In this episode Justin Finlayson of UnitedBorders talks about music culture, his charity work, upbringing and his own experiences with knife crime .
Justin on the history of Harlesden:
"When my parent's grew up in Harlesden it was a racist area, it was a predominantly white racist area and once you got out of school as a young black person you had to run, there was no messing about. When you speak to all of that generation you realise what happened for us to even be here today."
Justin on his experience growing up in Harlesden:
"My dad set up the first Black Panther party chapter in Stonebridge, it was the Hilltop Club above the precinct and that was a space for all young black kids to go afterwards and know their history, do boxing and do chess and that kind of stuff. So I saw when that whole movement was sabotaged by the police, at that point these guy were like "alright you know crack can be sold in the area" so anyone selling crack and they find out they're smashing you up and you gotta move out of the area. So I kind of grew up in a really strong political time where a lot of prominent leaders from the area were either killed or locked up for long periods of time, so it's just one of those ones where with seeing all of that and growing up with it, it was just like alright cool everything i've seen, everything that I've studied from a world view as well in terms of history is gonna encapsulate what it is that i'm going to do."
Justin on how the murder of James Owusu led to him becoming an activist:
"He was a business student, he was 22 years of age and everyone here knew him because he looked after his mum, his mum had a heart condition, and he was an only child. James was a budding Dj and all the rest of it but the fact that he put his own uni career on hold and spent part time to look after his mum, in the hood he was like a hero, we were like 'nah we would respect that' you know, somebody that is just that young who doesn't want no carer for his mum, he's the main carer. So when he got killed, he got shot 7 times in the back and died in his mums arms, it hit the area hard; That one hit me real hard so I was just like 'you know what, I need to actually do something more for this situation and I can't just set up a project in church road its gotta be a project that gets all these other youths who don't want to be part of the problem, who want to be part of the solution'."
Justin on moving to Cyprus with Akala:
"We were always involved in music from the writing perspective for his sister and then he said to me one day 'look there are a lot of black people that go to Ayia napa maybe we should do a food restaurant there' so I said 'yeah cool i've got the cooks, come on let's not talk about it, let's get it done'. Me and him went to Cyprus in January and he's always been as sharp as he is now at 15 so we went there and he basically negotiated all of our contracts and everything and he was only 16 at the time."
Justin on music:
"I've always kind of been active in music and he's [Akala] connected me to many things from touring with 50 cent, Christina Aguilera and Jay z to going all around Africa. I've done a lot of things with him"
Justin on austerity and how he funded UnitedBorders:
"That [austerity] was our first set back and I realised that even if you have something that works it doesn't really matter. I was using my own work wages to make certain things happen and any money I got I paid my team so they can take time off work, but I was still working full time and delivering this on the side, so at that point I didn't feel that sense of 'okay now was the time to jump ship' it was just something I did on the side and the money wasn't there so I was like let me just leave the bus for a little bit to concentrate on other things and I'll get back round to it."
Justin on finding out about his son's stabbing:
"On the 2nd of January at 10:30 I got a phone call from my wife saying Rico's been stabbed, Rico is my oldest son and I was like "what are you talking about", it just didn't make sense, he was stabbed 11 times and then the next phone call I got was from the police and they said he wasn't going to make it, I was in Bristol I which was two hours away so I had a two hour drive to London and all I was thinking was 'oh my god my phones here and I just don't want my phone to ring.' "
Justin on spirituality and the power of prayer:
"I believe in the power of prayer specifically if you're in a mad situation and that prayer is aligned to your true feelings, thats the only time that I tend to pray. I don't have wasted prayers, I do now give thanks to the Universe but I know that prayer actually works because all I prayed for was to keep him alive and for the phone not to ring. My whole mantra during that two hour ride was 'don't let the phone ring, keep Rico alive' I kept that mantra up until I reached St Mary's hospital."
Justin on his son's stabbing:
"It was just after New Years and he was walking my younger cousin back to the train station because they all stayed at the house and he said that when he was down there he kind of noticed some guys in hoodies and wasn't sure what was going on. Next thing you know he realised they were running after them, so he and my cousin just started to run but they got split up and Rico ran into a cul-de-sac, all the guys just ran with him and they just started stabbing . He started screaming and then on the last scream I think someone turned the light on and thats when the guys ran off. Honestly the people that turned the lights on saved his life and as well as that he couldn't move so he crawled to the door and thats what saved him, if he stood up he would've died."
Justin on the importance of strong father figures:
"There are so many youths out there with no father guidance that don't really know about male love or male attention. So that's part of what i'm about, that's what I do. So if you're not in the best setting you can still create something from what you've seen."
Justin on single mothers:
"For me that is just a person that needs extra support, so all these opinions around single mums are not useful because the reality is a woman that's got a child in her stomach for nine months, at no point is she envisioning this child having no father figure. 9 times out of 10 I feel like men are the ones severing these relationships. If you've walked away from a relationship you've got to work twice as hard now because now you've got to support someone financially and you've got to make a safe space for your children."
Justin's 5 indicators of at risk youth:
1. Likely to come from a single parent family
2. Known to social services
3. Financially deprived background
4. Expelled from school
5. Known to the police
Justin on Government spending:
"If you can spend 30 million on a Royal wedding which is only one day, and that is our money, how can't you spend 30 million in deprived areas. I see money being sucked from one area and being prioritised for Government spending. Why are teachers the worst paid? why is that happening? they should be balling. The people who are working in the hardest aspects of society should be rewarded the most it shouldn't be the other way round."
Justin on stop and search:
"The interesting thing about stop and search is that it never stops. So even when they say 'we need to get it back' it never stopped for us [black people]. We are always at the top of the stop and search scale. When the IRA were bombing the country, guess who were still getting more stops and searches than anyone else: us."
Justin on his experience with stop and search:
"I used to get stop and searched weekly to the point where I wouldn't tell my parents anymore and it'll just be normal. But it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing."
Justin on police:
"It all gets rolled into one narrative, that we're against stop and search because we are always targeted heavier than anyone else. People go 'oh they just don't like the police' no we're cool with police but how about having police that come from the area, that are not from elites and don't come into London for the first time with a racial bias set. Even if you had white boys that grew up around London they'd know certain things because they've got black friends. But when you're dealing with people that don't come from the actual borough itself it doesn't work. So the Metropolitan police for the longest time have been failing us because they cant recruit and when they do recruit black officers leave because of the internal racism that's going on in there."
Justin on Drill music and the importance of female artists:
"I was heavy into R&B, into Reggae, into Soca so I had a myriad of music, but a lot of young people now are just into one genre so I think that's more the problem, the fact that certain other artists are not elevated. We've got female artists that are doing well but are not being elevated on the same level as the male artists, they should be given the same push. My point is that once you start to elevate and push female artists we're gonna get more female dialogue because at the moment there's a lot of talk about Drill, but what about the female artists?, what about female expression? and a lot of these young boys are missing that, so when they chat to women they don't even know how to talk to women because they're objectifying them 24/7."
Justin on Government cuts:
"I always say if you wanna discuss knife crime then discuss cuts crime. Because it's criminal what the Government's done it is actually criminal. There's a correlation, there's a pattern. You've got Mp's that have now understood that there's a direct impact on cutting services to people and a lot of the time i think we get kind of too caught up in statistics. The Government has played this role where it's the parent, so if you're in a relationship the Government wouldn't help them but if you're a single parent then the Government want to play partner but cool if you wanted to do that then do it till the end, you maintain the youth services, you maintain the services that we need in the hospitals and you maintain the teachers getting paid."
Justin on what's next for UnitedBorders:
"At the end of this month we take away 20 young people to Devon to do surfing and what's exciting about it is none of them have even left ends. We've also got a 'Summer of Sweat programme', Rico is leading the kickboxing side of things and we've got a young woman called Claudia who's doing the dancing side of things. We've also got another guy who's spent most of his life in prison and was one of England's most notorious villains and he's doing football now, he runs a football academy. So we always get people who are young and people who have been through it."
"So there's a lot of exciting things coming up but I think more than anything we have to understand and recognise that particularly with the black community we're in the position that we are in right now because we didn't financially do a lot of the right things, so with our young people in particular we just want to make the money and connect then to morals as well, so it's money and morals together it is not money over morals."
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