Charlie Robinson (00:01.366)
Welcome to macroaggressions. I'm your host Charlie Robinson. If you're watching us on rumble band video YouTube vigilante TV or you're listening wherever podcasts are served. Thanks a million. We appreciate your support We couldn't do it without you if you want to connect with me the website is macroaggressions.io Hopefully you're taking a look over at activist post every morning. You've bookmarked it getting your news over there natural blaze as well fantastic articles by journalists who are writing about important

stories when they matter, not four years after the fact when it's too late. we couldn't do this show without our sponsors. So luckily we've got great ones for you. Chemical Free Body has been with me from really from the beginning. Tim James has been on this show more than anybody. He's devoted to making sure that people improve their health. It's fixable. This is a problem that we need to take charge of. You have to get honest with what you're putting into your body and Chemical Free Body makes fantastic supplements that actually work.

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Charlie Robinson (02:24.396)
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DontGetPushedAround.com is the website to go to to check it out. All right, now that the business is out of the way, let's get down to it with our good friend. You may know him from the Conscious Resistance Network. You may know him from the Pyramid of Power. It's hard to miss him. He's out there doing outstanding work. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show, Derek Brose. Hi, Derek. It's great to see you again. How are you?

Derrick (03:18.657)
I'm doing great brother, thanks for having me back on.

Charlie Robinson (03:20.854)
Well, thanks for being here and you've done a ton of outstanding work over the years and we're not gonna talk about too much of that. We're gonna talk about your new work because so fascinating to understand, I think, the backstories of how people got here. I know what led me here and what led me to this was being the sucker at the card table playing three card Monte and not understanding what the scam is and just getting

Derrick (03:28.697)
You

Charlie Robinson (03:50.242)
destroyed in the dot-com bubble and the housing market and I'm working in these industries and you'd think I would know and I didn't and so I had this awakening like I need to understand what's going on. I clearly don't, I don't know and I took it personally that I was being lied to and it led me down this path that I could have never imagined and I certainly couldn't have written a business plan to figure this all out. So I'm always kind of fascinated with how people wind up

Derrick (04:13.913)
you

Charlie Robinson (04:18.24)
in this world because we're talking about really important issues and we're doing that at a time when it matters, but we're also by doing this, we're sacrificing other things. There's other things that we could be doing. I used to have a really high paying job and it didn't, ultimately it didn't satisfy me. And I'd hear the stories about that and I think, yeah, well, I'd love to have that problem. I'm willing to try it out, you know, and see how it goes. And I felt very empty and

and it led me into this and I'm not here for the money and I don't here for any of this other stuff, just trying to make sense of this crazy world. So I know how I got here and it was just feeling frustrated that I didn't understand it. How did you get here?

Derrick (05:05.751)
Yeah, thanks for that brother and thanks for the opportunity to share about this. as you said, mean, most people who know my work know me for journalism, know me for activism or some of the various projects that I've taken on over the last 16 years. got into activism back in Houston, Texas, where I'm originally from in 2010, kind of started waking up to conspiracies via Ron Paul, Alex Jones, Jim Mars, you know, lot of those.

familiar names in late 2009. But actually, tend to tell people that I really started to wake up, or least I think in a bigger way, maybe more of a spiritual kind of personal development way in 2005. November 16, 2005 actually, just 20 years ago, just two months ago, I got arrested at 20 years old. Two weeks before I turned 21, I was charged with felony possession of controlled substance. I got caught with three a half grams of crystal meth.

bong and scale and baggies and all this sort of stuff because I had spent the better part of two years right out of high school and into college dealing drugs, being addicted to drugs, bouncing from one thing, you know, being the guy puking everywhere, doing 20 beer bongs a night to then being on Xanax to then being on this thing. know, eventually January 2005, I tried Crystal and it was a you know, short kind of rush to the bottom from there of being homeless and

losing everything I pretty much had, burning bridges with family, eventually living in a crack in meth house, and then also eventually getting myself sober off that, but continuing to deal drugs in the process. And so yeah, I got arrested and that was, I think, the beginning of my real awakening, you could say, because I mean, I'd always been sort of anti-authority, mistrusting of government. And I grew up in metal and punk scene. I was always a punk vocalist and metal vocalist. So a lot of that is just like, yeah, fuck the government kind of thing, but not with any sort of

deep philosophical understanding, just kind of a rebel without a cause, you could say, right? And so I kind of already had that in me, but it wasn't until much later, as I said, where I started to understand things on a deeper level. So for me, this getting arrested and then not only just getting arrested, I'd kind of been arrested a few times before this, but this was like, you know, the first time I'm like, crap, I'm really in trouble. I just got caught with some heavy drugs and I don't think I'm going home. And yeah, I ended up being sentenced to two years of felony.

Derrick (07:23.693)
prison sentence with a concurrent probation sentence. mean, it was this whole, it's kind of a whole story of its own of how I got screwed over. was told that I would sign for probation because I'd never been into any major trouble. had a few public intoxication tickets. I had a few, you know, things like that and some fights and stuff in high school. But this was my first time really getting in trouble. And I thought, okay, they're saying I'm have probation and I'll go home in a couple of days. can sign for probation. I can get out.

before my family or anybody knows anything and move forward. I was already kind of in my mind scheming of like, okay, well I can get back, I can go get some more meth and then I'll sell it I'll do this. And I was just still kind of in that mindset. So although I hate the prison system and I don't want to credit the prison system in any way for turning my life around because that was a personal decision, I definitely needed somewhere to kind of be that was not the streets. Because as I said, if I had actually gotten out,

then I would have gone straight back to everything I was doing. unfortunately, or fortunately, when I did sign for my time, the judge told me you'll go home on Monday. That whole weekend, I just had this weird feeling of like, something doesn't feel right. You know, I signed for this paper here and some of the other guys I was talking to in county who were a little more hardened criminals who were on their way to prison were like, yeah, it looks like your paperwork looks fine. You they said you're getting probation. Maybe you'll be out on Monday, but I go back to Monday.

Monday's court after sitting out the weekend in county and the judge says, I'm sentencing you two years of felony probation and I'm sentencing you to a concurrent sentence, which just means that I wasn't gonna go home. And so they sentenced me to six months in a prison facility that they call substance abuse treatment facility, which for all intents and purposes is prison. You're in prison, razor wire guards, you can't leave, but they make you see a counselor once a month so they can get insurance money to call it a treatment center is basically what it comes down to.

It's a whole scam on its own that I kind of later dove into and learned more about, but that arrest was really the beginning of, like I said, my real awakening. we could talk more about how, you know, it wasn't this first time I got arrested then. I ended up doing 11 months the first time, got out, was out for about five months, screwed up again, went back for another three. You know, I did that game for a couple of years. So when it was all said and done, October 2008, I was getting released. I was now a felon.

Derrick (09:43.449)
and I had done 18 and a half months in Texas state institutions. And so that was the month before Obama's getting elected. Again, not really very aware politically, but just kind of like, yeah, there's a lot of hype around this Obama guy. I don't know what's going on. But it was in that space of now that I was a felon and I couldn't get jobs anywhere that I started going to the library all the time and applying for jobs. And eventually I started reading some library books. the first thing I really...

read about was about the drug war and about the history of specifically the war on cannabis and the hemp industry and how there's, you the roots of the first drug laws in the United States, the Harrison Act of 1914, were all about propaganda about black jazz musicians or Chinese and Mexican migrant workers smoking weed and coming to steal in white women or trying to, the oil business trying to drive out the hemp industry. And that was the first book I ever voluntarily took notes on. And it was just like a light bulb of like,

Okay, I just went to prison for drugs and this is a whole part of history that I was never taught in anywhere in college or high school or anything. And that was the first thing of maybe there's other things that I haven't been taught. And then as I said, I kind of went on to activism and journalism and everything from there, but it was really in this period, this 2005 to 2008 and even a little bit after that, that I was deep in my struggle, you in and out of prison and really starting to do that personal work because when I did get locked up,

That's where I first started to kind of open up spiritually, you could say. You I was lucky to have a grandmother who was a big spiritual influence in my life. And I also had grown up my entire life visiting my birth father for his drug addiction in prison. So my earliest memory is five years old going to see dad at, you know, a razor wire prison. And why has he got a black eye? Why can we only see him for two hours? And him coming in and out of my brother and sister's lives, making promises, not keeping those promises.

Charlie Robinson (11:20.718)
Okay.

Derrick (11:30.411)
So, you know, wasn't until I got locked up that I could start to, and I started to slow down, I started to journal a lot, I started to meditate, started to kind of open up spiritually in different ways, that I could start to see this, what probably was very obvious to other people, like, okay, I have daddy issues, I have things that have not been dealt with because of that relationship or lack of relationship. And I was able to start seeing, like, wow, I was a super depressed little kid who I think blamed myself and thought, well, shit, maybe my dad doesn't wanna be around because there's something wrong with me.

that led me to cutting and to doing a lot of damage to myself well before I ever discovered drugs. I was starting to cut myself, I was starting to have suicidal thoughts at seven, eight years old, and then eventually that sadness turned into anger, and that anger turned into getting fights in high school, and that anger turned into getting arrested at school, and then eventually trying drugs and everything else. So that was the beginning of me being able to start to uncover and kind of unpeel some of those layers to see like...

Charlie Robinson (12:09.486)
Pfft.

Derrick (12:25.933)
well, why was I stuffing as many drugs up every, know, or if it's as possible? Why did I think that was the answer, the key to the enlightenment? And yeah, so that journey really began with me getting arrested.

Charlie Robinson (12:37.452)
Was it like they said where like the, you know, that night the door slammed shut and it kind of hit you like in a, obviously it's a movie, but in a Shawshank kind of way, like I don't belong here, they've made a mistake, you know, was it real to you in that moment or was it sort of like you'd been in and out and you kind of danced with the devil a little bit, nothing bad had happened and maybe you didn't know that this time when it slammed, it was really gonna slam.

for two years. mean, what was your mindset?

Derrick (13:04.715)
Yeah. Yeah, no, I thought like, so like I said in the beginning, because I was, still kind of in my, my, my kind of hustle mentality, which I've always had, and which is interesting now, because as an anarchist, as an agorist, I recognize like, I've always had this entrepreneurship interest inside of me to, you know, do business and create business and not, you know, not deal with government and all that sort of stuff. But the way I found it when I was younger is like, okay, dealing drugs. Like, and so I was introduced and sort of

mentored, you could say in a way, by a lot of older felons who were career criminals who kind of took me under their wing and almost in sort of a father-son type way that because that relationship wasn't there, I was always looking for something, you And so I very much got into like a hustle mentality of like I loved, it wasn't even about the drugs and it wasn't even about making a lot of money necessarily. I mean, never was making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I just enjoyed the atmosphere. I enjoyed the business side of it. So even after I...

did break through my addiction, which was a struggle in itself, and I'd love to share with you about that. I still, like I said, continued to sell drugs. so even when I wasn't touching them anymore, just realized, it took me a little while to realize, I'm still hooked on the lifestyle. So in the beginning, when I first got arrested, I was definitely, like I said, like, okay, if I can just sign for probation, I'll get home. I got a little bit of money, I can buy some more crystal, I'll flip that, then I can do that. And I was just ready to keep going with it, you know, and like keep doing this stuff. So in the beginning,

you when the door shut, I didn't think it was over. I was like, okay, cool. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna be out of here. But then once the judge handed me the sentence and said, no, you're not going home. We're gonna send you to this place for at least six months. Oh, and then by the way, you have to wait three to four months just to get there. And none of that time counts towards your sentence. It's what they call dead time. So you're literally just sitting there in the county with your thumb up your ass doing nothing. there's nothing, you know, it's not counting towards anything. You're just like, hang out here and one day we'll call your name and then your sentence will really begin.

And so that was just like, holy shit, I can't do this. So then I started kind of scheming a little bit. At that point, I accepted, all right, I have to tell my family that I'm in jail, because by that point it had been a few days and they were starting to wonder where I was at. And even though I wasn't really in touch with them on a daily basis at that point, so I did reach out to my mom and she was trying to help me in the beginning, hire a lawyer to see like, okay, will the lawyer come up with the plan? Hey, while he's waiting to go to this other place, can we at least have him and...

Derrick (15:22.069)
and we'll put them in outpatient treatment or something like that. They started to come up with the play, all this sort of plan. And then we went back to the judge and the judge just said no. So that took about a week or two. Now when that happened, that's when I realized like, shit, I'm not getting out of here. And that is for sure, I think one of the most really impactful experiences that I've ever had. And it's one that maybe without prison, but I think in some ways.

more people need to have that experience. And what I mean by that is the feeling of being completely powerless. Like when you're in this room and you're like, I'm not leaving these four walls until they say I can. I can go over there and cry on the phone to my mom, to my girlfriend, to my attorney. You know, I can be angry and you know, people do these things, of course. They, you know, I can sit here and mope and be pissed, whatever. It's not going to change anything. I'm not leaving this place until they say I can leave. And that is a very disempowering feeling. You know, of course, I've just like, like I, know, I can't.

piss in peace anymore, I can't eat when I want, I can't go to sleep. All those little, even the tiny freedoms that we take for granted, I think many of us do, even those of us who value freedom might not think about those all the time. The privacy aspect, just being at peace and not having to have people breathing over your shoulder and all that sort of stuff, it was just that, that's when it really hit me. was like, shit, and I'm looking at the calendar, I'm like, okay, the earliest I'm getting home, and so this was November going into December.

Like I said, I turned 21 in there, realizing like I'm not getting to go home. And the earliest I would be going home is next September, maybe, if they picked me up, you know, within that three to four month timeline. And so that's when it really hit me of like, okay, like I'm, and to add, you know, more insult to injury, like that, the week that I got arrested, my father was being released from prison. So it just felt like, shit, you know, he's going, he's getting out and I'm going in, you know, here I am. And I even used to refer to it and I,

Charlie Robinson (17:09.496)
my god.

Derrick (17:12.865)
my brother as well, we called it the family tradition. And this is where I've done a lot of personal work within myself and also tried to, to anybody who's willing in my family, because for whatever reason, on the bro's side of my family, my father's side, there is at least three to four generations of drug and alcohol abuse, prison, suicide, it's very prevalent. And then on my mom's side of the family, which is the Mexican side.

there is the Sanchez family, there's at least three or four generations of alcoholism. And I think, you know, I have my own theories about like maybe it's related to, you know, intergenerational trauma related to, know, I'll just, I think all of our, all of us, no matter what your skin color, background, place of origin, we've all probably got it in our bloodline just because the history of humanity is pretty fucked up the last few, you know, before the current time and even the current time, right? But so I don't know what the root of it is exactly, but I could see it. It's like, wow, this is like in my blood, you know, both sides of the family.

going to jail, going to prison, having drug and alcohol problems, and here I am, I'm continuing the family tradition, my dad's getting out, and now I'm locked up, you know? And it just was real kick in the nuts because it was just like, all right, you I've been pissed off with this dude my whole life, I've been blaming him for, you know, not being there for this thing or for lying and making these false promises, and here I am now. And thankfully I didn't have any kids of my own.

But I did have a little brother who was five years old at the time who I loved dearly and who I definitely could kind of see parallels of like, damn it, now I'm gonna have to write him letters from jail, from prison. And I definitely later had that experience. that was all what really drove me to like, all right, look, I'm here. Like I can't get out of here and there's nothing I can do. So I need to make the most of this time. And so, like I said, I started just journaling every day. I mean, just literally just writing out my thoughts. And also, I mean, I was...

Charlie Robinson (18:27.48)
Mm-hmm.

Derrick (18:54.635)
I had been about a month sober off Crystal at that point, but still it definitely takes time to kind of, for your body to get all this stuff out of your system. And because when I'm saying like Crystal, and I talk about this in my book about this whole experience, like I'm talking about doing big ass plates of cocaine and Crystal and align together and taking acid and taking MDV. I'm not talking about like, okay, you know, I took a hit here and there. I was a fool. You know, just like anything I do, like you see it with my activism, my journalism, I go full on. Well, I'm gonna go full on with pretty much anything I.

Charlie Robinson (19:21.24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Derrick (19:23.257)
I do, and so I was deep in it, you and that led me to some dark places. at the time, of course, I wasn't like, oh, I'm doing this because I don't have a relationship with my father. I was just, everything sucks. I hate my life. I'm miserable. I want to die, and drugs temporarily make me feel a little better, you know? And selling drugs makes me feel important because people actually want to be around me. And like I said, with time, as I started to journal, and then my grandmother...

Charlie Robinson (19:38.509)
Right, of course.

Derrick (19:46.649)
My dad's mom, she really stepped up and she's always been a big kind of spiritual influence in my life already prior to this. But then at that time she started to send me books. She sent me a couple of books on like Zen Buddhism. So I started to learn kind of like the basics of meditation while I was locked up. And I would be sitting there on my bunk at night, you know, just kind of like, all right, I got a cross leg and put my hands here and hear people like whispering like, what the fuck is that guy doing over there? You know, I just like, whatever, like I got to be here for myself. This is not about these people. And

Charlie Robinson (20:09.966)
Yeah.

Derrick (20:15.513)
My granny was also kind of like a Christian mystic, you know, she considers herself a Christian, but she was into like Steiner and a lot of more esoteric stuff, so she started sending me different books and things like that, which again, at the time, prior to being locked up, and even at the beginning, and even somewhat today, this was very resistant to anything related to God, you know, because I've always had a problem with religion, which I still do have a problem with organized religion today, and I've done documentaries on the reasons why.

Charlie Robinson (20:21.612)
Yeah.

Charlie Robinson (20:39.32)
Me too.

Derrick (20:42.499)
But at that time especially, was very much like, don't want, you I just kind of, to me, God, religion, spirituality was all one big thing. And this was the beginning of me kind of being able to untangle those things and say, well, maybe there is a way to kind of connect to something beyond the five senses that doesn't have to do with this dogma that I've been, you know, people have been trying to force me into my whole life, you know, trying to make me go to church. Cause I have very vivid memories of being kicked out of Sunday school in sixth grade for asking too many questions and things like that. So this experience though was like the beginning of me like, all right, you know what?

Charlie Robinson (21:07.475)
Yeah.

Derrick (21:12.385)
I'm gonna read some of this stuff granny's sending me. I got nothing but time anyways, and I'm gonna journal. And yeah, I it was really trippy because I could even see over the months, like my handwriting was getting like more slow, more precise, more clear as my mind got more clear, as I got sober off all this stuff that was leaving, all the chemicals were leaving my body. And so that's what I mean. Like I don't credit that place at all because it was just basically a place for me to dry out, right? And to kind of get my shit together.

But there are so many people that I met in prison and in jail and all the different places I went to who were brilliant minds who are just still to this day languishing in and out. I I have friends that I met at that time. Some of them figured it out before I did and they never went back. They did their one stint and they moved on with their life. Others, they're dead. They never figured it out and they overdosed or they continued down their path of criminal stuff and their lives ended. And others are still kind of cycling in and out of prison institutions. I have friends in all these different categories.

And it took me a couple of times before I was able to do it. So those places themselves are not rehabilitative. They're not redeeming in any way. It's all about how you actually use that time. And I saw this directly with my own father. My dad basically became institutionalized from being 17 and getting arrested with drugs. And unfortunately, he never made it. He died of a drug overdose in 2018 after spending his entire life in and out of institutions. And I talk about that in my book too, how that journey of

As I was working through my shit and then eventually getting to activism and kind of changing my life, I did get a chance to reconnect with him as an adult and just like, hey, you you don't know me, I don't know you, but this is who I am, this is what I'm about, and I just want you to know that I forgive you for everything. Everything's cool, it all happened for a reason. You know, this is what made me who I am, so whatever guilt you're holding on for me, you can let go of that. You can, you know, just move on from that. And so, yeah, all those lessons though, it really came from just like, as soon as I got locked up.

started getting into meditation, started getting into prayer, and just opening up in these different ways. Even when I wasn't sure, like, I don't know what I'm doing or who I'm talking to, if I'm talking to myself, like, I'll hold space for all of the above, right? I'm just doing something that feels like it's helping me work through these layers that I'd never looked at, you know, and that I was never, I guess, ready to or willing to look at, or I just used drugs to kind of cover up and smother those issues. And so yeah, and like I said, I didn't get it right the first time. I did have my own kind of back and forth story.

Charlie Robinson (23:32.951)
Yeah.

Charlie Robinson (23:36.43)
How was your relationship with your dad? Did he feel guilt? I mean, you told him he didn't have to feel guilt for it, but you know how you already felt guilt for your little brother. You know, he probably did as well. What was that relationship like? Were you able to let go of the feelings you had and how did that change when he passed away?

Derrick (24:01.273)
Yeah, I mean, I definitely think he did have guilt because so, I mean, I'm the middle child. So my brother's a year and a half older than me. My sister's a year and a half younger than me. So I don't remember any of his life with my mom. Like they did have, my mom says like, no, your dad wasn't always this way. There was a period where we loved going outdoors and he loved being a father and all this stuff. And when I was younger, I kind of convinced myself, I was like, well, you know what? Like maybe he didn't really want kids and he just accidentally had three kids and he would just.

would prefer to be out partying and I'm somebody who believes in sovereignty and so if that's his chosen path then so be it. I guess I just wasn't wanted and that's how it is and I'm not gonna take it too hard, it is what it is. But my mom says that's not the truth, that he actually, there was a period before he got hooked on drugs and that he was a very happy father and was grateful for all the things that he was doing. But again, as I said earlier, I do think that there is this...

I mean, I know for a fact that there is this intergenerational trauma because my grandfather, his dad is still alive and, you know, we don't have a very close relationship. I think he's softening up as he gets older, but I know for a fact that he was very, very hard and abusive to my dad at a young age. Also, my granny and my grandpa had my dad when they were 14 years old. So they, you know, right off the bat, starting out like very tough. My grandpa was into drugs at a young age because, know, their kids like 14 years younger than them. There's not a big gap there. And so...

Unfortunately, one of the first places my dad got drugs was from his father. One of the first places he got introduced to selling drugs was from his father. Now my grandpa eventually changed his life, got into the oil business, became a successful person, went and had a couple more kids after he remarried with my second grandma, but my dad was never able to recover from that. Once he got hooked on it at a young age, it's like, you could argue maybe his brain chemistry changed from being introduced to hard drugs at too young of an age.

But I know there was also a lot of damage in their personal relationship there. And again, most of this was before I was even born, but I've always heard stories that like my dad apparently stole a wedding ring or an engagement ring from my grandma and that, you know, when he was in the height of his drug days and my grandpa like never forgave him for that. And so there's just a lot of stuff that was never, I think resolved and picked up. And again, like abuse to my dad at a young age. And I think he just...

Derrick (26:20.314)
He seemed to be, which is think a trait that I probably pick up from him, like a very, he's very in tune with his emotions I say, and almost to a fault where like he really feels stuff. know, some of us are maybe better at like, know, things can flow right off your back. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. You if I'm upset about something, I can't hide it. You're gonna see it, you're gonna know it, and I think that's something based on what I've heard from family that my dad shared as well, and I think he just...

had a lot of trauma and things that he was never able to fully recover from and then got hooked on drugs and then got arrested at like 17 years old and was put on probation. My mom told me a story of like when she was pregnant with my older brother, my dad said he needed to go meet somebody at a local grocery store and she had no idea what he was doing. Well, he was trying to go make a drug deal and he sold to an undercover informant. And my mom said she remembers the cops just surrounding them, swarming them. She had to spend the night in jail while she was pregnant with my brother.

Charlie Robinson (27:13.678)
shit.

Derrick (27:13.785)
And that was like the beginning of my dad getting put on like real felony probation and he never got out of it. And this is another thing that I have direct experience about and I talk about it in the pyramid of power on our episode with the prison industrial complex that, and I experienced it later myself. Like once you get put on probation and then parole, like these things are like, I heard this often when I was locked up, people would say, don't sign for probation. It's like one foot in, one foot out. Now most people were in a hurry to get out as quick as possible, right? So if they say, hey,

Charlie Robinson (27:40.236)
Mm-hmm.

Derrick (27:41.235)
You can get out today, but you're gonna be on probation for two years. Like, cool, whatever, I'll sign, let me go home. But many other people I've met were like, dude, it's a trap. They're gonna have you doing, you got to pay this amount of money per month, you're gonna have to go to this meeting, this thing, and if you fuck up at all, they're gonna send you right back and they're gonna add more time. It just becomes a loop for people. And maybe not everybody, but I think for a lot of people, and I definitely experienced that where I would make a mistake and it just keeps extending, extending, you're just stuck in this cycle. Ultimately, all they want is money from you. And I think that's kind of what happened to my dad is that he got pulled in.

He was on probation at first and then he got sent to prison. And then, like I said, I my entire life. So he died when I was, I was in my early thirties. So for 30 to 40 years of his life, he was in and out of prisons, in and out of jails, in and out of institutions. And I think he truly became institutionalized over time where he just didn't, when he would get out, he, it's like he didn't know how to function because I'd never seen anybody who would get locked up so quick. You know, like we, as a young kid.

Mom would say, dad, your dad's been released. He's gonna come visit you guys this weekend. Or he'd show up on his Harley, you know, just pull up and take us out for a couple hours and play and buy us some gifts. And then within a week, mom would have to come break the bad news that dad had been arrested again and we wouldn't see him another two or three years. You know, there's just this cycle that was on and on and on. And so I think he was institutionalized in a lot of ways. I think he was carrying a lot of trauma from his father's relationship. And I think my grandpa...

was and probably still is carrying guilt from that relationship and I hope that before he passes that there's an opportunity to work through that. And I know my dad definitely felt guilty about not being there. And you know, I was 14 this one time when he got out and he was supposed to be, my grandpa finally said, all right, look, you know what? I'll let him come home. We always go to my grandpa's for Christmas Eve. And so it was Christmas Eve, my dad's out, grandpa's like, he can come home, we're all gonna be together. And it was like a big moment, you know, especially for me at 14 where

Like I said to you earlier, I'd been since seven years old, like secretly, quietly, cutting myself and kind of just like toying with just in a super depressed state. And at this point I was just like, okay, please, like he's gotta be there. It's gotta, you know, I still had this fantasy of maybe he's gonna come back and you know, our family's gonna get back together. And my mom had remarried and I never liked my stepdad. Of course, now today I have an immense amount of respect for him because it's like, I don't know what the hell my mom would have done with three kids by herself when my dad's in prison, you know.

Charlie Robinson (29:53.838)
Right.

Derrick (29:54.275)
My stepdad really kind of saved our lives in a lot of ways, but at that time I was just like, I want my dad to come home, kick his ass, and like, we're gonna get back together as a family and all this sort of stuff. And so there was a lot riding on this moment, and I talk about this in the book, that I remember showing up to my grandma's, and right away, as soon as they opened the door, I could just feel like something was off. Like for one, my dad didn't answer the door and welcome us in, and it's like, okay. And I'm kind of walking through the house, curiously looking around, I don't see him, like okay, I'm kind of getting a little anxious, like he's supposed to be here.

Charlie Robinson (30:01.977)
Mm-hmm.

Derrick (30:23.291)
And I remember walking to the bathroom and I had passed my grandma's bedroom and I hear her telling my mom, he's already been picked up again. They arrested him again. He's headed back. And I remember just, I mean, clear as day, dude, like I walked into the bathroom, slammed the door. I'm at my grandma's house, start crying my eyes out. And then I look in the mirror and I'm just like, fuck this, fuck this. I'm never gonna let anybody hurt me again. And from that point of 14 till pretty much when I got locked up, that's when I started getting in fights all the time. That's when I started just...

Charlie Robinson (30:31.384)
Jesus.

Derrick (30:52.367)
being the troubled kid, throwing chairs at teachers, doing all this stuff. It's like, and like I said, now looking back in hindsight, it's very clear. I'm like, this was definitely messing with me in a lot of ways. And so I decided, you know what? I guess that that's what people do. People just, they lie. They say things, they make promise and they don't keep them. So I started developing a lot of my own negative habits that I...

Charlie Robinson (30:53.846)
Okay.

Derrick (31:12.827)
You know, in this book, which I don't think we mentioned the title, it's called A Man of My Word, How I Overcame Addiction, Depression, and Mental and Physical Prisons. People can go to amanofmyword.com and learn more and pick it up. You know, this is like a real gritty, there's no sugarcoating of all the bad things that I was involved in. What I mean by that is like, I was not treating other people well, women I was involved with, I was cheating on every woman I met, I was just sort of mimicking the things that I was being shown. It's like, hey, you can lie, you can cheat, you can say whatever the hell you want. I guess that's just what people do.

Charlie Robinson (31:15.938)
Yeah.

Derrick (31:41.615)
That's what I was learning from my father. And obviously that led to a lot of bad places and hurting people and hurting myself and then eventually, you know, to drugs. But even before drugs, I was just an angry, very angry kid. And also I could see then I was seeking attention too, that I was kind of the class clown in a lot of ways too. You I would just do silly things if I knew that it would get a laugh out of my friends or people that I thought were friends or whatever. And just that sort of thing that I was just constantly. But I was also...

in all advanced classes. graduated high school a semester early before all my friends and went straight into college, but nobody knew that about me. I was the crazy kid and I kind of relished that. I liked being the crazy kid. It's like, cool. I'm something, right? People think I'm weird. I'm crazy. I'm wild. Fine. Like I'll, I'll lean into that. I'll play that up. And, know, eventually, eventually drugs kind of grabbed a hold of me and I wasn't in control anymore. But yeah, I mean, I think my dad was holding onto a lot of guilt, but ultimately after like, when I first got locked up, I did write him a letter and I kind of said,

Charlie Robinson (32:15.768)
Good news.

Charlie Robinson (32:20.226)
Yeah.

Derrick (32:39.439)
Well, here I am. I'm in prison, just like you, and I'm here for drugs. And I told him what I thought I needed to say at the time, but I think looking back, I also didn't take enough personal responsibility and was basically just blaming it all on him. And there's some truth to that, but it wasn't, you know, obviously I have my own actions I'm taking. And he wrote back to me in a way that was very disappointing, but it was basically saying that like, hey, you know, you need to take responsibility for your actions. And in my view, kind of didn't take any responsibility at all, which I...

Charlie Robinson (32:54.092)
Yeah.

Derrick (33:08.069)
probably was looking for at that time. And so that just annoyed me and I was like, you fine, he doesn't want to take responsibility, then I don't want to talk to him. So I didn't speak to him for another few years while I was kind of going through my own cycling in and out of prison. But then ultimately when I got out in 2008 and I was on probation, excuse me, parole until like June 2009. So technically today, 20 years later, I'm still a felon in the state of Texas. And I actually sued the state of Texas two years ago to try to change that because they...

That's kind another story, but I was running for mayor of Houston to try to spread the message, not to be a politician, but to spread the message. And I ran successfully in 2019. I was in the debates and all this kind of stuff. And I ran again in 2023, but I had a lot more support starting out. And so the mayor at the time basically said, disqualified me and said my felony disqualified me. I sued the state of Texas and still 20 years later, the state of Texas says like that my felony stands and they won't expunge it. They won't get rid of it.

So thankfully though, I've created my own life outside of their matrix. doesn't, nobody asks me about my felony to write articles for them, for example, or to do stuff like that. But if I was to go back and try to just get a normie job or back in Houston, where I'm originally from, I live in Mexico now, but when I was in Houston last, I really can't get rented most places because of this 20 year old felony, even though it's not a violent felony, even though it's not a weapons charge. You know, I basically have to go into some of the, you know, the most hood parts of Houston where somebody's willing to rent to me because they're like, felony, like, so there's.

Charlie Robinson (34:13.773)
Right.

Derrick (34:35.989)
That's kind of a whole other conversation too, that people, there still is this stigma around it and that's why I always just, I don't have any fear or stigma about it. I tell people openly about this. Sometimes I can tell people, like, crystal meth, I'm like, it's all good, like, I'm okay with it, are you okay? But I can still see there's this stigma around it and so anyways, yeah, I'm still technically a felon to them and when I got out and I was on my parole when I finished that,

I started to kind of reach out to my dad a little bit here and there, but he actually got out in 2012 and he's from Austin originally, and I'm from Houston, but he specifically requested that he be released to a halfway house in Houston because he was trying to be closer to myself and my siblings. Neither of them were ready to communicate with him at that point, but for me, this is a couple years into my activism, a couple more years into my spiritual journey. I'm like at that point where I'm like, hey, I'm ready for this. Like I need to...

I need the full on healing. I'd done some ayahuasca a little before that. I was just like, I'm ready. So he reached out and said, look, I'm at this halfway house in Houston. If you ever want to come here, I went all the way over there and I talked about this in the book. I met up with him and yeah, I was able to say, I forgive you. I forgive you for everything. It's all good. And then I saw him a couple of years after that. That was the longest period he was free of my entire life, from 2013 till basically 2018 when he died.

Charlie Robinson (35:32.45)
Right.

Derrick (35:58.339)
Unfortunately, over a couple of years, when I would see him around my grandmas and stuff, I could start to tell that he was starting to use again. You I never had any fantasies about smoking weed with him or anything like that, but he was starting to smoke pot here and there. And that wasn't his drug of choice. He was into much harder drugs. But I would ask him, I remember clearly asking him, like, does smoking weed make you want to go smoke crack or do any of other stuff? And he's like, no, no, it's no big deal.

But unfortunately for one reason or another, all the telltale signs started to show up again. The last time I saw him was April 2018 and I was in Austin visiting my granny. He was there living with her and my granny, the one who had sent me all this stuff while I was locked up, she was just exasperated and was just like, I can't take it anymore. I caught him the other day trying to steal my TV. He's going out late, he's disappearing, he's coming back with stories. And she was just, this is her son. She's tried everything her entire life to do whatever she could, giving him money, trucks.

Whatever, she could do. She was there trying to help him, but she was just like, I can't take it. And I walked out that day and I saw my dad sitting outside on this chair. I just, was this, man, it was this really weird role reversal where I kind of like parented him for a moment, you know? If that makes sense. Like I was just telling him like, dude, you know, you're 55. I he was about 55 at that time. I was like, you know, you still got 30 years of life at least. If you live...

well, you stop partying all the time. This could just be one long fucked up chapter, and you could put it all behind you. I know you don't wanna live with your mom for the rest of your life. Just get yourself together. He was an electrician by trade. I'm like, you got skills. Just put all this shit behind you. Go get yourself a place. Find someone that you love and move on with your life. And this could just be, it could be over. And that was the one time he didn't even try to convince me he was gonna change. He just kinda looked up at me.

with some tears in his eyes and said, love you, I'm proud of you.

Derrick (37:54.479)
That was the last time I saw him. Later that year in June, we got a call that he died of a drug overdose at a hotel.

Charlie Robinson (38:03.31)
Shit, man. This is...

This is so sad and this happens a lot and it doesn't have to be this way and I feel so bad for you but you've got this ability to see it in a way that is...

Charlie Robinson (38:22.206)
I don't know, you've been in it. know, like Max Egan was talking about this one foot in, one foot out, right? You got one foot in the normie world and one foot out in this. it's like, well, in your case, one foot in prison, in Elvis insanity, one foot out into the activism world. This deeply important doing the most, you know, doing the things that need to be done. And, man, I'm really sorry that you went through this.

Derrick (38:27.259)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Robinson (38:51.318)
I mean, I know that, yeah, it's not your fault, you know, but you know, this stuff is not your fault. It's your problem. It becomes your problem, right? Because you're living in it, but it's not. And I think that's where a lot, especially with kids, they get a bit confused. It's like, this is happening to me. Is it happening to me because I'm making it happen? Is it happening to me because it's just random? You know, you just don't have the perspective to know like,

Derrick (38:51.791)
Man, I appreciate that. It is what it is though, you know, brother? Like that's why I'm writing. No, and I accept it.

Yeah.

Derrick (39:12.837)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Robinson (39:20.462)
You know, it's tempting to say it's maybe it's because of me. Maybe if I was better than, you know, my parents wouldn't be getting divorced or going to jail or this or whatever it is. Like the, kids want to have some kind of some sort of like reason for like, maybe it's because of me. Well, it's nice of you to, to inject that and to think that maybe you, want to take some of the deflect some of the criticism, but in actuality, then these are, know how it is when you're in it, when you're, you're dead, when you're in the, in the

Derrick (39:24.975)
Exactly.

Derrick (39:45.092)
Yeah.

Charlie Robinson (39:47.674)
in the living room of some house with a bunch of people that you're friends, but aren't really your friends, and you guys are all partying, and you just go, Jesus, am I going to be doing this forever? I I bartended for a long, long time. It wasn't that bad, but the after party's got a bit weird, and there's some stuff going on, and there are things that turn from party into a little bit more party every night, and then, you know, it's not a party anymore. And so I know how that can go a little bit, how it can spiral, and you're sitting around, everybody's smoking cigarettes, and...

Derrick (39:57.147)
I had those moments for sure.

Charlie Robinson (40:16.056)
doing lines at three o'clock in the morning, you go like, God, there's gotta be more than this. Like, I feel like this is killing me, you know? And like some people, the light bulb goes off, other people, it never happens. And they wake up 30 years later and it's just all still happening.

Derrick (40:19.791)
Absolutely.

Derrick (40:25.295)
Yeah.

Derrick (40:28.663)
And I'm lucky that my period of that was just about two years and that the hardest of it were about nine or 10 months, which still, mean, and all these stories are in my book. mean, there's a bunch of them. There's the 10 hits of acid where I got stranded at a mall and I saw myself in the future and could see like this, I believe the spirit of that medicine was trying to warn me. Like, this is where you're headed. And I woke up the next day and threw away $1,500 worth of meth. There's the stories of being tripping and just messed up so much I run out of my.

room and pull a shotgun on everybody in my apartment and just tripping on acid underneath the stairs in a crack house. Like I got pulled into that world. Like you said, it can start out as just like, we're doing a little party and somebody brings a little Coke here and there. And then some people are able to dabble. I definitely, I don't like to say I have an addictive personality, but at that time, for sure. I mean, you put something in front of me, I was going to try it. And I thought I had everything in control, but these are powerful substances that can very quickly grab a hold of you, you know? And, and, you know, I accept.

Like this is why I'm sharing my story man with you and with the book and with anybody else because for one over the years that I've been doing this work and when I do public presentations I might mention briefly like well some of you know my story I was addicted to drugs I went to prison and that kind of led me to where I'm at but this is the biggest and even with this interview and the interviews I'm doing the deepest that I've shared it and the reason for doing that is because every single time I've ever shared even a piece of this somebody will come up to me you know without a doubt big crowd small crowd

one or more people will come up and say, I've never dealt with drugs in my life, but you're helping me connect to what I'm struggling with. Or somebody will say, I have a son who's addicted right now. I have a daughter who's in rehab. I think addiction is way more prevalent and prominent than we even believe. And I don't even mean just in the broader kind of world than the normie world. I mean in our truth, freedom communities as well that people just don't talk about it because, well, we wanna be awake. We wanna be enlightened ones. We don't wanna show any weakness of.

And that's how a lot of people view these things as view addiction, alcoholism and these types of things as a weakness. And of course it's hard to just come out and say, Hey, I have this issue going on and maybe you don't feel like you have the right people or the friends group around. Because that was also my experience as well. When I was deep in this, there's a story I shared in the book where I did start to have, like there were moments of clarity where I could see like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. This is not where I'm supposed to be at. And I would kind of mention it to someone that I was hanging out with somebody who I thought I might call a friend at the time. And they would just.

Derrick (42:51.779)
Like, what are you talking about, man? Like, you're just the guy I party at his house. I don't really know you. You know, I could see, like, these aren't the people I was really looking for. And ultimately, I think what I was looking for back then is what I've been able to cultivate now with, you know, people like yourself, like real friends, real connections through, you the events I host and through the people I've met through this type of work is like the real authentic connections that I think I was always seeking back then. And I share this story because, as I said, somebody will always come up and...

offer their story or ask for help and I figured if I could put this all into a book form, all the crazy things I went through and of course also the ultimate fact that at the end I did make it through it and I did get into journalism and everything. The book doesn't talk about any of that really. The book ends in 2012. I think the latest thing in the book is 2013 when I kind of go to see my dad and I forgive him. But it pretty much...

ends there. Like this is a prequel to everything that people know me for. You know, if you know me for activism, for journalism, documentaries, whatever it is, none of this is in the book. This is, you know, that's just the very end of the book because this is more about everything that it took for me to go through to get to the point so that I could start doing all the things that I'm doing today. And my hope is that by sharing this story and just by being real about it, that it might help anybody, whether in our circles or beyond this, because I do think the book has a chance for more mainstream appeal compared to some of the things I've written elsewhere.

Because this is such a problem prevalent issue that people deal with addiction of all types and if anybody can read this who's struggling or Know somebody who's struggling and it helps them in some way. That's my goal. That's my hope of this book You know, it's not about You know a sob story about things I went through I'm glad I went through them They made me who I am and it's important now that I think for me that I share those stories and if they can help somebody which you know I released the book on December 22nd. So it's only been a couple out a couple weeks and already I'm getting some really

Not only positive reviews from like Corbett and others like that who are you read it and are grateful for it But for people who've said like look I'm sending this to my son who's struggling right now I'm sending this to a friend who I think could use it and I'm also kind of working on a an idea where I'm gonna see if I can get some funding together to Kind of get maybe buy like a thousand copies and just get it into as many Treatment centers or even prisons or just rehab centers like as possible just for people to have access to it because one thing that's also in the book is that

Charlie Robinson (44:48.566)
Yeah.

Charlie Robinson (45:08.888)
Yeah.

Derrick (45:14.715)
that I wanna make clear like AA didn't work for me, 12-step, like that's not really my thing. I have friends who it's worked for and that's great and if it works for people, I'm not here to dismiss that or tell you, you you're wrong. It didn't work for me. The idea that I am an addict forever and I have a disease that I'm never gonna be able to be cured from is just complete bullshit to me. I don't think that's helpful. I don't think that's a useful sort of line of thinking. So I had my own kind of...

path to this and it's a non-traditional path, you know? So I did have to go to AA meetings, but that was because I was forced to by the law. I never, you know, stuck with it. It wasn't going and sitting around in a room where everybody's smoking cigarettes and talking about how, you know, horrible things that were. It just was not the vibe I was looking for. So I kind of found my own path in my own way. I don't, you know, have any kind of program I'm trying to sell to say this is the better path. I just, for me, that's not what worked. But ultimately, I just want to share this story with as many people as possible. And maybe through that...

Charlie Robinson (45:45.944)
Thank

Derrick (46:09.229)
allow some people to feel more comfortable to talk about these things. Because I do think even in our, again, our truth freedom communities, if we only talk about these things in whispers and, you know, kind of behind the scenes, it's not going to change, you know? And so I'm also, one of the other bigger ideas I have is that I would like to start some kind of, some kind of foundation, not a nonprofit necessarily with the state, but maybe a PMA or something like that. That would be called the Troy Bros Foundation. That's my father's name and kind of...

use his story, which unfortunately did end with the drug overdose, and this foundation would be just another avenue to try to reach and help people. I don't have the full details yet, but I just want his, I don't want his memory to just be that of a drug addict who just, you know, came and went and burnt out and that's it. Like, I know he was more than that, and I want to take that memory and make it more than that. So I have plans in the coming years to try to do that. And overall, I'm going to continue to do journalism, but talking about addiction and...

healing from trauma and these kind of things is gonna become a bigger part of my work in the coming years.

Charlie Robinson (47:12.216)
Yeah, I was just thinking about how your, you it's interesting, both of our dads who are no longer here had impacts in our lives with regard to drugs, but in very different ways. Of course, you've been very vocal about your father's influence on you with regard to drugs. I had kind of an interesting side benefit.

to this, if you can call it a benefit. My dad died when I was 16. He died of a heart attack while he was jogging. He was not on drugs. He wasn't a drug user or anything like that. It wasn't drug related. in my mind, I was terrified to ever do cocaine because of that. And so at the parties, at the 3 a.m., everybody's smoking cigarettes, doing line parties.

I was always there because I bartended and I knew, it was my group of friends and you know, but I never one time did cocaine simply because of that, because I thought I'm going to be Hank Gathers who was drafted number two overall by the Boston Celtics in 86, who in his, at the draft party, post-party, stew and Coke, dropped dead and died. I have that in my mind. I have my dad, you know, having a potentially a

Derrick (48:36.069)
Wow.

Derrick (48:40.249)
you

Charlie Robinson (48:40.494)
you know, heart issues running in my family. I'm going, well, this is a recipe for disaster. So in my experience, though I was in these parties and I was there, I went a totally different path because of that. Simply terrified that I would be the guy who dropped dead at the party and freaked everybody out, know? And obviously didn't want to be the guy dropping dead either. So it's interesting that like,

Derrick (48:54.939)
Sure.

Charlie Robinson (49:08.534)
Your dad influenced you even though he wasn't there by his previous behavior. My dad influenced me even though he wasn't there as well, sent me in a totally different direction. Didn't send me into a different direction when it came to the selling of drugs though. I certainly was doing that in college. Just was different drugs.

Derrick (49:26.373)
Found your way there one way or the other,

Charlie Robinson (49:28.514)
Yeah, the entrepreneurial spirit infected me after the first or second time I did mushrooms. And I said, this is great. I wonder, everybody needs to get these. How can we get them to everybody? Well, I could play a part in that, but so I did have the entrepreneurial spirit running through me, but I sort of detoured at that. And then in looking back, you know, I look back on that and I'm really glad I did because the people in that group of my life who were doing that, you know, there very few of them that went on to do.

much of anything and I could have gone down that path and I detoured. So it's always interesting to know like what happens in somebody's life that, you know, makes them choose, you know, what's behind curtain A as opposed to what's behind curtain B. And sometimes it's just luck. You know, you're in the right place or the wrong place at the wrong time. know, had you been somewhere else, had you been stopped at a, had the light been green instead of red, you know, maybe you wouldn't have been pulled over in 2005 and your entire world would have been.

Derrick (50:12.677)
Sure.

Derrick (50:25.317)
Yeah.

Charlie Robinson (50:26.306)
totally different, you would have gotten away with it. Might have been the worst thing that could have happened is for you to continue to get away with it and get away with

Derrick (50:30.99)
I've thought about that so many times, Like what, like, I mean, of course, when you first get arrested, you're just like, damn it, if I just had stayed home that day, if I just, why did I go out? Why, you know, and just playing those whole things. And after a while you're like, look, it got accepted. Here's where I'm at. But I've thought about that too. It's like, I mean, again, I think, I tend to believe everything happens for a reason. And I, mean, maybe I would have ended up dead if I didn't go down that road. Maybe I would have figured it out on my own, but maybe not. Because like I said, I was still in the mind instead of like hustle, like I gotta, you know, flip things.

Obviously I had crystal meth because I was still selling it even though I'd gotten myself sober about a month earlier and I wasn't touching it using it anyway. I was able to pull myself out of this whole crack meth house situation and that took a lot of effort on its own. But still at the time I was kind of pulled into and it's funny you talk about like the entrepreneurial spirit. I'd talk about in the book that I remember the day I decided I was going to sell drugs and this is maybe a credit to the way Hollywood can influence young minds.

I remember watching Blow and immediately turning to my girlfriend and saying, I'm gonna sell drugs. Like even though I grew up with a father in and out of prison, still none of that clicked for me. I I've watched Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz and they're still in the drugs, Boston George and everything and the women and the drugs and the money. I was just like, wow, yeah, that's what I wanna do. And immediately started like figuring out, okay, how much can I afford to spare at my warehouse job and buy a little bit of wheat? Just little things like that, but which then later on became like.

Okay, now I'm running drugs for some guy who later on, the guy I was selling drugs for and the person he was selling drugs for would end up being raided by the FBI in the summer of 2005 and like everybody got busted. I kind of got busted separately from that. But these were people who, you know, I'm on a list of like, now you owe me this amount of money. Now you're, you know, I've kind of pulled in and now I'm, you know, just this whole world that I wasn't prepared for basically, but it started out with that of just sort of like...

watching a movie on TV and getting excited and be like, ooh, I wanna do some of that. And then I was way out of my league.

Charlie Robinson (52:26.104)
You know what's funny? It's that I went to work one day and at this bar in Redondo Beach where was working. It was during the day and there's a sign, do not park here. Parking, filming a movie. So I couldn't park where I normally was. Went in, clocked in. Hey, what movie are they filming? It's a movie called Blow.

Derrick (52:46.006)
wow. Filming the bar scene there.

Charlie Robinson (52:47.01)
They were filming the beach scene. Yeah, where he's sowing weed on the beach. So... man. Well, but now... You don't mention it in the book, but now you are doing... Your life is outstanding now, man. And credit to you for crafting this life into what it is now. The Conscious Resistance Network.

Derrick (52:52.434)
yeah, very cool.

Charlie Robinson (53:17.248)
Independent Media Alliance, the Pyramid of Power, the People's Reset. I mean, from doing time to doing really important stuff, man, can we at least wrap up with what you are working on right now?

Derrick (53:31.085)
Absolutely brother again. Thank you for giving me the chance to talk about this because I know I know that not everybody in Your audience or maybe elsewhere might not care about this story. They're like, let me hear more about Epstein Sometimes I hear that I joke about that with my audience. I'm like, know some of you guys just want the salacious stuff It'll be there. It's not going anywhere But I think also I do think there's importance in this so just another reminder if you guys want to learn more about the book You can go to a man of my word

Charlie Robinson (53:44.482)
We'll get to Epstein. We'll get to it. Don't worry, it's coming.

Derrick (53:59.003)
Yeah, so I continue to produce content at the Conscious Resistance. Obviously we're in a new year here, so I'm kind of rethinking what I'm gonna focus on for 2026. I kinda wanna continue the shift towards solutions, but also continue to break down the daily cycle of propaganda we're all facing, and obviously the latest stuff going on Venezuela and everything else. I'll have some content out on that very soon. The Pyramid of Power is, I mean, as we're speaking, the final episode of Volume 17, part two.

My editor is putting the finishing touches on it right now and so it'll be out this month, January for sure. And actually just last week I released the book version of it. So the last month we've been working on turning all the scripts from being formatted for video format into a book version. And actually the book has more research that I had to cut out of the final conclusion of the documentary. Nothing that I think is majorly consequential, but for those of us who might be nerds into this type of research and really want to get into the finer details.

There's some things that I had to cut it so that the final episode wasn't three hours long, but I kept it all for the book version. And so people can find that at the pyramid of power.net. Of course, all the episodes are available for free one through 16 and 17 volume one, volume two is coming soon. And then there's a link to the book as well. So if you want to have a hard copy version of that, people can find that there.

And yeah, besides that, I'm continuing to write articles for The Last American Bag Bond with Ryan Christian, of course. We're continuing to do the Independent Media Alliance, as you know. And as we're recording here, we're about three weeks away from the People's Reset 2026, which is the event I co-produce and co-host in Morelia, Mexico. Really excited about that, because that's just another extension of trying to...

shift and pull more people towards solutions. know, we're 2026 now, 2030 is not far off in the distance as it may have been a few years ago. And so people have got plans, the predator class, they've got their plans and the people's reset is kind of our effort of bringing people together and beautiful mountains of Mexico, Morelia for five days of solutions, mental, physical, spiritual, building parallel systems, empowering technology, permaculture, growing your own food, building communities. And we've also got

Derrick (56:11.067)
A lot of awesome musicians, we're bringing Dub FX down here and Natalie Rise and a bunch of other local musicians. So it's gonna be a fun time. If anybody's interested in learning more about that or watching for free online, you can go to the peoplesreset.org and check that all out. yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be big things for 2026. Right now, I'm just gonna be focusing on promoting the memoir, promoting the Pyramid of Power book and seeing where that takes me.

Charlie Robinson (56:35.436)
Last question, how are your avocados?

Derrick (56:38.285)
man, we literally just got back from the land and I have another giant bag of them. I'll send you pictures of it, but right now downstairs in my living room, I have four giant sacks, probably I'd say four to 500 pounds of avocados right now. We have about 70 trees on the property and that's another big thing is, you know, this year is going to be a big year for our project. It's called the Contras Agora Eco-Village. And so we've got about six households who've bought into it. We're going to be aiming for like eight to 10 households.

And myself and my lady, we're gonna try to build our hempcrete home later this year and kind of make the shift towards being on the land. We got a house here in the city, but we wanna make that happen as the world gets crazier. And we've got this abundance. We've got some, I just picked guayabas this morning and we got so many avocado trees, I can't even count them, but the abundance is there, man. And we're just trying to thrive in it.

Charlie Robinson (57:32.761)
Some people talk about it. Some people actually do it. It's great to see you doing it, man. That's Derek Brose, everybody. Please buy his book, support his work. If you feel compelled, buy his book and send it to somebody in your life who you think might benefit from it. Everybody's gonna benefit from the pyramid of power. You can watch that if you're ready for it and the Conscious Resistance Network. Guys, go check that out. I republish articles that Derek writes over at ActivistPost all the time as well because I'm no dummy.

I'm just gonna take his work and republish it because it's outstanding and fantastic. And I hope you'll support his work. And if you're looking to support me, you can go to macroaggressions.io and do that. Hopefully you bookmarked activist post as well. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you again soon.