#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 200 Days to Go: The Power of Our Votes and Our Voices in 2020

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

This event will focus on the importance of the right to vote in the 2020 election season. Speakers will address COVID's impact on the election, ongoing voter suppression efforts, barriers faced by college students, the power of the Black vote, building diverse coalitions this election cycle and more. Also, with college campuses closed, churches shut down and grassroots advocates unable to knock on doors, the traditional ways of bringing new voters on to the rolls has become more challenging. We will also focus on the critical importance of voter registration this season. Speakers include: Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Hill Harper, Actor, Author & Activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Activist & Co-Host, Pod Save the People Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change Moderated by Roland Martin, Host of Roland Martin Unfiltered Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's funky, he's fresh, he's real, the best, you know he's rolling, Martin. Martin. Hey, folks, welcome to this special, The Power of Our Vote, in partnership with the Lawrence Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Glad to have all of you here. Normally we're live at 6 p.m. Eastern, but we wanted to focus on this whole issue of, again, 200 days out and the power of our vote. All kind of things are happening in this country.

Obviously people are focused on the international pandemic, coronavirus, but the reality is there still is an election, a presidential election, but also U.S. Senate races, congressional races, gubernatorial, state legislators, local races as well. And so the goal is to focus on the power of our vote, how important it is, but also the obstacles that are being placed in front of us. As I said, this is in partnership with Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Joining us right now is the leader of the Law community, Kristen Clark. Glad to have Kristen with us. In addition, we have a great line of people in this first half hour. Joining us is, of course, Hill Harper, good alpha man, my friend, brother. Glad to see you, Hill. Also, we have Rashad Robinson. Of course, he leads the color of change. Glad to have you, Rashad, and your hat, your ubiquitous hat. And of course, Brittany Packnetti. She also joins us. Packnett she also joins us Packnett

Cunningham excuse me got thrown a Cunningham on as well so she recently got married of course activist and of course one who's very much engaged in the next half hour will be joined by New Jersey US Senator Cory Booker I want to start first off with Christian Christian real. This we're operating in a moment right now where so many things are happening and people have no idea. We saw just just this week in Wisconsin. Excuse me. Last week, the sheer madness of Republicans forcing people to go out and vote because they were trying to keep that Supreme Court seat, which they lost. It backfired on them. Yeah. Wisconsin was sheer chaos. And a real important reminder that we have a lot of work

to do to get ready for November 2020. And 200 days is all that we've got to get it done. You have Milwaukee, a city where there are usually 180 polling sites operating with five. You had lines stretching for long blocks, people who are trying to social distance in order to cast their ballot, lines that were hours long, plenty of people who requested an absentee ballot and they never got it, and a United States Supreme Court that felt the need to unnecessarily interject itself at the 11th hour, just adding chaos on top of chaos. This is an election where people were disenfranchised. And it's a real crystal clear example of the chaos that results when you combine voter suppression

that was always there with the new unanticipated challenges that we face in the wake of the pandemic. What we need right now is states really going to work and figuring out how do we open up as many avenues as possible so that people can participate in the primaries that remain and in the general elections. We need states offering up as many early voting opportunities as possible. We need to make sure that people can cast absentee ballots without restriction. We need to make sure that people are getting those ballots with the postage paid and the address already on the envelope and a process that is streamlined and simple. I participated in an event with Stacey Abrams earlier today,

and I love the way that she broke it down. If you have 100 people in a community who need to vote and we can get 75 of them to put their vote in the mail, that means 25 people who are showing up on Election Day. And if we open up some early voting opportunities and 15 people, 15 of those 25 early vote, then we've got polling sites that only have to deal with 10 people voting on Election Day. In 200 days, we have got to work tooth and nail to open up as many avenues for people to participate in the 2020 election season. Rashad Robinson, what we have to understand, what is going on right now, look, this is not, this is not are you with the Democrats or with the Republicans?

It's undeniable fact. Donald Trump said it himself that if we expand voting, we lose. The Speaker of the House in Georgia said the same thing. We can't do all of these things because Republicans will never win. There's a clear strategy when you look at what's happening here. Democrats want to expand access to the ballot. Republicans want to constrict it because for them, if few people vote, better chance for them winning. This is just it. Facts are facts. And so we can focus in here and try to play games with it. When you look at the actions taken by these two parties, it's clear what the strategy is. And they want to do the exact same thing come November. Yes.

I mean, this is not unfortunate like a car accident. This is a long-term strategy, decades upon decades long strategy. Years ago, when Color of Change took on the fight to ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, right, at the time it was a 40-year-old organization. And their founder, Paul Weirich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation, famously said, you know, back when there wasn't as much the Heritage Foundation, famously said, you know, back when there wasn't as much video content as there is now, you know, we don't want everyone to vote. Elections should not be about everyone voting. Right. And so we so because we recognize that they know that we can't win if we can't vote and they know that they can't win if we can,

that there's going to be a whole set of strategies in place. You know, you talked about some of the political leaders and what they've said. The speaker of the House in Wisconsin, you know, who pushed to have elections on the election day was out talking to press in, you know, a face mask, gloves and a full like, you know, hospital gear. You know, all of the Supreme Court members in Wisconsin, even the ones that voted to keep the election day open, they all voted by mail. They all voted by absentee or early or by mail. And so none of them had to show up on election day. We do have a multi-tiered election system. And I'm so glad to be partnering with the Lawyers Committee under Kristen's great leadership, because what they are doing is both connecting the work that the lawyers are doing on the ground every day,

the work of the 186R vote with organizations like mine at Color of Change, who are working at the grassroots level to mobilize people to fight back against this also in real time. And so we've built out a platform called the Black Response. And the Black Response is our sort of COVID action hub where we are going to be doing a whole set of work to both attract, engage and mobilize people to work hand in hand with all the other folks on the ground, local and national, to fight back against what's happening. What we know is, is that we have to mobilize people to the polls in spite of this and to ensure that as many of us get to the polls in order for us to be able to change the rules long term around how voting is done in this country. Brittany, when you talk about how important this is, when you talk about activists on the ground going door to door, interfacing with people, we just saw what took place in Tennessee. They passed this law that basically was going to

criminalize people who were trying to register folks to vote. Lawyers Committee fought that. Tennessee then backs off of that. But that's what you're seeing. You're seeing you're seeing largely Republicans use the power of the office to put into place rules and procedures in Kentucky. They just overrode the veto of the governor when it came to voter I.D. But you closed but you closed driver's license offices. How the hell can you get a voter I.D. if you now can't go because the shelter in place? That's the games that we're seeing. And I think for African-Americans, we better understand and for African-Americans, for Latinos, but also young white voters had better understand. We're going to see more of this as we get closer to November.

We're going to see more of this as we get closer to November, because this is what has always been done. And let's be very clear, Republicans are using coronavirus to do even more of it. The kind of fear mongering that has gone on around this virus has been used to shield a lot of the kind of actions that you've been talking about. I mean, when we think about the fact that in Wisconsin, there were folks who thought ahead to get their absentee ballot and still didn't receive it by Election Day just to have the Supreme Court say that your absentee ballot had to be postmarked by Election Day. I mean, these are the kind of rules that we're seeing happen all over the place. And they're counting on us either being distracted or fighting each other so much that we don't get it together.

Look, I am from St. Louis. I'm a proud member of the Ferguson uprising. And the work that people like Kayla Reed, Action St. Louis, that Color of Change partnered on to go and engage the very communities that the establishment in Missouri had forgotten about. Unseated a long-term incumbent county prosecutor in Bob McCullough, that's the same prosecutor who failed to indict Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown. Everyone said it couldn't be done. And not only was it done, not only was he defeated, he was replaced by a black county prosecutor and voted in by all of the very people that people consistently said would never, ever show up to the ballot box again. If we engage our people, they vote. If we ask them to vote, they show up in the

ways that we ask them to show up. If we educate folks, they engage in the ways in which they've been educated. So we need to make sure that people, as Kristen said, are filling out their absentee ballot applications. We need to make sure that the United States Postal Office is protected so that those absentee ballots can be sent back with postage already on it and prepaid so that people are not restricted from that access. We're going to continue to see these rules happening all over, and they are depending on young people, on people of color, on disaffected voters to not show up in November.

And whatever showing up will look like, whether it's early voting, whether it is socially distanced voting, whether it is absentee voting, we have to make sure that we participate because nothing about us should be happening without us. I made the point, Hill, of what you're seeing here in terms of the games that are being played and just how absolutely crazy they are. And when you listen to the language here and for Anthony, go to my iPad and play this soundbite Hill, because it underscores how ludicrous you have Republicans who are playing the games. Because, again, to say, oh, no, you're Donald Trump. I don't want mail-in voting. Fraud, fraud, fraud. Remember, he had a whole special commission that was supposed to find fraud, didn't find any. And when you talk mail, you talk about voter fraud or mail-in balloting, the most important case was in

North Carolina, the Republicans were doing. So here was Trump the other day at the White House. Go ahead. You have to do the certifications. And you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place. No, I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing. I think if you okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay.

I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay.

I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay.

I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think it's okay. I think they dump it. I'll tell you what, and I don't have to tell you, you can look at the statistics. There's a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting. First, that's a lie, Hill, because, again, that's a lie, that thousands, and you can see the statistics, but what he's describing is exactly what Republicans did in North Carolina, where it was so bad that even the Republican Party had to say, yeah, we're going to need another election because we've got to throw this one out. But here's the crazy

thing, Hill. He voted absentee in Florida, in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court justices who ruled against the extension of absentee ballot, all of them voted absentee. That shows you how ludicrous these arguments are. Absolutely. But but Roland, I mean, that's been part of the game plan, you know,

obviously to to be able to just say whatever you want, you know, whether there's any truth to it, and then allow a huge discussion about lying or he's not telling the truth happen while all these different measures are being put in place at the same time to disenfranchise folks. I mean, obviously, I'm very proud to, for the last four years, to serve with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights as their national ambassador. And Kristen Clark has done an amazing job, and most of which folks don't even know, going to places to fight things like what was going on in Texas with voter ID laws, what's happening in Tennessee, North Carolina, et cetera. It's absolutely essential.

And Brittany's right in what Rashad's doing with color change. It's all true, but we have to remember that one of the number one ways folks, a lot of them having to do with the inability to pay back certain fines and fees based off of, oftentimes, problematic stop, frisk, search, charge, et cetera, and then disenfranchising from the voting process. And we can do all of this work, and we can do all these things and listen to these lies, and then argue about the lies as distraction.

As my son comes, he just woke up from his nap, so he's going to sit here for a second. And so here's the deal. We have to do all of this work behind the scenes to protect the right to vote. But then we also have to go to our people and do what Britney was just talking about times 10 and let them know how important their vote is. Because so many people I've talked to on the ground say, you know, my vote doesn't matter. It doesn't, you know, they're going to steal it anyway. They're going to do this. They're going to do that. And it's like Pavlov's dog. The communities have been beaten down so much that you shock them

once, the dog jumps. Shock them several, several times, the dog stops moving. Our turnout rates, particularly in our poorest communities, particularly in our most disenfranchised communities, are not what we need them to be to actually control the ballot. And unless we're actually able to do that work on top of the voter protection side, we're not going to be able to win these races. And it's incredibly important that we let people know that they matter, that their vote is important, and give them all the different tools

we've talked about already of how to do that and cast their ballot. Chris, and y'all have been, of course, fighting a lot of these things in the courts. For the people who are watching, and look, we cover this stuff constantly, give people an understanding of the type of litigation y'all are engaged in

all over the country trying to stop a lot of these crazy efforts to keep folks from voting. Yeah, I mean, this is the fight that keeps us up at night and going around the clock. We just filed a voting rights lawsuit in North Carolina today dealing with problematic voting machines in many parts of the state. We just filed a lawsuit yesterday in Gwinnett County, Georgia, where officials are failing to provide materials in bilingually.

And it's actually required under the Voting Rights Act in parts of the country where you have communities that are limited English proficient, that are limited English proficient. We filed suit in Ohio. Ohio was such a fiasco. The, the rules that have been set up in place for that primary will no doubt make it difficult for people to participate. You can handwrite an absentee ballot application. We fought and we were unsuccessful. Our goal when we go to the courts is to make sure at the end of the day that voters have voice in our democracy. And we don't win every single fight, but we also don't turn a blind eye to voter suppression when we see it. And sadly, voter suppression is alive and well across the country.

And it's fueled in part by President Trump, who at every turn uses his bully pulpit to spread falsehoods, lies about vote fraud. You talked about the speaker in Georgia. He's actually launching a so-called task force to study purported fraud with absentee voting. We know that this is all about discouraging states to do the hard work that's really needed in the midst of this pandemic to ensure that people can exercise voice in our democracy. So we are in the courts. We've got color of change that's in the street and really marshalling digital advocacy as a weapon to activate people and to fight back. We have Britney, who is a tremendous and powerful voice speaking truth to power. We have folks like Hill Harper, who is using his platform to encourage people to get

out and vote. And that's what it's going to take. It's going to be a multi-tiered strategy from now and for the next 200 days to make sure that we can overcome the barriers that stand between us and the ballot box. We don't need a reminder about what's at stake, uh, with elections. As you remind people, it's not just about the presidency and the top of the ballot. It's who is your mayor, uh, putting in place that police chief? Who's sitting on your school board and shaping policies, uh, for our kids? It's, um, who's the sheriff making policies, running our jails? It's, as Brittany talked about, who's serving as your local district attorney and making decisions about whether or not to prosecute that cop

who used deadly force without basis. We've seen what's happened to our federal courts over the past three years. You know, there is so much at stake right now, and it's important that people be encouraged and that we do the hard work necessary to make sure people have voice. And the 866 Our Vote election protection program that we run at the lawyers committee is one vehicle that's going around the clock 365 days a year and is a place where people can report complaints about voter suppression that may be playing out in their communities. I made the point, Rashad, about what happened in Wisconsin. This story is quite interesting. This is the headline of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It says, go to my iPad, Anthony, all seven Supreme Court justices voted absentee, even those who hadn't in the past. The Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, allowed the voting to go forward there in Wisconsin, even though they won't even meet together.

They meet via conference call. And so you're literally doing things in your own life that you won't let other folks do, and you're playing the games. And so what ends up happening is Dan Kelly loses because in Wisconsin, and unfortunately, they were trying to

purge 200,000 people from the voting room. And so what ends up happening is Dan Kelly And so one of the things that also happened here, which is crazy, Rashad, is that we have to remember, it was from Ohio where the Supreme Court allowed these voting purges. There is a clear plan to purge as many people as possible

in order to force people, not to be counted, to lower the numbers here. And that's why I keep making i keep telling people you know what don't assume your registration is good re-register every year every year fill that card out so they can't try to play the games well you know all of this i'm for first of all roland i'm so glad that you're doing that and that um you have this platform and you are able to just speak it really clearly because you're absolutely right. All these things are taking place. You know, back in 2016,

we had to run a campaign in Wisconsin in Paul Ryan's district where they were trying to move a polling place in Paul Ryan's old district where they were trying to move a polling place from a town hall to a police station, right? Hill brought up, and both Hill and Brittany brought up the intersections between criminal justice and voting rights. And this sort of idea, this strategy of putting up billboards before Election Day saying, you know, if you show up to the polls and you owe taxes or voter fraud is a felony. We have had to do rapid response for years around that. We had to do rapid response around that under the framework for years where we actually had a justice department that was trying to do everything it could to ensure that people had access to the vote. Now we have a Justice Department that is lockstep in the movement with the voter suppressors,

with the folks that are trying to suppress our votes. And so it's gonna be more important than ever. And so, you know, for us as a digital advocacy organization, we, you know, are seeing our job as a couple of things. We have built a digital action hub that we're gonna be rolling out over the next couple of months. actually have already started testing it out that has a set of tools for everyday people, both to fight back against misinformation and disinformation,

to allow us to tag it in real time, to have us have our members go straight to video, basically training hundreds of people that can go straight to video where we can buy ads across zip code tracks to be able to fight back against disinformation and misinformation that is also fueling some of the voter suppression that's happening, that we can also do the type of voter contact work when we might not actually be able to get to the doors at the sort of level and scale that we're able to get to the doors in places like, you know, St. Louis County when Brittany talked about the work that we did in partnership with local folks to unseat Bob McCullough.

All of those things, we're going to have to figure out new ways to build power in this moment. But what's clear is that we do have to do the work around communications, around mobilization, and around organizing in order to get people to the polls this election cycle. We cannot just simply leave it up to fate that people are going to be upset about what's happening in this country. People are facing a lot of pain. And what our opponents to Black people turning out are hoping is that all of the pain, all of the challenges combined with extra hurdles will help them keep enough of

us away from the polls where they will be able to kind of express their will for the type of future we should all have. And we should be very clear about who gets to speak for us and what justice and freedom actually looks like. And that is why we're going to need as many people as possible, both to support the sort of efforts of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE, but also support efforts that we are doing, because what we're going to have to do is be on the phones, to be on the internet. Not everyone's going to be on social media. We're going to have to do all the work to reach beyond the choir, because this election cycle is going to be harder than ever. I hear my own family members very clearly saying they might

not be the first people to open their doors to someone coming to knock, as I've done the informal polling about sort of what does it mean to do this type of organizing, this type of voter contact work in this new era. So we will have to change strategies. We will have to augment some things. And that is why for folks who are watching, we're going to need you to sign up. We're going to need you to put in some time. We're going to need you to go to the lawyers committee.

We're going to need you to go to Color of Change. We're going to need you to go to Color of Change. We're going to need you to go to organizations locally in your community, because the effort to ensure that we get the type of people in office that will hear us, listen to us, and be accountable to us is more important than ever. All right, then. Rashad, just let me know. I know you may have to go, just let me know when, then I'll have your final comment. I want to in right now. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who joins us. Glad to have you here, Senator, on this special dealing with the issue of voting. 2018, your state, the governor signed into law automatic voter registration, putting upwards of some 600,000 people on the rolls in January of 2019. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a series of bills that also expanded voter rights there.

This is what people need to understand, and we may underscore this all the time, why when you vote in that state for the state legislature, vote for those state rep and state senators, that matters because on the issue of voting, voting is not a national issue. There's no federal guarantee right to vote. So voting is not a national issue. There's no federal guaranteed right to vote. So vote is really 50 state elections. And so when we ignore who is the state rep in the state Senate, then that allows other folks to be able to control the levers of power. And so that's why it changed in New York. That's why it changed in New Jersey.

And we're seeing that all across the country. People are realizing that you have to be able to mobilize and organize in these states because that's where they want to restrict our right or our desire to vote. North Carolina is a perfect example. Florida is a perfect example. Texas is a perfect example, Senator. First of all, Roland, deep gratitude for you having me on here and just for being a friend. You've been texting me really good feedback during this crisis and I really appreciate that. You have a cast of heroes to me, people who I just really look up to from Brittany Hill and and son. And of course, Rashad, who's just the color of change is is to be a group of heroes as well. So I just want to start off by saying, because you've got Kristen there, who's such a great ally of mine in my work in the Senate and what she's doing right now through legal action. And and what the lawyers committee is doing is just extraordinary. I mean, I think she just mentioned about Gwinnett County just making sure you have

Spanish language absentee ballots. This stuff really makes a difference. And what's going on with voter suppression around our country right now is just insidious. And us as the civil rights, children of the civil rights generation, it's almost shameful that these gains that folks literally were dying for, I think Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner, for example, that they're now finally gutting so much of the gains that they got and finding new creative ways to suppress the votes, particularly of people of color. And what we saw in Wisconsin, you guys have already talked about that. I heard a little bit of the conversation.

But it's just to me, I've called it despicable on national TV already. And I'm just going to tell you, when I saw those images and those pictures of watching folk being helped out of their wheelchairs, the most vulnerable people in communities, it was just despicable to me where people were having to choose between their health and their voting. And when you see people of color, the numbers in Milwaukee, for example, I was just writing this down to get it exact, but 70% of the COVID deaths in Milwaukee County, the whole county, are African Americans. Blacks make up only 26% of the population. elderly person, as I saw on those videos, going to vote, what you are basically putting yourself in crisis for. You not only have the equal risk of everybody there getting it, but because of the things we know that are disproportionately impacting our communities. I'm sitting here in Newark. We got Superfund sites, incinerators, three, four times the asthma rates in our community, all of these environmental

toxins. And now you're sending vulnerable communities out to vote who can't vote by absentee. It is sinister as well as despicable. And so I feel very compelled in the work that I'm doing right now. This is one of those days where most of these days now, you know, you forget what day of the week it is because you're just going at it 24-7. But I'm blessed today. I was talking with fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus about our agenda, working with Chuck Schumer on the Senate side on critical things that you all have already been talking about, including these health disparities. I know we're talking about voting, but everything is interconnected here. Everything is interwoven when it comes to the rights, dignity, well-being,

and frankly, dealing with these persistent injustices that we're seeing in communities because they're lacking presentation. And I know you haven't touched on the census, but God, when you talk about adequate representation, your votes, meaning having the power that they should have, the challenges we're facing with the census deeply affect that. And so, Roland, I just want to get real quick to some of the things that I'm working on, specifically if that's okay with you. Go ahead. But right now, besides the health issues we're working on and the economic issues that we're working on, we were able to get into that last bill about $400 million in election assistance to states. It's a first step, but it's still only a modicum of what is actually needed. And so we have a big effort in the Senate Democrats of trying to get a lot more resources in there to make sure we have strong voter provisions

in this next coronavirus bill. And that really means four things that I wanna drill down on. First, we believe strongly, and you guys have been talking about it, in voting by mail. Good enough for the president, good enough for state Supreme Court members,

like we saw in Wisconsin. No one in America, especially at a time that if you're looking at the modeling I'm looking at, we could have a blip up again of coronavirus in November. Nobody should have to choose between their health and exercising what is a sacred right when it comes to voting. And there are different ways we can do it. We're talking about a lot of this, whether it's expanding vote by mail or by requiring every state

to send every registered voter a ballot. When you're talking vote by mail, there's a number of things that are really important. You guys might have already mentioned these, but it's about having postage paid. It is about not having these signature match programs be done in a way that we already know that they are used in a way to undermine the votes of blacks and Latinos. It means that if you get your ballot in by the election day, it has to be counted, even if it comes in later past election day. So we need to make sure that we are emulating and expanding upon the success that we're already seeing in a

lot of states that are leading the way from Oregon to Colorado to Utah. These are places that put in place very robust vote-by-mail systems, and it's something that we need to do. And again, as Wisconsin shows us, that just by having a vote-by-mail system, it does not necessarily mean it's just. Second, we need to ensure access to early voting through an extended in-person early voting period. It's something, again, that we are trying to figure out federal levers to incentivize states to take on that practice. Third, we absolutely need to expand options for voter registration, like online voting and same-day voting. It's something that I'm pushing hard as a part of my agenda. I think, as you gave my state a lot of props for that, that should not be something just by having the privilege of living in New Jersey. And I know y'all are jealous for not

living in Jersey. Really? Really? Yeah. I had to go there, man. I had to go there. Okay. I know you got state envy rolling. Keep moving. Keep moving. But we need to make sure that this is a national program. And fourth, we need to make sure that we are preparing for this election. What we saw in Wisconsin, we should make that the motivation for us to be marshalling all of the resources and activism we have to make sure that that is not the picture in November. And that means making sure that we are doing everything to expand access for those people that are being so often shut out from participation, not just people of color, but people with disabilities, people with English language proficiency issues, low income people in general, Native Americans. We need to make sure, as we saw in the last election, the Native communities in North Dakota, that state did targeted efforts

to try to disenfranchise Native Americans. And so that's overall the agenda that we're pushing in the Senate, trying to get resources there. We've got roughly 200 days, and we should be working on this with the same sense of urgency and activism that our ancestors in the civil rights movement were doing, because in many ways, the stakes are higher right now in this election. And I know what the difference this could make in terms of who

controls the Senate, which affects judges, who controls the presidency, which affects existential issues from environmental justice and the climate crisis, all the way to pressing issues that we were making progress in under the Obama administration. Remember, the president had the 21st Century Task Force on Policing, which had so many great recommendations in that have not been implemented. An attorney general that was willing to do consent decrees. Got it. So all of these things are on the ballot, and we've got to make sure people have access. Brittany, you heard the senator say right there about how you've got to mobilize and organize.

What are the conversations you are having? And, Hila, you can jump in, and Rashad, you can jump in on this as well. What are the conversations you all are having about how people can mobilize and organize where you can't go door to door, where you can't do all the things that we traditionally do when it comes to getting people ready to vote? Sure. Well, first of all, just so much respect for Senator Booker and the work that he's continuing to do for us and on our behalf in the Senate in fighting this issue and getting out ahead of it. Look, we really need to get back to our value of community in this moment. It is a Western dominant idea that we should all be out for ourselves and that individualism should rule the day when, in fact,

as a community, our values are rooted in communal power. They are rooted in making sure that what is affecting your neighbor, we understand, is affecting ourselves. And so those are the kind of values that we need to lead with in this moment. Look, we have the technology, so we can get creative with it. We know where our folks sit, whether they are on the Internet or off the Internet. So it is about us taking out our phones, sending all of our loved ones the link to vote.org, and say, check your registration today. Because as you said, Roland, sometimes we can get thrown off those voter rolls and not even know about it.

It is about leveraging leaders in the faith community as they stream out to their congregations to make sure that they are empowering the information with them and that you are texting out the link to download your absentee application to the family group text. Yes, it is about all of the organizing that established organizations like Color of Change and so many others are doing. But it is also about us recognizing the power of community. It is about us recognizing that our vote does more when we can vote in a block and actually communicating that with the people that we love. It's also about educating the people that we love. I have a lot of college students in my life who think that their vote doesn't count for anything. They're saying the same things that Hill has heard from people that he loves and cares about. So I've been having the conversation that doesn't patronize them,

right? That doesn't say, you need to go and vote because I said so, right? We know that that's actually not an effective strategy to condescend someone into voting. It is a much more effective strategy to ask someone why they feel disengaged and disaffected by the system, and then to have a conversation about what happens at the polls that directly affects them. So yes, I want you to care about who's running for district attorney. I also want you to care about who's running for president, because they will have a hand in whether or not you can continue to pay for college. It's about making sure that people know about what's going to be in front of courts. It's about making sure that people know about the power that cabinets have to create rules and regulations that affect

our everyday life. It's about making sure that our folks and our loved ones who take advantage of public housing know that the president decides who runs that HUD department. We have to actually be having these conversations with the folks that we have influence over, that we have power over, and who we know trust us so that they can get honest, correct information and access to the things that they need to make sure their voices are heard. Rashad and Hill. Hill, go and I'll jump in. Okay. I think Brittany is absolutely right. This conversation is bringing me back to my days at Harvard Law School when I learned about Charles Hamilton Houston or Thurgood Marshall.

And at that point, during the civil rights movement, fighting Jim Crow laws and moving into the civil rights movement and Brown versus Board of Education, et cetera, it was the idea of attacking the court system to create meaningful change. Now that we've moved into this era over the last 30 to 40 years of systemic and institutionalized racism and disenfranchisement that we've seen that is very purposeful and deliberate, and we've also seen this wealth gap grow, and now that there's so much money in politics, it's really about moving into the power of the vote and the power of these offices. And we have to call each other to task, to be quite honest. There is a frustration. I've been doing a lot of work in Flint, Michigan, and Flint is one of the poorest cities in the country. 41% of the people live below poverty line. The vast majority of those are black women,

ages 24 to 35, most of whom are single moms. And it is a community that's been completely ignored. It's a water desert as we speak. But the point is, is that getting those people engaged when they've been beaten up so badly is difficult. But the one thing that they say is that folks and so-called celebrities and people of influence will come to Flint, take a picture, post it on their Instagram or whatever, like they're doing something, and then you never see them again. So what does that mean? To Brittany's point, we have to call influential folks to task to say,

hey, it's not just about one post on Instagram. It's about you picking up the phone and going back to old school, and we're going to give you 1,000 numbers to call. And when those folks get a call from Roland Martin or Senator Booker or Puffy or an athlete who's local or anybody, a politician, someone that they know, and talking about different ways that they can make a difference, everybody on all tiers has to show up and do work and do meaningful work to get people involved and get people engaged. I know Senator Booker loves this quote because I've seen him speak many times and he's an eloquent brother and he loves to pull out this quote, which is true from Dr. King, the arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice, but then he'll say it doesn't bend on its own. And we, all of us, have to start doing the bending. We can't just say, you know what, it's good if you vote. You should show up.

We have to do the work. We have to show up, pick up the phone. And particularly in this day and age, we just got to call folks and call and call and call and talk to them. It's not just about social media because many of our people aren't on social media. They're not streaming Instagram. They're not doing that work. Many are, but it's about actually, social media because many of our people aren't on social media they're not streaming instagram they're not doing they're not doing that where many are but it's about actually but they do pick up the phone and they do and when someone who matters to them calls them and talks about how they can do it gives them the instruments of how they can vote they will

vote and participate and i think that that's critical we have to we literally have to to have uncomfortable conversations with each other about what are you actually doing to make everybody here on this roundtable is doing the work. But there's a whole lot of other folks that we all can name that talk like they do something, but they're really not doing anything. And we have to have those honest conversations to say, you know what, I'm going to lean on you. I'm going to send you a thousand numbers and a thousand names. And over the next three weeks, will you make these calls and commit to that? And if we break up the work that way and we actually do that kind of work, that real grassroots old school work, we actually can see results. If we don't, if we're not willing to do it, then, you know, we're going to expect the same old results. Rashad. And so just a couple of quick things. So I want people to join us at Voting While Black. Voting While Black is the platform where we are going to be putting technology and tools in people's hands who are able to use the technology to allow us to reach closer to what we can do without being able to get to the doors.

And so a couple of things that I want to say about that is that Brittany is absolutely right, that community has to come first. And for the last several years at Color of Change, we've been really working to build a relational organizing strategy. And what I really mean by that is starting at community first and moving to issue down the line, working to build relationships and communities around the country. And Hill just talked about Flint. And a perfect example is sort of the Flint story of our work,

where we started to have Black women's brunches there, just inviting Black women into conversations. And Flint and a lot of other cities around the country, with a lot of people coming offline, but then bringing people into conversations around digital organizing. Our current on the ground full time organizer in Flint, Ariana, actually showed up to one of those brunches. And it was her first time sort of coming to that type of activist event. And she went through the trainings and

is now a full-time organizer and led the work that we did on the mayor's race in Flint. A lot of the sort of efforts sort of that we're trying to do is bring people up a ladder of engagement, but connecting with everyday people to then give people the tools to get into their phone book list, to get into their email list, to get into their phone book list, to get into their email list, to get into their social media list,

and then provide people with the things to say, the scripts to move, and then connecting that back to actual data so we can know how many people we've touched, so we can also look back before Election Day to find out who we actually haven't talked to and who we may have to find other tactics. Having a data-driven program that is rooted in relationship and community is what we're trying to build and trying to quickly scale that up with a deep recognition that it will be really challenging and trying to pair that with the work of fighting misinformation and disinformation. We're already seeing in a lot of our polling and a lot of our numbers, a lot of ways in which some of the disinformation and misinformation

is impacting us in terms of how Black men, particularly Black men under 45, are seeing this upcoming election. And we're really focusing on both doing more deep listening, but also really trying to connect very clear conversations with that effort. Going to be rolling out a multimillion dollar ad strategy directly targeting two black men over the next couple of months off of a set of focus groups and polling that we've done to really try to engage and mobilize folks, but pairing that with listening so that we're actually addressing the conversations, right? If people are saying that certain politicians or certain people have

ignored them, it's not simply saying, no, they haven't ignored them, but it's having a conversation around why staying at home is not the answer and why building powerful campaigns that hold people that we put in office accountable is the right answer. And so I agree 100 percent with everything that is said. And what we need to do is pair that vision with infrastructure, infrastructure that allows us to actually scale that. So we are reaching millions upon millions of people because that's actually what it's going to take in order to win this next election. Back in 2018, we did over 5 million voter contacts, you know, leveraging about 20,000

volunteers. We're going to need to do a lot more of that over this upcoming election cycle. And we're going to need volunteer power to engage that. And we're going to need volunteer power to engage that. And we're going to need people power to engage that. So I hope people come visit us at colorofchange.org or votingwhileblack.com. And those are both places where you can join us. And of course, you know, sign up for the work that the Lawyers Committee is doing, because we rely on them so much as partners in helping us fight all the barriers that are being put in our way. And then I also just want to, of course, thank Senator Booker, who has just been amazing on so many issues and particularly helpful to us as we have challenged big tech and Silicon Valley

around some of the ways that the tools have been harmful and some of the platforms have been harmful. And ensuring that as much as we now have to use all these platforms, around some of the ways that the tools have been harmful and some of the platforms have been harmful. And ensuring that as much as we now have to use all these platforms, whether it's platforms that allow us to work or platforms that allow us to reach voters, that those platforms have civil rights implications baked in because they are sort of oftentimes

able to build, grow, and move without having to deal with civil rights, and oftentimes not having to hire black and brown people in the first place. And so having folks like Senator Booker do the questioning, create the policies, and ask the tough questions and do the pushing is so important as well. We've got about 10 minutes left, and so what I want to do is I'm going to go to Christian and Senator Booker, then we're going to do a final round with Brittany Hill and Rashad. Christian, I'm going to go to you.

Anthony, go to my iPad. You sent this tweet out six hours ago. In Wisconsin, at least 27,500 absentee ballots from eligible voters came in too late to be counted. Guys, you should be going to my iPad. More than 11, 000 voters who requested you should see it now more than 11 000 voters who requested ballots uh were never ever sent one okay so that's a tweet you sent in 2016 trump wins wisconsin by 22 748 votes now i'm not assuming that all those fc ballots let's say this was the presidential

election, would go to a Democrat or Republican. But to say 27,500 people that came in too late to be counted, 11,000 never got one, right there, that's 38,000 ballots. That's more than the margin of victory in 2016. And so people need to understand the work the laws committee is doing. We're in a situation where literally every single vote can make the difference. Yep, that's right. That is the story of democracy. Every vote counts. Or doesn't count.

Well, the reason why we see hostile election officials peddling these vote suppression schemes is because our elections have come down to these razor thin margins. You peel off a few people in Milwaukee, you peel off a few people in another community and all of a sudden you can turn the fair outcome of an election on its head. It's why this moment demands that we be vigilant. It's why this moment requires that we really take this time that we have at home with our families, as difficult as it may be to not be carrying out our ordinary lives, to think about what is the work that we can do right now to make sure that we have voice in the 2020 election season. History has shown that when African Americans turn up, when we show up and exercise our voice, we can shape history. And the ink is not yet dry on the role that we will play in the 2020 election cycle. I think that we can claim this moment to, one, start doing the work to make sure that our

communities are registered. As Brittany pointed out, you know, our churches are shuttered. Our campuses are shut down. Grassroots activists are not able to knock on the doors in the way that we would ordinarily do in order to unleash the power of people who are not yet registered to vote in our country. So working right now to make sure that they know about online voter registration if it's in their state is critically important. Making sure that we're pushing for same-day voter registration as a last-minute option to bring people onto the registration rolls in November has to be

a part of our strategy. I am really grateful for the leadership that Senator Booker has taken on many of these issues. We have a 400 million dollar allocation that has been put forth for states to begin to do this work right now. We need more funding. We need more of that funding to make sure that states can put in place all of the strategies needed to make sure that people can register and that people can vote in the primaries and vote in the general election. When I talk about vigilance, that means paying attention. If you hear about an effort to purge people from the roles in your community, if you hear them talking about new eligibility criteria, call 866-OUR-VOTE.

Call the election protection hotline that we lead at the Lawyers Committee. It's the nation's largest, nonpartisan, trusted source of information. And more importantly, we will fight back a lot of the complaints that people bring to us by way of 866, our vote. We end up taking those complaints and filing suits in court to fight back. I just want to close by noting that this is no doubt a very dark and turbulent time for our country. We've got people who face eviction, people who may have had their utilities shut off. We've got kids who are on that side of the digital divide that are not able to do distance learning right now. And as Congress

goes to work and puts together these massive spending bills, it's important that they bring a racial justice perspective to bear to make sure that the most vulnerable communities in our country are not left out. And I'm really thankful for Senator Cory Booker and for all of the members of CBC who fight every day to make sure that our voice is not left out. And that actually ties back to the power of our vote. If we don't vote, we don't have a seat at the table, and our issues get left by the wayside. I got about, so here's the deal. We are live streaming this on YouTube, Facebook, Periscope,

as well as Instagram Live. IG Live cuts off exactly after 60 minutes. And so if we could make the comments brief, Instagram live, IG live cuts off exactly after 60 minutes. And so if we could make the comments brief, Senator Cory Booker, then Brittany Rashad will close out with Hill. Senator Booker. I just want to just again say I'm grateful for the five of you that are on this call. You all are really people I look up to, admire and have had the chance to work with really closely. I want to just close out by saying two things. One is please, please fill out your census form. That is so urgent and related to what we're talking about,

about political power and representation. I'll say that again. Number two, I just want to let folks know that we are really in a distraught present where the rights that we have are being rolled back. I think of a guy named Larry Butler who I talked about during, I think, a Supreme Court justice hearing

who's 90 years old, African-American man, South Carolina. The poll tax when he was, back in the late 1800s, was equivalent to what he ended up having to pay. In fact, he paid more just for him to get a voter ID according to their voter ID laws, he paid more just for him to get a voter ID according to their voter ID laws after he couldn't get one through a bunch of rigmarole, was sent a lot

away as an elderly man without that much money. I could give story after story of example after example in so many states now about how rights are being rolled back. We've got to fight back. And this election 200 days ago is going to be a real crossroads for our country. And the final thing I'll just say, because Hill was so kind in his words to me, as was others, overly generous, frankly. Hill is just as amazing of a speaker. And then on top of it, he's handsome and has hair. I will say he's a triple threat. I just may have barely won.

But I will say, though, that King has another quote that I'll end with, which is just that change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability. It must be carried in on the backs of people who are willing to demand and work for it. And that's really got to be us in this generation, especially this year of great crisis and great consequence. Brittany. I'll just remind people that if your vote didn't mean anything, people wouldn't be spending so much time, so much money and so much effort to steal it from you. Text 10 people as soon as this is over. Send them the link to vote.org. Ask them to check their registration and have them tell you if they're registered. If they're not registered, they can get link to vote.org. Ask them to check their registration and have them tell you if they're registered. If they're not registered, they can get registered on vote.org. If they are

registered, tell them to go ahead and get their absentee ballot ready and then tell them to go sign up at Voting While Black. Nothing about us should ever be decided without us. Senator Cory Booker, we appreciate you joining us. Thanks a lot. Senator, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Rashad, your final comment.

Final comments, just to second Brittany. Join us at votingwhileblack.com. Join us at colorofchange.org. We don't win any of these things alone. We win by building collective power together. And so I just want to invite people into this work, into this service collectively, and into the work of being trained in this moment of how to use and leverage digital tools,

because we're going to have to find new ways to do old things, which is fight against all those forces that are standing in our way, and build power and make change in spite of it. So I hope people do that, and thank you for having me. Speaking of those digital tools, what we want to do is, when we get done here, Hill, you're going to give final comments in a moment.

When we get done here, what we want to be able to do is, we're going to be able to restream this. We're streaming this on my Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, and Instagram live channels. Lars can be on his Facebook page. We wouldiscope, and Instagram live channels. Largest committed Facebook page. We would love to be able to stream it to heal your Facebook page as well as Color of Change. The system that we use, we can stream simultaneously to six different platforms. That way, again, on the restream, we can reach more people who can watch this rebroadcast.

And so I'll send both of you guys a text message on that. Hill, your final comment. You know, I'll tell you, this election is about our future. And, you know, during this talk, my son came and sat down for a second, and then he got a little bored, so he left. But it's about him, and it's about all the little young girls, young boys that look like him and don't look like him and all of that. This election, all the way down the ballot, is going to influence the next 30 years in this country. And I'll tell you, I want to show you

a picture. This is a woman named Kathy Blake, who passed away yesterday. She was an organizer that I worked with in Flint, and she was an amazing woman. You just see her smile and just who she is. And she tirelessly organized volunteers. We did all these educational sessions about litigation in Flint, and we're still in the federal courts and fighting and fighting and fighting for the community to set up a victims fund. But she represents to me the fact that the disparities in terms of the impact of COVID are directly related, directly related to the lack of our voice in the political infrastructure and the ability to get services after five years in a place like Flint. So, you know, just on a triage level, I'm doing a GoFundMe through my Instagram, and the link is there in my profile, just to raise money to buy water for Flint because it's a water desert right now.

And I'll be going up to Flint later on this week when the first semi truck arrives with 23 pallets of water. And we're going to get over 15,000 gallons of water to Flint before in the next week or two. people like her that have fought the fight and are out there on the front lines that are now dying because of disproportionate, disenfranchised health systems and opportunities that are offered folks. We've got to stop. We have to. And we have to take care of our kids. And we have to do this work. So it's an imperative piece of what we do. 866-OUR-VOTE, 866-OUR-VOTE. Kristen has said it. Please use that number. Go to Color of Change. Look up Brittany. Follow

her. Roland Martin's doing this every day. So everybody who's been on is doing some type of work in their lane to do the work. Whatever makes your heart beat faster, do that work. Support it. And God bless. Kristen. When I turn on my TV, I see a whole lot of Rose Garden briefings,

but I don't see enough focus on us, on our struggles, and on the challenges that we as African Americans face today. So I just want to thank you, Roland Martin, for always giving voice to the issues that are front and center for black America. And no doubt, the ability to exercise our voice in November is one of the biggest struggles that we face as African Americans today. Senator Booker mentioned the census, and that is an incredibly important issue.

Right now, we know that there are a lot of hard-to-count communities that have not yet submitted their census form, that have not yet called the Census Bureau to make sure that every single person in their household is counted. And if we don't stand up and be counted, our communities will be shortchanged over the course of the next decade. I look forward to working in partnership with all of the folks who joined us today and with you to make sure that we show up and turn out and exercise our voice come November. All right. We certainly appreciate it, Kristen. Thank you so very much. I want to thank Senator Cory Booker, Rashad Robinson, Brittany Packnett, Cunningham with Hill Harper. Here's my final comments, folks. This is very simple.

There is not a single thing that you can name in your life that government does not have a role in. Forget all the people who talk about less government and smaller government and get government out of our lives. There's not a single thing in your life that government does not play a role in. The moment you're born, your birth certificate is a government document. The moment you die, that death certificate is a government document. Your driver's license, if you go to a public university,

when you are, any number of things, you are engaging in government. If you care about the need for a stop sign or speed bump, if you are concerned about sewer systems and streetlights and sidewalks and all of those things, that's all government. And so we have to understand that voting is one piece of this pie. I always say voting is when you vote. That's the end of one process and the beginning of another. So the election is over. Now we then mobilize and organize to move the people who we

voted for. And then if our person even didn't win, we're still a constituent. Even though Donald Trump was in the White House, we're still a constituent. We still can demand what we need and desire in our communities. And so don't let anybody tell you voting is irrelevant. It means nothing. It's a lie. Voting is critically important when it comes

to changing things in this country. The key is getting the right people in place who will then do what we need them to do. And so first and foremost, you got to be registered. Second, then you have to vote. Now, you heard Brittany say it. She said, when you get done, text 10 people. Look, you don't have to even go outside of your family. You should be doing checks. Is every single person in this family who is eligible to vote, are you registered? That's where you start. And then we begin to move people and begin to educate them. That's why this show is critically important, giving you the issues that matter. And so that's what we want everybody to do.

And so please support what we do, support the Lawyers Committee. If you want to support their work, where can folks give? Lawyerscommittee.org and hit that donate button. Okay, so all you got to do, folks, and of course what we do here, you see it down at the bottom there,

Cash App or PayPal, support what we do because this, having our own platforms, allows us to be able to do this where others will not give it this level of attention. All right, folks, I'm going to see you guys at 6 p.m. Eastern for our regular edition of Roland Martin Unfiltered. Do not forget, also, we have a great thing for you guys on tomorrow. Gerald Albright is going to be doing a live, going to be doing a live broadcast,

a live jam session from G's Place. That's, of course, his home in Colorado. He is raising money for artists who do not, who are being impacted by coronavirus. A lot of people don't realize there's so many people who can't play sessions, who can't do any of those things. And so Gerald is going to be doing that for him. And so he put this thing here together. Anthony, go to my iPad, please. You see it? All right. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and restart it. Go. Hey, everybody. This is saxophonist Gerald Albright. I'm so excited to announce that this Thursday evening, April 16th... Kill that background.

...at 7.45 p.m. East Coast time... I want full screen. ...4.45 p.m. West Coast time, I'm going to do my very first live stream concert at G's Place, my home recording studio. So we'd love for you to tune in. You can find it at my Facebook page, which is Gerald Albright Music. And also it'll be linked to my dear friend and fraternity

brother's pages, Roland Martin, on his Periscope page, his Instagram page, his YouTube page, and his Facebook page. So it will be easy to find on Thursday evening. And proceeds are going to go to those musicians who are having challenging times during this horrible pandemic that we're going through. But we're going to get through this. We know it. So tune in on Thursday evening. Donations can be made on my Cash App account. And the username is the dollar sign Gerald AA. Once again, that's the dollar sign G-E-R-A-L-D-A-A. We appreciate your donations and your love, and we thank you in advance for that. So we'll see you on Thursday evening. We're going to do a lot of tunes that you know and love.

It's going to be a party. We want you to be a part of it. So we'll see you then folks as soon as we end when we hit in this will immediately archive on youtube and our facebook page in Periscope. Please share it with as many people as possible. They can hear the content that we just had for the past hour. Thanks a bunch. I'll see you guys later. Holla! All right. Groovy.

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