At Liberty Podcast: Bars Behind Bars: The Use of Rap Lyrics in Court

KENDALL CIESEMIER
From the ACLU, This is At Liberty. I’m Kendall Ciesemier, your host.

When Ice-T and his band, Body Count, released the song “Cop Killer” in 1992, it spurred outrage. At the time, Bill Clinton and George Bush were running for president, and condemning “Cop Killer” was among the handful of stances where they found common ground. Officials and police departments called for a complete boycott of Time Warner Inc. for refusing to halt the sales of the song. In response, Time Warner publicly stated its unshakable commitment to stand by freedom of expression and argued that “Cop Killer” is an “artist’s rap on how a person in the street feels.” “It’s a shout of pain and protest,” and “raw with rage and resentment.”

Professor Carrie Fried of Winona State University conducted a long study that year in an attempt to contextualize this dialogue in research; she found that participants exhibited several implicit biases. they were more likely to find one of two songs with the same lyrical content more threatening and offensive if they thought it came from a Black artist or fell under the genre of rap. She also found that participants were quick to pin violent lyrics on the rap genre, even when they came from folk songs. So what happens when these implicit biases sit on the jury in a real criminal case? Across the country, rap lyrics are on trial as prosecutors pull from the expressive words of artists, and judges deem these songs to be admissible evidence in court.

Joining us today to discuss this evolution of this practice is Erik Nielson, professor at the University of Richmond and co-author of the book Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America. We are also joined by New Orleans rapper, songwriter, and former member of the 504boyz Mac Phipps, who experienced firsthand how the use of lyrics on trial can lead to a wrongful conviction.

Erik, Mac, welcome to At Liberty!

MAC PHIPPS
[00:02:36] It’s a pleasure to be here.

ERIK NIELSON
[00:02:38] Thank you for having me.

MAC
[00:02:39] Yeah, and thank you for having me.

KENDALL
[00:02:41] Of course, we’re so excited to have you. Mac, I want to start with you, as you are the resident rapper of the group. In the introduction, I talked about 1990 to that era of rap music. The nineties were very notable for the genre. This is also when you put out your first work.

MAC
[00:03:01] Yeah. So I was like 12 going on 13 at the time.

KENDALL
[00:03:04] Amazing. And what about that time was exciting about rap?

MAC
[00:03:08] I think back then the lines of where you were from in hip hop were drawn a little, you knew, when you heard certain things, what region it came from, what area was from. It was a time where hip hop was spreading across the country and everybody in different cities and in different regions was establishing where they were, you know, within hip hop. And it was a golden era for me. It was a golden era for hip hop.

KENDALL
[00:03:36] And it’s not just Ice-T that found his music and hot water. N.W.A was notable for their songs of resistance. Songs like Fuck the Police. Come to Mind.

MAC
[00:03:50] Right. Years before that, you had a group called 2 Live Crew who basically were banned because, you know, because of sexually explicit lyrics or whatnot. So they actually put a project out called Banned in the USA.

KENDALL
[00:04:04] Eric, what can you tell us? I mean, you’ve written a book about rap music being on trial, which we will get into. But from your research, from perhaps even your personal interest, what can you tell us about kind of the historical context of this time?

ERIK
[00:04:19] Well, it was definitely the time where, as Mac noted, you started to see the emergence of regional styles that were definitely recognizable. Also, that’s really about when quote-unquote gangsta rap, and then all of the subgenres that would fall under that really took off. You know, one point I do want to make is that Ice-T song Cop Killer was actually a heavy metal song. It’s a really good example, though, because I think a lot of the outrage that was directed towards him was because he was known as a rapper. He was an African-American man. I’m not sure that if this had been performed by a traditional white heavy metal group, that we would have seen the same public outcry. But what I will say is that the era that you referred to, you know, the late eighties, early nineties, really is important to understanding the prosecution of rap music, for one. That’s about when we started to see the first cases. 1990, 1991. And that really did track pretty closely with the emergence of gangsta rap, because, you know, a lot you don’t hear Talib Kweli or Mos Def lyrics being used in court.

KENDALL
[00:05:29] I also want to talk about this at the time was happening in conjunction with the race riots spreading across the country. The use of the lyrics in criminal courts, I think might to our listeners could seem to be a pretty niche civil liberties issue. But I’m wondering if you can tell us and explain why it’s not. How does this incrimination of rappers fall in line, just straight in line with America’s racist obsession with policing and the carceral system?

ERIK
[00:06:01] When we’re talking about the emergence of gangsta rap and the music that came from it, that is now being used, being targeted. You know, gangster rap itself emerged in large part in response to the hyper policing, where figures like Daryl Gates, who became famous, for example, for militarizing the police force. And in California, you saw all of these sort of anti-gang initiatives, some of which were not even constitutional. That really started to inform the music and the response to it. And then the other thing I would say and then, Mac, I’m sure you’re all over this, but I wouldn’t actually call it niche. You know, as part of our research, we’ve identified five or 600 cases involving rap as evidence. But that is a tiny drop in the bucket. We know the number is in the thousands, probably the tens of thousands. It’s not some isolated practice.

MAC
[00:06:53] Right. And just to add to it, I don’t recall ever, you know, hearing that we labeled this particular rap, gangster rap. I think that the fact that it was spreading across America and a lot of white kids, we’re listening to it. I think there are certain people that felt the need to label and identify that for that particular audience.

ERIK
[00:07:17] And I’m a testament to the truth of that. Right. I was one of those rural white kids from Massachusetts who was listening to first Run DMC. But believe me, as soon as I got N.W.A. and Ice-T, this teenager brain of mine gravitated immediately there. And many of my friends were similar in that way. And so I think that’s right. Part of this is that as rap, this type of rap especially became mainstream, that meant it was going into white households, and there was a real response to that.

KENDALL
[00:07:46] Now that we’ve established the historical context and where this is all coming from, I want to talk about how you each are connected to this issue. Mac, I want to start again with you. This issue is personal to you. Rap Lyrics. Being on trial, your lyrics were used against you. I was wondering if you could take us back to that time and tell the story to our audience.

MAC
[00:08:12] Okay, so it was February 28 was a Sunday night. We had an event scheduled at a nightclub in a very rural area in St Tammany Parish. And I was right outside New Orleans, probably about 30 minutes away from New Orleans. And we went there and I remember it being a little small club. It was kind of packed and at the time, you know. Gangsta rap, keep in mind, was like. It had established itself as a major part of hip-hop. So it was big everywhere and in a lot of, quote-unquote, gangsta rap songs, you know, you hear a lot of loud sounds, a lot of bangs. So imagine we’re in a club that’s dark, smoky, crowded. You’re hearing music that actually has gunshots in the music. So all of this is going on, you know, in a club. So it was somewhere after midnight that a fight broke out on the dance floor. And I saw my brother trying to break the fight up. So my immediate thought was to go walk in over there to see what was happening, because I was there with a lot of people and my mother and father was actually in the club as well. When I took a step toward the incident, I heard what appeared to be a gunshot coming from my right side. What let me know that it was a gunshot when I saw people running. And my immediate reaction was to let go of my pocket, pull my gun out. Now, the biggest mistake I made as I’m running toward the front door, remember, I had a gun in my hand. I didn’t want my gun to bump into anyone. I didn’t want it to go off. So I held it above my head and kind of scooted through the crowd with the gun above my head. And I can vaguely recall people yelling, He has a gun. But I was going toward the front door yelling, Where’s my mama? Because my mother was collecting the admission fees. So I went to the front door, didn’t see my mom, ran back to the club and around the back and my mother was in my car. We went home. Now, once we got home, the brother who was housesitting, my two younger siblings, he met me on my lawn and he said, Slim, the detectives just called here and they need to talk to you about a shooting. So it was at that moment that I learned that someone had actually been shot. So what I did was I went and sat in my room and I tried to recollect everything that I’ve just seen in the past 45 minutes to an hour, because I wanted to make sure that when the cops got there, I knew, you know, I had my information correct. So I put on some sweat pants and waited for the cops to come because I felt that if I was as cooperative as possible, if it helps, you know, help me get through the process where he can test my hands, make sure I didn’t find anything and I’ll be going home. So I sat there and the detectives came to the cops who had detained me were very cordial because I allowed them to search my house. I waived all of my rights. I did all of that. So when the detectives got there, they told the detectives that this young man was cooperative. He let us search his house. He didn’t ask for a warrant. He didn’t do anything. He waived his rights. But their response was Motherf*****. And they just were, they went there getting in my face and yelling. And I just knew that this was a different set of gentlemen. And they had, I just I felt something different. So I was taken from my house, brought to the substation, and I was questioned. And while I was being questioned, I remember just praying silently to myself that whoever was shot would live. Because I felt if they live, obviously, they would be able to tell someone who shot them. Right? So I was sitting there secretly praying to myself like I hope this person, whoever it is, someone walked in the room and whispered something to the detective and left out. So then the detective looked at me and he basically told me that it had shifted from an assault investigation to a murder investigation. And I remember just sobbing. I remember just crying like, oh, shit, because now I know if this person can’t speak for himself and tell them who shot them, and the attitude that these guys are, you know, are exhibiting is making me feel like, wow, they’re going to try to put this on me. Right. So I remember I then felt the need to. Change something that I had initially told him. I initially told the detectives that I did not have a gun on me in the club. I told him that because I knew that the one thing I was guilty of was carrying a concealed weapon. So that was the one thing during the questioning that I was trying to avoid. And this was before I found out someone died. Right?

KENDALL
Mm hmm.

MAC
[13:05] And so once they told me someone had died, I told the cops, no, I did have a gun on me. Now I want to show you where my gun is at, because now I need this gun to prove my innocence. You know what I mean? So I brought them back to my house, gave them the gun that I had. They tested. It was never fired. I remember them doing something with my hands. They tested it, whatever test they did with my hands, came up missing. So officially charged a couple of weeks later, about ten days later, the person who actually did the shooting came forward, told detectives that he was the actual person who shot him. And it wasn’t me.

KENDALL
[00:13:46] Right.

MAC
[00:13:47] At my bond hearing, you know, I was thinking I was confident I was going home. I was like, okay, so this is it. I’m about to be a free man. Didn’t work out that way. The prosecution stated in court that they received information that they never presented. By the way, they never presented this information, but they said that they’ve received information and they have reason to believe that this young man was compensated for his confession, which makes no sense. They didn’t allege that I paid him to shoot anyone. They allege that I paid someone to go to prison for the rest of their lives. So because they knew, it didn’t make any sense, the way they framed it was he’s trying to claim self-defense, he’s trying to get himself and Mac off of the charge.

KENDALL
[00:14:42] Oh, okay. Yeah. Mm hmm.

MAC
[00:14:44] That doesn’t even make any sense. So you have a person that actually confessed to the shooting? They’ve done their investigating. They dig for information on the dug here, they dug there. And what they were left with is a young man who was 22 years old, gainfully employed, who had never been in any running with cops and who displayed a very mild manner in court, who didn’t get in any trouble in the jail, and whom everyone they spoke with was able to say that, Oh, this young man, this is just a mild man, that this is who he is. So we didn’t have anything on him. So the only thing that we had that shows some semblance of aggression is his music. So. They were tasked with a, it was a serious task, because, you know, you’re trying to prosecute someone who you basically have no physical evidence, you have no credible witnesses. So you had to turn to his music, was the only thing that you can display for this jury to show some type of form of aggression or some type of semblance of aggression from him. And that’s where the song that was came into play.

KENDALL
[00:16:12] Yeah. And Mac, you served 21 years.

MAC
[00:16:17] 21 years and four months.

KENDALL
[00:16:21] That’s just such a disgrace. Thank you for sharing all that. It sounds like an incredibly traumatic experience.

MAC
[00:16:29] Quite traumatic, to say the least.

KENDALL
[00:16:32] What did it feel like to have artistic expression brought into this? I mean, artists are known for using metaphor, hyperbole, details that are elevated or fabricated, like a lot of stuff, is not biographical but rather referential. How did it feel to have that used?

MAC
[00:16:57] I felt horrible. I like to think that we don’t live in a society of idiots. People are more intelligent than they are portrayed to be. When we watch movies, we have actors portray these roles. We get caught up in it because it gives us something to get, you know, to fall into for the moment. But we know that all of this stuff is fake. So to have them use- and then, you know, to have them use their pick and chooses of what of the parts of lyrics that they want to use. That is what’s also disheartening because I can take the average young rapper right now. He may say he kill 100 people on this song, but he also said on this song he owns a Learjet. He has like 45 different Rolls-Royces. So, I mean, we can’t pick and choose which part we’re going to say is true.

ERIK
[00:17:46] And a public defender, he’s got 45 Rolls-Royces, but he’s been declared indigent by the court.

MAC
Right.

KENDALL
[00:17:53] It’s poetry. The meaning is actually up for discussion, up for interpretation, for the consumer’s personal experiences to be projected on to the music or the artwork.

ERIK
[00:18:09] And it’s intentionally fluid, yet peculiarly true with, you know, African-American vernacular, black vernacular and black musical traditions. But that’s true for poetry generally. And so that’s what’s so concerning is that all of a sudden you have police and prosecutors who, by the way, have almost zero training ever with any of this coming in and ascribing fixed meaning to the words and ideas that were intentionally written to provoke the opposite response.

KENDALL
[00:18:37] I want to turn to you, Eric, as I mentioned in the introduction, are the coauthor of a book called Rap on Trial about this exact issue. And I’m wondering how you also personally came to this work. How did this enter your life?

ERIK
[00:18:53] Well, yeah, I, I was somebody who was drawn to rap music just sort of at an entertainment level, you know, starting as a teenager and always enjoyed the music. But when I was going to college, you couldn’t take classes on hip hop. You can’t. And then I eventually started taking a real interest in African American literature. And if you study African American literature, you really can’t divorce it from the musical influence. They’re so closely intertwined. And so that’s when I really started to find, I guess, a lane- something that really interested me. And I was specifically interested in the relationship between black creative expression in the United States and law enforcement and what the law and that relationship meant for the art and how it responded to surveillance, to harassment. And so that’s been my research, you know, and starting from the antebellum South to the present day, I’ve written about all periods around there. But when I stumbled across this phenomenon, you know, the use of rap lyrics, in particular in criminal cases, I actually came about it because a colleague of mine in the UK named Ethnic Quin at the University of Manchester was actually doing something similar in the UK, uncovering that grime lyrics were being used in a similar fashion. And I thought to myself, okay, if it’s happening in the UK, what do you bet it’s happening in the incarceration capital of the world? And this was just as I started that investigation. Little Boozy, who’s now Boozy Badazz, was on trial in Baton Rouge. They were using his lyrics. But aside from a few high-profile cases, I wanted to see how pervasive this was. And so I started digging. And so that’s when I sort of stumbled into this expert role. And since then, you know, I’ve probably worked in some capacity on 100 or more cases. I’ve testified in a dozen or so at the state and federal level. You know, I will say one other thing I didn’t work on, I had had no connection to Mac’s case I was barely out of undergrad when that happened. Since then, when I’ve gone around the country talking about this, what I’d go out of my way to say is, as I am, my role is not to speak to the guilt or innocence of people. It’s to speak to their need for a fair trial. And my strong conviction that using rap lyrics generally, if not always denies them that. But I would say all that as a disclaimer, then I’d say, okay, but there’s one exception. There’s one exception where I am actually attesting to the innocence of somebody. And that’s Mack Phipps. His case was so egregious. I have since come across other cases that are equally egregious, to be honest. But it was so shocking to me that this kind of miscarriage of justice could occur. And if you’re someone like me, actually someone like Mac too who’s never who never really had any run-ins with law enforcement or the criminal justice system. You really? I anyway, was naive. I believed that there was

MAC
Likewise.

ERIK
[21:55] Yeah, yes. And so having seen this and then seen other cases, many other cases like it really shook my faith and at the same time motivated me to push back.

MAC
[00:22:06] Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. I, I think I was naive enough to think that the system worked properly until I experienced that it didn’t.

KENDALL
[00:22:16] I appreciate, Eric, how you say you’re advocating for people to have a fair trial, because I think that’s, you know, no matter kind of what your beliefs on the validity of the carceral system period as a methodology for restoration, the idea that everyone deserves a fair trial is something that feels like a very American value. Mac, I want to talk to you about this idea of incrimination and just like how it could potentially thwart the expression and the development of the genre of rap. What has the reception been to cases like your own from the community?

MAC
[00:23:00] Well, unfortunately, I think that more people in the community should be more outraged about it. I mean, and I think that we need to do something about it because my my my model is ultimately what everything or every position that I take in life is, you know, to treat others the way I want to be treated. If I was actually guilty of a crime, then I wouldn’t waste my time trying to do this work that we’re doing now. We’re trying to get these laws passed across the country. And I think that for artists coming in the future, I have a duty and a responsibility to make sure they don’t have to censor themselves when they create their art. Because if they’re creating their art under the pressure of censorship, then I don’t think it’s art. So that’s what makes it important to me. And I want to make sure that they don’t have to worry about that when they’re creating.

ERIK
[00:24:00] I think there is a certain there’s an obvious racial element to all of this. So the overwhelming majority of defendants in this situation are young men, Black or Hispanic. This is who’s being targeted. Right. But, you know, another racial element is the relationship between the recording industry and young Black or Latino artists. You know, Master P was probably the exception in this, but, you know, a lot of the major labels were overseen by predominantly white executives who had no meaningful connection to the communities, out of which many rappers came. And they did actually pressure many artists to take a more thug-like approach to their music. Even shelving albums until artists would agree that they were going to do more of the gangsta style. So that as an expert, that’s also something that I try to convey to judges and juries that these are these are young entrepreneurs. They are responding to market pressures the same way professional wrestlers do, horror film directors do, and everybody else. It’s also important for all of us to understand how truly cruel this practice is, because on the one hand, we limit all of these opportunities. We create some avenues to escape those, you know, poverty, violence, and then we slam the door. When you take advantage of one of those opportunities, it’s a rock and a hard place. It really does represent our criminal justice system. I mean, that in and of itself is what we’re looking at.

MAC [00:25:26] I Okay. I couldn’t have said that better.

KENDALL
[00:25:28] Yeah, me neither, Mac. Me neither. I want to talk about what kind of lyrics are criminalized, how this kind of operates in an actual trial or court case. You know, I mentioned that some cases are actually being reopened. Erik, what’s at play here?

ERIK [00:25:46] So the rap lyrics and videos are used at all stages of the process, so they can be used to motivate investigations to include reopening years old, cold cases. They can be used certainly in indictments and they’re used routinely in indictments, and then they can be used obviously at trial and then post-trial at sentencing. You know, I’ve served as an expert in a couple of death penalty cases where there is that execution, that second phase, where they use things like that to determine whether someone’s going to be put to death or not. Yeah, but what we focus on is the trial phase. Most of the time it’s prosecutors using lyrics to establish the defendant’s involvement in some underlying crime. So you’ve been charged with a shooting. You made songs that mention shooting one and one equals two. Now we are using it to show that you have knowledge of guns or that maybe it’s motive, an intent, something like that. Or if you wrote the song after the crime occurred, you just wrote a confession to it. Right? You’re now confessing. So that’s the most prominent set of cases. But there is a small but and growing subset of cases where the lyrics themselves are punished because, you know, the First Amendment, although, you know, fairly broadly written, there are some categories of speech that it doesn’t protect and that includes so-called true threats. And so we have seen a number of cases where young men are prosecuted because their lyrics are viewed as actual threats to people. And so those are the cases where we see the First Amendment most clearly implicated.

KENDALL
[00:27:21] Erik, some people listening to this conversation are going to be asking themselves about how using rap lyrics in a criminal trial squares with what we see both in the Constitution but also in legal case precedent about free speech. The Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to use protected speech as evidence when that speech is irrelevant to the case. And this was established in the 2013 case, Dawson versus Delaware. The case itself set a higher standard for the use of evidence when it comes to art forms. But yet still today we see rap lyrics being used to reopen cases and being used to incriminate people. How? Why? Explain how this works here.

ERIK
[00:28:09] I mean, the Constitution does talk about freedom of speech and assembly. If you look at the text of the Constitution. And I think just as important is that courts have repeatedly upheld that expression is creative expression. Artistic expression is protected by the First Amendment, political expression, artistic expression. So we’re talking comic books, films, music, you name it. That’s one of the reasons that this practice is so concerning, is because you have a First Amendment, you have courts that have repeatedly reinforced the notion that artistic expression is protected, and yet this is still happening to rap artists. There are certain types of speech that the first and, I meant according to the courts, does not protect against. I mentioned true threats. You know, there are a number. There are a handful of categories. But generally speaking, rap music should be protected. Now, one of the issues is that, you know, an organization like the ACLU almost exclusively approaches this as a First Amendment issue. And that has not been a successful approach. Although why do you think? Well, because in every case I’ve worked on, lawyers will make two arguments about why the rap lyrics should not have been admitted. They will, they will make the rules of evidence argument being, you know, this is so prejudicial that it’s prejudicial value is more significant than any probative value it has. So the prejudicial outweighs the probative. Those are the rules of evidence. And then they will also make the First Amendment freedom of speech argument that never gets any traction, ever. Judges do not do not acknowledge that they always rule on this in terms of the rules of evidence. So the First Amendment approach isn’t particularly successful. That’s unfortunate, but that is how it’s played out so far.

KENDALL
[00:30:04] And so what do we do? What is the solution?

ERIK
[00:30:10] Well, you know, one thing I want to add to and just one last thing on the First Amendment sort of arguments is the First Amendment argument around artistic expression or any expression really typically involves some slippery slope argument. So the argument is that, hey, you might not like or care about rap music, but someday if you don’t stand up for rap music, it’s going to be the things you love that the government comes for. You know, it’s a good argument, but it’s not an accurate argument because we’ve already seen over four decades that that isn’t true. It specifically targets rap music. It isn’t going to spread to white art forms because it would have already. We have plenty of violent genres, musical and otherwise, and it hasn’t. So, you know, that argument doesn’t really hold. I am hopeful that there are new strategies for making a stronger First Amendment argument, but I think there’s going to be more research that’s needed first. I think I’ve made the point that, you know, the government has always gone after black expression. It has always targeted hip hop. You know that it mentioned 2 Live Crew. Right. So they tried for a while to use the obscenity angle, didn’t get any traction. So they’re going to find another way and they’re going to keep looking. So I think on top of these sort of statutory solutions is also continuing to focus on education. And I know that sounds just so vague. Americans will disagree with that. But it’s true whether it’s educating attorneys, judges, and certainly inside the courtroom jurors. So that’s why I’m grateful to have this opportunity and opportunities like it, you know, to reach a wider audience, not only to raise awareness about the practice itself, but also, you know, why it’s so deeply concerning.

KENDALL
[00:31:51] Oh, yeah, absolutely. It can feel almost dismissive to just say, like, this is an, you know, education issue. We need the public to have greater awareness. But we often say at the ACLU that really education and public perception of an issue does actually precede legal or legislative change. That’s been the case in a lot of landmark victories that we’ve seen at the Supreme Court. We saw public perception of gay marriage changed before we actually saw the Supreme Court grant the right to marry to gay individuals. So while it doesn’t feel meaningful, it actually is meaningful. I thought that would be worth noting, but I want to actually pivot back to you, Mac, were talking about this problem. In a very legal, almost distant legislative way when I know that this is like a very personal issue to you, your life has been. Unbelievably impacted and irreparably damaged by this issue. How does it feel sitting where you are now to be talking about it in this way?

MAC
[00:33:13] I actually think that discussing it is therapy for me and I still have a friend that’s in prison for a crime he not only didn’t commit. His stage persona was used against him. And I think that is, you know, I have a duty to talk to not only those men but to myself and so my family, to all of the people who fought so hard for me to be able to sit here and speak with you today as a free man. I feel indebted to those folks, and I want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else and. I just want to make something very clear. I’m not giving people a pass for crimes that they committed. My stance is simple. If you’re going to charge someone with a serious of a crime as murder charges and these are serious felonies, I would like to think that you have more than song lyrics to prosecute these people. And it says a lot about sloppy police work, laziness, and not wanting to do your job. And just, you know, harping on something that we all know is entertainment is just another way to criminalize the expression of Black men. And I don’t think that most people are racist. I don’t think that most people are inherently racist. I do, however, think that most people have their biases and they have their quote-unquote prejudices because it’s shaped by their environment and shaped by their family and stuff like this. And I just think that until we as individuals begin to see those who we may consider or may have been taught that are not like us until we begin to see them as we see ourselves. We’re going to continue in this cycle of these issues. I was convicted by an all white, predominantly over 40 jury and from a very rural area in Louisiana. And I don’t think these people were horrible. I think that there is a part of these individuals that really thought they were probably doing the right thing. But they were misinformed.

KENDALL
[00:35:38] Eric, Mac, thank you both so much for joining us and for sharing your passion and your work with us and informing us all on how we can, you know, do better. We really appreciate it.

MAC
[00:35:54] Well, thank you for having me.

ERIK
[00:35:56] Yeah. And thank you for the work that you all do at the ACLU to stand up for free speech. It’s needed now more than ever.

KENDALL
[00:36:02] Certainly. And we really appreciate you two coming on and sharing your story. It takes a lot.

MAC [00:36:09] Thank you.

KENDALL
[00:36:14] Thanks so much to Mac and Eric for joining us and thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to At Liberty wherever you get your podcasts and rate and review the show. We really appreciate the feedback. Until next week, stay kind.