#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 4.1 RMU: ATL mayor on COVID-19 response; D-Nice talks Club Quarantine; Sam Jackson: Stay the F home

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

4.1.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: #Coronavirus update; Atlanta mayor talks COVID-19 response; Florida prison employees teste positive for the coronavirus; Alabama school board member snaps over the lack of funds for Black students; Trump wants to suppress your vote.. D-Nice talks Club Quarantine; Sam Jackson: Stay the F home. #RolandMartinUnfiltered 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today is Wednesday, April 1st, 2020, April Fool's Day. That pretty much describes every day of the Trump White House. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, the White House is having their Coronavirus Task Force update right now. Well, in fact, Donald Trump is actually talking about drugs, a war on drugs. Dude, we see what you're doing.

This is a damn joke. We'll be joined by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to talk about what's happening in her city when it comes to the coronavirus. Also, how do victims of domestic abuse deal with being locked in with their abuser? We'll discuss that. Plus, 12 prison employees in Florida

have tested positive for the coronavirus. What does that mean for prisoners? Also, my man D-Nice will join us talking about club quarantine and how he's just turned into an international superstar DJ. Plus, the Alabama school board member goes off because not enough money is being spent on black students. We will talk with her.

And Donald Trump admits Republicans want to suppress the vote. He actually said it. And Samuel L. Jackson has a message for you. Stay the fuck at home. It's time to breathe the vote. He actually said it. And Samuel L. Jackson has a message for you. Stay the fuck at home. It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Markdown. And it's rolling. Best belief 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. It's rolling, Martin. Rolling with rolling now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's rolling, Martin. Now.

Martin. All right, y'all. So right now at the White House, y'all going to get a kick out of this, okay? Donald Trump is actually standing on stage with generals and the military talking about the war on drugs. Y'all can go to the shadow of my video, please. Actually, it's a joke. It was actually happening right now. Y'all, it's a coronavirus.

So he kicks this thing off with this big old announcement of how they're targeting narcotic operations. We know what the hell you doing. You're now turning this damn daily press conference into 48 hours. We know what's going on. Anyway, y'all, the game recognized game.

All right, as of today, there are 207,535 cases of COVID-19 in the United States and three U.S. territories. 4,609 people have died as a result of the virus. 8,762 people are recovering from the virus. Now, again, in New York, the most grown-up person in the country when it comes to responding to what's happening is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

This is what he said today. In this war, we must plan forward for the next battle, meaning we have been behind from day one. This virus has been ahead of us from day one. You don't win a war that way. The next battle is the apex. The next battle is on the top of the mountain. See that curve? You see a curve. I see a mountain. The next battle will happen at the top of that mountain, that's where it is going to be joined. And that's where the enemy either overwhelms our health care system or we are able to handle the onslaught of the enemy.

On a personal basis, on a social basis, on a systems basis, we're never going to be the same again. We're not going to forget what happened here. The fear that we have, the anxiety that we have, that's not just going to go away. When do we get back to normal? I don't think we get back to normal. I think we get back or we get to a new normal, right? Like we're seeing in so many facets of society right now. So we will be at a different place. Our challenge is to make sure that transformation and that change is positive and not negative.

Let's make sure we're taking the positive lesson and not the negative lesson. And Vice President Joe Biden continues to remind us how ineffective Donald Trump has been. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared? I say that you're a terrible reporter. That's what I say. What do you say to the American people who are confronting this new reality? This is bigger than any one of us. This calls for a national rally and to everybody move together.

I think it's a very nasty question, and I think it's a very bad signal that you're putting out to the American people. The American people are looking for answers, and they're looking for hope. And you're doing sensationalism. You know, I laid out in detail what I would do if were I president today and go to JoeBiden.com. And the same with NBC and Comcast.

I don't call it Comcast. I call it Comcast. First of all, I have to take care of those who, in fact, are exposed or likely to be exposed to the virus. And that means we have to do testing. That's really bad reporting. And you want to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism. Secondly, I would make sure that every state in the union had at least 10 places where they had drive-through testing arrangements. Let's see if it works. It might and it might not. This is an all hands on deck. This is, as someone said, maybe as you, Jake, at the outset, this is bigger than any individual. This is bigger than yourself.

This is about America. This is about the world. This is about how we bring people together and make the kind of sacrifices we need to make to get this done. I happen to feel good about it, but who knows? I've been right a lot. A recent poll shows that Donald Trump's disapproval numbers are declining after a short coronavirus bump. Now, 44 percent of those polled approve of his handling of the virus, while 51 percent disapprove. Vice President Mike Pence predicts the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. will be comparable to that of Italy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a 30-day stay-at-home order. Also, Wimbledon has been canceled for the first time since 1945.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom says California public schools will not reopen before the end of the academic year. Liddell Jones dropped 1,000 points due to bleak health and economic projections. And let me check to see if that idiot in Mississippi has actually issued a stay-in-place order. You remember, you know, he's been ignoring this issue for quite some time. And let's see here. What did this fool announce? So now Tate Reeves, the governor, is closing all non-essential businesses, beaches and reservoirs.

Now remember, this is the idiot who overruled the mayors of Mississippi, including Mario King of Moss Point, Mississippi. We had him on the show the day it actually happened. He talked about how the governor of Mississippi just overruled all mayors and declared nearly every business an essential business. But now that you've seen a rapid growth of cases in Mississippi,

just like the food next door in Florida, now they're acting. Really? Oh, guess who's still stuck on stupid? Kay Ivey in Alabama. All right, let's go to my panel. Joining me right now today is A. Scott Bolden, former chair of National Bar Association

Political Action Committee. Brooke Thomas, host of Controlling Our Narrative podcast. Derek Holley, president of Reaching America podcast and political analyst. Derek, I want to start with you right now. Right now, right now, while we are sitting here talking, all right, y'all let me know when I can see the panelists.

Right now, Derek, this fool is having a news conference, pulling a bait and switch, bringing out Attorney General William Barr, the Secretary of Defense, these other people, to talk about the war on drugs. Dude, really? I mean,

game recognized game. I got it on. I have it on. Derek, all Americans are tuning in to say, hey, where are we coronavirus, what's going on? He's talking about moving some ships into the Caribbean. I'm watching it right now. And so, yes,

they started out. I was curious, too, as to where they were going with this particular press conference as it relates to the war on drugs. I didn't understand. But then I think they kind of tried to pull it together when they started talking about all the numbers that come in from this part of the country in terms of drugs, bringing it in here and thinking that they could be bringing in the coronavirus. Nah, you know. So, yeah, it could be a little bait and switch there. You know that's bullshit. You know that's bullshit. You need to get your weed before all this shutdown happens.

I don't want these to happen. But, Darren, we know that's bullshit. Okay, they sitting there talking about all the cartels are trying to take advantage of the coronavirus. Scott, give me a damn break. First of all, if you want to have this announcement, you could have had this announcement at the Pentagon. But no, you purposely, you could have this announcement at the Department of Justice.

But no, you purposely do it when folks are tuning in to watch the coronavirus update. We know what he's doing. Donald Trump has decided 530 p.m. Eastern every day is going to be his daily television show. That's the deal, Scott. Yeah, it makes no sense because everybody who's tuning in is looking for the opportunity or looking for an update, not just on the causes of the coronavirus and the deaths or the numbers, but looking about to see the game plan.

How are you going to get us out of this? How are you going to lead us out of this? What is the game plan? And how is that game plan working? It's touched all of us directly or indirectly. And I got to tell you, I could care less about what's going on in the Caribbean or drugs or anything else. I want to know when we can get back to, as the governor of New York said,

the new normal, whatever that's going to be. You know, you got to fight this thing, as he said, you fight it at the apex. Either you're going to win or it's going to win. But we need to be hearing more facts and figures about that as opposed to drug interdiction, which you ought to be doing anyway. It's got nothing to do with the pandemic. And so more disappointing leadership. I tell you, this is the idiocy and where you find out where there ought to be a litmus test for whether you can run for president or not, that you cannot be an idiot and run for president. You got to change the constitution because this is where we're all suffering from that not being one of the litmus tests for being president of

the United States. Brooke, with such how awful this is, this news conference has been going on since 530. We're not talking about 46 minutes. Are you actually trying to convince me that they're spending 46 minutes talking about drug interdiction in the United States when the greatest threat right now to the health and safety of Americans is the coronavirus. Give me a damn break. No, absolutely. And what you said earlier, this is his TV show every day. He's turning this into his daily TV show. I think it's more than that. I actually think this is a campaign rap. Every single day, he goes out there, stands up in front of more Americans than would ever be willing to show up for one of those actual campaign rallies. And he has a campaign rally

because he can't do it physically anymore. And what is happening right now, this weird conversation about the war on drugs, pair that with his tone yesterday, and then the day before that, with the weird conversation of, oh, impeachment, the impeachment talk, that's what ruined all of this. All of that is just a distraction because Trump has finally gotten to the point where he realized he

failed. He is the reason, and his leadership, his lack of leadership is the reason why the numbers look like they do right now. And it's all a distraction. So distracted. So now you're focused on this and not how his failure. Right.

So, Anthony, you can you can go to my iPad. So now all the generals have walked off. You're going to see it in a moment. And now you're about to see the medical people come out. Derek, here's what's so funny. Literally during this deal, he goes, oh, I now heard that I'm number one on Facebook. That's nice. That's precisely why we don't cover. That's why when Donald Trump goes to the microphone, we do not cover Donald Trump because he's going to lie, he's going to make stuff up,

he's going to say stupid stuff, and that's what he does. Fair enough. And I can't dispute that. But at the same time, I think when you speak about his administration and call them his leadership and all that kind of stuff, you're talking about the rest of those people up there, too. And some of those people up there, I mean, they are

well-respected in terms of what they do. And I think when you insult him, you're also insulting those people, and I. And some of those people up there, I mean, they are well respected in terms of what they do. And I think when you insult him, you're also insulting those people. And I just don't think that's accurate. No, I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. Wait, Derek. I'm going to say this and give you a second point. When Dr. Fauci

speaks, we go to the news conference. When Burt speaks, we go to the news conference. When that Stepford husband Mike Pence speaks, we go to the news conference. When Burt speaks, we go to the news conference. When that Stepford husband Mike Pence speaks, I turn away. Because all he does, Mr. President, you've been so great, so gracious, so kind,

your superb leadership. You've been amazing. You've been wonderful. I mean, give me a break. Come on. That's his only job. His job, he is the hype man for Donald Trump. So the bottom line is this here. What our audience needs, Derek, we need trusted voices. We don't need our people who are going to stand there and lie, make stuff up.

And that's Donald Trump. Go with your second point. The second point I was going to make, as I was saying, we're in a global pandemic right now, and I think we, everyone, needs to come together. The heck with what he says. If he makes a butt of himself on stage, then that's fine. But we as a country right now need to come together and come together as a whole as we figure out what we need to do next to deal with this pandemic.

But, Scott, we cannot do that because the person who is sitting here making some of the most critical decisions is Donald Trump. I'm going to Brooke first. Talk about the Scott. Brooke, you can't do that because this is the person who's making critical decisions. This is the person who says he's signed or authorized National Defense Production Act but won't use it. This is the person who says, he literally said today, well, you know, I also understand why these hospitals need all these protective gear.

No, exactly. And I don't think it is disrespect to the people standing behind him. That's actually one of the failures of his leadership is that when they were giving him the information, he wasn't listening to them and making decisions based on that. It seems that he was completely ignoring them and that harmed us. So it's not to say that those people, the scientists and the experts haven't been doing things the right way. It's that they're not the leader. They're not the president of the United States. And as much as we want to say, oh, ignore him, he is the reason. His lack of movement

on this is the reason. His rhetoric is why Liberty University opened up and all of those kids immediately said, it does matter what he says, unfortunately. I mean, I wish that we could just ignore it, but he's the one who makes the decisions. Yeah, but you know, Roland, this is worse than that. Scott, that's the real deal here. Go ahead, go ahead. He won't do the work that's necessary. This is complicated stuff.

I mean, you don't have to be a doctor to read, to appreciate. He's got the best minds around him. He won't put in the work because he's just lazy about it. And you can't be a strong leader if you don't put in the work and connect the dots and tell us how you're going to lead us out of this. We can forget about China and him saying this was the China virus and they should have told us and so forth and so on. We need leadership. And he's incapable of that.

He just is. And so the governors and the mayors have just ignored him, basically, other than to play nice to get the supplies they need. But the federal government ought to be leading on this, and many states are leading on it, because they've given up with this administration. As they praise him for his leadership, at the same time, they know they're not going to get the help his leadership, at the same time, they know they're

not going to get the help they need, at least not efficiently, and they've moved on from him in many ways. Oh, that's exactly what's happened. It's a joke. Folks, do we have the mayor of Atlanta? Yeah. If so, let's go right to her. Atlanta, folks, has 599 active cases of COVID-19 and 18 deaths, and yet Atlanta residents are not complying with their stay-at-home order. What the hell's going on? Y'all need to stay out some damn parks. Joining me right now is the mayor of Atlanta,

Keisha Lance Bottoms. Mayor, what's wrong with these folks? Do they... Look, we done read thousands have died. People are literally dying. I'm sorry. I don't need to see some grass that bad and congregate with some other people. Well, Roland, hello. I believe the last time I saw you, you were dropping me off at my house to see you again.

No, actually, I was in your car and they dropped you off. So you hooked me up with the ride to my hotel. I appreciate that. But now you're right. It was a long night. But no, really, that story, in my opinion, was a bit overblown. People, by and large, have been complying with the order. We had the Beltline that runs through Atlanta. It's a beautiful walking trail that so many people

are familiar with. And what's happening is that people are congregating there and they are still going into parks and playing basketball. So we do have some problem spots. But what concerned me most of all, a couple of days ago, I got in my car and I rode from one end of ML King Drive to the other end. And, you know, in every African-American community, ML King Drive really is representative of the heart of the community. What did disturb me was what I saw during that ride, that many African-Americans, especially young people, are not taking this seriously. Congregating in front of, you know, the barbershop or wherever they're

hanging out, all these places, they should be closed. And I think what people continue to miss is that this is happening to us too. And even if you're asymptomatic, you're taking it home to your aunties and your grandmothers and your mothers. And we have all of the underlying conditions in the African-American community that make this virus deadly. We have asthma, some of the highest asthma rates in the country, high blood pressure, diabetes. You go down the list, it's prevalent in the African-American community. And so I think, you know, it really is about messaging. And I've reached out to some of our local influencers yesterday asking, could they please put it up on their IG pages and talk to people in whatever way people will receive this message? Because clearly they're not getting it watching network news.

They've got to receive it in a different way. And people have to understand no matter what your age is, people are dying. Well, and you talk about passing on to older people. Look, we've done the stories on the numerous numbers of individuals who are in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s who are dying. Yesterday, we talked about one guy. He lost both of his parents, but we had, of course, the young brother, a college student in Michigan,

who, you know, about to graduate in a few weeks, he died as a result, got turned away as well. And so we're trying to explain to all of these young folks, like, hey, you are not immune from this. A group of 70, these little rich white kids in Austin chartered a plane a couple weeks ago went to Mexico for spring break. Now 28 of the 70 have coronavirus.

I mean, it's scary. And I even have this conversation with my 17-year-old son. I said, you know, so many kids smoke weed and they vape and do all these things that compromise their lungs. They're not going in nearly as strong as they think that they're going in. And for my son, anyway, I had to speak to him in terms of his brother who has severe asthma. They all have asthma. And I said, listen, you've got to understand, if you get sick and you bring him in this house, your brother could die. Any of us could die. I mean, you know, any of us. But

when you're not coming in in tip-top shape, which most of us are not, it makes you even more vulnerable. And so what I can say about Atlanta, I've been talking, communicating almost daily with Dr. Carlos Del Rio of Emory University, and I'm following his lead. He was the one who told me two weeks ago, you have until March 24th to shut this city down if you want to have any hope of slowing the curve. We immediately shut down the city. Our governor just announced today that he is shutting down the state, so I'm glad that the rest of the state is coming along with us on this.

Way to finally wake the hell up, Governor Kemp. Way to finally wake the hell up. Well, you know, Roland, I'll just say better late than never. You know, and I understand he had to go through his process and really understanding and really understanding. And really, I believe hearing from President Trump that this is also hitting rural America.

But see, I get it. I understand. I understand. But I look at, look, mayors have been leading. Really, what's been happening around this country, mayors have been leading, then governors. I can't get to the White House. I look at Mississippi. We had the mayors in Mississippi, including Mario King, Moss Point, Mississippi. They said, shelter in place.

Then, what does the governor do? He then declares nearly every business in the state to be an essential business, overrules all of them. Then today he finally announces, uh, yeah, shelter in place. Why? Numbers skyrocketed. They've been begging DeSantis in Florida to declare, nope, he wanted that spring break money. He wanted all of that. Finally today he declares it and you're sitting here going, y'all, these are people who are dying. I had the coroner of Albany, Georgia, not even an hour from where you are right now.

He said that's a city of 75,000 people, 71 percent black. Somebody went to a funeral and several people have not been a number have been infected. And now in the city, 30 deaths in that county. And I just don't understand why people want to play around with this. This is deadly. In fact, go to my iPad, Anthony. You even posted your mama coming by the house. You posted this photo.

Your mama didn't come in. That was from a distance. Right. She said she needed to lay eyes on us. So she cannot come in our house. And thankfully, my 17-year-old son banned her from our house about three weeks ago. He said that they were probably carrying germs and she didn't need to come in. So she said she just needed to stop buying and lay eyes on us.

So she was coming from the grocery store. We let her pull up in the driveway and we waited. But again, though, the reality is you're trying to protect your son, yourself, but also your mother. Yeah. I mean, and what I suspect is happening, what's happening to all of us, we are, we know people who are sick. We know people who are sick. We know people who are dying. We already have at least 15 City of Atlanta employees who have tested positive.

I have one friend who just had an oxygen tank delivered to her house today. She has been running a fever for almost three weeks. My college roommate's mother has been intubated and in the name of Jesus started breathing on her own today. She's been intubated and in the name of Jesus started breathing on her own today she's been intubated for two weeks and say I'm sharing this because it's one thing for us to watch it on TV and we we see how horrible it is in New York and these other places but it's now in our faces and it's in our families and in our communities and what I suspect with a lot of leaders across this country is the same thing is happening.

It should not have to come to that, but we are where we are. And it's just my hope that as we take a moment and we breathe, and I understand people are afraid. What worries me, our domestic violence numbers are up. Our reports of child abuse are down. So we understand there are some underlying things that are happening even on top of this pandemic. And people are afraid about jobs and how they're going to eat. But what I've been saying to all of Atlanta is that if we don't get through this,

we're not going to be alive to eat and to go back to a job and to do all these things that we consider to be normal. So it's a moment for us to take a minute, be still. And as leaders, our responsibility is to make sure that our people have the tools and resources they need on the other side of this. We've already started sending out locally from our economic development arm small business loans.

We're not cutting off people's water. We're not towing cars. If you get financial assistance from our housing authority, we're not evicting you. So there are a lot of things that we've done, what I consider to be very common sense proactive things to help relieve some of this stress. But elections matter. I'll just say that. Absolutely. We don't understand that this, that elections have consequences.

I don't know what else will show us that. Well, we're certainly seeing that, I think, out of D.C. When you talk, when you, I mean, to have the person sitting in the Oval Office, I can't call him president, sitting in the Oval Office, questioning why do hospitals need so many masks and gowns. That, to me, is just beyond idiotic. You've got governors who are begging. Look, you announced last week nearly all the ICUs and Atlanta hospitals are filled up.

They're being ravaged down in Albany, Georgia. I mean, this thing is happening, and you have someone who refuses to even deal with these companies who are also jacking up prices. These companies who are trying to charge hospitals six and seven and eight and ten dollars for a mask when they normally cost a dollar. You need leadership to say, hell no, time of crisis, we're taking this thing over. In fact, I saw a video before I talked to you. The FBI raided the home of one guy who was hoarding some 5,000 boxes of masks. He was trying to sell them up in a massive markup. He got his apartment raided by the FBI.

You would think the federal government would use the powers to say, if you're talking about this is a war, you have to act like this is a war, and you can't have companies jacking up prices and enforcing city officials like you or hospital districts or counties or states to spend millions more for something that costs pennies. You're right, Roland.

And in the same way that our hospitals and our medical professionals need this PPE, we've got sanitation workers, we've got parks and recreation workers who are passing out food to kids, we've got police officers who need it. And when I just had a conversation with my team before going on with you and when I said to them, when we finally get our PPE, treat it like you're getting some gold bars and some diamonds, because this is the hottest market for this PPE.

And it is frightening when you see that our national stockpile has almost been deleted. And what it says to me, this is simply a lack of preparation. And so when I even look at our response from our city, there are a lot of things you plan for as mayor and you have to anticipate things that may come up. I didn't anticipate a pandemic. But what I can say as a city, you are prepared because you have

an emergency preparedness plan in place. You have reserves, your rainy day money in place, and you're able to mobilize. And what it looks like to me is the federal government was just caught flat-footed as if this couldn't happen. And again, I'm taking it back to elections. This is why elections matter. You know, people would say, oh, he's going to get us all killed. I don't think anybody ever thought it would be through a pandemic. And when you don't have leaders who value preparation and who value all communities, then you are in a situation in the same way that we had to respond to Katrina

because the nation didn't show up. It's the same way we're having to respond locally because we can't depend on our leaders at the top. And I mean that leader, not all of our leaders, that leader at the top. We've got to be able to see about ourselves as local leaders. And I'm just glad that governors and mayors

across this country are making the tough calls. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bonds, we appreciate it. Stay safe and thanks for your leadership. Thank you. All right then, I want to quickly go back to my panel. Scott, again, that's what leaders do. They lead. She gave the order before the governor did.

The reality is there are people who were chirping at California Governor Gavin Newsom two weeks ago, but experts are saying his decision two weeks ago and the decision in Washington state has likely saved thousands of lives because they took the action But here's the other deal there were mayors who made those decisions in San Francisco in Fresno And this is the point lives are being saved because people took it seriously Two three four weeks ago unlike this idiot in DC In fact, we are now one hour and seven minutes into this news conference have yet yet to hear from Dr. Fauci, have yet to hear from Dr. Birx, because I'll tell you why, Scott. He saw what happened yesterday. They got too much attention. And so therefore, he wants to monopolize the whole stage. Go ahead. I want you to be wrong about that, but I know deep down that you're not. I've said it before on this show, Dr. Fauci is who America is going to listen to, and he's the most powerful man in America

during this pandemic time period. Now, it'll be interesting. Keisha Last Bottoms, the governor of California, all of the local and state heroes in this pandemic, Governor Cuomo, are just getting high marks. And it'll be interesting once we'll get through this and we get and we will get through it. Politically, what does that mean? Will the voters reward strong leadership or will they not? Will they forget once we go back to some normalcy? Or will they remember? You know, Trump's bump in the polls was really interesting. But then yesterday, and now we're talking about drug interdiction, he's back down at 44 percent. Anytime he gets over 44 percent, the Republicans

and independents who really like him and support him do a whole new story on it. But I have to remind them he's not even above 50 percent. Scott, Scott, Scott, I got to interrupt you because the real expert is now talking. Oh, well, let's go to this curve. Are we looking at living with some sort of social distancing guidelines? Essentially, essentially until there's treatment or a vaccine? For example, people looking forward to the

summer talk about, you know, going to baseball games, going to concerts. We have political conventions over the summer. Are things like that possible or safe without a vaccine or a treatment in place? Dr. Yeah, I think if we get to the part of the curve that Dr. Burke showed yesterday, when it goes down

to essentially no new cases, no deaths at a period of time, I think it makes sense that you're going to have to relax social distancing. The one thing we hopefully would have in place, and I believe we will have in place, is a much more robust system to be able to identify someone who's infected, isolate them, and then do contact tracing. Because if you have a really good program of containment that prevents you from ever having to get into mitigation, we're in mitigation right now. That's what the social and physical distancing is. The ultimate, the ultimate solution to a virus that might keep coming back would be a vaccine. In fact, I was on the weekly conference call

with the WHO-sponsored group of all the health leaders in the world who are dealing with this. And we all came to the agreement that we may have cycling with another season. We'll be much better prepared. We likely will have interventions. But the ultimate game changer in this will be a vaccine, the same way a vaccine for other diseases that were scourges in the past that now we don't even worry about. I mean, the vaccine is, as I said, it's on target. We're still in phase one. There were three doses that we had to test.

We've been through the first two doses. We're on the highest dose now. When we get that data, it'll take a few months to get the data, to feel confident to go to the phase two. And then a few months from now, we'll be in phase two. And I think we're right on target for the year to a year and a half. And you remind me, asking you and Dr. Birx, have either of you received threats of any

kind, or have you been given a security detail, given that you've been out here every day on camera speaking? The President Well, I mean, anything that has to do with security detail, I'd have to have you refer that question to the Inspector General of HHS rather than my answer to that. Can we call up on testing?

Here's an insecure. Everybody loves him. Can I call up on testing? I said they'd be in big trouble if they ever attack. You know, he was a great basketball player. Did anybody know? Trump starts talking. We don't take him live because all he does is make stuff up and lie. It's just simple as that.

Simple as that. Brooke, you heard Keisha Lance Bottoms say elections matter. It's just simple as that. Simple as that. Brooke, you heard Keisha Lance Bottoms say, elections matter. It's absolutely true. And people had better pay attention, and you've got an election in November, and it matters who is going to be in the White House for the next four years. Hopefully not this idiot.

So many. Listen, this is the non-problematic hill that I will die on. I wish more people would pay attention to that. Excuse me. I'm so sorry about that. Especially right now, elections matter. Your local elections matter. You need to be paying attention to who is willing to protect you right now. Take a look at how your city council, your mayor, how they are handling eviction in your area. Take a look at when your state governor, when your city's mayor was willing to shut down schools to protect people. Obviously, the presidential election, if we didn't learn,

I mean, every other day we have a different example as to why that election matters. But I think people already know that. You know what I mean? People already know that it's important for them to vote for president. But right now, you're getting a look specifically at why. Look at what the district attorneys are doing. Who's sitting in jail at a higher risk for this that shouldn't be? Look at the prosecutors in your area. Look at the city council. There's so many different reasons. Look at your pastor. How is your pastor handling this? Look at who is willing to protect you. Because I think the light is on everybody right now. Speaking of protection, I want to go to my next guest real quick here, folks. You heard Mayor Lance Bottoms talk about this.

Folks, victims of domestic violence are really, really in a tough situation. Joining us right now is Amina McWhorter, founder of Love by the Hand. It was an organization that provides support for victims of domestic abuse. That was a boxer, Amina, today who has his boxing license suspended because he posted a video last night trying to teach men how to beat their wives or girlfriends during this whole crisis. He said, oh, it was a joke. He issued an apology. But this is not a joking matter.

We are seeing an increase in domestic violence as a result of coronavirus. Absolutely. First of all, thank you, Roland, so much for this opportunity to be able to talk about this. This is a serious situation because outside of COVID-19, domestic violence numbers are on a high on a daily basis. People don't understand when it comes to domestic violence that it's domestic violence. Before the violence comes, the domestic part comes, which is verbal abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse that's happening now, even spiritual abuse from what we're seeing. So the tension building behind that is what is causing then that physical part. And we're in a crisis right now. We know that. And so even when it comes to financial and not knowing how the money and where their checks are coming and people being

laid off at high numbers, the increase of violence alone is high. So even with domestic violence, think about it from this point, Roland. We have a stay-at-home order. My God, stay at home. So you have to stay at home with your abuser who's mentally breaking you down, emotionally breaking you down, physically now breaking you down, and you have nowhere to go. And even on a global number, that domestic balance comes in so many different forms outside of what we know, even in the United States. So even China's numbers with the coronavirus and COVID-19, that was at a height even to the divorce rate. So this is serious. One in four, it was one in three. So without the coronavirus, one in four women. So let's just do, we already have to be, what, 10 in a room?

So one in four counts. But the numbers have changed in the last year to one in three. And one in seven men, this boxer who's doing this, one in seven men are even being abused. But because of ego, they don't talk about that. So what does a person do? seven men are even being abused. But because of ego, they don't talk about that. So what does a person do? I mean, you're shelter in place.

Correct. What do you do? So it's very important that during this time, number one, we do not pass judgment. Because until you have been in certain situations that you don't even know or understand what it's about. So we have to be very

cautious and mindful of what's happening right now in people's homes. And so when people are reaching out to you, they're not going to reach out to you. But you know what we have to do, Roland? We have to reach out to them. So if someone is on your heart, if someone is in your spirit, if a name pops in, a song, a scent, whatever it may be, it's you a text away because they need to know that they're not alone. And so it's important. We have resources locally as well as state, National Domestic Balance Hotline, the 799-800-799-7233. I can give you those information. You have local. I am based here in Washington, D.C. And even in the DMV area, in Prince George's County alone, the number of homicides on a day

outside of, on a time that we're in an epidemic outside of this, a pandemic, excuse me, outside of this, it is increased by even 500%. 500? So we need to just reach out to people, let them know that they are not alone. Give them local foundation numbers, such as mine, and so forth. Pray like never before. And so this time is very, very serious. Even when it comes to the increase in just one week, less than a week, Roland, less than a week, the domestic violence hotlines, local foundations are seeing an increase in numbers. And ironically, that we're talking about this today on April the 1st, Roland, this is the month, April, of sexual assault. So when people are locked up, you know, I heard something wasn't funny,

but you know, it is what people are saying, is going to be a whole bunch of babies and stuff. Even when it comes to sexual assault, that's abuse. So now when you got the tension and you're going to come here and you're going to, you know, I want to be intimate. Domestic violence is with the intimate partner. An intimate partner can be parental. It's a spectrum of domestic violence. Doc, first of all, Amina, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. We want to give folks that information. Again, folks, we want you to place that phone call, get help. You should not

be in a situation where you are being beaten and you think there's nobody to be there for you. Amina, thanks a bunch. Thank you so much and I pray for all of us and be mindful that we are here together. Thank you, Roland. All right, you take care, folks. Amina McWhorter, founder of Love by the Handles. Gotta go to a break. We come back. We're gonna

check with D-Nice. Have any of y'all been part of his club quarantine? Any of y'all? Brooke, Scott, Derek? I don't think so. I was one of that 100,000. First of all, we know Scott ain't got no rhythm, so he wasn't there. But I've seen

Brooke at club quarantine. I tried to holler at you, but it was too packed. All right, y'all. I'm going to go to a break. We come back. We're going to chat with D-Nice. And of course, we're going to also talk to Desmond Meade about what's happening in prisons in Florida, how they're being protected. We got also this white school board member in Montgomery, Alabama, y'all.

Drop the like. It's hot. She went off in the meeting basically saying, we ain't helping these black kids because we ain't trying to help black kids. We're going to talk with her right here on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Back in a moment. You want to check out Roller Martin Unfiltered? Go to youtube with it right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered back in a moment. You want to check out Roland Martin Unfiltered? YouTube.com

forward slash Roland S. Martin. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real.

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And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it. All right, folks. This whole coronavirus deal is driving lots of people crazy. They're cooped up in their homes. They can't go anywhere. They're sheltered in place all over the place. And what it means by being sheltered in place, that means that even if you want to go somewhere,

you can't. Imagine being a DJ and your job is to be around a bunch of other people. Well, like many people, DJ D-Nice has been sidelined as a result of coronavirus. And so for the last couple of weeks, he has been burning up social media with club quarantine. This thing started where it was just literally, you know, just at the crib and he was sitting around. He was just in the bed and said, I need to figure out something to do, y'all. He jumped up. Did it on a Monday, had about a couple of hundred people.

Yours truly was right there. He's been my man for a long time. Then by that Saturday, it hit more than 105,000 people, including Michelle Obama, Oprah, Joe Biden jumped on. It was crazy. Deneise! What's up, man? You know I love you, man.

You my man. I'm sitting in the very spot where it all began. So again, as I was saying, you were just like, look, you couldn't go anywhere. Look, gigs got canceled, postponed. And you were like, yo, I got to play some music. I needed to, man. I wanted to play music just for us because we partied. I look real bad right now, man. It's quarantine, man. I need to play music just for us because we partied. Damn, I look real bad right now, man.

It's quarantine, man. I need to shave, bro. But I was just sitting here, like, you know, just wanting to play music for my friends because usually when I'm at most of my gigs, I will see you, Kenny Burns, you know, Black Thought, a lot of the people that were in the chat room. We would always party together anyway. So I figured, like figured just being here playing music would bring some excitement to their lives.

And it ended up becoming this massive thing. And again, that first day, it was like a Monday. Maybe it was a couple hundred people. At the time, you had about 200,000 Instagram followers. And then you DJed again and again. And then people, Essence did a story. The Undefeated did a story. New York Times drops a story.

And that's Saturday. And I'm telling you, I was tracking it, y'all. So it was like 9 p.m. I go on, and D-Nice had y'all. 9 p.m. He had 266,000 followers. Midnight, it was above 566,000. The next morning, it was not. No, no, this is Friday night. It's Friday night. Next morning, it was 907,000. By the time he DJed Saturday night,

he had crossed a million followers and the numbers have been going up. Where are you at now? What, you at 2 million? I'm at almost 1.9. Dude, I mean, you gave me what you said that Sunday. Tears. You were just shocked. I woke up in tears. It wasn't just about the followers. It was when I realized that we had all done something special

where we, you know, something that started out so basic and simple with a group of friends ended up being something that helped so many people through a difficult first weekend. That was the first weekend of the quarantine. And people were, we didn't know what to do. We didn't know what to expect. So to play some music and knowing that,

you know, giving from our hearts, because it wasn't just me, you were in there every day. Like I said, Black Thought, like all these incredible people, Kelly Rowland. You were in there every day. Like I said, Black Thought, like all these incredible people, Kelly Rowland, we were all there together every single day and watched it build and watched it become what it has. And it's been a, it was a beautiful experience. So yes, I woke up in tears knowing that we did that.

It was a trip that Saturday because as I was watching it, you were just blown away by this next person, this next person. Then when Amy Schumer popped in, then Ellen, then Swizz Beatz, and Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Oprah, then Michelle Obama, then when Biden, then the Sanders people jumped in.

It was just like, it just kept going. It was like new level, new level, new level. And the beauty of it, dude, there were no VIP rooms. There were no VIP ropes. It did not matter who you were. There was no special place. It was everybody being in one spot just enjoying it. Yes, it was fantastic, man.

And that's the beauty of it. I cut it back. I scaled back to do it once a week now. So it will always kind of remain with that kind of fresh feeling. And also, it just gives other DJs a chance to shine. You know, like, I don't want to make it seem like I invented this. You know, I decided to throw the type of party that I wanted to throw, and it ended up working for so many people.

But I try to spend more time, like, going in and supporting other DJs and other writers and popping in chat rooms and doing interviews just to give more support, you know, because, you know, we're all in this together, bro. You know? Well, let's also be honest. You went nine hours. I went nine hours, yes. No one goes nine hours. Right.

I mean, that's, and in fact, it was a, so let me tell y'all, get ready Derek, Scott, and Brooke for y'all questions for D-Nice. So y'all, so D-Nice was spinning on Saturday. No, Sunday. It was on Sunday. It was on Sunday. And so you're supposed to what? You popped on

and do what? Three hours? Wait, which Sunday? The just past? Just past Sunday. Oh, no. I was only supposed to do 45 minutes. Okay, y'all. So he's supposed to do 45 minutes. Okay. And he's spinning. He's spinning. He's spinning. I got on late. And this is what I hear. All right, he's spinning. I got on late.

And this is what I hear. All right, y'all, I'm just here 20 more minutes. D-Night sound like a Baptist preacher who when they say, I'm about to close, y'all, he went for another three hours. I was like, if he say 20 minutes one more time, I'm like, just stop. And then he was like, this is it. This is the final song.

This is the final song. And I type, no, it ain't. No, it ain't. You did say, you did type that. I said, no, it's not. Y'all, I said, he going to play one more. And then Pebbles, oh, I got to play this. I got to play this.

Pebbles. And then he played it. Then a couple, a few more. I was like, I tried to tell y'all. Listen, man, when you have Halle Berry in your chat, in your IG Live, and she's like, D, play more music, how do I say no to that? I mean, you just don't say no to Halle.

I concur. And that's how to have Mimi Valdez was the one who threw out hashtag very nice. What do you make of all the people who are like, oh, my God, are we watching this budding romance? Because Halle has been showing you crazy love. Yeah, Halle's good people. That's my friend.

No, there's no romance. No romance. But if it is, you wouldn't say no. Let me go to Brooke. Brooke, here's D-Nice. What's your question? What's up? First of all, this has been so much fun.

It's been great, because it's not just, like, an experience that you get to see everybody who's popping in kind of having the same experience as you, but it's really like hook it up to your speaker and have fun. Get out of bed. You know, do something in your pajamas that you're wearing all day, because that's what we do these days.

But were you surprised? I think for me, I was curious because the first time it went super viral, that was the Michelle Obama day. It was 100,000 people. But then the next day, there were way more people. And there were a lot of people talking like, oh, this is never going to happen again. If you missed it, it happened again the next day. Were you surprised? This is never going to happen again. If you missed it, it happened again the next day. Like, I did. Were you surprised?

When I woke up that Sunday morning, I was just shocked that we had reached 100,000 people. Because no one had ever done it. Like, last night, Drake broke the record. Drake did 300, but it's Drake. So he did 300K. But the next day, I wanted to see if this was like, if it was real.

And when I signed on, like within 10 minutes, there's 100,000 people in there. We maxed out at 165, and I was like, wow, this is actually a thing. Like, people really enjoy when I play music. So that's part of the reason why I scaled back, so it can always feel fresh and fun.

And when I'm on, they know, like, I'm gonna bring it. We're gonna have a great set. So yeah, I was definitely to bring it. We're going to have a great set. So, yeah, I was definitely surprised, though. Derek, what's your question for D-Nice? D-Nice. D-Nice. Yes, sir.

It was good. It was a good look, man. My question is, how do you take this momentum right here? And I know we're a long way from getting out of, from being home, but taking this momentum with you after this coronavirus leaves us i'll be honest with you i i get offers every day you know like major major offers i mean you you name it every network offering opportunities to all of the streaming networks i personally just decided to hold back on having those conversations because what i'm doing started from a place of love and out of

respect for people that are fighting through this. I just decided to take a week off to just sit back and just enjoy it and do what I'm doing now for the love. Monday morning, this coming up next Monday is the day when I start to look at the business side of it. I would be crazy to not look at the business side because this is what I do for a living. This is why I got into music, for these types of opportunities. But people have definitely respected my wishes to just hold off. And this weekend, I'm going to take the time to decide on how I move forward with it. I know for sure I want to do, I want to take it on the road and do a club quarantine within, you know, five cities because I want people to actually come out and feel

what I was actually feeling at home. Not just through your phone speaker or not just hooking it up to your Sonos, but to actually be in a club environment and hear Sister Sledge and hear a Drake record mixed with Sister Sledge or whatever, like the way I mix.

The goal is to just come up with a plan this weekend and see what we can do to one, you know, monetize this and also what we can do to give back to people, because that is we're going through a rough time right now. You know, and I would everything that I do should be based on giving back, giving something back to people that are that are suffering. And I'll be on. Look, I ain't got no problems. I told you, D-Nice, after that Friday night, I hit one streaming service where you don't have a time limit. Instagram, you got 60 minutes.

I was like, yo, y'all need to do a deal with my man. He's killing it. I'm just telling you. Scott, question. Hey, D-Nice, Scott Baldwin here in D.C. I've been to a number of your parties. I don't think we've ever met, but I want to tell you, I can see a club quarantine in the top ten cities in the U.S.

I know that has to be one of the proposals that came your way, like the physical structure. Of course, yes. And you spend on one night or all nights, or even you get some equity out of it. Absolutely. But I tell you, my wife and her girlfriends were listening that night where

Michelle Obama was on, and they brought me into it. I jumped on. And what was amazing to me was your humility. Like, we were living with you while you were spinning, and you were as surprised as everybody, your audience, about who was

jumping on. Like, at one point point when Biden got on or Michelle Obama got on, you were like, Michelle Obama's on. Hey, y'all, Michelle Obama's on. You were amazed that we were living it with you while you were kind of narrating it. And I just think your humility made the difference. We wanted to get you to a million. We wanted you to keep spinning. And we wanted more celebrities and Black Thought leaders, Black Thought leaders to jump on with you, man.

So a lot of love and support out here. God bless you. I appreciate it. Those moments, just full disclosure, I knew I put the call in to ask. The excitement for me wasn't that they were just in the room. It was that I actually called and asked, and they followed through.

So that to me was, it kind of showed me the influence that I have. You know, as a DJ, sometimes people kind of like attempt to downplay who you are. Not to say that I've had those issues because I've done some incredible things even outside of DJing in my career. But usually when I'm playing, I'm in your world. If you hire me, this is your thing. That was something that I created, and they all came to my world. So Janet Jackson came to my world. Patti LaBelle,

Ellen DeGeneres came to my world, and then posted it on her world and said, hey, everybody needs to go and follow D-Nice. Like, you need to see this party. Or Mark Zuckerberg probably had no idea who I was. And you know what? He was in there. He owns Facebook and Instagram. And he was

in there. So, and, you know, it just kind of showed me, like, the influence that we have as African Americans and that we're leaders in this culture. And we did something that no one had done at that time. You know, like I said, Drake kind of broke the record last night. But even then, the way he did it, it pales in comparison to what we did that night.

We had everyone in there. And it was a time when we all needed to feel good about what we were experiencing together. So, yeah, it's a wonderful feeling. It was our new normalcy. Well, and also what I think is also great is that for a lot of people, especially a lot of young people who have not heard a lot of these artists, I mean, you're playing, you're not playing the same stuff. I mean, you're going deep in the crates.

And people also are getting a sense of your love of music, playing different artists. Any of y'all out there who missed the interview I did with D-Nice in Chicago, go to our YouTube channel. We talk about stuff that he's gone through. We talk about his history, talk about how he was high, that he was real low, how he's had to rebuild this.

And I think, D, and people, and look, folks, this ain't new to me. D-Nice and I have known each other for years. He knows the moment I... Y'all, this is a true story. This is a true story. I'm in New York.

I don't know what the hell I was there for. And I'm in New York, and I run into one of my fans on the streets of New York who was with her mama and her kids. And I go to my hotel. I meet them. It's like I took a picture of everything.

I go to my hotel. And I tweet, what the hell is going on in New York? It was like 10.30, y'all. I had nothing. I was like, I'm in my hotel. And somebody said, Roland, D-Nice is spinning at I don't know what hotel it was. And so the sister who I met and her mama, she said, these kids are driving me crazy. Are you going to this party?

I was like, hell yeah, I'm going. She met me at the party. I said, D-Nice is spinning. And it was a craziest thing. And I told a bunch of my other followers, I'm going to this party with D-Nice. I'll see y'all there. It was a hookup. We danced all night. Because you know,

and I told people, y'all think I'm lying when I put it in club quarantine. I've helped D-Nice pack up. I don't leave parties early. No, no. He will stay. Come on, Roman brings the funk. He will stay until the end.

Uh-uh. I don't believe in leaving early. You know, I'm always happy. Whenever I see you, I know it's definitely going to be a party. Because you go straight to the stage, man. You know, and just set it off. If someone's standing around, you'll go straight to the stage, man, and just set it off. If someone's standing around, you'll get right in the crowd.

We've done that. We're a Congressional Black Caucus. Like, you'll get out and just do your thing, man. So I have so much love and respect for you. Well, I can't look. I have a very simple philosophy with parties. If I go home and my clothes are dry, I'm pissed off. But if I go home and I got to peel my clothes are dry, I'm pissed off. But if I go home

and I got to peel my clothes off, that was a party. Absolutely. Well, I can't wait after, again, we have dispatched of this coronavirus for that first get-together. It's going to be crazy. Bro, you've been on Jimmy Fallon, the LA Times.

So many amazing things have been happening. God has been blessing you in a tremendous way. I'm just glad to know you. I appreciate all that you do. And man, we're going to keep tuning in and just keep doing you. You know, I love you, brother. Good to see you all. All right, D, talk to you.

Get back to club quarantine. I mean, my kitchen. All right, drink more of that water and not more of that alcohol they keep sending you oh my gosh they said they sent you so much alcohol you can open up your own liquor store i was saying to someone either my friends love me or they they are they know that i have a problem way too much alcohol in here but the one person look just now i just before i got on with you will smith sent me another shipment of like eight boxes of water.

See, I love Will. Will is always sending water. He just sent you some just the other day. Yes, and now there are like eight more large boxes of water. I'm like, yes, Will. And in fact, that Saturday when you were DJing, when you hit 100,000, you were like, yo, somebody call Will. He needs to get on here.

Because Jada was on. Jada was on. So I sent him a text. I was like, yo, D-Night's like, get your ass on Club Quarantine. Get on. And you know what? He got in. And that same night, he sent me cases of water with a beautiful note.

But no, Will is a classy dude, man. Yes, yes. That's the one thing that I love about Club Quarantine is that we brought so many beautiful people, not in terms of physical beauty, but just like beautiful spirits together in one room, in one chat, and we were all there

together and experiencing that moment at the same time. So it's beautiful, man. Thank you. Derek, you got a question in, didn't you? No, no, I'm good. You didn't get a question in? Real quick, go, go. Oh, yeah, I did. I asked my question already. Oh, you did?

Okay, I was about to make sure you did. D-Nice, man, I know you got an interview coming up. Brother, always good seeing you. We'll chat soon. All right, later. All right, bro, take care. That, I hope y'all enjoyed that. Club quarantine has been really absolutely fun.

I got to go to break when we come back. We're going to talk with my man Desmond Meade about what's happening in Florida prisons. 12 prison guards got coronavirus. What does that mean for the inmates? Next, Roland Martin Unfiltered. You want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered?

Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar that you give to us supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered, support the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real as Roland Martin Unfiltered support the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year. You can make this possible. RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. All right, so a lot of y'all always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I

wear. Now, I don't know. Robby don't have one on. Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares. I don't like even the silk ones. And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago, and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here, and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square.

This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect. So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down the, it took me a year to find a company that did it. And so they basically about 47 different colors. And so I love them because again, as men, we don't have many accessories to wear. So we don't have many options. And so this is really a pretty cool pocket screen. And what I love about this here is you saw when it's in the pocket, you know, it gives you that flower effect like that. But if I wanted to also, unlike other, because if I flip it and turn it over it actually gives me a different type of

texture and so therefore it gives me a different look so there you go so if you actually want to get one of these shibori pocket squares we have them in 47 different colors all you got to do is go to rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares so it's rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares all you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you who are members of our Bring the Funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool. So if you want to jazz your look up, can do that in addition uh y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares my sister who's a designer she

actually makes these they're all custom made so when you also go to the website you can also order one of the customized uh feather pocket squares uh right there at rollingsmartin.com forward slash pocket squares so please do so and of course uh it goes to support the show. And again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. All right, folks. So we talked about what is happening, of course, all around the country,

shelter in place. But imagine being in prison, a breeding ground for coronavirus. We've seen this take place in Rikers Island in New York, some other places as well. In Florida, the number of Florida prison workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 jumped to 12 on Monday,

according to the Department of Corrections. Three of the employees work at Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Santa Rosa County. A fourth person works at Appalachee Correctional Institute in Jackson County. The latest count of infected workers is a jump of four over the number of cases reported by the corrections department in late February.

So how are inmates being protected? Well, joining us now is Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. Desmond, glad to have you back on Rolling Mark Unfiltered. Hey, Marlon. Thanks for having me on, Roland. Let me start by saying this. You know, I think that measure of a country is gauged by how it treats its most vulnerable. You know, and so when we're talking about the coronavirus, you know, a lot of folks, you know, place a lot of attention pre-existing medical conditions that makes a dangerous coronavirus dangerous to folks in prisons than you have in this country. And so what we're seeing here in Florida is, especially we have a governor that seems to be Johnny-come-lately to a lot of these remedies. What we're seeing is the potential of turning our prisons into a morgue.

And you have to have a response to it. When you talk about distancing, the reality is you have people who are congregated in very tight spaces. Yes, and so, and you're right. On March 17th, we wrote a letter to the governor and how we was approaching this this pandemic was that there are several ways that that we can alleviate or relieve some of the potential of the coronavirus ravishing prisons. One way is releasing people early. You know, you have a lot of inmates that are over 65 that are terminally ill that could be released. You have a lot of inmates who are less than a year from

being released. The governor could exercise his clemency powers and to get those folks out of there. You have folks who are up for parole that the governor could actually impact. And then, of course, you have folks. We could stem the flow of people who are incarcerated by slowing down the amount of people who are entering into the jails. Right now in Florida, we have over one hundred and seventy five thousand people who are behind bars. And that is a recipe for disaster. It is absolutely that. And again, when you talk about you had Sir Nakama Harris and others who have been calling on the Bureau of Prisons and state prisons to look at this release, low, you know, low level offenders, folks along those lines.

Then, of course, you still have the people who believe in throw the key away, who are like, look, these are hardened criminals. Keep them in there. But this is still also a health risk to the workers in these prisons, who also have families. As a matter of fact, within our recommendations to the governor, we also

paid a lot of attention to the guards. Right now, you're seeing 12 guards who are impacted. They not only have the potential of infecting inmates, but then they're taking it back to their community. They're taking it back to their homes. And so we're asking for the same type of approach that you would use on medical professionals, same type of approach that you would use

for people who are working in nursing homes, that you should also apply those procedures to guards. They should be wearing masks. They should be having a protective gear. They should be provided with any necessary supplies, equipment, and garments that's needed to prevent them getting infected and to prevent them actually transferring them to the inmates. You know, just a couple of days ago, the governor made a statement about wanting to prevent cruise ships from docking at the Port of Miami. They don't want cruise ships docking in Florida. Right. But each prison is like a cruise ship that will eventually dock. Right.

At some point, people that are incarcerated, they will have served their time, and they must be released. And so it is incumbent upon us, it's really incumbent upon the governor to take some bolder steps. He don't have to wait for White House guidance, right? He should be, he's the governor of this state, right?

And so therefore, he should take the steps that's necessary to prevent this from rolling out of control. You know, why wait for somebody to die before you take actions that you could have taken before their untimely death? Well, we are we are talking about the person who waited to do a shelter in place and allow coronavirus to spread. Today finally made that decision. And again, that's how weak leadership, speaking of weak leadership, I want to ask you about this. I'm going to bring in Cliff Albright on this as well. Donald Trump pretty much let the,

just verbalized what we all know the other day when he was on the Fox News and made it clear that Republicans are all about suppressing the vote because they know they will lose. I want to get your thoughts on this. Y'all press play. An email from Kevin for you, Mr. President. If there is another relief bill, how can we stop lawmakers from dipping into it again for special interest projects? Man, we were just talking about this. Do you want to expand? Can we stop the next one?

It's just the common facts. I mean, they have a majority in the House and therefore you need their vote and they want to get certain things. I will tell you this. If you look at before and after, the things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again. They had things in there about, you know, election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. And they had things that were just totally crazy. Desmond, of course, you have the amendment for there in Florida. Boy, you've been y'all been fighting the Republicans there. They lost in court. I saw your tweet this week. And to hear Donald Trump say that,

all those things, restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated, same-day registration, all those things, Republicans don't want to make it easy for people to vote because they know if you can keep the vote low, they can stand a better chance at winning. Let me tell you, Roland, the first impression that I get when I was hearing those comments is it's something that we believe even during Amendment 4, right? And it's that I think the

biggest problem with what's going on right now with the coronavirus is that it has become politicized, right? When you're talking about Democrats versus Republicans, you know, because whenever anything becomes politicized, the only people that suffer are the regular people, people like me and you, the people that's out here in this country. But here's the thing, that we know that people have historically not cared as much about people who have been incarcerated or currently incarcerated.

We've seen when there was flooding on the East Coast a few years ago, how long it took the folks to actually remove people out of prisons that was flooding, right? That's primarily because no one has anticipated people like me with felony convictions being able to eventually vote, right? And I know that there are some people that's scared of seeing this new constituency of voters coming. You know, we have over 1.4 million here in Florida. And this recent court case, though, and the rulings in it, and with the judge's decision to turn this lawsuit and make it a class action lawsuit, so where now any future rulings will apply to all of the 1.4 million instead of just 17 plaintiffs, right? What this does is sends a serious message because the courts have rejected the state's attempt to suppress this lawsuit, right? What that says right now is how the governor, how any elected official,

whether they're Democrat or Republican, respond to the needs of people who are incarcerated or people with felony convictions may have some serious consequences when election time comes because the way the courts is going, a lot of these 1.4 million people are going to be able to vote and they're going to not have short-term memory like some folks used to historically have in the past. I'm going to go to Derek and Brooke in a minute. I want to bring in Cliff Albright, who is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Cliff, on this point, to hear Donald Trump just say out loud what we've always known, and this is part of the problem. Even right now in Wisconsin, they are refusing anything to change,

to allow any changes to the April 7th primary. Because if they know for a fact, by holding onto that seat, it guarantees them to be able to kick folks off the voting rolls in November. They've actually had a state thus far where a federal judge ruled they cannot remove 200,000 people from the rolls.

But that's what you see what's going on. And so you have Democrats in Wisconsin who have been pleading to say, wait a minute, this is about keeping folks safe. They don't care. Their whole deal is, nope, election is fine. Go to the polls. Even though in a number of counties, I think there's

more than 100 now polling locations, they don't have enough people. They don't have enough hand sanitizer in those places. And this is what you're dealing with. And the reason I, and Desmond's right, it shouldn't be partisan, but the reality is this, Cliff, Republicans will do all they can to block, to suppress the vote. And that to me is shameful. It should not be that way, Cliff. Yeah, and it's exactly like what you said, Roland, where the man in the White House said out loud what we all know to be the case. But this isn't the first time that they've done that. Right. We know that, you know, just a few months ago, Mitch McConnell did the same thing in talking about the attempts to extend the Voting Rights Act, restore voting rights, restore voter security, election security, that Mitch McConnell basically made the same remark, like, oh, y'all are just trying to do all this stuff because you want to be able

to win elections. So they know that this notion of expanding the electorate, of making it easier to vote, of expanding voting access, they know that that doesn't work in their favor, that they'll lose elections. And that's literally what Donald Trump said out of his mouth. It's amazing that Wisconsin will be trying to move forward with that election. And even as their great leader, their grand leader, has said that even he put aside his Easter wish list and was going to extend his silly 30 days or whatever until the end of the month, if even he has done that and Wisconsin is beyond him,

then that really tells you all you need to know. Derek and Brooke, I want to bring you in this conversation, this whole issue. This to me should not be a partisan issue. First of all, there's no affirmative right to vote in our Constitution. It really is. We really don't have a federal election. We have state elections. Derrick, I want to start with you.

This is where Republicans of conscience, you said it before, Republicans of conscience, conservatives should be saying to the party, stop getting in the way. If you want people to vote for you, damn it, compete for their vote. before, Republicans are conscious, conservatives should be saying to the party, stop getting in the way. If you want people to vote for you, damn it, compete for their vote. Don't restrict it. I agree with that,

Roland, and you know I've said many, many times, the Democrat Party takes for granted the black vote, and Republicans don't do enough to get it. At the same time, black people need to get off their ass and go vote. Now, you and I, we talked about this on your show a few weeks ago when I was on the show.

And the thing about it, in 2016, it was a low... This is according to the Pew Research Center. It was the lowest turnout ever since we've been... since we've been tracking elections for African Americans. 59.6% of people came out in 2016 after a record high in 2012. So

the candidates also have to do a better job of their messaging to get people out to vote. But the point, Brooke, it doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter who the candidate is. It doesn't matter who the party is. What should be happening here, very simple,

and that is these politicians should get the hell out of the way. You should have nonpartisan commissions who are governing these elections. You shouldn't have these secretaries of state who are putting their thumb on the scale, changing the rules to benefit their parties. Yeah, absolutely. And, of course, back in 2016, the numbers were so low because I think it's easy for a lot of people on the outside, not us, but on the outside of this to kind of look at it like, you know, black people specifically are just not, they of gross push to pull in this mythical swing voter

that is this person that is a middle-class white person who switches back from Republican to Democrat, depending on who talks to them the best that election year. But when it really is, you know, there's a lot of black people who are completely being ignored, just like you just said, and also have to jump through the hoop

because of these ridiculous voter suppression tactics all around them. So not only do you have to get yourself to vote anyway, you know, not really seeing anybody act like they care about you, but then you've got to make sure you're still on the rolls over and over and over again. Make sure you can vote in the right place. Not be afraid of weird prosecutions that, you know, we've been seeing. And I'm not surprised that Trump said what he said once, because he's been just blatantly saying it all over and over again. But yeah, he's right. Voter suppression means more Republican votes. That's why gerrymandering has been a thing for so long and it's so blatant now. But I guess I'm just not surprised by it. And Desmond, I want to go back to you.

The reality is what y'all did in Florida was critically important. And frankly, ballot initiatives, and look, it was very difficult what y'all were able to do. It took 10 years. You're still fighting it. But the reality is you have to change

state constitutions. Alicia Reese is trying to do a ballot initiative in Ohio to put the right to vote in the Constitution to cut these shenanigans out. And I think one important element of that, Roland, is the fact that, you know what? We didn't have any politicians involved in our campaign. Right. And I really do believe that part of our problem is that we can't pin our hopes on the individual. Right. We have to pin our hopes on ourselves. Right. That's like I used to tell folks, that's how I was able to marry the most beautiful woman in the world. I didn't I didn't rely on someone else to introduce me. I went and did it myself.

And that's how we can listen. We cannot depend on other people to get the things that we need. Right. And our our efforts in Amendment four, you know, I remember the night two nights before the election. And I told folks that the most important person on that ballot was not named Andrew, was not named Ron. Right. The most important person on that ballot was Oki and Ray Ray and the Desmond's and the Neal's. And it showed on that night. Right. And so I do believe that that, yeah, we have to change constitutions in a lot of these states. But I also believe that the changes that we want to see, we cannot rely on an individual or a candidate. We need to actually wrap our hopes around our community and mobilize our community along some values that we all share. Mobilize our community along the lines of humanity. And when you do that, that becomes more powerful and more lasting because politicians will let you down. Politicians will lie to you. Politicians will do a 180 in a heartbeat. Right. And so we have to invest in our communities.

We have to invest in our own. Cliff, as y'all have traveled the country, y'all have seen that. Yeah, definitely. That's a big part of what our message is. And one of the things that we often talk about is us believing that we have that power, right? And that we have a right to that power, because oftentimes we don't think we have a right to use that power because it's

been used against us so many times in our past. But, you know, one of the things that I wanted, two things I want to mention real quick in relating regards to this is, one, you know, we talk a lot about disaster capitalism, right? About how, you know, every time a disaster happens, you got folks coming in, gentrification, they try to take advantage of it and try to make money. You know, this is very much a situation of disaster voter suppression, that under the cloud of all the justified concerns around coronavirus and our health status. And I know you've talked a lot about even the racism that's been seen within the response and disparate testing and all of that. But within all of this environment that you got folks coming in trying to take advantage of the situation, use it for voter suppression, whether it's Wisconsin or whether even states like Georgia that are actually shifting towards voting by mail.

But we always have to be careful because the devil's always in the details. And so it's not just about whether they shift the voting by mail, but we always have to be careful because the devil's always in the details. And so it's not just about whether they shift the voting by mail, right? When you shift the voting by mail, are you sending a prepaid envelope along with that ballot to make it easy for folks to send that ballot back or that ballot equipment back? Because if you don't do that, then that's the same thing as when you move a polling place five miles down the way. Every time you do something like that, you know that it's going to have an impact on turnout. Or if you have a postage, not a postage deadline, but you have a ballot received deadline, meaning that the ballot has to be received by election day versus postmarked by election day. And so there's a lot of stuff within the voting by mail and some of the new

policies and some of these options that some of the states are going to that can sound good on the face of it. But once you get into details, there's lots of room for suppression to take place in the way that they administer it. I want to do a real round here. Last one, Desmond, I'll start with you. We look at these primaries, and the bottom line is this here. There is going to be an election in November, and we better be fully prepared for folks going all out to figure out as many restrictions as possible. Everything that Cliff just outlined.

So black folks better be fully prepared to fight until hell freezes over and then fight on the ice. Yeah, so the challenge right now is being able to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. I mean, we cannot ignore the fact that this coronavirus epidemic is impacting real people, impacting lives in ways unimaginable, right? We have folks who are not working

and folks who don't have any source of supplementary income to provide for their families. We have people who are homeless right now on the streets that we don't know what to do with. Right. And of course, our brothers and sisters that are in prison. So, you know, but in spite of everything that's happening and the attention that this coronavirus is dictating, we cannot lose a sight or cannot lose the eye on the prize or that goal, that ultimate goal that we have. And for us here in Florida, it is really that, you know, we've been silenced. People with felony convictions have been silenced for so long that we're looking at 2020 as our time, our moment to make our voices heard.

And we're going to take full advantage of it. But we have to balance how much, how aggressive are we going to register people to vote and train them and make sure that they're turning into change agents in their communities and bringing their family and friends to the polls or having them vote by mail. And we have to balance that with the fact that we have to also be cognizant of people's needs. Real life goes on. When I was in jail and I was getting ready to get out, I wasn't rubbing my hands together and saying, man, I can't wait to get out to vote. You know, we had real life issues that I had to deal with first.

Where am I going to live? You know, where am I going to get funds to pay bills or take care of my family? So these are real life issues that we're facing right now with the coronavirus. And we're trying to do it in such a way or engage in such a way that way we can balance the two. But we're definitely not losing sight of the prize that lays ahead. And that is making sure that people with felony convictions are making a significant impact.

And we cover the gap in all these elections, not only in the state of Florida, but across this country, in Louisiana, in California, in North Carolina, in Philadelphia, Michigan, we cover the gap and we want to make sure that our presence is felt while at the same time tending to the needs of our comrades. Derek, it is going to be a tough fight, pure and simple, when it comes to what's going to happen in the next few months in November for these not just presidential election, but senatorial elections, congressional elections,

gubernatorial. You got legislatures that are up for grabs as well. It is going to impact us if this coronavirus, if we have not made this thing extinct by the fall. Absolutely. And unfortunately, I look at what's happening and even, you know, the article you're talking about, Wisconsin, that kind of thing.

And the other brother was talking. I think any change right now in our electoral system is going to have a negative impact on the African-American community. And I say that just because on a whole, we just don't like change. And we start talking about asking people to mail in a ballot and we haven't provided that return envelope, I think we open up a whole can of worms, a whole, like you said, a whole nother type of voter suppression. I think any type of change, if it hasn't gotten, hadn't been tested before we implement it, I think we open up voter suppression. So the idea that the Republicans are putting these different ways out there to suppress the black vote, I think some of the things that we're looking at could be easier, could actually backfire for African-Americans.

Well, the reality is, Brooke, is this. The way to beat it is to vote. Right. That's it. Absolutely. Vote. Local elections matter. Every single election matters. And right now, there's more evidence of it than ever before. Vote. Absolutely. Cliff, I'm going to give you the final word here. Look, y'all have been

going to places a lot of other people ignore, going to these small rural places where black people are, who they don't see politicians, they don't see campaigns. And the reality is, if we actually maximize our power, Jamie Harrison can beat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. You can actually see states flip. You can see what happens when we do.

We saw what happened in 2008. Obama runs in North Carolina. He wins about 14,100 votes. They immediately go on a massive voter suppression because they were scared. The bottom line is here. You put the right folks in place, you can then control the laws, and that has to happen. So, Cliff, final comment. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I actually think, to your point about South Carolina, I actually think that what we're seeing now in terms of this assumption that this coronavirus is a city issue, right? You're seeing some of that narrative even coming out of the White House and

from other places as well. This assumption that it's not affecting red states, which we know is false, right? We know that one of the states that has the risest rates of increase right now is Louisiana. We know Florida's right behind it, again, right here in Georgia. And so I think that this attitude that you've seen from some of these red state governors and some of these legislatures is actually going to come back

and haunt them so that you could see in a state like South Carolina where people, because they were neglected and because there were more deaths than what should have taken place, that people do kind of respond

and say, well, wait a minute, we need to take another look at some of these policies. We need to take another look at Medicaid expansion. We need to take another look at these folks that are always constantly trying to act like government serves no purpose. investing in the right people in all of these states and in all these counties so that they have the resources that it takes to mobilize folks, especially in a time of need. If that takes place, if we get the right resources to the right people with the right mindset that we have the power to do, then we can see history made in this election. Indeed.

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. I certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Desmond Meade. Thanks a lot, man. What y'all doing in Florida with the Restoration Project? Thank you so very much.

Also want to thank Brooke Thomas for being here. Of course, Brooke, regular panelists, and Derek Holly. Thanks a bunch as well. I tolerate you being Omega, but it's all good.

All right. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Whatever. Just keep all that purple and gold stuff out of the video it's all good. All right. Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Just keep all that purple and gold stuff out of the video frame when we live. All right, folks, got to go to break. When we come back, I'm going to talk to a white school board member in Montgomery, Alabama, who says she is simply fed up with racism denying critical dollars to black students.

I will talk with her next on Roland Martin Unfiltered. You want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered? Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar that you give to us supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered support

the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year. You can make this possible. RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. No, no, no, no. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me. Come to me. All right, folks. I was on social media and I came across this story and I said, wow, we have definitely got to talk about this. And that is this video here out of Alabama. And the school board member, white woman, gives this impassioned plea, angry, upset about her county,

how they allocate money to her lobbyists, but fail to fund school districts with majority black children. Watch this. I'm going to say some things, and maybe I'll get fired from being on the board. I don't know. But I've got to say my piece about this. I wasn't alive when the Civil Rights Movement started, but my people were.

And they made decisions then, and that's why we're sitting in this situation now. Now let me just say this. I grew up in domestic violence, child abuse, alcohol, and everything. I'm not going to talk about me. But school was my safe place. And when I was in seventh grade, I made a commitment to God and to Christ that everything in me, I was going to commit to this city to help a child if it was in my power to do so. Unfortunately, the same people that look like me are the ones that are blocking this.

They should be first in line to say we want to support you and we want to support the black children in this community because that's what we're talking about. And when I ran for school board, I want y'all to know as the first person that said that, that it's a race problem. I wasn't able to speak up in the 60s because I wasn't born and I was too young, but I'll be damned. I'm going to speak up in the 60s because I wasn't born and I was too young, but I'll be damned. I'm going to speak up for it now, and it's going to make a lot of people mad. My day started this morning at 7.30 with a call from Montgomery Police.

For those of you who don't know, I work at Child Protect. Because a six-year-old baby, kindergarten little girl, has been being raped over the last several months by a 51-year-old neighbor. That's how my day started. You know how it came out? Because her grades started dropping and she was having behavior problems. But we didn't have the counselors in place and we didn't have the teachers that knew how to respond to that except to make her go stand in the hall day after day and you know what she finally because her mother wanted to know what was going on so she told her this has been going on for months so she told her and when she came to us today she said if I tell y'all are you gonna be mad am I gonna be in trouble because we don't have the funding for that

because the black and brown children are not important to people that look like Am I going to be in trouble? Because we don't have the funding for that. Because the black and brown children are not important to people that look like me. They're not important. But they're important to me. Joining us right now is Jana Bailey. Jana, glad to have you on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Can you hear me? Jana Bailey, can you hear me?

Yes. Okay, there we go. I can. There we go. You, that was about a two-minute version of that video. You had some other comments that you made there. What was it that set you off where you said, we've got to call out, call this thing what it is.

Racism is the heart of denying resources to black kids in your school district. Well, what started it is we have a new superintendent and several of us ran to make a new school board because nothing was getting done. We have the lowest millage or property tax in the state required by law. We are at 10 mills. And so we have been asking legislators, and I don't know if the viewers are familiar with how a property tax has to be passed, and it may be different in Alabama because we're so backwards on a lot of things, but it has to be a resolution from the school board, and then it goes to the county commission

because our school district is a county school system. And so the county commission has to vote on a resolution that then has to go to the legislature. The local delegation has to be a unanimous on voting. And then it goes to the full body to pass a bill for it to come back to Montgomery County for the voters to vote on it. So all of this, and we get to the very end

where it is in the legislature, in the legislation, and it is being supported except by two white, a senator and a representative, and they were blocking it. So essentially what it was doing was saying that we are not going to allow the people in Montgomery County to vote for this. Now the demographics of Montgomery, I don't know if you're familiar with this, are 36 percent white in Montgomery County. So I am not a real smart person, but I was smart enough that I can see that by not letting it go to the vote, there was no way it was going to pass. Because if it gets to the people, the majority of people that are black and brown in our county, they're going to vote for better schools for their kids, but we've got to get it on a ballot. And so it was just one more way of not having

them to have the ability to vote. The second part of that is in our county, we have another school system that is out in the county, it's Pike Road, and it is predominantly white. And when it was, the school has been in existence, it'll be five years in August. When they went to the county and the city and the legislation to ask for 28 meals, it was passed with no problem. Ours is at 10. Theirs is at 10 theirs is at 28 so we were having to vote that night on on the on having to hire lobbyists to go down to the state house to lobby these two the senator and the representative that were standing in the way and we were we voted on that that night, which was March 11th, and then March 13th is when all the coronavirus hit. So the legislature is now out,

and the chances of it getting on the ballot in the fall is probably next to zero. But that's the long and short of it. I mean, that's pretty much what happened. I was in Alabama more than a year ago. I had one of my school choice is the Black Choice Town Halls at a church there. And at the time, they told me that the school system was under the control of the state. The state had taken it over.

Is that still the case in Montgomery? Yes, we are still under state jurisdiction and they still. However, we in the last year, four of the seven board members are new, and we have been on there just a little over a year, and we are making great strides to come out from under that. So we are very hopeful that by the end of this school year that we will come back out from under state intervention. And, again, I've spent enough time there

with people to understand really how archaic Alabama is on this. So when you talk about this majority, it's sort of like Louisiana just changed their law where it used to be you could literally send somebody to the death penalty without requiring a unanimous decision i don't know many places where it requires a unanimous vote uh you know uh from of your board and so are there so is the law that that yet all board members must vote to allow it to go so like who who determine who votes who picks And so how does it even work? So it's so crazy. I mean, rolling is so crazy.

OK, so what happens? The seven board members with the superintendent, we we know we need more money. We are at poverty level. We have twenty nine thousand students in our district and we are losing between seven hundred 1,000 every year. So we need more money. These kids are going to school in the buildings that are crumbling before them. So what happens is the school board says, okay, we need more money. The school board then votes on a resolution at a school board meeting.

We all sign it. We say, yes, we want a millage increase, a property tax, because that's where most of the money comes from. So we take our resolution to the county commission. The county commission has to do a public hearing so people can come and talk about it. At the public hearing, most of the people that spoke were in favor of it because they want better schools. They want to have counselors.

They want advanced placement. They want arts in the schools. And we don't have that now. They want their kids to. They want advanced placement. They want arts in the schools and we don't have that now. They want their kids to be able to take books home. So the county commission had to vote on a resolution. It did not have to be the majority. So the two that abstained look like me and the others voted for it and it passed the county commission. Then the county commission sent their resolution to our local legislation, local delegation, which is the representatives and the senators that represent Montgomery.

So they all had to approve. So wait a minute. So wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So in order to raise taxes for schools. Property tax. Property taxes for schools. School board votes. Then it has to go to a county commission.

Then it has to get approved by a state rep and a state senator before it goes on the ballot? No, there's another step. It has to be approved by the local legislation, which are the representatives and senators that represent Montgomery County. They all have to agree, and then it goes to the full legislative body, and they have to vote a bill to say,

okay, we're going to let Montgomery County put this on the ballot so people can vote for it in the fall or whenever. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. So the entire state legislature has to vote to what people in this one county can do. Yes, yes. Yes. What? Okay. I've covered politics my entire professional life. I'm 51.

I have never heard of that many levels for a county to raise property taxes for a school district. I've never, that's unbelievable. It's mind boggling. And, you know, I was not aware of this either. I thought, oh, we just put it on the ballot like anything else that we want to vote for and it's voted for and it passes or it doesn't pass. But this has to go through all of these different channels. And like I said, that night that we were having to vote and we voted for it. I mean, it passed our board. We had already voted on the resolution.

What we were voting on on March 11th was lobbyists that we were having to hire at about $10,000 a month so that they could lobby these two people to see that they needed us to at least get it on the ballot. So that is where the frustration. And you know, Roland, you know enough about the South and you know about Alabama and you know about Montgomery that this is deep-seated. I grew up here in Montgomery Montgomery and I am a product of the public schools. I graduated from Lanier in 1979, a little bit older than you are, but not by much. But I went to public schools and they were integrated when I was in the third grade. I'm not good with math, so I can't do how old I was or what year that was, but I was in third grade. And, you know, for the kids going to school, there was not, I mean, there was no problem. We all played on the playground together,

but it was as the years went by and it got to be in about 1986, 87, and the powers that be decided to try and keep white people in our school system, they were going to implement a magnet program that was still within the schools, but it was a magnet program. And that was a way to keep white kids in the school. And it worked for a while. And then they moved those programs out of the traditional school buildings. And so now they are separate. They're no longer in the traditional school buildings, which is also a problem because no longer are the smart kids or the 10% who are now in magnet schools. They are no longer eating in the cafeteria, they're not cheering with them. They're not on sports with them. So we have another level of segregation

because what happened with that, and we'll just air all our dirty laundry tonight, but what happened with that is a lot of the magnet schools, they were limited to the enrollment. So for example, if ABC school said, okay, we can only have 300 ninth through 12th graders in our school this year. So it was an application process. And so if you were the 301st child and you were trying to get into this program because you played the trumpet really well, or you were a great artist or photographer or singer, or you were great in math or the languages, too bad. You're not going to get into the magnet program. And so now you are in a traditional school and the opportunities drop drastically because if they don't have that extra learning

ability and they're not reaching their cap of learning and they're not given the equal opportunities. The reason I know that system well, I'm a product of Houston Independent School District and the Magna School programs. Went to a Magna School in elementary school, went to a Magna School in high school, and yes, Magna schools were created

in many of these places to desegregate schools. And so you place Magna programs in predominantly white schools, predominantly Latino schools, predominantly black schools, to be able to bring a racially diverse group into it. So you're absolutely right. It doesn't make sense to remove them because you go back to, frankly, your segregated schools. And you're also removing those, what some call gifted and talented programs out of those schools. And so when it comes to this issue, so what's next?

What's the next step? What can people do? What can our audience do? How are you rallying people there in Montgomery to get these to get the state rep and state Senate to say, hey, you represent the people, not vice versa? Right. Well, sadly, as as you know, as all the stuff that has happened now with the coronavirus. Now, let's think about this. Most of our children, about 65 to 70 percent of our children in the public school, I'm talking about the traditional public schools, are at or below poverty level. OK. And so they a lot of them do not have access to Wi-Fi. And they certainly don't have access.

If there are four or five kids in a home, they each don't have their own computers. So now, just like everything across the country, we are going to online school. And this is how children are going to learn. So what can we do here? We don't have a lot of extra money. So we can't say, okay, everybody is going to get a tablet or everybody's going to get, you know, some type of equipment to be able to do their work online. I did just hear from the superintendent, who is wonderful. Dr. Ann Roy Moore is the superintendent Montgomery County, and she has led us for the last two and a half years. She's doing a phenomenal job. She works great under pressure, but I did get an email and it looks like we're

going to be able to use, now listen how antiquated this is. I mean, this is the best we can do and we're going to do it, but we are going to be able to put our school buses, the big yellow school buses, park them in neighborhoods and be able to have Wi-Fi off of that or hotspots. Well, in fact, South Carolina, the exact same thing, 3,000 school buses were converted to mobile hotspots. And that's what we're going to do. That's great. But it doesn't matter if you have Wi-Fi if you don't have the equipment to use. Right. I mean, you can have a mobile hotspot, but if there's no computer, no laptop, no iPad, as a saving grace is that, and this is one of the things, one of the digital,

so we talk about digital divide, African-Americans always over-indexed on phones because for a lot of poor African-Americans, it was either they have a cell phone or a home phone. Folks chose cell phones. And so the reality is we over-indexed on that, but that's still talking about a lot of these programs, a lot of these apps you can't actually access on your phone. You need to actually have a desktop. And what I've said in all of our coverage since coronavirus has really come up in the last really more than a month, I've said that this coronavirus

has exposed the underbelly of America. All of... First of all, all of the people we treat like crap, we desperately need right now, okay? Amen. All these parents who are going crazy, who are like, oh, my God, where are these teachers? Mm-hmm.

All these people who say we shouldn't paying nurses more, or they really wish we had more nurses and health practitioners. And it's showing that the haves and the have-nots, this assumption that everybody has broadband, everybody has Wi-Fi. And when you talk about rural areas, it's even worse. It is worse, particularly over in the western part of Alabama, which is considered the black belt, which is the poorest and the ruralest, I don't know how they're going to do it. And it is going to put these children behind. And I don't know if any other states did this,

but we passed a law, and I really, I'm sorry, I don't remember if it goes into effect in August of 2020 or August 2021, but we passed a law that said if a child was not reading at third grade level, by the time they finished third grade, they were going to be held back. So let's talk about that. I mean, yeah, I mean, you don't pass. First of all, you don't pass such a law if you then don't provide the necessary resources to the school districts in order to actually make that happen.

But see, that to me is also what angers me when you have politicians who pass laws who don't even think about... Two or three, a handful of politicians that pass these laws, and that is what angers me. They're not the people that are on the front line, and they have no idea, and they don't understand it. And they don't know what these children, it's easy for them to sit in the ivory towers, but they've never walked the schools and they've never seen what these kids, what they come into.

If you can't even go to the bathroom because the plumbing is broken and the doors are broken off of the school. The school I went to high school and was built in 1929. I graduated in 1979. It has not changed at all. The same lead paint that was on the walls in the library is still on the walls in the library. The ceiling has fallen down on a number of schools. So our infrastructure right now, just to get these schools up to maintain safety, as far as I'm concerned, is $220 million. If we were able to pass, and we weren't even asking for a lot, Roland, we were only asking for nine additional meals. That was it. Just to bring us up to 19. That that would have given us enough money over the next 30 years to be able to fix the infrastructure, have more resource officers, provide arts in the school, and provide advanced classes for all of the children. All I'm asking

is equal, equal education so that they can reach their full potential. And you ask, what do we do from here on out? Well, you know, obviously I have a lot of friends that are white. You know, that would just be natural. And some of them have said things to me like, I can't believe that you spoke. And, you know, why did you say that? And you're not going to get elected again because you know you live in a Republican white district. I didn't run to get elected again.

I didn't run to just keep a warm seat. I ran because we have issues in Montgomery County and this is my circle of influence. And so if the people that look like me don't begin to start speaking up, then you know what? What? Ah.

We froze. She's about to drop the mic. All right. Get it fixed. I need her to finish her last comment. I gotta have her finish her last comment. All right. Let me know. Man! Jana was about to drop the mic.

I'm trying to remember. If people like me don't speak up, and so I want her to finish that particular point. Do we have her? Yeah, her video froze. Okay, so go ahead and let me know when y'all have her. Yeah, my control room is working on it right now. And so just give me one second.

All right, I think we got it. All right, here we go. You said if people like, you're talking about your white neighbors, if people like me don't speak up. If we don't speak up right now, we are going to lose our city. And this is my home. I mean, this is where I live and I work and I play. And I love this.

I love my city. But more importantly, I love these children, and I want these children that are growing up in poverty, that are growing up in public housing, I want them to be my doctor one day, and I want them to be my dentist, and I want them to be my teacher. I want them to be the artist and the, well, I won't say politician, but I want them to be a talk show host. I want them to reach their full potential. Maybe they are going to have their own electric company. Maybe they're going to have their own plumbing.

But right now they are not getting the opportunities. And people say, oh, you can't throw money at the problem. That's what I hear all the time. They're not managing the money right. What are you talking about? There is no money to manage. There is no money there. Jana Bailey, we appreciate your passion. We're glad you spoke up. One of the reasons why I created this show is so we could have someone like you and others who have a platform to speak to folks across the country. And so keep it up and whatever we can do, keep us abreast of what happens.

Whatever we can do to help, just let us know. I will, Roland. And listen, it has really been a true honor to be able to be on your show, and I hope a lot of people are listening to that plea, and let us use our voices and continue talking about this. We may be on the crux. I was listening to your show earlier. I think we're on the crux of something really big.

You just said it. The coronavirus has uncovered a lot of ugly in this country. But on the other side of that, there's going to be a lot of good because there are people like you and me that are going to keep fighting for it, and I've got a lot of people behind me too. All right. Well, we're certainly there with you. Jana Bailey, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Thanks, Roland. Bye. All right. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, this is why we do what we do. And we certainly need your support. We've got more than 2,000

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