Maya Gwynn
With KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn with Black Perspectives IE, a show where we learn about the amazing things members of the Black community are doing in the Inland Empire. My guest today is Joe Richardson, civil rights attorney and host of Inland Edition here at KVCR TV. Thank you so much for being here today.
Joe Richardson
Thanks for having us, Maya. It's good to see you.
Maya Gwynn
Good to see you too. So, to start off, what are the specific personality traits that you have that you feel make you a good civil rights attorney?
Joe Richardson
Communication. You know, hopefully everybody's lucky enough to have a teacher that changes their life. I've had a few, but my first one was my sixth grade teacher Mrs. Bird. She told me that not everybody can write a poem that rhymes in three pages in fourth or fifth grade, and that communication is your gift. And I always enjoyed it. And communication has a CO at the beginning. CO means ‘with’ or ‘together’. And so, I wanted to connect to people. And, you know, I enjoyed politics. Learned about that early and understood that most politicians were lawyers for better or for worse. And then that kind of set me on the path to wanting to do law school. So communication, I think, is huge. I think a desire to bridge build is important on the civil side. As it pertains to civil rights, 90% of your cases are going to get resolved one way or the other before trial. So you want to be ready to try cases, you want to be able to try cases, but you've got to be a bridge builder, because you've got to look for opportunities to create a win win. And often it goes that way. So communication, bridge building, and then hopefully, a desire to just do right by people, and to leave things and situations better than how you found them. Because I think sometimes in the Civil Rights area, we get an opportunity not to just get something resolved because someone got their hand caught in the cookie jar, as it were, but maybe we can fix something that's larger, fix something systemic. Get enough people whose hands get caught in the cookie jar where now they're gonna fix and remedy a problem so that we don't get there again. So hopefully, you know, all those things kind of come together. They certainly help me in what it is that I do.
Maya Gwynn
Do you remember the first instance you realized you wanted to be a lawyer?
Joe Richardson
Yeah I mean, I would love to say my dad used to talk a lot about politics when I was little, so names like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Maxine Waters, Thurgood Marshall, you know, dinner table conversation. But I gotta tell you, for all of the things that I saw in terms of people doing things in civil rights or whatever - I was watching the TV show Matlock in the 10th grade. And this guy resolved these cases every week before, you know, 8:57pm and I just thought he was so clever. And so one of the things that I took from that is that I hope that I'm clever that way, that I can, like, put things together. But I will say that there are things that I saw with my dad dealing with, you know, the criminal justice system. I wanted to be on the civil side, but things pertaining to property and some other issues where we thought potentially racism or civil rights implications existed, so that was there as well, and it made me feel like maybe I could connect the dots to help people that way.
Maya Gwynn
Definitely, my grandma would always watch Matlock and say, sit down. He does not lose a case.
Joe Richardson
I'm gonna be just like him. Now I don't want to wear the same suit every week. But other than that, I want to be just like him.
Maya Gwynn
With all that that you just talked about, and then also someone that is dealing with racial social justice, how do you take care of yourself? Because you can't pour from an empty cup.
Joe Richardson
Yeah that's a really good question. You remind yourself that the work will be there tomorrow and it will have brought friends, you know. So what you do is you give yourself a cutoff point. I'm not particularly good at working at home, so I try to let my home time be home time. So I try to be very, very intentional about that. At the risk of saying something overly simple - when I was little, the movies was a happy place and a safe place for me, so I keep a movie pass, and the movies are downstairs from my office. So I probably do about 20 movies a year. Sometimes on a Friday afternoon, work till such and such a time, go downstairs, go to the movies. You know, I really just try to be intentional about my balance. I do the personal trainer two or three days a week, you know, my church activities and all of these other things. And so try to do those things that kind of balance you and connect you. When I get home, I like to be present. I take a moment, watch my daughter do her new stuff. She's a journalist, so I try to just do things that kind of keep me even, and that includes stepping out on the practice, in other words, so doing things like this that allow you to get perspective about what it is that you're doing. As you get back in it, you get to measure progress, I go into a speech or things that are connected to the passion of communication. I read quite a bit, and so, you know, I kind of try to put it together that way, to keep myself sane, as it were.
Maya Gwynn
Definitely and for those who from all different types of walks of life, who maybe are high income or low income. What's the best way for them to get involved in social justice or things in their community?
Joe Richardson
You know, the first thing I think, is conversations. You know, I met Barack Obama in law school. Sat and had conversation with him. He came and spoke one day. We had a Minority Affairs Coordinator Dean that kind of knew everyone. She's like, ‘I got this brother named Barack coming today. Yeah, and you going because you don't have class’. The next week, our office is a hangout point. I go and see him and say, ‘Hello, hey, Joe. How are you?’ I mean, so you connect with people. But as fantastic as he is, things don't change because he said something. Things change because people have conversations about what he said. You have conversations with people that you have relational influence with, people that'll listen to you because of who you are, maybe because you're in the family, maybe because you work with them, maybe because they've seen you be a good person, be a true person, etc. So now, what is it that you think about that? And then figure out ways to be involved otherwise, not only in terms of understanding what's happening with issues, how your local representatives could contribute to those issues and contribute to your area moving forward on those issues - there's not only a matter of that, but also where each of us kind of see ourselves as well.
Maya Gwynn
Great advice. All right, so we're gonna go into our rapid fire portion. So just the first thing that you think of, if your work had a theme song, what would it be?
Joe Richardson
Oh Sensitivity.
Maya Gwynn
Oh yeah. Who sings that?
Joe Richardson
Ralph Tresvant from New Edition. I'm glad you asked. Fall 1990, made it to number four on the chart.
Maya Gwynn
Okay, I know the other New Edition song, just not that one. All right, if you had to teach a master class and a random skill that you have, what would it be?
Joe Richardson
Have to be communication, for sure, I've actually done it once or twice, because you learn as much as you teach.
Maya Gwynn
And what's your favorite IE restaurant or landmark, something that reminds you of the Inland Empire?
Joe Richardson
Oh,boy, for me, I mean I went to the University of Redlands, so I gotta, you know, I'm a bulldog, so I have to say that the U of R campus is gonna be my thing.
Maya Gwynn
And how can people keep up with you and support what you're doing?,
Joe Richardson
Sure well, we're at McCune Law Group, so you can always look up McCune Law Group. Look us up online or in social media, Joespeak_MLG, that's where we are on Instagram. I believe we're Joespeak on Tik Tok. You could also look up Joe Richardson, civil rights attorney. It'll make us pop up.
Maya Gwynn
Thank you so much for being here today.
Joe Richardson
Yeah, thank you very much, and thanks for going easy on me.
Maya Gwynn
Of course. Joe Richardson is the civil rights attorney and host of KVCR TV's Inland Edition. Join us again next week for Black Perspectives IE. Support for the segment comes from Black Equity Fund at IECF, advancing racial equity and supporting long term investments in black led organizations and Riverside and San Bernardino counties. For KVCR Public Media. I'm Maya Gwynn, thank you.
