YouSaid · the spoken record

Adrian Perkins

lines on the record: 69
first: 2023-07-27
most recent: 2023-07-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“As open about it as possible because it's helped me rewire after I've left the military and I don't have to be in soldier mode anyway. I have to exist in a completely different dynamic and with completely different circumstances I have to be there for my family in various ways that I have to go through these things and I have to deal with my past experiences and I have to deal with friends in a certain way. So this has been very, very helpful for me and it keeps me helping too very helpful.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, no, it does. And the interesting growing up in an African American community, there's a stigma on there was a stigma is getting better on mental health and going to see a therapist and then going into the military, a very similar stigma on mental health. If you want to see a therapist, there was a weakness associated with it. And that's the reason why to this day I talk about it so freely as well because I want people to see this, you know, military veteran, this college athlete, you know, people that fit those kind of manlier stereotypes to talk about therapy freely. And I have plenty of friends. It's like, oh my God, I'm so happy. You told me you went to therapy. Like, I'm going to go. I've been thinking about it. I've been on the fence. I'm going to go. And you'd be surprised, David. I'm talking about, you know, military majors, colonels. I'm talking about mayors that'll hear me talking about it even to this day and say, I'm really happy you told me this story. So that's the reason why I try to be.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where we have a moment of grieve. I'd be an operations officer. I was actually responsible for working harder in that particular moment because we had to make sure we were able to call in those nine-line medevex as quickly as possible. We had to make sure we established security as quickly as possible. We had to get our firing point back up where we fire those artillery grounds back at the enemy as quickly as possible. And the five name was Wilderness. You just had to go into action. So yeah, it's very, very atypical things that occurred to me growing up. I'll put it that way”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I did from the neighborhood context to the military context, I did. And, you know, in talking about therapists, it probably wasn't the best thing for me going from that type of neighborhood environment to the military. And I've had to kind of hash those things out of my older age. But yeah, it was a lot of familiarity with it that allowed me to just go through it and keep going. In the military, I was stationed the first time we lost soldiers was my first deployment in Afghanistan where we had a direct rocket attack on one of our fire direction centers. I was a battalion operations officer and we lost two people immediately on impact and then a third soldier bled out on the plane, Jamar Higgs, who's from Arkansas. He bled out on the Medevac out. And that was in a moment where, you know, death in the military isn't the same as it is in real life.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was unconscious, actually. I didn't learn about Code Twitching and all those technical terms until much later in my life. It was very unconscious. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be accepted. I wanted to do good by people. I didn't want to get in trouble. I also saw a lot of people being, you know, the coronal justice system in my neighborhood taken away neighborhood leaders and young people and all that other stuff. So I knew I had to a pretty tight line to walk. So it was pretty unconscious to me. And I got some very genuine great friendships that I have to this day. Actually, crazy enough, I talked to my elementary best friend yesterday on the phone as a white guy, him and his mother and my mother are the closest and they're probably best friends to this day. So no developing those friendships, it was just unconscious and it was just baked into the environment for me.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Class president election, you have to be able to talk to black and white students. And that was an ability that not a lot of students had. One thing about me growing up as well that's embedded in my story is although I grew up in Cedar Grove and all black neighborhood, I was educated in a neighborhood named Bramoor, which was pretty much a predominantly middle class white neighborhood off of a program called Majority to Minority Transfer Program, Eminem Transfer. And, you know, night when I got home, I was around a lot of black people. And by day when I was at school, I was around, you know, a lot of white children in gifted classrooms as well. And I would see friends with some of my black friends on some of my breaks. But yeah, I had to be able to learn a lot of different languages and lingo and cultures.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very diverse. I went to a public school, David. It was very diverse, but the diversity is different. In the South, Louisiana, my diversity was black white. When I go to West Point, I'm exposed to Latino people and I'm exposed to Jewish people and I'm exposed to Asian people and, you know, people from various different backgrounds. We even had cadets come from other countries. So the diversity was very different. My student body in high school and something else that kind of gave me some tools to do was almost split 50-50 black white students. So, you know, if you want to win a”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It gave me the tools and the confidence to let me know I could survive in any scenario that I was ever put in. I could lead in any scenario that I was put in if necessary. And yeah, it was just a transformational experience that I'm very blessed to have and 100% accounted for a lot of the other successes that I received throughout my life.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it changed me in. In very fundamental but very revolutionary ways as well. And I'm going to, I'll jump into that. The reason being is because, you know, obviously I was an athlete coming out of Louisiana. I was somewhat of a leader being class president. But going to West Point, you're around a bunch of class presidents, a lot of type A people, but also it removed me out of Louisiana as well. I got to see more of the world and it gave me a discipline unlike anything that I had ever had. And I was already a pretty disciplined kid. You know, I would wake up in high school. I was already waking up at 5 30 in the morning running before I would have to go to school. So I was already pretty disciplined. But West Point gave me a discipline and taught me how to focus and orient myself around missions. And it taught me how to lead various groups of people, not just people that grew up in a neighborhood beside me or my own neighborhood. And yeah, that gave me the tools and talk about confidence. That's where it was introduced.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. So I was not intending to go to West Foyant. I was intending to go to LSU. But my junior year on September 11th when the World Trade Center is were attacked. That's when I changed course quite a bit. My older brother was actually already in the military at the time. So I knew a little bit about the military because I spent some summers with him. But after watching those towers fall that morning, that's when I made the decision that I was not going to LSU. West Point had already recruited me at that point. And I started to take that recruitment serious and I set myself on the path to get my nomination and go to West Point.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you know what at West Point? It wasn't even confidence. And I tell this story, it was Naivete. I didn't know much about West Point. I didn't know much about what I should do at West Point. My mom, you know, my mom went to, you know, night school. She didn't have the traditional college background. And she was like the first person in her family to do it. So I didn't have many reference points. So what I told myself when I got into West Point was Adrian, you should do the same things you did in high school, not knowing that everybody at West Point was their class president at high school was the captain of the drag team. So, you know, it was one of those things that kind of inadvertently out of naivety walked into and it worked out for him.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So me and my best friend looked at each other and said, all right, let's try this out. And we walked in a room, signed up, didn't do anything, and ended up winning and become, I became my class president for the first time. I ran out my sophomore year in high school. And yeah, as you pointed out, that pattern continued to repeat itself all the way up through graduate school where I was student.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a child, I didn't really get the concept of age well. I wanted to beat them both in sports and in the classroom despite that big age gap. So that's what really made me focus in class and really wanted me to focus in sports. But sports was my first love. So when in high school, I was like, I'm going to be an athlete. And, you know, it was all about football and basketball and running track. And one day me and my best friend were walking to sports practice and one of our friends stopped us and said, you should sign up for student government. And we laughed at her. I was like, no, no, no. We play sports. We know our lane. We just wanted to be the high school jocks. And she's like, no, you need to sign up. She's like, you don't have to do anything. It's just a popularity contest.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Politician. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny this is going to be a very funny story because it wasn't intentional whatsoever. I grew up. I wanted to play sports. Let me credit my brothers here. I hope they don't watch this because we're extremely competitive and I never credited them with anything. One of my middle brother was extremely good at sports and my oldest brother was extremely good with academics. So as a kid, and I'm seven years old, younger than my middle brother, I'm nine years younger than my older brother.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She took college classes at night. So by the time I graduated from middle school, she had a bachelor's degree. So she showed me the importance of hard work and she showed me the importance of education early. It was just, you know, a woman that was going to make a way for her family. And even with a black woman in the south working two jobs, we still struggle. Again, that was why we lived in that neighborhood. It was plenty of nights when we still didn't have enough food despite her working end to end. you know, growing up like that very much also influenced the policies that I implemented when I became the mayor. I wanted to make sure that we helped out as many of our citizens as possible, especially those that I knew were working harder than most, yet still falling behind.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, she was weird. It feels when I look back like she was omnipresent. She's somehow worked those jobs where she still was able to take me to sports practices and support my brothers and things of that nature. But my mother was a there is a very religious woman. She made sure that she kept us in the church as well. We grew up Church of God in Christ Kojic. I was at church. I was doing everything from Bible study to prayer. She had me in the choir. I couldn't sing. So really grew up with a strong church background. But yeah, I remember her picking me up from school and we would go, I would go with her either to her second job where she cleaned office buildings at night. I remember doing plenty of homework and these, you know, fancy office buildings sometimes bank buildings, not so fancy while my mother vacuumed and cleaned up office buildings at night. On some nights, she would pick me up and she would go to college. She would go to school. She went to.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it was traumatic. Like, I can remember that to this day, you know, when a kid is sleeping under his bed at night time, that he's going to, he or she is going to walk around with an anxiety the next day. He's not going to quickly be forgotten either. You know, when you go to school, you're going to carry that with you when you're interacting in the neighborhood. You're going to carry that with you and not be sure, you know, where danger lurks. And when you're a child trying to figure out the world, that's not what you want introduced, right? That's not the most ideal circumstances. So not an ideal situation at all. And I'm very blessed that I have my mom and that I have my community to add those positive experiences to balance out the negative in my life.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I always told my students this is the non Wikipedia version of me. I was born in City Girl Carey Florida, the one poorest communities and neighborhoods here. My mom had, my mom and father had me, and I had two older brothers. Unfortunately, my father ended up leaving the family when I was three. We were already kind of financially struggling, but we really started to struggle at that point. But I had a superhero for a mother, what we didn't have in resources and material resources she made up for were the values that she taught us so but we still went through those circumstances i remember some of my earliest memories sleeping under the bed because we used to have feelings so often i didn't want to get shot as a kid”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's happened to be here, David. Thank you for the invite and serving at University of Chicago. It's an honor for me. I'm on a mission after I left the office to try to inspire as many young people as possible. So that was the perfect destination for me. So I really enjoyed it.”
2023-07-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 542 — Adrian Perkins · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source