Jecorey Arthur is the soon to be youngest member ever elected to the City Council of Louisville in the state of Kentucky. He’s also a professor and a musician.

Democrats hold the majority in the Metro Council with 19 blue seats and seven red seats.

Jecorey “1200” Arthur, before he was elected to Louisville’s Metro Council, was a popular rap/hip-hop/poet/activist/artist that appeared on Live Lunches, Waterfront Wednesdays, and his songs on our airwaves. We are glad he’s still performing in addition to his work as a Councilman for our city. “Mama Please” is a song and video he participated in that features the vocals of Drea d’Nur and the guitar playing of Rami Nashashibi. The song is a powerful statement of the times we are living in and dedicated to the memories of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. It is also a dedication to Cariol Horne and pushes a national call to action in support of Cariol’s Law that comprehensively addresses police violence. The new album from Drea and Rami is called This Love Thing.

The Black vote carries a lot of weight in the 2020 presidential election, and there's been a hard push for the Black community to get the polls. One group of Black voters says they're tired of politicians who want their vote but don't have a true Black agenda.

On one occasion we recorded in Brooklyn and here in Chicago at Studio 35 on the South Side. Prior to COVID-19 travel restrictions, I was flying most folks to Buffalo but post-March all of that changed. Yet, I decided to start flying again in July. I was going back to Buffalo and we recorded songs like “Jerusalem” and “Mama Please” while on Zoom with Brother Ali in Minneapolis, Maimouna Youssef in Philadelphia and Jecorey in Louisville. The core band was rooted in Buffalo and remained consistent on each track and so it always felt like one big family in the studio and we all really did grow to really fall in love with so many facets of this experience.

Jecorey Arthur joins the show to have one of the most important podcast conversations thus far. Jecorey is indeed a young trailblazer, he is the youngest councilman in Louisville, KY history! The epitome of black excellence. Jecorey and Michael discuss topics ranging from ADOS, Trump, Biden, Ice Cube and much more! Jecorey is traveling the path of leaders that came before us and setting the example for those who will follow. Tune in and as always be prepared to learn something.

Vocalists, emcees, spoken-word poets and musicians — many of them longtime IMAN artists — took part, including Louisville community activist and musician Jecorey Arthur, who was recently elected to the city council in that city, where the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by police has sparked protests and calls for reform.

NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with musicians and activists Rami Nashashibi and Drea D'Nur about their new album, This Love Thing.

"Domestic violence and intimate partner violence does not go away in a pandemic," said Kenneth Cox, the center’s vice president of communication. “We noticed that the calls that come into our crisis line have increased (and) the times were longer for the calls.”

This page is dedicated to those actions. A place where advocates and allies alike can: listen to the stories, learn about the problems and engage in the solutions to racism and inequality in America.

During the Wednesday panel, participants offered up other ways the public can work to promote racial equity in Louisville. Councilman-elect Jecorey Arthur told viewers: “We need you protesting at your Thanksgiving dinner. We need you protesting every holiday, telling your aunts and uncles and your mother, your grandmother and your family about injustice that’s been happening, not only these past few months but these past few hundred years.”

Comparing Louisville’s recent reckoning with racial inequality to his favorite Malcolm X quote, Arthur said that the city residents have realized that a knife has been thrust into the back of Black citizens. But, they haven’t begun to pull it out or heal the wound for the Black community.

In Louisville, protests are demanding greater accountability from both the city police and the attorney general’s office. “I’m thinking about how we organize as a Black community,” says one city council member.

The statue of King Louis XVI that once towered over passers by outside Metro Hall is now in storage, awaiting conservators to look it over.

Beyond the protests, Arthur said it is important for the city's Black caucus to be proactive rather than solely reactive in tackling issues that plague Black Louisvillians — such as an impending higher rate of job displacement over the next decade due to automation in the workplace.

"There's potential (for unity), but we can't get to that point until you acknowledge the injustice," said Jecorey Arthur, a local musician and Louisville Metro councilman-elect. "To say the Kentucky Derby is a time of unity when it is the symbol of segregation in our city shows your lack of knowledge about reality."

LOUISVILLE — The days before America’s most famous horse race typically engulf this city in a whirl of activity and opulent anticipation. The Kentucky Derby is as much about $1,000 mint juleps and flamboyant millinery as a hoof-pounding competition that lasts barely two minutes.

I am Black. Beyond being Black by look, I'm Black by lineage. Meaning, I have inherited debt, I have inherited trauma from generation after generation of neglected people, of enslaved people, of Jim Crow people. That was the lens I announced my campaign from. I have been very clear from the start that my goal is to fix Black Louisville.

Did you miss out on civics in school? Are you unfamiliar with how government works? Would you be interested in learning with me? Then sign up for my Political Patreon! It's political education 101 through multi-media content.

Dear students — here is your assignment this semester! Let's all win.⁣
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Shoutout to our District 4 JCPS Brown, Roosevelt-Perry, Lincoln, Breckinridge-Franklin, Coleridge Taylor, Byck, Shelby, Meyzeek, Western, Central, Breckinridge Metro, Ahrens, and Heuser!

"As her family, we can do much, but there's no timeframe on when she's going to be OK and able to fend for herself," Trinity's grandfather said. "… Something needs to be done, and the law needs to prevail, at least in this case, because this child is innocent."

“This moment is probably the smartest in all of the history of the human race, with the most access we’ve ever had to information and technology. In the 1820s, when the Louisville police department was created, we didn’t have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google. You didn’t have news at the tip of your fingers. And we also have advanced past a moment where, in the ’80s, we had the Michael Jacksons and the Bill Cosbys of the world, the Whitney Houstons of the world. They were the forefront of what America thought life was like for Black people. But they really created a veil that we almost hid behind, and our struggles hid behind, our failures hid behind. We see Beyoncé and LeBron James and Michael Jordan and we think that’s what it means to be Black in America.”

Arthur, who has been a visible presence at the ongoing protests downtown, said it's unbelievable this conversation even has to take place in 2020.

"This panel in itself is based on the assumption that downtown was never meant to be racially just," he said.

"Everything happening between the pandemic and the protests that's really just 200 years imploding on itself but in Louisville, in the last two centuries," Metro councilmember Jecorey Arthur said.

At 28-years-old, Arthur is a local musician, professor, and organizer who now wants to tackle gentrification’s negative effects and turn them into positive ones, where the community is served first and foremost, once he takes office.

Jecorey Arthur, who at 28 is the youngest person to be elected to the city’s metro council and will sit on the body starting in January, said Louisville was still “very much ” operated by “plantation capitalists and plantation dynasties” and is unsurprised by the slow action on Taylor’s case.

CBC News Network host Michael Serapio speaks to activist and professor Jecorey Arthur about the ongoing protests in Louisville, sparked by the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

The city of Louisville, Kentucky, has been rocked by the shooting death of Breonna Taylor by police in March. Jecorey Arthur, who has become the youngest person ever elected to the Louisville Metro Council at the age of 28, said he wants to address the systemic racism in his hometown.