#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 2023 Election Recap: The Victories & Defeats

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

11.8.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: 2023 Election Recap: The Victories & Defeats  We will have an extensive election recap. We are looking at the victories,  the defeats, and firsts from across the country.  Ohio Congresswoman Shontel Brown will be here to discuss the win for abortion rights supporters as voters decided to codify reproductive freedom into the state constitution. Ohio is the newest state to pass a law making recreational marijuana use legal. We'll talk to an advocate about the ramifications of this new law.  Rev. William Barber will join us to discuss the election results and the policy changes we may see.  In other news we are covering tonight, the Department of Justice launches an investigation into a Mississippi town and its police department.  Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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at taylorpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Today is Wednesday, November 8th, 2023. Coming up, I'm Roland Martin, unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Huge night for Democrats all across the country, from Ohio to Pennsylvania to Virginia. You name it, they defeated Republicans and abortion was a huge topic. The question is, how does this help President Joe Biden going into 2024? Are Democrats realizing that if they run on the issues and drive their voters to the polls, they can actually win? We've got extensive coverage on tonight's show,

folks, breaking all of this down. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin, Unfiltered, on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling.

It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah. It's Roland Martin. Yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now. Yeah, yeah. He's funky, fresh, he's real the best. You know he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's rollin' Martel now!

Martel! Thank you. Republicans nationwide are scratching their heads today trying to figure out what the hell happened. They thought they were going to do well all across the country. That is not the case. From Virginia to Pennsylvania to Kentucky to New York State and other places, Republicans had an awful night as Democrats racked up wins left and right. No bigger place than in Virginia, where Democrats not only held the state Senate, they now control the House as well. This means that Delegate Don Scott will become Virginia's first black speaker of the House. All of this, folks, the backdrop of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who was campaigning, saying, we're going to take control of the Senate and the House,

and then we're going to ban abortion in Virginia. That was a huge issue that was on the ballot. And guess what? He looks real crazy now. All the talk about Youngkin being a surprise candidate for president in 2024, that just went out the window. And so now the question is, how do they regroup? But also, when you look at the other results, the abortion being placed in abortion rights, being protected in the Ohio Constitution, passing legalized marijuana in Ohio as well. Andy Beshear in Kentucky, the Democratic incumbent beating black Republican Daniel Cameron by a wide margin. Folks, it was win after win after win. The one place Democrats really want to secure a win

was in Mississippi, where Brandon Presley lost to incumbent Republican Governor Tate Reeves. We're going to break this thing down. Lots of folks we're going to be talking to. Chantel Brown, congressman from Ohio. Reverend William J. Barber. We'll be talking to him as well and so many others. Let's start with my panel. Robert Petillo, host, People, Passion, Politics, News & Talk 1380, WAOK out of Atlanta. Rebecca Carruthers, Vice President, Fair Election Center, Washington, D.C. Joe Richardson, Civil rights attorney, Los Angeles, California. I dare say, Rebecca, I'll start with you, Republicans not doing well. In fact, it was so funny. I got a, you know, one of those emails that you always get from these campaigns,

and it was so funny. It came in this afternoon. It was from Rona McDaniel, of course, who is the Republican chair. I could not help but laugh when I got it because something last said, are you OK? And that's why I had to tweet Rona. Are you okay today? Well, Ronna Romney McDaniel. Let's not forget that when she dropped the Romney after Donald Trump called out her relative, Mitch Romney. You know, so here's the thing. Abortion was on the ballot last night in many of the states, but it played out differently depending on if it was a mid-Atlantic southern state like Virginia

versus a deep south southern state like Mississippi. You know, what's really interesting, Republicans have painted themselves as the small government party, but to get involved in women's reproductive choices isn't a small government thing. So it was really interesting watching Republicans fight with their traditional, quote unquote, small government party, but then having to balance it with evangelicals. So I think what we saw last night is what 2024 is going to look like with the Republican Party trying to figure out which direction it's going to go in, if it's going to lean into conservative evangelicals or if it's going to go back to the traditional tenets of the Republican Party the way it's been in the last 50 years. So, you know, I'm really curious to see how they're going to regroup. I'm curious to see if their strategy is going to be leaked next week when they have their

postmortem to figure out what went wrong, when Republicans should already know going into last night what was going to go wrong, because they went too far on abortion rights in this country and voters aren't having it. Well, look, one of the things that they did, Robert, was they kept saying that we want to leave it up to the states. Okay, there you go. Leave it up to the states. Now they're having to contend with that

because not only is it impacting statewide referendums, we saw it last year in Michigan, we see it in Ohio, now we're seeing it impact their candidates. Well, earlier this week when the polls came out saying that Joe Biden was losing to Donald Trump, I told people not to worry about it for one reason, that Republicans are continuing to run on this MAGA agenda. And what we've seen over the course of the last decade at this point in time is that it's an unwinnable agenda. There's an agenda that Donald Trump won on in 2016, and then Republicans lost in all the special elections in 2017. Then they lost the House in 2018. Then they lost all the other elections in 2019. Then they lost the White House in 2020. Then they lost all the other elections in 2019. Then they lost the White House in 2020. Then they lost all these special elections and referendums in 2021. Then they lost

the red wave in 2022. And now they're losing again in 2023. We're seeing nationwide this MAGA agenda is a losing agenda. It has nothing but a trail of destruction behind it for the Republican Party. And they're going to have to determine Donald Trump being up 50 points against the other Republican candidates. And they're basically debating tonight for no apparent reason, because he's going to be the nominee. What is this going to do to their party going forward? Will they actually attempt to be an actual governing party or simply a party that kowtows to the needs and the whims of Donald Trump? They knew beforehand that the abortion issue was going to be a losing issue in Ohio. They knew this earlier this year when the voters decided that they were not going to

approve the ballot, an issue that would have made it more difficult for them to change the Constitution. They knew in Virginia that Glenn Youngkin was wrong on these issues and that the voters were not simply going to be motivated by crazy conservative parents raiding schools, talking about school choice to switch to Senate and the House back to them. Glenn Youngkin won that seat as governor because the Democratic Party in Virginia decided to screw over Justin Fairfax and put in Terry McAuliffe, a throwback to the 90s. And that's why Glenn Youngkin has that seat right now. Not because there was a mandate from voters, not because he swept in with new ideas, but simply because Democrats shot themselves in the foot. And the Republicans are going to have to do some real soul searching to figure out what can they do to break away from

this extreme mega agenda and come back to being a natural governing party. Because at the end of the day, about 30% of the country loves Donald Trump no matter what he does. The other 70% of the country votes against him every single election, and they want to win. They're going to have to find out how to come back to the center and really push forward policies that a majority of American people push forward. And I ask this question, what is their constituency right now? African-Americans are not breaking for Republicans because they keep people like Tommy Tuberville and Marjorie Taylor Greene around. Women aren't breaking for Republicans because they're fundamental rights and they're fundamental choices. Gay people clearly aren't going to be

voting for Republicans. Young people aren't voting for Republicans because Vivek Ramchand wants to raise the age to vote to 25 years old. Old people aren't voting for Republicans because they keep making fun of Joe Biden for being old. Where exactly do they plan on getting their votes from? And they're going to have to figure that out pretty soon. I got a big kick out of this last night, Joe. This was Sean Hannity just foaming at the mouth, just befuddled by what happened. Watch this. Trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don't want abortion legal under any circumstances. And I go, but Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don't want abortion legal

under any circumstances. Okay, here's the problem, Joe. They don't. They literally are talking about a national ban. They've been saying that. Mike Pence was saying that. Today, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is saying the exact same thing.

Democrats aren't scaring women into this. They're stating facts. Yeah, they're stating facts. They're telling them the truth. I mean, really, this is the caboose on a very, very long train, except the train is continuing to go. Go back 30 years ago, Scalia was out of the mainstream.

Reagan appointed folks who were out of the mainstream. Bush appointed folks who were out of the mainstream. Bush appointed folks who were out of the mainstream. Clarence Thomas was out of the mainstream. Clarence Thomas still is out of the mainstream. And so now, Antoinette Scalia dies, and then you've got Gorsuch, you've got Amy Coney Barrett. The only reason they were appointed by Trump was to get rid of abortion. This has been their goal the entire time, and to be able to do that once they've done it, now they don't want to own it. You hear all of their people talking about, oh, you know, this is something that doesn't affect a whole lot of people. They literally want to change the

subject. So it's hard when you have to run around issues as opposed to running on issues. And so many times, to Robert's point, so many times when they won elections, in Virginia and other places, it was because of who the Democrats put up, things that the Democrats didn't do in boxes they didn't check and not coming out and showing up to vote. And so once they overturned Roe with people that were unelected, they thought they were going for the gusto, and they've been suffering consequences ever since.

So hopefully the Democrats have a template because they did say, oh, let's just leave it to the states. No, they're going for the gusto. Thomas wants to undo half of the things that got passed in the last four or five years or 10 years, including gay marriage. And there are plenty of them that want to go for the gusto and do a national abortion ban. And so they need to own that and deal with that. And we'll just turn people out to vote. I found this to be interesting. We're going to break this thing down. We'll go to the break.

We're going to come back, talk about this here. We'll do some exit polling data. I'll explain that when we come back. Roller Martin Unfiltered. Folks, we're talking about last night's election. Huge wins for Democrats. Republicans are now trying to figure out, man, is Trump going to

be our saving grace? But a lot of people still don't like him as well. So there's a lot we're going to unpack right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn lives there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial.

This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking ourens, America's Wealth Coach, inflation is on the rise. Interest rates are high. Can you still thrive during these uncertain times? On the next Get Wealthy, you're gonna meet a woman

who's done just that, living proof of what you need to do to flourish during these uncertain times. These are times where you take advantage of what's going on. This is how people get rich or richer. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Welcome back to Rollerbar Dunn Filter. We're breaking down last night's election.

Saw this here, this stat here. Found it to be quite interesting, Robert. Exit polling data out of Ohio. Black men are most in favor of abortion rights, even more than white and black women. White men are most against abortion. That would surprise a lot of people that black men have a much larger view of this issue than white women and black women. Last night, of course, voters in Ohio put this issue, placed it in abortion rights, reproductive rights, in the Ohio Constitution.

This is how it ended up being. The conservatives got crushed on this one. Come on, guys. So here's the deal. Yes, 2.18 million folks. 56%? No. 1.6 million, 43%. A total of 3.18 million folks, 56 percent. No, 1.6 million, 43 percent. A total of 3.8 million votes were cast.

The thing that was that's wild here, Robert, is that Republicans did everything they could to stop folks from voting on this. They did not want this. And even after this, the Speaker of the House goes, well, we're going to still find ways to protect a woman, first of all, to get rid of abortion. Dude, they've not put it in the Constitution. You're going to have a little difficulty now. You're right. And look, this is one of the points I think is very important to me, because there have been for some reason this smear against black male voters over the course of about the last decade

that somehow we don't defend black women's rights electorally. It started around the Doug Jones election in Alabama, where there was this idea that there was a schism between black men and black women on many of these electoral issues. Groups use that for fundraising. They use it to push down black voter turnout in various elections. Black men and black women are in lockstep on most political issues, particularly on this issue of life. One of the issues that I hear from many black male voters on radio and in other places is that they want more control when it comes to reproductive issues. They want more of them to focus on child support and child care and equal rights for fathers,

et cetera. That doesn't mean they want fewer rights for women. They just want more of their rights to be respected and actually actually part of the political agenda. And I think the fear that many people have, both on the left and the right of American politics, is a united front coming from black voters. Because a united front coming from black voters on these issues means that we're able to hit with a closed fist instead of an open hand when it comes to political issues. And the more that we are walking lockstep on these issues, the more that we can push for on things such as women's reproductive rights, on criminal justice reform. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Economic opportunities, all the things that we meet with in our portfolio require us to be working together, and we can't let outside groups work to try to separate us electorally. If you want to hear something unbelievably stupid, Rebecca, it is stuck on stupid himself, Rick Santorum. Last night on Newsmax, remember he got fired from CNN, they enshrined reproductive rights in the Constitution. They also legalized marijuana They they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they they Listen to this. And you put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot, and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don't know what they were thinking, but that's why I thank goodness that most of the states in this country

don't allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country so then you're and wow pure democracies are not the way to run a country so damn you damn you people for stating your opinion we get to tell y'all how you should actually think and believe well rick santorum you're really going going to hate Ohio next year because guess what's coming to the ballot next year is the right to actually have fair maps. And guess what? Young people, old people, everyone in between is going to come out and vote. They're going to decide if they want to keep having extreme gerrymandered political districts in Ohio or if they want maps to be fair and representative of the people who live, work, and play in

Ohio. So that's what's coming up next, Rick. So sorry to tell you that. But here's the other thing. Issue one was even more than just abortion rights. Issue one was the right for women after having a miscarriage to actually have proper medical treatment. It was also for people in Ohio to have consistent and safe access to family planning needs. So not just having an

abortion, but also the right to have access to birth control. And so those are the things that issue one dealt with. And then issue two dealt with, let's figure out fairness. We had so many people locked up in this country because of marijuana possession. And guess what? This country is now saying, hey, it doesn't make sense for marijuana to be criminalized. We need the federal government to act on it. But guess what? State by state, states get to decide if they want marijuana to be used for medicinal use

as well as recreational use. So Rick Santorum, guess what? People get to vote. That's what democracy is about. Democracy is about having free and fair elections and also about participation. So last night, we saw a series of free and fair elections across 29 states, and we saw people show up and participate, including young people. After all, we should want young people to engage

and be active civic citizens in this country. Damn those young people. Joining us right now, Prentice Haney, co-executive director, Ohio Organizing Collaborative that was very much involved in this effort. Prentice, you had to get a kick out of Santorum

like, damn it, how dare those people in Ohio, those young people and other people actually vote on stuff that they care about. Well, let me say this. Only losers and cheaters are scared of free and fair elections. In Ohio, like we just said,

young people and black folks are not sitting on the sideline. What we saw last night was a sleeping giant that rose up and fought for their rights. Eighty-three percent of Black voters voted for Issue 1 and around the same amount voted for Issue 2. What's so exciting is that we live in a democracy where people like me, Black folks, are pushing the envelope every single day to make sure that we have access to the ballot. It just wasn't that long ago, 60 years ago, that many of us didn't have full enfranchisement, and still many of us don't today. But in our organization, we have formerly incarcerated persons, child care workers. We have parents, teachers, people of faith,

students, all Black folks who are coming together and they made sure that issue one passed, issue two passed, because guess what? The people of Ohio is not the same as the electorate of Ohio. The electorate is something that people like to cheat and lose and steal because they don't like democracy. But guess what? Organizations like the OOC and black folks go out and build an electorate where young people get to exercise their right to vote, where they get to go out and make sure that they actually practice democracy together. And when you build an electorate, you can win. Listen, we're not scared of having an expanded electorate because when you have an expanded electorate,

people get to raise their voice. And that's what make our democracy way more safe and deliver real things for our community. Folks, pull the vote totals for the Ohio referendum. That obviously was a huge deal. Again, that was, so actually when I said it earlier, that was the, I thought that was the abortion vote. This was the marijuana making it legal. Again, 2.1 million, 1.6, no, almost 57%. That's what we call an overwhelmingly mandate, Prentice. Exactly. An overwhelming mandate. This is what I'm saying. Listen, we know that legalizing marijuana, you know, legalizing your own reproductive health, these sort of issues are very popular issues among black voters and amongst all Ohioans. It's just so exciting that back in August, black folks and young folks in all

Ohioans defended our right to our democracy, direct democracy. You know, I can't believe someone said there's a pure democracy. Listen, democracy has never been pure because it's never been something that could work for all of us. We are the ones making our democracy work for all of us. And last night, what we saw is that people who fought to make sure that the ballot was open, that there was access, got over all the barriers of strict voter laws, unfair maps, purge voters, they made sure their voices were heard. And they can see that when you go out and you vote on issues that matter to you, you don't have to wait for politicians to deliver what you need. You can get access to abortions. You can get legalization of

marijuana for yourself. That's what Black voters showed that they'll do in Ohio, and they're going to do it again in 24. So, all right, so now legalizing. So what does that actually mean? What that actually means is that for about a decade, many black voters in Ohio have been disenfranchised and disinvested in. When you don't focus on an electorate for over a decade, then they don't show up. But what we saw this year is that there was real investment from our organization, from campaigns talking to black voters about why these issues matter to them.

If we look at the leadership of the abortion ballot, we look at the leadership of the democracy ballot, we see black faces, we see legacy civil rights, NAACP, Ohio Unity Coalition, APRI. We see groups that look like us at the center of them. It's not by chance that on election night we now see victories that have overwhelming majorities with black folks supporting it. You cannot win something if you don't have us in leadership and you don't have programs that's catered to us. We've run programs, and we talked about this last year. This is not new.

We've run programs for young black voters, for cynical black voters, for voters of faith. You have to make sure that you cater a program to each of the different types of values and ideologies of black voters, and then you could create a path for us to go out and win. And so I think, based on last night, we just saw the beginning of that wave in Ohio. And next year, we're going to see even more of that as more black voters come out and actually raise their voices and show that their political power does matter and make a difference in the state.

All right, then. Prentice, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. This, again, it's sort of driving the GOP mad, which is interesting because former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner is now, at least we know is really because of money, he's now on the side of cannabis, correct? I can't hear you. You couldn't hear me there? Can you hear me?

I'm sorry. I can't hear what you're saying. Prentice, can you hear me now? Can you? All right. Not sure why you can't hear me we appreciate it thanks a lot so joe here's what i think is interesting again john bainer is now working on the side of cannabis yeah bainer and got pragmatic too it's interesting well you know once the party threw him away you know chased him out of being in the speakership. You know, he supported Biden three years ago.

You know, there were some changes afoot even for his life. And then, you know, there's probably some kind of incentive, you know, related to that. But at the end of the day, you know, the worst thing that the Republicans can do is to create these issues that, you know, this whole abortion thing was created by the overreach of the Supreme Court. It was created by that. And really, for as good, however I might feel about, you know, the Democratic candidates and, you know, over the years on the national elections, Biden wasn't the greatest candidate. You know, Biden didn't win a primary until the third time he ran once Jim Clyburn and people my age decided that Bernie Sanders wasn't going to be the guy. See, that's when it changed. And so when you have the wrong candidates on the other side, when there's overreach on the other side, they create an open door. That's what they've done. And they continue to do that. And so even the John Banners of the world that are pretty conservative get pragmatic, you know, maybe because they see the benefit to that, the benefit that can come to the state.

I don't know if he has any personal deals related to any of that or whatever that might be. today, it makes common sense to not have the law focused on undoing a bunch of folks that are getting long prison terms related to marijuana, something that makes you want to sleep and make you hungry, but not necessarily is going to lead to a whole lot of other things. We have to make a decision on limited resources, what we're going to actually do. And so these are issues that are unifying issues, particularly for young people. And young people, when they come out and vote, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic. I just think it's just really interesting when you look at across the board, there's this prevailing viewpoint that, oh, my God, if you look at the poll numbers and this is going to be awful for biden things along those lines um

one democrats are so good uh at whining complaining uh teeth gnashing as opposed to focusing first of all locking down your people and going to work uh we're going to break down what happened in Virginia next. And again, that's what that was about. They took control of the House because they didn't just, oh, we'll see what happens. No, they went out, raised the money, recruited candidates, ran the candidates,

and that's how they now control the House of Delegates there. And so we'll discuss that next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. As we examine last night's elections all across the country. Back in a moment. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok I'm Faraiji Muhammad, live from L.A. And this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation. You and me, we talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard.

Hey, we're all in this together. So let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's The Culture, weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. We talk about blackness and what happens. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on

May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding

of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working

and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad.

That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. In black culture, we're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting.

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The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. We'll be right back. Thank you. Folks, welcome back to Roller Mark Unfiltered. Before I went to the break, I talked about Democrats having to put their head down, focus on their base. And that's really, really how you win elections. A lot of people, obviously, last night, it was laughable

for me. Just pull up the panel. It was laughable for me last night, Joe, to watch. It was in Dallas last night. I don't watch CNN voluntarily. My dad happened to be, he was flipping through and watching it.

And my God, it was absolutely boring watching them. It was just boring. And what was driving me crazy watching all of these people that they act as if abortion was the only issue all across the country. And it wasn't. Take, for example,

the Kentucky governor's race. Now, was it a major issue? Yes. Was it the only issue? No. So Andy Beshear, the Democrat incumbent, he beat Republican Daniel Cameron last night. But here's the whole deal. Cameron got outperformed by other Republicans. So they didn't want a black guy in Kentucky. The thing that was also interesting, guys, come on, pull it up. Guys, we're

moving way too slow. Let's go. Here's the whole deal. I mean, you're sitting here talking about this race, and yes, abortion wasn't an issue. Abortion rights, reproductive rights, wasn't an issue. But this is Bashir who also provided voting opportunities for formerly incarcerated. Health care was abortion rights, reproductive rights was an issue. But this is Bashir who also provided voting opportunities for formerly incarcerated.

Health care was on the ballot. A number of issues were on the ballot. And so I think it's a mistake when I watch all these national, these mainstream white networks where they think abortion is the only issue. It's not. You have to make a

compelling argument on a variety of issues to get people to turn out to support you. Yeah, I guess as it turns out, it's not enough to be a black Republican with, you know, with that's the nephew-in-law of the leader of the Senate, actually, you really do have to connect to the issues. And of course, as the advertisement said, all skin folks ain't kin folks. And so he didn't have a whole lot of Black voters. He needed some Black voters. Andy Brashear did an excellent job at seizing on what the issues actually are. And I think that he connected with those issues, including health care. Health care is everywhere. Being able to do the Medicaid expansion, being able to let folks know. I think that he is a good example of how to make sure that you connect with your voters, grow the electorate, and move us along in a way that gets more people

to the polls and people understand what's at stake and understand what's actually important. He did an excellent job at that. There is an argument, we'll have to see how that goes, that a lot of Democratic folks that were running for office are a little bit more popular than Joe Biden is. I don't know if that's necessarily going to necessarily pan out, that that's actually the case. But you're running on issues of things that Biden has accomplished and things that you're a part of. And once you really see how that touches your life and you get people to the polls, then you can win. I think Bashir showed that. And I think we have to look and remember, it's not that even before abortion,

we Democrats connect, frankly, to most bread and butter regular folk issues. That's always been the case. That's never changed. It's still the case. We have to continue to connect the dots and let them understand that and let them understand that we were the ones that passed Obamacare, which was, you know, passed as a term, passed along as a term that was supposed to be negative. You know, we are the ones that are dealing with these things. Look at what's happening with the unions and the big three. Those are Democratic bread and butter issues. And so we have to continue,

use that example, use that as a template to make sure that we're connecting with voters and reminding them of who we are, reminding them who is it that actually is helping regular people. And it's going to be Democrats.

Robert, Daniel Cameron paid a huge price for his shameful actions when it came to the Breonna Taylor case. This is the Louisville Courier-Journal. They listed five takeaways, and they talked about how Andy Beshear expanded the Democrats' whole, he only won by 5,000 votes four years ago, how he won in rural places, how he won in the suburban places, but also how he was successful in Louisville. Look, black turnout was a huge issue. That was an issue there.

Come on, guys, go to the iPad. Thank you. You see right here, he says, Bashir took 72% of the vote in Jefferson County and Louisville where the Taylor case unfolded after winning 67% of the vote in 2019. And again,

this is where until Freedom, Populist Campaign, others, they put that pressure and black folks said, we're going to make this fool pay for what he did in the Breonna Taylor case. And they sure did. I think that's what the mainstream media, for the most part, is not giving enough attention to.

You know, of course, the media has an agenda in these cases. They want to make sure that abortion is the number one issue because there is special interest behind that. But we cannot ignore the fact that criminal justice reform, the treatment of black and brown people, and this movement for black lives was also crucial in this election. Very much Bashir's margin in this election was far larger because of the levels of black turnout that we were seeing. And for my black conservative friends, I tell you guys this all the time. Don't believe these people when they come to you and say, we're going to support you.

Don't believe them when they say all you have to do is sell out and do what we say to do. We're going to put money behind you. We'll get behind you and campaign. They never come through at the end of the day. And I think that Daniel Cameron actually decided when he was dealing with the Breonna Taylor situation to come out strongly the same way that we saw Keith Ellison do in the George Floyd case, you would have seen a very split electorate. You would have had some people in that Louisville area that would have supported him because of that and that alone. And that may have actually bridged that gap.

He was going to lose conservative support because of it. He would have gained this support. So stop listening to these political consultants that tell you to just run on this bag of agenda, this run to the far right of the electoral process, because at the end of the day, back in those backwoods of Kentucky, those good old boy MAGAs flying the Confederate flag are not going to vote for you. They do not care about your policy, do not care about your party. It's a skin color issue. And if you want to make up that difference, that margin to be able to win, you need to build those coalitions to be more of a centrist candidate. And that's what doomed Cameron.

And that potentially what doomed his political career going forward. Well, he also learned a valuable lesson. You can get Trump. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated It's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne from brothers osborne we have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing benny the butcher brent smith from shine down got be real from cypress hill nhl enforcer riley cote marine corvette mma fighter liz caramouch what we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things Be real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being

able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Trump's endorsement, but Trump didn't give a damn about him.

Trump didn't even come to the state to campaign for him. The Courier-Journal says Trump had a tele-rally for Cameron on Monday and put out a two minute video last week, reaffirming his endorsement of Cameron. Daniel Cameron sat there, Rebecca, and he was all in with Donald Trump. And that's where one of the mistakes was, because he thought that was going to put him over the hump. No player. You got played. To continue with what Robert said, when you are a conservative candidate, if you sell out your blackness and blackness isn't just sold out on issues,

but when you are inauthentic to your black experience, the black authentic, the black experience, and you run away from that, white voters do not respect that. There's nothing you could do to not be Black as a Black conservative. So you needed to accept that you are Black. And that's fine. That's okay. Come on over. I love being Black. The issue with Daniel Cameron is he was very inauthentic. And for him to sit and stand and tell the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, even tell the people of the United States that it was perfectly acceptable to not push forward and take those officers to trial, even though that grand jury said, hey, there is enough here to do something to move forward on this. For him to ignore that and to ignore the travesty of what

happened with Breonna Taylor is shame on him. And guess what? The voters showed up and they said, shame on you, Daniel Cameron, we will not support you. So that's what we saw that happened last night. What's interesting with talking about mainstream media and like some of those other networks, by them focusing so much on abortion as the voting issue, what they don't understand, even if it's a state where abortion is one of the top three issues, it still plays out differently. It depends on the region of this country with how abortion plays out. When we talk about Mississippi later, comparing it to Virginia with how abortion showed up, one thing that we have to look at is

the economic impact and those who are economically impacted by not having abortion, but without, who have an economic impact when it deals with abortion access. But in Kentucky, that isn't what the number one voting issue was for folks. And last night, we see that one of the top voting issues is criminal justice reform, is figuring out how do we, what do we do with law enforcement that's acting rogue. And what we're seeing is black voters are saying, hey, pay attention because we will show up and we will vote on this issue. So shout out to Tamika Mallory, Untell Freedom, and some of the other groups that decided to stay on the ground to organize the last three and a half years and make this a top voting issue for black communities in Kentucky? You know, the thing here, Joe, that people have to understand, we start talking about different states. Rebecca makes a great point. You have to understand the

makeup of the state. So, for instance, Kentucky does not have a significant black population. It is a red state. All the other Republicans running statewide in Kentucky won by double digits. Voters there, they like Beshear. And so, what you have to do is understand and study how does that happen. What is it about him? What was he saying that they actually liked and they voted for, but they rejected all the other Democrats? You look at Mississippi, same way. 2.5 million people.

You have 38% of the population African American, yet 15% of the black folks in Mississippi cannot vote because of their laws when it comes to having a felony conviction. But last night we saw this is the third straight election. The Democratic candidate got about 47 percent of the vote.

They seem not being able to get over that hurdle. Jackson, obviously, is a Democratic stronghold. But along the Gulf Coast, they got crushed. So last night, Brandon Presley ran a great race. He did everything right. He raised lots of money. He actually outraised Tate Reeves. But the reality is Tate Reeves still won. There still are a lot of votes that have to be counted, but the reality is reuse one. But when you look at a place like that, it's one of those places where no matter how broke those white folks are, no matter how bad their health care is, no matter how bad their education

is, no matter how bad the jobs are there, no matter how bad the wages are in Mississippi, they are just simply hard core Republicans. And so, you know, Democrats, what they're going to have to do, they're going to have to really go old school, like SNCC, like CORD, go into places like that and really spend year round trying to flip vote. First of all, trying to maximize black voter turnout, trying to reach those poor white voters as well, because they seem to not be able to get over that 47 percent number. Yeah. So you've got this education component. I think Stacey Abrams is a great example of how to have a long term relationship with voters that starts off with education and brings them along and start off with them younger, as young as possible. It is

interesting. If you look at it, there's this irony. Now, you had Brashear one who was an incumbent and you had the governor of Mississippi one when who was an incumbent. But if you look at Brashear won, who was an incumbent, and you had the governor of Mississippi won, who was an incumbent. But if you look at Brashear and how much black votes helped him, even though there weren't as many of them to mine, that means that he was very, very successful in mining the black voters, OK? Certainly helped by the Breonna Taylor issue, but he was good at making that connection and mining those voters.

And in Mississippi, Presley needed to be able to have more voters, right? So there's this issue with the criminal justice system and being able to undo some of that, which is a little bit, probably a little bit tougher in Mississippi for a lot of reasons. But even then, there were a lot of Black folks available, votes available that he did not get. Okay. And so we really have to have long-term relationships from state to state that start off with education and bringing folks along, connecting them to the issues that are important to them and really doing the diagnosis and really doing the post-election work so that we understand why Brashear worked, how much of it was his personality, how much was it, what were the issues,

where those black voters actually were, et cetera. And are there more black voters there that can be mined in rural areas and other areas? Take that, make a comparison between that part of the country. To Rebecca's point, there are some differences in different parts of the country so that you absolutely understand what the secret sauce is to educate voters, to bring them along, connect them to what their issues actually are that meet them where they are, and do it long term so that over the course of several elections, Mississippi, the potential is there. The numbers are actually there now, and they will continue to be, particularly

in a state that's so black, 37%, 38%, whatever it is, there's a lot of potential there. And a big part of it is not accepting the suggestion that because you're in Mississippi, because you're in Alabama, because you're in fill-in-the-blank southern state, you cannot win. Until Brashear won four years ago, we thought we couldn't win in Kentucky either. But he's finding a way to do it, even though it's not going down ballot. So we have to make sure that we do a diagnosis and figure out what actually helps to connect with these voters,

and of course, educate from the very, very beginning and early on and go there. Robert, look, at the end of the day, I think when you talk about politics, so many people, they only focus on the political season. If you're in Mississippi and you see that you can't, you're just getting, you're stuck on 47 percent, then what you have to then do is truly go in, look at the numbers and say, we got to go figure out how to pick up another 45 to 50,000 votes.

We figure that out, then we can win. Republicans have control, the governor's mansion there 31 of the last 35 years. They have a firm grip on the legislature as well. But again, do I believe that it's impossible? No. Look, Republicans control every statewide office in Texas, but the bottom line is you've got 900,000 black people in Texas

who didn't vote. You had 75 percent of voters 30 and under in Texas in 2022 who did not vote. You've got two million eligible but unregistered Latinos in Texas. Texas is 61 percent minority, yet the people who vote in Texas, 61 percent, they are white. So what it requires is it's going to require these billionaires in the Democratic Party to literally say, we're going to have to grind this thing out and go

through the slog and do that hard work going town to town, door to door, and it may take you two, four, six, eight years, but you can't just only focus on it during the election year. Look, Roland, this is one of the problems with the Democratic establishment. In the last six months or so, Donald Trump has been convicted of or found liable for raping Eugene Carroll.

He's been found guilty of $2.5 million in fraud from Trump University. Sorry, $2.5 million in fraud for the Trump Foundation, $25 million in fraud from Trump University, or sorry, $2.5 million in fraud for the Trump Foundation, $25 million in fraud from Trump University. He's facing $250 million in fraud in the current case that he's facing. He has 91 felony counts around the country. He was impeached twice, and we've seen about three Republicans call on him to step down and drop out of the race. President Biden had one bad poll, one bad poll. And David Axelrod and all the other Democrat establishments are saying, well, let's throw granddaddy out the house because he's going to lose. This is just the way that

Democrats react to things. Democrats are the most scared group of political people that I've ever seen. In a state like Mississippi, you have to understand who your electorate is. It's Black people. There are over 100,000 unregistered black voters or eligible unregistered black voters in the state of Mississippi. You turn them out, you get them registered, you turn them out at Obama 2012 levels, then you can win back. You can make up that 50,000 vote gap that exists there. And when you think about the rhetoric that we have in the country around politics, we have Democrats who want 95 percent of the black vote, but they are afraid to talk about black issues in any kind of candid way.

A decade ago, you could not talk about being pro-abortion in America. You'd have to use all kinds of euphemisms, women's rights, women's reproductive health, pro-choice, all these other things. And in 2023, you can just say, I am pro-abortion, and that is fine in American politics. We have to bridge that Rubicon and be able to do the exact same thing for black issues if you want to turn out black folks in those numbers. If you want to get black folks out, you have to run on a strong black agenda that gets those 100,000 people who are not registered registered.

And then after they're registered, you have to get them to the polls. You need to be talking about strong criminal justice reform. You have to talk about pardoning the victims of mass incarceration. You have to talk about direct economic benefits for black folks. You have to talk about reparations on the state level in a state like Mississippi. That's what gets people turned down. All right, hold tight one second. We come back.

We're going to talk to Congresswoman Chantel Brown about what happened in Ohio. And even though they lost big, boy, Republicans are still saying, well, that really wasn't the intent of what happened in Ohio. And even though they lost big, boy, Republicans are still saying, well, that really wasn't the intent of what happened last night. Dog, y'all lost. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling, the limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars.

Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersceiling.org brought to you by opportunity at work and the ad council. They do not like taking L's. You're watching Roller Markdown filtered right here on the Blackstar Network. Субтитры подогнал «Симон» Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin, who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear.

How the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say, even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes,

it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders?

Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for a balanced life with Dr. Jackie. We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on. So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network, A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. Last night, voters in Ohio affirmed in their Constitution reproductive rights.

While Republicans in this state still are not happy, they've been doing everything they can to stop them. So 27 members of the Ohio legislature literally put out this press release, and it's quite confusing. They said, Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life,

parental consent, informed consent, or viability, including partial birth abortion, but rather introduces more confusion. This initiative failed to mention a single specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state. We will continue that work. So this right now, Congressman Chantel Brown of Ohio, Congresswoman, I got to say, they can't take an L. They like, I mean, last I checked, they literally said, we're going to put the right to reproductive rights in the state constitution.

They think they're bigger than the state constitution. They do. We are, and thank you for having me, first of all, Roland. And Ohio had an incredible night. It was a big win for Ohioans, a big win for women, a big win for families. What it actually did do, in case there's some confusion around what the Republicans were trying to conjure up, is it restored the law of the land as it was when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. It eliminated the extreme abortion ban that had no exceptions for rape or incest.

And it also made it possible for doctors to provide emergency care for miscarriages without fear of the government interfering or being criminalized. And last but not least, that didn't get a lot of attention was it maintained access to birth control pills, contraceptives. So that's what issue one was about. Now, the bottom line is it keeps politicians and elected officials and the government out of the doctor's office and allows people to make their own personal medical health care decisions. That was it.

Well, one of the reasons why they are so obstinate is because of political gerrymandering. And they have been fighting that. Voters in the state made clear when it came to drawing the lines, they were kind of like, yeah, we don't care what y'all think. So guess what? That's now going to be on the ballot next year. That's right. That's right.

So Ohioans has been, it's been a very gerrymandered state, as we can see from the results from last night's election. In the words of our former party chairman of the state, Ohio is more rigged than it is red. And that was demonstrative in the numbers as it relates to issue one and issue two. There was a broad coalition of support when it comes to the freedoms that people are being, that are coming up on the ballot, people want the rights to make their own choices. And clearly, right now, the Republicans are not about giving people their rights. They're about taking rights away, whether it is your right to maintain autonomy over your own body, the right to read

certain books, the right to vote. They are all about stripping away rights, and they are really doing a relentless job of trying to turn back the hands of time. So what you now are faced with, again, and this is what I keep trying to explain to people, is that we have to stop looking at elections as sort of a one-off, that you have to say, okay, we chipped away at this.

Now, got to come back next year. And realize there's going to be another election, another election. And so I keep saying to black folks, others, we cannot check out of the process. It has to be this sort of this relentless pursuit of democracy by saying, we're going to keep coming back. And if y'all are standing in the way,

we're going to do all we can to vote you out. That is exactly right. I think it would be, I would be remiss if I did not remind folks how we actually got to this place in Ohio. In 2016, we had one of the most qualified candidates running for president against one of the least qualified who ever applied for the office.

And what happened was people got complacent. They thought, okay, she's got it in the bag. who ever applied for the office. And what happened was, people got complacent. They thought, OK, she's got it in the bag. I'm going to stay home. I'm going to sit this election out. Some Democrats even bragged about voting for third-party candidates in protest. We do not have the ability to afford that, because what happened was, we got President Trump. And what happened was, he appointed not one, not two, but three Supreme Court justices to the bench who turned back the clock on what was almost 50 years of precedent as it related to Roe v. Wade.

And he took extreme pride in that. So, yes, we do not have the luxury of saying, OK, we won. We can sit down. We cannot afford it, especially right now, because just like when Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs decision came down, they were relentless about that. They continued to pursue and try to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades. And they were successful. And so that's how we got to where we were yesterday in Ohio, with having to restore those rights and enshrine them in our Constitution, because too many people set out the election

in 2016. It is a real live example of the expression when we say elections have consequences. We didn't feel that in 2017, 18, 19, 20, or even 21. But in 2022, the Dobbs decision came down because Trump had the ability to appoint, again, three mega extremists to the Supreme Court who made a decision to strip away women's rights to make their own health care decisions. So I could not be more proud, grateful and thankful for the volunteers and the voters who showed up and showed out yesterday for to lead us to victory on issue one. Last question for you. Other day, I saw a former congressman, Tim Ryan, say that President Joe Biden needs to drop out of the presidential race. This is the same Tim Ryan, frankly, who did not campaign for black votes in Cleveland and Cincinnati when he ran for the United States Senate.

And he can't say that I'm lying because I text him personally about those things offered to come to the state. Never accepted. And so, what do you say to him and others who keep this drumbeat, oh, Biden needs to drop out when clearly he is not, he's running? Listen, Tim Bryan, who is also a friend, a former colleague, knows that that's not how this thing works. But furthermore, let me say this. Your previous candidate said it very well. We had we had a bad poll and there's only two ways to run in politics. And that's on the polls are scared. And yes, those numbers are actually frightening. But what we know about polls is polls don't vote. You might remember a certain candidate in 2021 was down by 35 points in polling.

So who was that? I. Don't be talking in the third person. Like, oh, a certain candidate. Now people at home going, who's she talking about? Yeah, so when you ran against Nina Turner, early polls had Turner far ahead of you in the polls, but then

when it was time for the actual the poll of all polls, you won. Yes. So the actual, the poll of all polls, you won. Yes. So the elections is the poll of all polls and they actually deliver results. And polls have never been favorable for Joe Biden. As my sweetheart, you know, Antoine Seawright likes to say, when they count Joe Biden out, he shows them that they don't know how to count. So listen, it is too early to predict the weather for next year. A poll is simply a snapshot in time. And so we have time to galvanize, mobilize and educate our voters. And that's what we intend to do.

And that's what we've been doing. And we're going to keep doing it. And I should say this also. Thank you for the privilege of this, allowing me to be on this platform, because it's awfully hard to get oxygen in this space to really detail the accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, as well as when the Democrats had the majority. We had one of the most productive Congresses, you know, recreating jobs, delivering high-speed broadband Internet at affordable prices, capping the price of insulin, the largest investment in our climate crisis.

I could go on and on. The Veterans Pact Act that expanded benefits for veterans that were exposed to toxins in burn pits. I mean, we have done a lot. But I don't think people equate some of these successes to the Biden-Harris administration. We were on the campaign trail last year in South Carolina, and the lady was just talking about how her husband had gone from getting like 10 to 15 percent of his veterans benefit to 100 percent. Well, that was not a miraculous act of God. That

was because we passed the Veterans Pact Act. So we have been doing a number of things that people just don't realize are a result of the Democratic majority that we held in the 117th Congress and the good work of President Biden-Harris. I mean, the largest investment towards our HBCUs, making history with putting the first Black woman in the vice presidential office, appointing more Black female judges to the federal courts than all presidents combined, all presidents combined. So we have been doing the work. We just got to get the message out and we've got to connect the dots. So I would just encourage people to really stop and think about the choices that are going to

be before them. You have a man that has been twice impeached, has over 91 indictments, I mean, who had a full-fledged Muslim ban on place when he wanted to come—when he came into office. And also, I think I recall him suggesting we inject bleach during COVID to try to cure that. This man is not worthy of being back in the president's office. And I haven't even got to his efforts to have an insurrection and not have the peaceful transfer of power that we have become accustomed to in this country. Well, I've said this since this show launched

five years ago. We've had a standing invitation for all CBC members. If they want to come on, talk about things they're working on, they can come on. All they got to do is let us know. We reach out to folks all the time. And so that goes for you.

That goes for all of them. Because dating back to my TV One show, I understood that, look, these other networks are not calling black caucus members on a regular basis, even though they are the largest caucus on the Democratic side in the House. And so feel free. Want to come on and talk about something?

Let us know. That's what happens when you own it. You ain't got to ask nobody. Thank you. Well, thank you for the privilege. Thank you for having me. And keep doing what you're doing, Mr. Martin. Your voice is so critical, so very important, and so valued.

So thank you. And I will certainly accept that invitation. It's been a pleasure to be on. And I, again, thank you for the opportunity. I'm rolling, Mr. Martin, my daddy. I thank you. And I will certainly accept that invitation. It's been a pleasure to be on. And I, again, thank you for the opportunity. I'm rolling, Mr. Martin, my daddy. I'm rolling. All right. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. See you, Vince, too. I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot. All right. So this is, so what you heard there, you know, for our panel that Congresswoman Brown laid out is the point. You have to, and this is what we're talking about, you have to detail what you have actually done. And we've laid that out. The Biden-Harris team, they've now got a year to do that. The polls are giving you an indication.

People are sort of leery where they stand. Now is when, Rebecca, now is when you get to work. Now you see where you are weak. You see where your tough spots are. And now you begin to work, now you see where you are weak. You see where your tough spots are. And now you begin to attack it. I have been saying on this show, for me, one of the weaknesses in the Biden-Harris administration, I rarely see any black men being out here

talking about the various issues. Gotta get them out there. You've got to also, if you're driving the economy, I need to be seeing the Commerce economy, I need to be seeing the Commerce Secretary. I need to be seeing the Treasury Secretary. I need to be seeing the brother who is the Assistant Treasury Secretary, the highest-ranking African-American ever, Wally Adeyemo. I need to be seeing those folks. And again, I love talking to former Congresswoman Marsha Fudge, now secretary of HUD.

Love having her on. But that housing, that's one thing they need to be sitting here laying out. We did this, this, this, this. And in specifics, because a lot of folk just don't know when stuff, when checks have shown up, child care benefits, things along those lines, you have to put the work in on the issues. Yes. Rebecca, go ahead. Yes, and I want the Biden administration to also understand that last night is not a predictor of what's going to happen in 2024. Don't just think that abortion and those types of issues is what the

Biden administration should spend the next 12 months talking about going into next November. But like you said, speaking specifically on the issues, and when you have Black men out and talking about the accomplishments of this administration, I very much respect Congressman Clyburn, but it shouldn't be our elite Black man in this country. It should be everyday Black men who could talk about everyday issues. And the reason why I'm saying that is right now there is a vacuum for that. That's the reason why when you see Ice Cube talking about his agenda, it's the reason why it actually has air, because there is a vacuum and that voice

is needed to talk about everyday issues that doesn't show up in a shiny Democratic Party package. So we need to see more of that going into next year, because the Biden administration absolutely need Black men to be informed with what's going on, as well as engaged and then talking to one another. It's not good enough just to go to the barbershops. Unfortunately, a lot of my white colleagues who work in different campaigns seem to think that that's a cheat code all of a sudden. It is not a cheat code for you. If this is your first time in a barbershop. They ain't listening to you. So we need to see more everyday black men who are engaged. And that's that's something that the Biden administration has time to do in the next 12 months. You know what? So, Joe, I'm sitting here.

You know, Charles Blow just put out this piece called the Joe Biden re-election dilemma. He says in here that, oh, Joe Biden should be far and away the favorite to win re-election in 2024. Can we please stop with this nonsense? Let me explain. We have had close elections, in term, in close elections for the last several elections, Republicans have not been winning the popular vote.

So we can go to 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000. I mean, we can look at the numbers, okay? And so we are a fractured country. We already know that when we talk about the election, it really comes down to five or six states. Right now, we can say that the 2024 election, Florida is off the map. Democrats have been horrible there.

Florida is no longer a battleground state. We can say Georgia, Arizona. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team

that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-stud on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves or up a way you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.

Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Those five. Now, I won't say Colorado. Not going to say New Mexico.

What did you say, Rebecca? North Carolina. We still got to look at North Carolina. Okay. No. It was at Supreme Court. There's a statewide race. Okay. No. It was at Supreme Court. I mean, okay. I'm not going to put

North Carolina in that column until Democrats actually start winning there. Okay? Biden barely lost there, but they've been losing in North Carolina. I'm just going to say, it's five states. It's five states. Okay? Fine, Robert, you can put it in Nevada. Okay. But the bottom line is say, it's five states. It's five states. OK? Fine, Robert, you can put in Nevada.

OK. But the bottom line is, it's really five states. OK? So the reality is, I'm not shocked by any of this. I'm not. I'm not shocked that people are saying, oh, my God, I'm worse off because I understand what has been happening. I've been listening to, I'm in group chats and I'm in other

chats and these people are walking around and like, oh my God, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not enthusiastic about Biden. Well, hell, it's a lot of people I ain't enthusiastic about, but I also am taking a... Every time I look at Yank Uygur, Yank is going off and... I'm like, dude, seriously. You're yelling and screaming. Guess what?

You're yelling and screaming on Twitter. Ain't going to solve Jack. He is... I'm like, Yank, guess what? Trump is going to be the nominee. Biden is going to be the nominee. Biden is going to be the nominee. It's some shit, just deal with it. Just deal with it.

To me, this is sort of like going and going to the car dealership and they come back and it's like, all right, your transmission, your engine, your lights, I could stand there and, huh, him and her. Guess what? Go ahead and get ready to pay that two, three, four thousand dollars. Either you pay it or your ass taking Ubers all day. I mean, we could stand here.

That means nothing. So I'm not one of these people like, oh my God, I wish Biden was 60. He ran when he was that age. He lost. He lost.

And let me remind all of these people because I'm literally I am sick and tired of all of these Democrats bitching and moaning, oh my God, he's going to be 82 if he gets reelected. Warren, Klobuchar, Harris, Booker, Buttigieg, Bloomberg. I know I'm leaving two or three people off there's six people who were running in 2020

Sanders, that's seven nobody liked any of them if people liked them, they would have kept running Harris didn't even make the primaries. They all began to drop out.

And I'm serious. All you Sanders people, he fucking lost. He lost. I thought Gary Hart was an unbelievable candidate. Gary

Hart was having an affair. Sorry. So at some point, you got to wake up and go, okay, this is the hand I'm being dealt. Because Biden ain't getting younger.

And when I say the hand that I'm being dealt, you can sit here and talk about Biden is, Biden ain't done this. Can you argue against the infrastructure bill? Nope. Can you argue against the American Rescue Plan? Nope. Can you argue against the announcement now made regarding rails generating 100,000 jobs? Nope. I mean, I could go on and on and on. So when I hear people say, like, Bill Maher, yeah, he's done a great job, now sit down.

I'm sorry, in what world do you say to the person who's done a great job, now sit down? Because we're stuck on this deal, oh, give me somebody young and vibrant who can excite me and who can lose. Because there were some young people. Harris was younger. Booker was younger. Buttigieg was younger. Oh, I'm sorry. They didn't excite you enough. And so I'm sitting here going, hey, this is who is sitting in front of me.

On the right is going to be an insurrectionist, lying, narcissistic, four time indicted, massive liar. Over here is the incumbent Joe Biden. a big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big,

big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, they took up a case that deals with the issue of people who commit domestic violence having guns. Waiting on that decision. Okay? Over here, I got somebody who's appointed 150 federal judges, more black women to the appellate court than all other presidents combined,

who's appointed civil rights lawyers, ACLU lawyers, directly from where they were all the way to the federal bench. Now, hold up. So now, so I got, those are my choices. That's, that's actually, that's what's in front of me. And so I'm not sitting here going, Oh my goodness. You know, I wish, I'm not looking for Biden to go run a damn marathon. I don't need him to go surfing like Obama did. I don't need any of that.

What I need is for some shit to get done. What I need is for him not to incite proud boys and Oath Keepers and flat out racists across the country to storm the US Capitol, overthrow the election. What I need is not to see these crazy deranged MAGA people who don't give a damn about civil rights, who do not give a damn about holding police officers accountable. That's who I want to deal with. So again, for all y'all folks who are, oh my God, I know he's running. Deal with it.

And people like, well, you can't be scaring us. You should be trying to instill fear in us. Project 2025, Google it. Then you'll understand what the real fear is. That is what is getting on my damn nerves, Joe. And I need people to understand, buckle up, man up, woman up, shut the fuck up, and focus on winning in November 2024,

and defeat crazy, deranged, white nationalist, white supremacist, MAGA Donald Trump. Well, what's interesting is is not only in spite of, but because of everything that you said, it guarantees that elections will continue to be close. In 2000, if, you know, the election ended in Florida, but if Al Gore had won Tennessee, then Florida would not have been in play, would not have been determinative. 2004, the difference was Ohio and Ohio only. We know what happened in 2008. 2012, supposedly, Barack Obama was behind, but he comes back.

2016, some folks stayed home. Even Donald Trump had the plane warmed up, didn't think he was going to win, thought he was going to get on the plane and be out. And we got lax. And so even in the best of times, you have a very, very divided electorate and a lot of folks are going to vote sight unseen. And so therefore, it's about turning your folks out. Here's the good news. We can run on actual records. We don't have to hypothesize about what Donald Trump would or wouldn't do. Let's talk about what he actually did

the last time he was in office. Let's talk about, remind folks of the debacle surrounding COVID and how many people died that didn't have to. And the fundamental instability in this country. And then compare what Donald Trump, who is just about as old as Biden, by the way, B-T-W-I-J-S, as the kids say. Let's compare what Donald Trump's judges did versus what Biden's judges are doing. And so run on records, actually talk about here's what we actually did and how it affects you. This is what he actually did. We don't have to hypothesize. Here's where we're going, assuming he's still on the street. So just run on records and inform people and remind people of the urgency of voting because 2016 is a cautionary tale of what happens when we don't go vote. I'm just tired of Democratic whining. I'm tired of it.

Got to go to break. We come back. Reverend Dr. William J. Barber. I know he's going to sit here and pray for me because some look sometimes, you know, I can sometimes y'all I can explain stuff in a nice, wonderful way. But sometimes, matter of fact, I don't know if y'all remember this here years ago. Matter of fact, I'm going to tell this story on the upside of the break. And I'm going to get a kick out of this one. It's a true story, too, about cussing and getting your point across. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Blackstar Network. I'm Dee Barnes, and next on The Frequency,

we have griot performance artist and author, writer, singer, and composer, mother nana camille yarborough please join us for an incredible conversation of knowledge wisdom and power of the elders i'm a perception changer you're a real ranger you're a mind devourer and a problem solver you're a beast eater a soul excre, a void filler and a bio spiller. You are a thought warmer, a plan former, a power orchestrator and a tongue translator. Right here on The Frequency on the Black Star Network. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's wealth coach. Inflation is on the rise. Interest rates are high. Can you still thrive during these uncertain times?

On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to meet a woman who's done just that, living proof of what you need to do to flourish during these uncertain times. These are times where you take advantage of what's going on. This is how people get rich or richer that's right here on get wealthy only on black star network. Next on the black tape with me great call. We welcome the black star networks very own role in more who joins us to

talk about his new book, White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now, and how as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well,

let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really,

really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two

of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with

exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes,

rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tetherpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. All right, folks, joined right now by Reverend Dr. William Barber, Poor People's Campaign, Repairers of the Breach. He's on the phone. Reverend Barber, years ago on Nightline, I was watching Nightline.

It was hilarious. They had Ice-T and Dr. Alvin Poussaint on. And Ted Koppel said, Ice-T, what about the language in rap? And Ice-T said, well, you know, Ted, he said black people are different from white people. He said, so our intentions are different. He said a white person will say, Johnny, put that knife down. Put that knife down,

Johnny. He said, a black person will say, Johnny, put that goddamn knife down. He said, it's emphasis, Ted. And Ted Copper goes, uh, Dr. Poussaint, your thoughts? And Alvin Poussaint, Harvard, all that. He goes, well, you know, Ted, Poussaint, Harvard, all that.

He goes, well, you know, Ted, I.S.T. got a point. You already got a point. And anybody that doesn't know, there comes a time for harsh language and strong language doesn't read the prophets or Jesus. You know, when Jesus saw a fig tree produced like it was really a fig tree but not produced, he damned it. And, you know, the prophets would often say very straightforward things, different than cursing and profanity. And what I hear you saying is a frustration. Listen, how do you win in politics? You've got to go get the votes.

And you've got to—it's two ways you go get votes. You either let people know what you have done, and then you let them know, if you give me another turn, what I'm going to do. This is what I've done. This is what I'm going to do. You know, you talk about North Carolina. I want to issue one slight correction. Folk that lose in North Carolina lose when they don't run on issues. We've had a governor, a Democratic governor in North Carolina since 2016. How has he run? He's won two terms because when he ran, he ran and said, if you elect me, I'm going to do Medicaid expansion. I'm going to raise wages.

I'm going to protect voting rights. When you run and you only run on law and order and stuff, run away from that, you lose in North Carolina. When the maps were found two years ago, this last term, North Carolina went from 10-3 to 7-7. And poor and low-wealth voters made this flip in those key races. We went from 10 Republicans to three Democrats to 7-7. How did Berkshire win? Don't just look. Don't let people tell you it was just abortion. Go back to 2018.

In 2018, Berkshire, whose father, by the way, was governor, went to East Kentucky and in Louisville, black Kentucky. He said, if you elect me, I'm going to do felony re-enfranchisement, you know, for people who were, had lost their voting rights. I'm going to do Medicaid expansion and I'm going to raise the minimum wage. He said that. He ran that. He even said some things are not about Democrat versus Republican, left versus right, but right versus wrong. When the Poor People's Campaign was in the street and the current governor would try to block us as attorney general, Berkshire stood against that governor. He went to eastern Kentucky and showed white folk in eastern Kentucky, and he won counties. In fact, we were up there in five counties. Three of them turned blue in 2018.

If you look in Biden-Harris, people keep forgetting, how did they win? Well, they ran on living wages and Medicaid and voting rights. That's what they said they were going to do. And they need to talk about what they have done, but they also need to talk about what was blocked. And if they get elected and get a Congress, what they will finish. I've been saying to them, stop just bringing celebrities and leaders like myself or somebody to the White House.

Bring poor and low-wealth people to the White House whom your policies have lifted and impacted. Let them know what you've done. Then tell them what you're going to do and let them be. You're chilling because there are 60 million, let's start this roller, there's 60 million poor and low-wealth voters in this country, 27 million voted in the last election, 39

million. There's not a state in this country where poor and low wealth voters don't make up at least 33% of the electorate. And in most states, if just 20% or less in those states would be mobilized, not 30, not 40, just 20% around an agenda, whoever got those votes would be mobilized, not 30, not 40, just 20 percent around an agenda, whoever got those votes would win. So how in the hell can you really

say you want to win if you're not just working hard for those votes, telling for what you've done, what the blocks were to what you wanted to do, and if you give me another term and the Congress, I mean, this is what we're going to get done. You know, I don't know for instance why right now in the Senate, the Senate isn't passing living wages, passing the Voting Rights Act. Let the House block it, but pass it so folk will know

if you give us the House and give us the presidency, we will get this done. And this is what we've already done, and this is what we'll do. And that's how people will be moved to the electorate. It's real simple. It's about, you know, what's really taking place in their lives. And lastly, Roland, you know, we got to talk about life and death. Life is on the ballot. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in this country. You're not addressing poverty and low wealth, you're not addressing people's lives. 350,000 people died during COVID

from the lack of Medicaid expansion. I mean, the lack of health care. You're not saying what you're going to do about health care. You're not caring about people's lives. But if people know you care about their living, then they will move and vote for you and stand up and stand with you. That has to happen in this cycle.

Well, what you laid out, I think, is critically important, but it's also, we're talking about being on the ground. We're talking about really focused. You and I talk all the time, and it's not this silly, normal, and I'm going to say it, too many dadgum civil rights organizations want to have personality-driven rallies as opposed to educating people. When I was, we were in Virginia helping the Virginia House Democrats. After the five events we did, people would come up to me and they would say, well, man, what can we do? I said,

because it was like alphas and it was deltas and AKAs and others. I said, listen, stop trying to cover the whole doggone area. I said, go pull the data, find out the five lowest voting precincts, and then each one of y'all members of the Divine Nine

take one precinct. I said, take one precinct. I said, take one precinct. I said, stop trying to do everything. I said, so if you take the nine, say, let's take the lowest 12, Divine Nine, Eastern Star, Prince Hall Mason, and the Lynx, those 12 organizations, I said, just focus on one. You may very well, you may very well

increase in that particular district anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 votes. And here's what people don't understand. Last night, even though the Democrats won the Virginia House last night, I went through the data, Reverend Barber, and what it showed is that when you start breaking down some of those numbers, they could have picked up an additional four or five seats and they lost those seats,

won by 173 votes, up as a 1,300. So if we focus on that, we can win elections, but this old school just get together and just make a bunch of noise. No, you got to grind this thing.

You got to go touch the people. You got to talk to the people. You got to educate the people. You can't go to them and say, well, vote because Harriet Tubman got away from slavery and vote because. You got to show, first of all, have the agenda right. Push the candidates to talk about the things that really matter. You know, like in Mississippi, most people don't know that 80 percent of Mississippians

wanted Medicaid expansion and living wage. If the governor came, when the candidates for governor started running over the last couple of weeks, what if that had been from the beginning? But even if he didn't, the organization should be going to the places where people are and pushing that. And you're right about numbers, so let's drill down. Because we've never seen an election where we've had the kind of massive turnout we want to, even where we're seeing victories. The turnout is still far below what it could be. But if you know, for instance, if you know in Florida that there are 2.8 million poor and low wealth voters who did not vote in 2020, and the margin of victory was only 370,000 in the governor's rate, then go where those 2 million poor and low wealth voters are and rally them around the issues. If you know in Georgia, there were 1.76, 1,076,000 poor low-wealth voters who did not vote. But the margin of victory wasn't but 12,000 votes.

Go in those areas, find where they are, and move them on agenda. If you know in Kentucky that 700,000 didn't vote in 2020, the margin of victory was only 500,000. In North Carolina, 1.1 million didn't vote. The margin of victory was only 70,000. So right there, you get a picture that we're not losing because we're losing. We're losing because folk are not focusing on and drilling down on where the voters are. So what we're going to be doing is, in 30 state capitals in March the 2nd, we're having massive rallies that call people to vote around seven issues in state capitals. We are announcing 35 weeks of intentional focus on low-income voters who, when they

voted two or maybe two elections ago, they voted progressive, but they have not voted since then. The number one reason that people say they don't vote is nobody talks to them. So we're going to have a massive campaign to talk to them all the way through the election. And every time we gather, we're going to be gathering around issues, but then the issues will drive who we go talk to. Targeting errors. And by the way, Mark Rowland, what we're doing in PPC and Repairs of the Breach is bringing folk together. We're bringing folk together in East Kentucky and in Louisville in those pockets where people say, well, that's Trump country. No, no, no, no, no. Because even in those areas,

if you close the margin by which an extremist wins, you help on the other side, you know. And so you've got to drill these numbers down. I don't know how many times I have tried to say it, say it nicely, say it cussing the world. Can you walk away from this many potential voters? And the number one reason that they don't vote is that nobody talks to them. Talk to the people. Go where they are. Pick the areas and increase these margins. And victory for progressive and for civil rights,

for justice can happen even in the South. There's not a southern state. There's not one southern state. y'all hear me on this, where 20, if you move 20 percent of poor, low-income voters, 20 percent, that it would not fundamentally shift every electoral, every at-large election. That's why these folks are so hard on voter suppression. They are looking at this number, these numbers. They know the Southern strategy has all kind of

bricks and holes in it. And for the life of me, I don't understand sometimes why, as you say, folks are continuing to just do the old school, the celebrity-driven, you know, just do it or not, tell folks to vote because we died, folk died for it in the past. No, tell them to vote because of how they need to live

in the present and what's happening right now and go targeting those areas. But we can't be bougie now. We can't just go get the folk that normally go. And you can't after election when they put up 90 percent of the black folk voted for a candidate. No, that's 90 percent of those who voted. Right. It's not 90% of our people. You got to know what's really going on. Read the numbers and go hard, you know, go hard in the trenches and hard in the paint. And lastly, you've got to mobilize the folk in those communities that go hard. One of the things we're trying to do is make sure that if you're going in communities, you don't go in a community for people who never go in the community.

You raise up and build leaders from within those indigenous communities so that they can become the ones who inspire others to move. Well, that's why I don't know why the White House keep playing game with this. But this is why they need to stop trying to just invite you, accept that invitation, bring poor affected people and have Biden meet with them. He can talk about his existing policies, but I'm tired of this whole deal where you only talk middle class, middle class, middle class, Scranton.

No, it's a bunch of poor people. It's a bunch of poor working class people. People out here trying to make ends meet, they need a voice too, and they've been messing around for three years not wanting to have that meeting meet. They need a voice, too, and they've been messing around for three years not wanting to have that meeting. And they have a voice.

60.9% of black people are poor and or low wealth. That's 26 million people. 30% of white people, that's 66 million. What we have said to them is let us bring into the White House a diverse group of low-income, poor people who actually support what you've tried to do, with some more religious leaders, talk to them and let those people leave the White House and go out and tell the story.

This is what has happened. This is how it has impacted us. This is what is done to address poverty. But some people made it temporary. If we get out here and vote, we can put people in office who will make these things permanent. You know, we can address 87 million people without health care. We were two votes, Marlon, two votes from 43 percent of America, excuse me, 50-plus million Americans, and 43% of black people moving out of low wealth

if the living wage bill had passed. We were two votes. Two votes. Well, you know, those are the people that need to have the mic. Those are the people you need to be talking to because those are the people that live and breathe and know how to move the sleeping giant in this country. Anybody in this election cycle, as close as these elections are,

that is writing off 60 million poor and low wealth voters and not talking to them intentionally is a damn political fool. I'm just going to say it like that. Right now, go to my iPad. The video we're showing right now is when we live stream when y'all were marching in West Virginia against Manchin. And this is what we're talking about. Look, the 2023 election is in the books. The focus now is

on 2024. You're going to have primaries beginning the first of the year. You're going to have Democratic primaries, Republican primaries happening all throughout gearing up for the general election. This is all hands on deck. This is where and listen, I'm not freaking I'm not freaking out by these early polls. And it's showing how people feel because they are a snapshot in time. What they should be doing is sort of operating as like cold water on the face of these largely white, Democratic, progressive strategists who are going to be spending billions of dollars. And I'm talking about the environmental lobby. I'm talking about the pro-choice lobby.

I'm talking about American Priorities PAC, the DNC, the DSCC, DCCC, Democratic Governors Association. the DSCC, DCCC, Democratic Governors Association, all of these people, they had better understand that you're gloating now because you won, but you could be crying a year from now. You had better be putting the work in. I have been saying, Reverend Barber, because when you were into Kentucky, y'all said, this ain't no rally. We're going to be teaching y'all tonight. They should be sitting here talking about how are we having education town halls in critical

towns, in cities, in battleground states, beginning in January. And I'll say this here right now, to every black person, and I've already got several on the book, don't come with them typical, lame MLK programs and Black History Month

programs. We need to be thinking totally different because literally this election in 2024 is going to be between Biden and an absolute white supremacist, white nationalist, fascist, and Donald Trump. Exactly right. And Roland, I want to say... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

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podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man.

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And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth.

Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. When you said that about Kentucky, when we went out to do exactly like on a Thursday, we did a teaching, but what also is that Friday night, people were talking from the other side. Actually, hold on one second. Your phone is breaking up. You said when y'all were in Kentucky, what happened? Reverend Barber? I think we were losing.

Okay. I think we got you back. Go ahead. OK. We taught them the facts and the figures on how to go out. They went out all over that state, in every county, from the east to the west, from Louisville to Harlan County, teaching people, registering people to vote based on the issues. Now, the pundits have already said

Kentucky was just because of abortion. No. Berkshire didn't just run on, he did talk about abortion rights and women, but he also said to folk, I'm going to increase the Medicaid I've already expanded. I'm going to continue to do,

make sure people get their rights back when the felony re-enfranchised. I'm going to work to bring jobs and then to raise Kentucky's minimum wage above the federal minimum wage. He taught the language of the people. It went everywhere, everywhere. And we've got to be careful of the mainstream media that want, or even some consultants that just want to look at one issue. This silver bullet issue is not how you win long term. You must see where the pockets of votes are. You must go to those people and talk to them.

And again, I want to say it on your show. I've said it for the life of me. I do not know why that we've been asking for two years now to bring impacted people, poor and low-income people, from West Virginia, from North Carolina, from key places, from battleground states, to enter the White House, not to be Democrat or Republican, but to talk about what was done, to hear what's going to be done and continuing, and allow those people to go out and be the microphone. You know, in our campaign, we've not campaign, we don't even have to endorse anybody. We endorse the issues and let people look at people and say, listen, whether they stand on Medicaid, whether they stand on health care,

whether they stand on your life, whether they stand on living wage, people are smart if you point those things out, but you have to point them out. And you cannot leave this sleeping giant sleep. And that is poor and low-wealth voters are a critical key to a fundamental shift. And lastly, Roland, I've done the data, and I got a book coming out called White Poverty, how the mythology around white poverty continues to exacerbate lies about race and class. And the data shows that poor and low-wealth white people even don't in the majority vote against their own self-interest. Most of them don't vote. But when they tend to vote, they actually tend to line up more with black people in terms

of the issues that really matter. That's why even in Mississippi, 70 percent of Republicans want Medicaid expansion, 80 percent of all Mississippi. We better know these numbers. We better go to these people. We better let them know where the policies are going if folk get elected, because that's where the power lies in this particular season that we're in. One more time, there's not a state where poor and low-income voters don't make up over 33 percent of the electorate. And in most battleground states, poor and low-income people, that's people who make less than $15 an hour and who are $500 away from economic ruin.

In battleground states, they make up over 40% of the electorate. If you accept them to the electorate, you don't talk to them in your ads, you don't talk to them in your speeches, you don't talk to them door to door, you are actually committing a form of political suicide. If you do recognize them, you will increase. And Dr. King said it like this. The greatest of the racist oligarchy in this country is for the mass of Negroes and the mass of poor whites

to come together, form a voting bloc that could fundamentally shift the economic architecture of this nation. We have that possibility right in our hands if we get away from the old style and do the work like you're talking about. Reverend William Barber, Popeye was campaigned,airs of the Breach.

We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Final comments from our panel. At the end of the day, Robert, again, the work begins now. I always say the end of the election, the end of the election is the end of one process and the beginning of another. Guess what?

2023 elections are now gone. Now the focus is, okay, where I live, are there school board races next year? Are there county races? City races? State rep? State Senate? Gubernatorial?

Obviously it's going to be congressional. Presidential? This is where. Take a breath. Get some rest. Get recharged. get refurbished, but it's time to go to work. You're absolutely correct. And look, in this period of time when the Republican Party is effectively in shambles, it's not a functioning party. Democrats cannot just simply count on the fact that Donald Trump's going to be in prison

and they're going to win by default, which is the attitude that I hear from a lot of Democratic political strategists in the majority right now. The reason they feel they don't have to put their pedal to the metal in this election, they can kind of wait it out because they want to play that game of just being in the center, being in the middle, not taking any strong positions, and just let the Republicans defeat themselves. That is not a winning strategy. If you want African-Americans to turn out in the same numbers they turned out to save you in 2020 and in 2012, you need to put the work in. If you want young voters to turn out in record numbers. Remember, the Gen Z voters, they think of President Trump as being the president of free stimulus checks, of PPP loans, and of reality TV and not having to go to school. They

don't have the same view of Trump as other voters do. You have to put in the work to bring them around. It's not enough just simply to have meetings with the elites of the White House. You need to hit the ground running, put forward the legislative agenda that you promised in 2020, show the people you're fighting for, and show people that with another term, you'll get the job done. Rebecca? The Democratic Party can't rely on suburban white women in order to win next year. If that was the case, then last night in the Jackson northern suburbs in Ridgeland, which is Madison County, Mississippi, we would have seen Tate Reeves get voted out as governor. Right. So we can't rely on those white women in the suburbs. Instead, it's reaching out to the people who brought you to the dance.

In 2020, it was young people that brought Biden to the dance. It was Black men, Black women that brought Biden to the dance. So he's going to have to spend time doing some deep investment, and not just with those who are, quote unquote, part of the talented tent. He needs to stop just talking to folks who are connected. He needs to talk to those who are disaffected, those who are disenfranchised, and those who are suffering economic setbacks. Those are the people that Biden needs to be talking to starting tonight as we go into the 2024 cycle. All right. Joe? I am always inspired by Dr. Barber, and I think that what he said is where we need to be.

There's this sleeping giant of millions upon millions upon millions of voters in places where we're supposedly red, but we're actually misread. People there, the votes are there. And there's nobody that understands what Medicaid expansion is that can be affected by it and bettered by it that doesn't want it. Even people that are super conservative, most of the times will go out of their way to say,

well, you should have your right to reproductive health, even if it's not my thing necessarily. That's what they found out in Ohio. The votes are there in places where they need to be there. In Wisconsin, the gentleman, I forget his name, ran for Senate last time. The votes were there if they had done what they needed to do in Milwaukee. And so as long as we are intentional about going out, educating voters, connecting them to those issues, listening so that we know that what we are doing is not being pitched on deaf ears and we're putting the knot in the front to help sell what it is that needs to happen, then we can continue to be successful.

Again, the Democrats are on the right side of most bread and butter regular folk issues. And so what we can do is if we do that work, we can win. But the work has to be done and it has to be done long term. Robert. As I said, the work goes on, the cause endures, hopefully still lives, but the dream will never die. But I want to press upon the Democratic Party. The black folks are not going to turn out with the same old, well, we brought Jay-Z out for the concert. We brought T.I. out. We brought, you know, we went to the barbecue.

I got hot sauce. We got a big pile of collard greens. That's not what black voters are looking for right now. You passed $1.7 trillion in infrastructure. $1.5 trillion. Well, I gotta stop, I gotta stop you there because the Black Voters Matter folks properly use collard greens

and food to register people. So I gotta stop you there because in your state of Georgia, they were very successful by pairing food drives with voter registration. So I got to slow you down a little bit there.

We can do that in the third rail. From the administration, we need policy, we need legislation. That's what I'm saying, but you got to specify. Because, look, I've been on the road

with Black Voters Matter. They use concerts, they use food drives, they use everything at their disposal to register people, to get them to turn out. And so all that works, but you're right, you still have to have policy. But again, everybody has different roles. And the reality is from the administration standpoint, they have to say one, what we did, then what we're planning

to do. What they can't do is only talk about what we did, because elections are based upon not on what you did, but what you are going to do. And so, again, and for everybody else out there, I keep telling y'all this, and y'all think I'm playing, and I'm going to do a whole breakdown. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do it. I might do it after the first of the year. I might do it actually before then. But we'm going to do a whole breakdown. I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do it. I might do it after the first of the year. I might do it actually before then. But we're going to spend a whole two hours on Project 2025. And y'all really need to understand, these people are not hiding it.

They're not keeping it to themselves. They are very clear on what their plans are if Donald Trump takes back the Oval Office, and that is not an America any of us wants to be a part of. Trust me. Joe, Rebecca, Robert, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Everybody who's watching as well. Folks, it was a huge night. You had Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee,

who was headed to a runoff against State Senator John Whitmire in the race for Houston mayor. Neither one of them got a majority of the vote and so they moved to that. That's going to be in a few weeks. Whitmire got 42.5 percent. Leak got 35.6 percent. Runoff is going to take place on December 9th. Philadelphia gets its first black female mayor. You have Chanel Parker, elected the city's 100th mayor. And again, first woman to hold the position.

And of course, she won the Democratic primary, so she was guaranteed to win as well. And so many people are watching that because she also ran on law and order and also believes in stopping frisk. So we'll see what happens there. And plus, a big congratulations to Yousef Salam. Remember, one of the Central Park Five, the exonerated five?

If Donald Trump had his way, they would have got the death penalty. Last night, he officially won, and he is now going to be a member of the New York City Council. He'll represent a central Harlem district on the city council. And so certainly congratulations to you. Self Salam. You also had a North Carolina town electing his first black woman mayor. Barbara Foucher will be the next

mayor of Carboro, Carboro, NC. She served on the town council. She won a seat in 2017, reelected in 2021. She's the first black woman to serve as mayor of the town. The second black person to hold the office. You also have in Rhode Island the first African-American

member of Congress, Gabe Amo, who served in the Obama and Biden administrations, defeated Republican Gary Leonard to win Rhode Island's first congressional district. So congrats to him. So a lot, a lot of big wins last night. Folks, that's it for us. We'll see you tomorrow right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, So a lot, a lot of big wins last night. Folks, that's it for us. We'll see you tomorrow right here on Roller Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Don't forget to support us with what we do. Folks who are sitting here sending us via Cash App, they were like, when I was cussing, they were like, hey, keep doing it. So if y'all want to support us with what we do, send your check and money over to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash out, dollar sign, RM unfiltered, PayPal or Martin unfiltered. Venmo is RM unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com.

Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You also, of course, should get my book, White Fear, How the Browning of Americans are Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, available in bookstores nationwide. And, of course, you can check us out on Amazon News. So go to Amazon Fire. You can watch our 24-hour streaming channel. You can watch us on Plex TV, Amazon Freebie,

as well as Amazon Prime Video. Folks, that's it. I will see you tomorrow. Recy Coburn's gonna be sitting in the host chair tomorrow. I've got a dinner at the vice president's house at 6 p.m., so I will be there. Maybe I'll go live from the grounds at the top of the hour, and so we'll see what happens. All right, y'all.

Take care. Howl! Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Black power. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told.

Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. Hey, Blake, I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart.

Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Thanks for watching! I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the

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