, right? That's how bad that policy is. But in Newark, like I said earlier, the Catholics tended to resist that. Even black Catholics. Now, the one story I tell an untenable, my book on the true story of white ethnic flight from America cities is that of the Euston family. Whitney Euston's father is a classic case. He comes up from the south in the great migration when men were expected to work. And they had to work 'cause if they didn't work, they starved. And were they not only work, but they married, they stay married and they raise families. Whitney's father worked in the singer selling foundry during the Depression, made enough of a living to support her and her son, her mother and her mother is seven siblings. Her mother marries a guy from my neighborhood, John Euston, they moved to an area in a weak wake area. She's talking about what a quiet, peaceful little village she lives in. And then she says, "The crime starts and the drug start." And then in '67, the riots come. And then she says to John Euston, her husband, he says, "Sissy Euston says, 'We've got to get out of here.'" And you're right, Joe, they moved to East Orange. Well, as soon as they couldn't, they buy a house there. They're not gonna stick around for this. 'Cause they're not subject to the same forces that we were subject to. - Yeah, if you listen, you ever take a ride down Center Street from 280 down to Seton Hall University, and you ride through some of those neighborhoods in East Orange and Orange, those houses are beautiful. Those houses are enormous, and they're beautiful. That's an immediate suburb of Newark. It's like the, the far still section of Newark, okay? Where those houses are all big and beautiful. Well, guess who bought those homes in the 1970s and the 1980s in East Orange and Orange? Black people, black people leaving Newark. If you're just joining us here at the front line with Joe and Joe, we have Jack Cassio. We're discussing the full rise and fall of an American city, but then beyond just Newark, New Jersey, we're talking about cities in general. Jack, one more time. Untenable is the book that you wrote on this topic. What's the subtitle? - It is to call the true story. The truth, okay, for anyway, so. The true story of white ethnic flight from America's cities, because what I, why I use the word ethnic is 'cause it was not like we white people fled. It was ethnic groups fled and all at a different pace and for a different, not all for the same reason, but at a different pace. And to different places and with different outcomes, different consequences. - Yeah. - And the problem in a city like Newark, for working class people like my parents and all my friends, is that when we had to leave, the close and suburbs were taken, they were too expensive. We couldn't move to South Orange or West Orange. We, my friends all moved down the shore and the shore doesn't sound more glamorous than it is up close. We're talking about these slapdash suburbs built 10 miles from inland from the shore out of the pine barons and the scrublands. And in a book I tell about my own experiences there, which we're incredibly disheartening because we left behind perfectly functional, wonderful neighborhoods, often built around the church and school, you know, with the mom and pop shops running up and down our streets. My main street was Orange Street. You guys probably Bloomfield Avenue. Brothers with South Orange Avenue. And when I went back and talked, I must interview 50 people from that world and from other cities as well. But the word that keeps coming up about our neighborhood, which was seen bizarre and retrospect, is idyllic. You know, by 1960 I lived in idyllic neighborhood. By 1975 it was untenable, you couldn't live there. And I got the title from a friend of mine, a good friend. Most of my friends, virtually everyone by the way, who was affected by this phenomenon, turned Republican. You know, we grew up in Democratic neighborhoods and turned Republican. But my one friend stayed, remained a Democrat partly 'cause he was from a union family. And I asked him, you know, I interviewed, I had a bunch of guys together, I hadn't seen a long time, we're talking about it. And I said to Marty, I said, why finally did you leave our block? You were the last guy to leave our block. In my case, the highway took my house but he remained on the other end of the block. And he said, well, Jack, it became, he's searching for the right word, untenable. And I said, what does it mean? What does untenable mean? He goes, well, you know, when your mother gets mugged for the second time, that's untenable. When your home gets invaded for the second time, that's untenable. Anyone who did not leave was a fool or a say or a masochist under those circumstances. Now, unfortunately, crime had a racial face because essentially all the crime, all the street crime, you know, let's face it, you guys know that there's crime that the blacks do not have a monopoly on crime at Newark. But street crime, yeah, it was virtually 100% black on white, at least we're all white, we experienced it that way. Blacks who were more victimized by what we were did not experience as a racial thing, but as a cultural thing, you know, they knew. And I talk about this one great book I integrate into my story. It was written by a kid who grew up in Columbus homes, by a kid, and one of the first people to move into the buildings, when they were wonderful. And then he talks about what he saw around him and it was black on black in his case. And it was destructive. Then finally, they were forced to make the same kind of decisions that his neighbors and little Italy were forced to make, or the North End Italians. We got to move. - Yeah, I mean, I remember, I remember like when I was a kid, my Uncle Danny owned a pizzeria slash ice cream shop down on Seventh Avenue, going close to downtown. 'Cause my father, my family is from the first ward, closer down that way. They built the projects across the street. And my Uncle Danny had just a little store, right? Low pizzeria, right? Got robbed maybe three or four times. I remember when I was a kid, he told my father, he said, "Pup, can't do that anymore." You can't do it. You're risking your life just to try to make a living, or just walking down the street. And again, that's one of the things that bothers me, Jack Cash. It was like when people want to try to couch this about race, how many black people have been destroyed by these policies that like ever since this so-called white, white took place? Well, none of this has improved. Ross Baraka has not improved anything. Corey Booker before him didn't improve anything. Sharp James didn't improve anything. Ken Gibson didn't improve anything. And for those of you who don't know who those people are, probably know who Corey Booker is, all right? Those are the last four mayors of Newark, New Jersey. It's what T.S. Eliot would call the Wasteland. That's what Newark is. So it's not even benefiting the black people? No, you don't benefit black people by tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus and replacing with George Floyd, which was what Newark did, which is the tearing down of the Columbus statue, which was a gift from the Italian community to Newark a hundred years ago, was just appalling. And then he just threw it away. They said they were gonna put it in storage. My cousin who's still a cop in Newark, and he's half Italian, he knows that world. He said he just threw it by the side of 280 left it there, right? - Yeah. - And the other Columbus, you know about the story, the other Christopher Columbus statue by St. Francis. - Can I tell you that story? - Yeah, tell me back, 'cause I tell, I'm driving down the street a couple of minutes before we gotta take a break. I'm driving down the street and all this is going on. And in my head, I just was curious about that statue. I was like saying to my wife, I wonder if they're gonna target that statue, 'cause they had already a couple weeks prior taking down the one downtown that you just talked about, okay? So they got to that one first. So my wife and I were, this was during COVID, by the way. - Right. - We got in the car, I wasn't working, I was unemployed for three months, got in the car, and we were going somewhere and he said, you know what, just for the hell of it, let's take a ride through Newark. Jack, my hand to God, this is a true story, all right? So I said, I'm just curious. So we're driving down 8th Street, down towards Bluefield Avenue, where St. Francis Church is, okay? And I said to my wife on the way down, I said, I just wanna see if that statue's still there. As we're driving down, I'm seeing all the yellow lights from tow trucks and flat beds and all that stuff, and the statue was coming down. It was being taken down. Now, I was outraged, I did a video at the moment that went viral on Facebook, okay? And I was wrong, I have to admit, I was wrong. I thought it was the city of Newark taking it down, okay? And in fact, it was a buddy for chenado from the Italian Tribune. - Right. - Ace Alagna's son-in-law, that the family took the statue down, okay? - To protect it, to save it. - To protect it and save it, right? After they saw what happened to the one downtown, they took it down, in fact, I got a phone call saying, "Hey Joe, your heart was in the right place, "but you were wrong." But he took that statue down to protect it. And I think it's in the suburbs now. One of my cousins told me that it's somewhere in like, you know, Morris County, they put it up somewhere else. So that's my story about that statue. - Yeah, that's true, that is, I got the inside story on that too. But I didn't get to witness it, that must've been really freaky to see what's happening. - Well, I was there and I didn't know what was going on. And I automatically assumed, 'cause when you were looking what happened, what was going on in Ohio and all these other places, where the statue's coming down, I'm automatically assuming that it's the city of Newark that's taking it down, okay? And that's another thing you can get it to too, is the double stage of it. Let me start another question. I'm gonna hand it over to Joe before the break. - I wanna bridge on the other side, the riots that took place in Newark to what we saw in the summer of 2020. In my family, my mother's uncle was a cop, Johnny Tarosa, a corrupt cop got thrown off the force. He's the drive for the mob and he was a cop. He would always talk about the riots. How they started was the poet, was arrested. You correct me if I'm wrong, Jack. And then the riots began. And then we saw riots in this summer, the summer of 2020. Let's talk about that 'cause Newark never recovered and I don't think many cities are gonna recover from those riots. - That's right. Newark was the prototype. It was the first big riot in a major in Northeastern city. By the way, my father was a cop. My uncle was a cop. Several of my cousins are Newark cops. So I know this story well. My uncle, in fact, was there defending the third precinct, the one that was under siege. You know, it started a lot in a sense. I should say I have two chapters in a book. One is called "The Rebellion" and the other is called "The Riots." And the rebellion is how Emery Baraka, the father of the current Newark mayor, the poet, he and his friend, every conceivable black radical was passing through Newark at that time. This is the Casablanca of strange radicals. And they've sowed the ground for a year or two. Not just black radicals either. Tom Hayden of the SDS, the bride of Jane Fonda was there for four years preparing the groundwork for this riot. What set the riot off, which was somewhat spontaneous, was the false report that the cops had killed as cab driver, John Smith. I mean, he was the George Floyd of '67. In fact, Floyd, this guy was attacked a couple of cops. He was resisting arrest. They had to carry him into the precinct. You know, so many incidents start over. Resisting arrest always looks ugly. You know, there's no good way to subdue someone who's resisting arrest. Fortunately, there's before video cameras. But the rumors spread that they killed him. And that's how it started. And then- Jack, let's leave it there for the third precinct there. Jack, let's leave it there for one second. Let's take a quick break. And we're fascinated by the story. We want to know more about it. But I don't think a lot of people know about the Newark riots. But if you're just joining us here at the front line with Joe and Joe, Jack Cashill, we're discussing the rise and fall of an American city, specifically Newark, New Jersey. But the topic is obviously going broader than that to talk about American cities in general. Jack, one more time, your book is untenable. The subtitle? The true story of white ethnic flight from America, cities available, I'd say go to Amazon, 'cause that's where publishers keep scoring nowadays. All right, so please go out and buy the book if you want to know what's going on on this topic. So Jack has written the book and we encourage everybody to go out there and buy it. So stick around here at the Veritas Catholic Radio Network. We have another great segment with Jack Cashill. We'll be right back. Catholic Radio works. And now we have it here in Connecticut and New York. It's been seen around the country that there's no better tool for evangelization. Where there's Catholic Radio, the folks who listen deep in their faith, families are strengthened, parishes and communities flourish. So let people know you're listening to Veritas, tell your friends to tune in, and let's make an impact here for Jesus and his church. This is Steve Lee for Veritas Catholic Network. Welcome back everyone to the front line with Joe and Joe, Joe Pacillo and Joe Recinello. We're way in the breach with Jack Cashill. We're talking about the rise of fall of an American city, specifically Newark, New Jersey, but we're also broadening the conversation because obviously what happened in Newark applies, what happened to a lot of other American cities. So Newark had riots back in 1967. The summer of love, I agree enough, Jack. - That's right, yeah. - It wasn't, there was not a lot of love going on. I was born right after that in October '67, but just a, I'm gonna hand it over to Jack, but Jack started, ended the last segment, talking about the riots, the radicals with air, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda's wife was there. Yeah, I said that deliberately. A lot of other black radicals. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jack. Huey Newton and others were there too, correct? - Stokely Carmichael was there. It was a very popular at the time. Iran Karanga, the founder of Kwanzaa was there, right? - Right. - This was, he found Kwanzaa, and then it goes to prison a couple of years later for kidnapping and torture and couple of black women, which is, I think Chris Kringle did that too, didn't they? Maybe I'm mistaken. - Yeah. - But go ahead, you were talking about how there was a resisting arrest, cab driver, got hauled into the precinct, please continue, Jack. - Yeah, this is how so many riots, there's a flashpoint, but it's all been prepared for, right? You know, I talk a lot about Anthony Imperiali in the book, who is the sort of a fiery Italian ethnic nationalist leader and he was considered racist, horrible person, but in Miri Baraka, who is the real potsteror for all of this, the father of the mayor of Newark now, Ross Baraka was the guy most responsible for making this happen. And he wrote a very interesting memoir about it, which is oddly candid. He went to Barringer, he grew up in mining our neighborhood, right, integrated neighborhood, and just, you know, two-parent, loving two-parent family, both working, right, great migration people. And it's just, he fell off to, you know, his problem was he went to college, right? No one in my neighborhood is going to college, but he went to college and got his head turned. He got multiple scholarships out of Barringer High School. This is in 1950. I mean, this is the world that they paint about growing up black in the cities is not a complete picture of what it was really like. - Well, that's why we have, that's why we have you here, Jack. But I want to throw the, I want to just transcend race for a second and talk about like, you just mentioned several radicals, radical leftists, that's what they are, whether it's Stokely Carmella, Ron Caranga, whether it's on the Caucasian side, Tom Hayden. These are radicals stirring the pot. Problem with the whole narrative about Anthony Pirielle, okay, is that Amiri Baraka is the type of guy because he's a radical leftist. Forget about the color of his skin. He's a radical leftist. Is that when they punch you in the face, they expect you to just cave in and just continue to let them just do what they want because they're radical leftists. And if Pirielle was the guy who said, no, no. If you come across Park Avenue, okay, anybody coming into our neighborhood that's going to try to spread this riot into let's say the first ward, the north ward and come down, we are going to defend our neighborhood. That's a natural and normal thing to do, okay. And I, by the way, when I was a little baby, I would go ahead, Jack. - Yeah, I portray Imperialia positively in the book because, and it also speaks to the different way ethnic groups reacted to the pressures they were under. Dejuice fled, I mean, it's, I don't blame them, but they were the first ones out. The Irish were kind of somewhere in between, but the Italians fought, right? They resisted. And, you know, you can't fault them for doing that, but your fault didn't no matter what you did. If you resisted, you were a racist. If you fled, you were a racist, you know? There was no, there was no good alternative. And even, you know, blacks who did respond to the same way were since given a pass on racist, but they didn't, that didn't help them with their lives at all because they were the ones at the front line suffering the most. From the, what would basically happen in the riot, in the Colonel Report, as things pointed out, is that the percentage of fatherless children had grown to the point where they were taking down whole neighborhoods. You know, where it had been, like in 1950, you know, like 80, 90% of black kids were living in two-parent families. By the mid '60s, that was down to 70%. Today, it's down to about 20, 25%. You just need one bad kid in a block to bring the block down, you know, but you have a block filled with fatherless children. You can't control it. The boys are gonna set the standards for the neighborhood, and they unfortunately do, and did. So, I mean, that is the one great problem that no one wants to talk about. It is the problem, and it's still the problem, and it's more of a problem now than it was even then. - But isn't that the problem across all families right now? It's one and two, get divorced. 40% of American children are born outside of wedlock. - Right. - I have five kids. My parents were married 52 years, my father was a barber in Bellevel. I mean, they got married, stay married. That's the key to success. It's the key to success in life, period. My parents weren't educated. They sent me to college, they sent my brother to college, they owned the house. It can be done, but no one talks about that. And in my view, why? Because staying married isn't easy. Life is hard. God helps you to do it. We take God out of the picture. Frankly, marriage is falling apart. - Joe, let me ask, Jack, if you don't mind, I want to throw this over to Joe and then to you. I have an idea, I want both of your comments on it, if that's okay, all right? Joe said earlier that they destroyed these cities. Okay, you drive to Newark, New Jersey now. It ain't anybody that was 30 years ago, okay? When supposedly there was all this white flight, all right? Is it, Joe, you said these cities aren't coming back, okay? But if, let's say for argument's sake, let's face it. The main victims of these policies in this inner city are African-Americans. I think that's as plain, plain as day, okay? Where African-Americans in America step up and they're gonna have to change a lot of the nonsense that's going on. You mentioned Jack, teachers unions, the power that they have, all right? Start shaming these young men into marrying the women that they've impregnated and raising their children. A lot of things that can be done, if African-Americans in these cities would step up and start to demand better. I would love both your comments and my completely off-paced Jack will start with you and then I'll go over to Joe. - The other Joe's last comment was my thesis in my book. I mean, in a nutshell. Here's the opportunity we had in 2009. And I'll tell you the story 'cause I talk about this in the book. In 2008, Barack Obama gives a talk on Father's Day, in the South side of Chicago at a church. Democrats are allowed to speak at church without worrying about church-state separation. And he makes the kind of speech, you just the kind of speech Joe you'd hope he'd make. He says the real problem in our neighborhoods is that men are acting like boys and abandoning their families. And then he goes through a litany of consequences. Fatherless children, boys without fathers are five times more likely to drop out of school, 10 times more likely to get arrested, 20 times more likely to go to prison, et cetera, up and down the list, right? And the media are not sure what to make of this 'cause he's saying what you or I would want him to say or Alan Keys would have said or George Bush wouldn't have thought to say it, but good conservative Christians would have said. And then two weeks later on a hot mic in a Fox News studio, not knowing he was being recorded, allegedly, Jesse Jackson says, and I'm gonna use what exact words he says, and he makes a slashing motion with his hand while he's saying, Barack Obama, he talking down to black people, I wanna cut his nuts out, right? So literally what he said. And then he used the N word and some other stuff. That was the last we ever heard from Barack Obama about the one thesis that he was better capable explaining than anyone before or since. The first black president, he had the opportunity, Joe, just to do exactly what you said, bringing that message to the community and say, we've got to turn this around. We're the only ones who could do it. But he refused, he failed, chickened out. I mean, I can't understand why, chickened out. But Jesse Jackson grew up on a farm, and he knows what he's talking about. But that was it, Barack Obama. Now, it's very difficult for someone in a lesser position to enforce that kind of thinking. - Well, Joe Rasinello, do you honestly think that there's no hope or do you think that there's, at some point, some sort of paradigm shift could take place in these cities that could bring in policies. I mean, this is something more social and culture when you're talking about fatherlessness, but also the political policies, the education system. I mean, Joe, is it hopeless? - Where there's God, where there's God, there's always hope. But ultimately, it's very difficult for families to break generational behaviors. I mean, you have fourth generation single moms. This is what these families know. We're seeing this now across America. How do you do that? The church has to be strong. People have to go to the church and hear the message. They have to see with their own eyes, people just like themselves, both white and black, who are successful in marriage, raising kids together, man and woman, successful. Don't have to be educated, just have to work hard. Love each other, love God, love your family, love your neighbor. Then things grow. You can't legislate morality. Morality can't be legislated. It's not with words, it's with example, and God gives you the strength to do it. Ultimately, there lies the solution. The rest of it is just words and social activism. And frankly, we've had five decades of that in Newark and in cities like Baltimore, in Memphis, in East St. Louis. Nothing has helped. And these politicians haven't helped. Jack, what do you think? - No, I think Joe, I totally agree with you. And honestly, what's made it worse for today than it was 50 years ago, is that today, for the last 10, 15, 20 years in schools, and through the media, especially since the rise of Barack Obama, young black kids are being told that their problem isn't their problem, it's their problem is because they're being oppressed, that they're part of a system, there's all critical race theory, that the white people are your oppressors and you are the victims of that oppression. So when you do a flash mob robbery on a Nike store, you're just liberating those goods from the oppressive capitalist patriarchy. They believe this. They've been had this pounded into their heads. Instead of being taught, like if they had gotten, and this is where Catholic education could come in handy, going to Catholic school and being taught, a genuine sense of morality and respect and responsibility. That's not happening in your schools. Schools are reinforcing the message they get through the media, and it's, I don't know where it ends. I'd like to think that it ends someplace positive also, but it's gonna take a real reawakening, I mean, literal reawakening, a great awakening, like the fourth great awakening, a great Christian awakening to turn things around. - But doesn't that require people like us, Jack Cashhill, joining us here at the front line with Joe and Joe, doesn't that require people like us? I'm not gonna say that, I mean, I moved to Arizona two years ago, I don't live in southern Bergen County anymore, or anyplace close to Newark, but just leaving, I'm not necessarily talking about myself in particular, but just in general, when do we start shaming the Jesse Jackson's of the world? As a group, I'm not talking about as a racial group. I'm talking about as a, let's call it, more conservative minded people, if you wanna put it like that, okay? People that know that the policies that are implemented, if you even wanna dignify them by calling the policies in the inner city are what's destroying the cities. When do we shame the Jesse Jackson's? We shame the Al Sharpton's, we shame the Ross Barakas. We say, you're the ones oppressing your people, don't blame me, I get up every day, I go to work, I don't have a lot of money, I gotta raise a wife, I gotta, I have to support my wife and my son, okay? Don't blame me, don't blame race. Blame yourselves, you power hungry leftists, okay? Embed with teachers, unions, and others, who keep all these people in chains. If you tell a single mom in the inner city, like Joe said, you don't have to be educated to know that something's wrong. That mother knows her kids not getting educated, yet if that kid goes to central high school, Ross Baraka and the state of New Jersey, they say, when she says, well, how about you give me a voucher for half the money that you're spending now? And I'll send my kid to St. Benedict's and he's guaranteed to graduate from St. Benedict's, okay? 'Cause that's how good they do. And it'll save the taxpayer $14,000 a year, okay? And they say, shut up, go back into your, go back into your, I can only want to call it at home, shut up and don't open your mouth. That's what Ross Baraka and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and people like that, the black liberal establishment, what I always call on the show, Jack, the black liberal Uncle Tom establishment, 'cause all they do is they do the bidding of the white liberals. That's all they do. - Well, you know, just that's an excellent question, Joe. And to your point, I would say, I see I'm an optimist. I see a slight turning, just to that point, your ability to speak out and have the power of your own speech restored to you. 'Cause we've been, you know, frightened for so long of saying anything out of line. And I'll give some credit to a gentleman who was born just when you were also in Newark, you may not know this, who's now the most popular podcaster in the world, is Joe Rogan. His father was a Newark cop. And like so many people in Newark, he was half Irish and half Italian in that generation. I think Egon Musk's purchase of Twitter was, will be remembered ideally if things, you know, unless they reverse it as the turning point in terms of the restoration of free speech. And it's empowering people to speak up again. So many of our allies have been, including virtually every Republican in Congress, have been tongue tied on this issue from the beginning. And partly 'cause they have no experience with it. And so I felt like I could go out and say, I've been speaking to, you know, this, I've been saying this for the last 60 years since I was old enough to write, to talk. And I was always like alone, and no one, but I have, my power comes from my street crit. I mean, I was there, I saw this. I know what I'm talking about. So if like a, a Abraham Kendi tries to contradict me, I'll say, you don't know what you're talking about. I've seen more than you've seen, right? This is where age comes to certain wisdom maybe, I don't know, but I've always been outspoken on this subject. I now find that I have people who are willing to join me in the discussion. - Jack, just what you're saying basically says to me, it's not about people, it's about power. You see, that's kind of how I see this. I don't see it as a black and white issue. I see it as a power issue. And there are many people, frankly, who are black, in fact, most of which who are black, who are suffering because of this power grab, in the neighborhoods that got burned down where stores are never going back. You go to like where Westside High School is, I was just there on Sunday, actually, for an activity show at the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Block after block after block abandoned has been for decades and decades. It's about power, forget about you. You're not part of the equation. I don't care, they don't care. I want mine, you get nothing. Give me your vote. Give me your vote and sit back down. And that's being said, across the board, if you ask me to this country, we have to get our country back, all of us. - I think you're seeing some, especially among black males, some understanding of how they've been used and exploited for the last 60 or so years, you know? And thus, there are numbers in, as Trump, among Trump polling support, are increasing to the point they're beginning to worry of the people who've controlled their votes for, you know, since LBJ. Yeah, I think people are wising up. It's gonna take a lot of wising up. This is a big problem to solve, but it's possible and I remain hopeful. - You know, I like to show, I just wanna say one more thing. - Go ahead, Joe. - Let's talk about the reawakening. That is it in a nutshell. I'm gonna be truthful with you. I don't claim to be the smartest person on the block, but my eyes are open and it has everything to do with the reawakening. When you're honest with yourself, it begins with me. It begins with me, looking in the mirror. Where am I often? How can I do better? Me, Joe Ressanello. It's a reawakening of America. And that is how the cities come back. That is how the country comes back. That is how we take responsibility for ourself and our family. And then it grows. Outside of that, it's just talk. It's nothing but talk. Nothing but empty activism. - Joe, let me ask you this, because you just triggered a thought in my head. I'm gonna hand it over to Jack also, okay? One of the things I think that we could do that dispels the whole racial narrative that's always proposed by the left is to say, "I'm not going back to Newark. "I don't have some idea that all of a sudden "ethnic, Catholics, Italians are gonna, "all of a sudden repopulate North Newark, New Jersey. "My concern is through the people that live there. "The people that live there are largely "African, American, and Hispanic, okay? "So, why am I speaking out? "If I'm such a scumbag racist "that they want to make me out to be, "then why would I care about Newark? "Why would I care about Detroit? "Why would I care about Chicago? "My attitude, if I was a racist, "let them kill each other? "Who cares? "We are speaking up because we love these "people, okay? "They're being wrecked by, like, "you mentioned Joe Ressinello, "power hungry people who simply just want their vote. "Let's be clear about that. "They just want these people to keep voting for them, okay? "And they throw them a crumb or two. "I mean, I think that the message, "the message is in and of itself, "guys like us speaking up saying, "Wait a minute, we're speaking out "because we care about these people "and we're tired of the chains that you put them in. "You're the ones who are the racists, not us. "Your thoughts, both of you." No, I agree with you on this, is that every individual today in America has the potential to be his own publisher. Even if it's just spreading message on Facebook or Instagram or wherever, you have an audience. And we've been too shy about saying what has to be said. Now, there's ways to couch it and to be politics so that your niece doesn't run out of Thanksgiving dinner and never talk to you again, you know? Because these people don't know anything and most of them don't want to know anything. It's remarkable how little they know and how hostile they are to new information. You've seen that, you know what I'm talking about. And we all have family members where we've got to dance around them and we still have to dance around them. But we can't say nothing. And I think the next few years we'll present as opportunities where something has to be said. And it's like, you know, it's like getting mugged by reality. You know, that expression, it was a metaphorical expression is how to, you know, like what's a, you know, a neo-conservative, it's a liberal who's been mugged, right? I mean, that is one way to do it. You don't want to have to do it that way. But as long as we remain silent in the face of the tyranny we're living under now, the social tyranny we're living under now, including on subjects like faith, we empower the tyrants. - Well, that's one of the things that we Joe and I have said on the show a lot, Jack Cassio is that, why would the left be so, when they have Google, they have meta/Facebook, okay? They have YouTube. - You're talking about multi-trillion dollar market cap. Why are you getting so bent out of shape because this guy Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $50 billion? $50 billion, nothing compared to Facebook, but you guys got all bent out of shape. Gee, I wonder why? And I got a prediction over the next five to 10 years. X, I'm going to stop calling it Twitter 'cause it's now X, okay? X is going to be a $500 billion to a trillion company. You know what, I don't know why? For no other reason, okay? Or I'll give you two reasons. One is Elon Musk is smart, okay? And the second is what you said, Jack Cassio. I want to be able to speak. I want to be able to speak and be heard. Now, if nobody listens to the front line with Joe and Joe, so be it, it's a free market. If they think we're a couple of jimokes from Newark, New Jersey, so be it, okay? But in the meantime, it gives us the opportunity to open our mouths and you want to know what? People listen, why? 'Cause we're so smart, no, because people need to be encouraged, Jack Cassio. They need to be encouraged by people like you, hopefully by people like us, by people who are willing to say, look, call BS on all this nonsense. I don't care anymore. Jesse Jackson's going to call me a racist no matter what, whether I open my mouth. So I might as well open my mouth, your thoughts. - Well, yeah, I know you're actually right. And that's where it starts. I'll give you an example, a negative example. Is it, oh, maybe six months ago, I was offered to be on a panel discussing reparations, right? And this was in Kansas City where I live. And I have some degree of visibility here. And this was a local, it was televised on local PBS station, et cetera. There were three black people on the pro-reperation side. I quickly volunteered to do it, right? And then they had the hardest time finding a second person to be on my side, right? No one wanted to do it. And now we're arguing against something that's a slam dunk. You're even at that think card to tell the people why this is a bad idea. But finally, they did get a local talk radio guy who was on "Tender Hooks the Ho Time" as was the moderator, you know? I just had fun. I enjoyed it, right? And I think I got a little respect from the audience 'cause I had fun with it. I was talking to the mic, I'm talking to you, you know? I was like, right before you're kidding? But once you do that, once you break through, once you have an audience that doesn't want to hear what you're saying, then they have to think about it. And that scares a lot of people. They don't want to have to entertain the fact that they've been proposing horrible ideas for half a century. So it takes a while to get them used to it. But I think it's always good to come into it with a good spirit and have fun and to, you know, try not to step on too many toes, but-- - It would be hysterical if Joe Restonello and I were invited to be on a panel discussion with Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi. I would go there. I would go there with a smile on my face of ear to ear. I wouldn't be the normal angry Joe P. I would be smiling. 'Cause like you said, go into it with some humor and take down their nuts as Joe Restonello, we got about two minutes left. - Courage begins with the audience of one, in my view. It begins with the audience of one. I am who I am in the eyes of God alone. I have to live with me. And I think people have to look at it that way. I love everybody, but at the same time, the truth applies to everybody equally and we have to be courageous. But our strength if you ask me has to come from God and it's there and people have done it. And those are the people that change the world. They change the world and it can be done again. Your thoughts, Jack, you're from Newark. You could change the world. There's no question in my mind. - Jack, we changed a little bit of it. - Yeah, you got about a minute. - You look at some of it. - We got about one minute left. Just to give you a heads up, we got about one minute left. - Right, look what Paul did in the first century AD, right? He changed the world, right? With Jesus and Paul, two most influential people in history of the world. You can do it. We've had three great awakenings in American history. We need a fourth. You're absolutely right, Joe. And sign me up when it's ready to start. - Hey, well, listen, Jack, look, you've been doing it for a long time. Joe and I are new to this game. We started doing this in 2018. I will tell you this, okay? We're not the most courageous guys in the world. I would say, I would say speaking for myself, I'm one of the Lord's least courageous people, okay? However, I do recognize what's important. I do recognize what's right and what's wrong and what's so much of what's going on in America. And we could have you back, Jack, talk about a lot of other things, okay? But this is a major problem. This is a major problem for a major segment of our brothers and sisters, our American brothers and sisters living in these swamps, okay, of inner cities and they've been caused, okay? And they could be turned around and that's why we're glad that you came on the show, Jack, to have this conversation about the rise and fall of an American city. We spoke primarily about Newark. Jack Casho, one more time. The book, the subtitle, "Where Folks Could Buy It." - The book is called "Unshenable." And it's the true story of white ethnic flight from America's cities. There's probably different places you could buy it. - I recommend Amazon 'cause that's where my publisher keeps score. So the more purchases you buy and the more reviews you post, the better off I am, you know? - All right, Jack Casho, thank you so much for coming on to the front line with Joe and Joe and you're welcome back here anytime, brother. - Yeah, I'd love to talk to you guys. Good to have a couple people who use word like finook in the middle of a sentence, you know? I don't hear words. (laughs) - Gotta love it. And thank you all out there for joining us on the Veritas Catholic Radio Network 1350 on your AM dial 103.9 on your FM dial, spreading the truth of the Catholic faith in the New York City metropolitan area. Thanks once again. And remember, until the next time that our conversation is your conversation and that conversation is going on everywhere. We'll talk to you soon. [MUSIC PLAYING]
