#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Aaron Dean Sentence, Blacks & Advertisers, Exonerated 5 Gate, Homicide & Black Kids, Ginsation

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

12.20.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Aaron Dean Sentence, Blacks & Advertisers, Exonerated 5 Gate, Homicide & Black Kids, Ginsation The former Texas police officer convicted of manslaughter in the 2019 killing of Atatiana Jefferson will spend 11 years, 10 months, and 12 days in prison.  The family attorney, Lee Merritt, will be here to tell us how the family feels about his conviction and sentence.  A recent Nielsen study proves the lack of authentic representation directly impacts how Black communities spend their money.  I'll examine the relationship between authenticity, engagement, and the impact of inclusion beyond what's on-screen with the Vice President of Solution Consulting with Nielsen Analytics. Homicide is a leading cause of death for children here in the U.S. and has increased on average by 4.3%  each year for nearly a decade.  The rate of homicides for black children increased four times that in two years.  I'll break down those numbers.  More than 30 years ago, they were wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park.  Monday, they were honored with an entrance to the park named the "Gate of the Exonerated."  Three of the five will join me tonight.  In tonight's marketplace segment, two sisters took their love for spice and created a health-conscious business called Ginsation Ginger.  I have some thoughts on Phat Tuesday..... Support RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. you there? No, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture. We're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns.

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Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Today is Tuesday, December 20th, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The former Texas police officer convicted of manslaughter and the killing of Antoinette

Jefferson is headed to prison for 11 years. We'll talk with the family attorney, Lee Merritt, about today's jury decision. A recent Nielsen study proves the lack of authentic representation directly impacts how black communities spend their money. I'll examine the relationship between authenticity, engagement, and the impact of inclusion beyond what's on screen with the Vice President of Solution Consulting with Nielsen Analytics. Homicide is a leading cause of death for children

here in the United States and has increased on average by more than 4% each year for nearly a decade. The rate of all homicides for black children increased four times that in two years. We'll break down those numbers. More than 30 years ago, they were wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. Monday, they were honored with an entrance to the park named the Gate of the Exonerated. We'll tell you about the Exonerated Five in tonight's Marketplace segment. Two sisters took their love for spice

and created a health-conscious business called Gensation Ginger. Also, the documentary Fat Tuesdays talks about the role of Guy Torrey and what it created at the famous Comedy Store in Los Angeles. But why is it in the documentary on the Comedy Store that Tuesday was completely left out? We're going to talk about White Out

and how Black people and our impact have saved white institutions we've never gotten just do it's time to bring the fog on Roland Martin unfiltered on the Black Star Network let's go He's right on time and he's rolling Best believe he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling Yeah, yeah With Uncle Roro, yo

Yeah, yeah It's rolling Martin Yeah, yeah Rolling with rolling now. He's punk, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know. He's rolling, Martel. Now. Martel.

All right, folks, the Supreme Court temporarily blocks an order to lift pandemic era restrictions on asylum seekers. In Chief Justice John Roberts brief order, he asked the Biden administration to respond by the evening to an emergency appeal filed by several Republican led states seeking to keep the policy known as Title 42. They want to keep that in place to slow an expected increase in migrant crossings. Robert's move means the policy which allows officials to swiftly expel migrants at the U.S. border will stay in effect at least until the justices decide the emergency application. I'm going to talk about this now with my panel. Joining me right now, Michael Imhotep, host of the African History Network show. Also, Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali. He, of course, is a former senior advisor for environmental justice of the EPA.

And joining us as well is Randy Bryant, diversity and inclusion strategist, speaker, trainer, and writer. Okay, glad to have all three of you here. So let's talk about this here. Mustafa, I want to start with you. You've got advocates who say Title 42 is wrong, that we should not have this, is what the Trump administration put forth. But you even got Democrats who are saying we have a border problem in this country. Your thoughts on this Supreme Court decision and how do we deal with this issue of illegal entries into the country? You hit the major point is that one, we have to make sure that we finally have real immigration reform. We haven't

had it since 1986. And because folks on Capitol Hill have refused to actually address that systemic issue, then we have things like Title 42, which was put in place through the public health law, I believe it was 1944, that said that when you have these types of pandemics and other types of things, you could use it to stop folks from being able to come into our country because you didn't want them to be able to spread the disease around. So we continue to place Band-Aids on the real issue at hand, which is true immigration reform. Now, I understand that we also, the president in 2021, actually moved forward and shared with folks on Capitol Hill his plan for immigration reform. But once again, folks refused to do what was

necessary to address that issue. We understand also that folks use immigration as one of those voting sort of wedges, if you will, especially Republican brothers and sisters love to use that to sort of rally up their base to raise money and a number of different dynamics that are going on. So this is, you know, we do have a serious problem at the border, but if we're not willing to deal with the, you know, the real root of the cause, then we're going to continue to kick the can down the road and we're going to continue to have, you know, these situations where we have massive amounts of people who are trying to come to a country where they can have a better life, just like folks did from Europe. Michael, again, what is the answer? Because you can either

confront the problem or you can keep kicking it down the can. You can keep watching Fox News and others make this a major, major issue, or you can actually deal with it. Is there a political will to actually confront the problem in America? Well, I don't think Republicans really are not serious about dealing with when it comes to immigration reform. And you're going to have, you probably have some Democrats who are really not serious about it as well. But there has to be real immigration reform. And when we look at something like Title 42, it's a complicated situation. And the reason why it's complicated is because you're going to have to have the resources in place. You're going to have to have the resources in place.

You're going to have to have the manpower in place to handle this influx of migrants that are just on the other side of the board. It's approximately 130,000, 135,000, something like that. So when you remove Title 42, you're going to have this influx coming in. And I guarantee you the Biden administration does not want that playing 24 hours a day on Fox News as well. Now, what's important to understand, yes, this is a humanitarian issue, but also this has to do, or this deals with, U.S. policy to Central American countries going back the last 50 years, in some cases the last 100 years. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of the conditions that people from Central American countries are fleeing from, U.S. policies help to shape those conditions as well. So you have chickens coming home to roost at the same time. OK, so and the other thing that's that's that's really, I think, really important to understand, Roland, is really understanding the history of immigration laws in this country and how these immigration laws were shaped to create largely a white country, going back to 1790, when you had the first naturalization of the Immigration Act of 1790.

So this is a very complicated issue. And I know you're going to have Republicans saying, oh, they're taking our jobs. You got 10 million available jobs right now, OK, at the same time, and a 3.7 percent unemployment rate at the same time in a three point seven percent unemployment rate at the same time. So this is a complicated issue, but you're going to have to have the resources and manpower really put in place to handle this influx. That's about what that's about to come here. The thing here, Randy, that is interesting. Whenever I had this conversation, I had some idiots out there who were saying, oh, Roland Martin was saying, you know, we've got to allow these people in. Here's a fact that we have to confront, and that is America's never wanted to confront this issue.

Big business benefits from illegal immigrants. Exactly. There are services. There. There are services. There are jobs and services that are being done right now that Americans do not want to do. That's a fact, Randy.

It's a fact. And so people are like, oh, we can't have this. Okay? If you want to shut it down, if you want to close the border, you're... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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

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

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

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

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, know it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car

and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Better figure out how all these other things are going to get done without the cheap labor. Right. I don't see real immigration reform

happening anytime soon because too many people, one, like you were saying, benefit from us having people who are willing to do work that a lot of Americans are not willing to do. Our society is built, our capitalistic society is built on a working class folk that are in the fields picking our vegetables or in the factories

helping ensuring that we get our meat that are in the wine industry and that are pulling the grapes. We are dependent and there are people who become extraordinarily wealthy because of these people. And so everyone's kind of wishy-washy when it comes to immigration laws. Also, if people are paying attention, it should not be something you have to look for. We apply immigration laws dependent on, honestly, the hue of the person. And so no one is solid about it. It's very interesting to me how at some points people are, you know, humans and we want to save people

and we recognize the crises in countries depending on the hue of those people. And so it's going to be difficult to get immigration policies in place because no one has a firm stance on it, because it works for the very people who say that they're against us letting people in. See, I get a kick out of the folks who don't want to own up to what is really happening in our society on this issue. And Mustafa, we can go a number of industries, not just oranges and lettuce, not just the crops in Florida, California, Texas, and other places. We're also talking about customer service sector jobs. Right. We're already talking about right now, Mustafa, how that industry has folks who aren't even applying for jobs.

So, again, I would love for all of these people who are like, close the border. Okay, gotcha. You're going to have to confront what Americans are not doing. And how do you still have a functioning society if you don't have people doing those jobs? Then people say, well, pay higher wages. Absolutely agree. Question, are you going to pay higher prices? I remember, Mustafa, when Levi's left the United States. And I kept telling people, okay, we want stuff cheaper, faster.

Most importantly, cheaper. You can't keep making cheap goods, but you're demanding $15, $18, $30 an hour. Right. I see y'all, money is money. Business is business. And that's the thing, when we're having this conversation, Mustafa, folk don't want to deal with all these folks, including black people, yelling, hollering, screaming about getting rid of illegal immigration,

they don't want to pay those higher prices for goods and services. You close the border. I'm very clear on this. You will have significant impacts to our economy. Some would even say that parts of our economy will crash. Now, there are those who would like to see that. So we need to understand the totality of the game that's being played around immigration, because you see these ebbs and flows with it. There are

those who want to see our economy at this time not continue to grow until after 2024. I don't even need to call out who those individuals are. Most folks have enough brainpower to understand that. The other side of this dynamic is that we utilize our visas in some really interesting ways. So for those of us who follow what was going on during COVID-19, and we talked a little bit about the agricultural sector, you know, even though we had shut the border in many instances, we still had folks who were coming in who were working in some of those various things that we mentioned earlier. Then you looked at some of the things that were going on in the meat plants as well. Many folks will remember the stories about a number of immigrants who were working in those meat plants who were getting sick.

They didn't have any rights. So folks also play on this immigration game by making sure that folks don't have the rights to be able to fully navigate our system. So for our folks, I understand that we want to make sure that we have economic opportunities. But the reality is, is that many of those jobs, as we've said before, are not the ones that many of our folks are actually interested in. And we should also make sure that we're raising salaries for everyone. But as you said, Roland, making sure that we understand how that plays out in higher costs and a number of other dynamics that will hit on, you know, some of the pocketbook issues that we all deal with.

And look, Michael, the thing here is this here. America loves cheap products. We love it. And we got to own up to jack up your expenses, products going up. You going to love them then? Yeah. A lot of this deals with the fact that a lot of people don't understand basic business, basic economics, don't understand how this works. First of all, for all the people who want to stop undocumented immigrants coming here,

all the people who say ship them back, shut down the borders, things like this. First of all, they ain't going to ship back 11 million undocumented immigrants. That's not going to happen in this lifetime or the next time. Secondly, the way you can help stop undocumented immigrants coming here is to stop eating food that you did not grow yourself. That's what you can do to help stop that. Stop eating food that you did not grow yourself. Now, most people are not willing to make the sacrifice to do that because about 90% of the food that you eat, if not more, at some point, an undocumented hand touched that to deliver it to your mouth, to your plate. And then the other thing that we

have to understand is the term undocumented is a tricky term. The reason why is because about 40% of people who are classified as undocumented came here legally and overstayed their visas. So visa overstays contribute a lot to this as well. It's like if you have a legal driver's license and then your birthday comes and it expires and you keep driving, you're driving on an expired license. Well, it's not like you never, it's not like you started driving illegally at first. It just has to be renewed. So about 40% of people who get classified as undocumented are visa overstays as well. So this is why it takes a lot of education to really understand the problem before we can fix the problem also. But this is a lot of people, unfortunately, a lot of Americans don't even understand how the economy works.

And Randy, we talk about those visas. It's a lot of companies, a lot of industries that rely on those work visas for people, especially in technical areas, to work in these companies. That's exactly what I was thinking. Particularly the tech industry is absolutely dependent on us having immigrants that come and support these companies. But they also have the money. They also have the money to ensure that these visas don't necessarily become expired. And so it also depends on how we want to use people. I mean, if we're being very honest to me, immigration reform is about the selfishness of us as a people. We don't want to give up anything. We do appreciate the value that people bring to our country. And yet at the same time,

we don't want them to fully be Americans. We like to cast them out, particularly when it's time to vote. You know, hate, as we have seen the last several years, gathers voters. It excites people. And so people get really excited when you talk about blocking people and not liking people. But if people were to really realize that we could not make it, our economy would absolutely stop without these people, it would change the game. But they don't see that part. They really just, a lot of people just are seeing the hate. And of course, we might remember Donald Trump was one of the people who was

yelling loud and screaming. And he was using a whole bunch of these illegal immigrants at his properties across the country. Right. Exactly. And that's all I'm saying. All right, y'all, I've got to go to a break. When we come back, we'll talk more about issues of the day. We'll talk about the Exoneration 5, getting a monument, if you will, at Central Park.

Also, I'm going to deal with the erasure of black people as it relates to the Comedy Store in L.A. Wait till I explain to you how black people saved what is called an institution but in the actual documentary on the institution black folks are nowhere to be mentioned i'll break it down i'm rolling unfiltered on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know. So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy.

Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on. So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network, A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Pull up a chair, take your seat at the Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network.

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I've been frozen out. Facing an extinction level event. We don't fight this fight right now. You're not going to have Black Army. All right, folks. A recent Nielsen's attitudes on representation on TV study found that 59% of black viewers are more likely to buy from brands that advertise in inclusive content compared to 2021. Joining us right now is Erica McKinnon, the vice president of solution consulting with Nielsen Analytics. Jones is right now. How are you doing? I'm well, Roland. How are you? All right, so let's unpack this. First off, Nielsen Every Year has done a study on black viewing habits.

And black people, it ain't even close, watch more TV than anybody else. So what's the latest numbers? Because I want our audience to understand the gap between us and everybody else. Yeah, it is definitely a huge gap in how much, you know, black Americans spend on, you know, television, whether we're consuming TV, whether it's via streaming. I mean, right now, about 48 million black consumers are engaged in TV. And when you talk about that, you also have to take in consideration not only just linear broadcast TV, but streaming, whether it's podcast. How many hours per week? Because in the past, y'all said it was like 45, 48, 50 hours per week. Yeah, it's still in that same range, over 48 million people tuning in with, on average,

about 45 hours per week engaged in media in general. And as you know, on average about 45, you know, hours per week engaged in media in general. And as you know, media is so fragmented, Roland, there's so many different ways in which you can consume media, right? But we're, I don't know where we have the time, where are we finding the time? So if we're, if black people have, like say 45 hours a week, who's this, who's number two? Yeah. So there are other groups, whether it is white or Hispanics. Hispanics is actually spending a lot of time with media, too. We're really seeing that, especially across different media like podcasts, where they have a ton of engagement in addition to streaming. So not only, again, African-Americans, but we will also see Blacks. And then, as I mentioned, streaming, we've been talking about this for the last couple of years, is where we definitely see more Black consumers really

flocking to that platform. One of the reasons why, almost at 36 percent, is because we have more control, right, over the content that we want to view, such as your show, right? We want to be able to connect with content that's authentic to us. And so we're finding that via streaming versus traditional broadcast television. So, and this is the thing we're talking about. I mean, so, so we're consuming, we're consuming, but the, but there's not, there's also not a rate on, on return, if you will, was, was coming back to us and numbers show we're going to spend when we see us. Yes, exactly. And the data shows that. And that's one of the, you know, focus points this year's theme amplifying, you know, Black

Americans and media is speaking to the fact that, one, in 2025, we're going to be spending almost $2 billion in our Black buying power, meaning we're buying products, services, and goods every day. If we see it, we're going to go buy it. But what's happening is if the information that's been shared with us, if the content, if the creative doesn't resonate with us because it's not authentic, which will be a common thing that you'll see in the report, we're not going to invest in it. And that's what's happening. So we're not going to see that return because black people, we want to be able to purchase goods and services from, you know, brands that actually resonate with us. And so that's what we're starting to see in the data.

And so if the numbers are showing that we want to see us, are the companies listening? Yep. They're taking heed, you know, to the fact, and especially with the more data that we're showing them and saying, hey, you guys have been pandering for the past couple of years, right? You say you want to be connected to the Black consumers, so you put us in, you know, different advertisement or put us in content, but let's take a step back and really talk about who's creating that content. Is it a Black content creator? Are the people sitting at the table creating that content? Do they look like us? And it goes back to that theme of authenticity. So, you know, over the last couple of years,

we've seen, you know, brands really try to, you know, connect with us and they've had some missed opportunities, you know, they've fallen flat. And because of that, they're now taking heat saying, okay, we need to do a better job at connecting with black consumers and making sure that that content actually resonates with them. And that is not just, you know, oh, well, we have our diverse slate, right? We have our diverse talent. So, or we have this diverse creative. So therefore we're, you know, reaching a diverse slate. That's not the case. We want to make sure that that content is authentic. So brands are really definitely taking notice of that and really going back to the drawing board and making sure people that look like us are making those informed decisions on what that creative should look like.

Questions for my panel? Randy, you first. I'm just, I have so much to say about this topic. First of all, I kind of just want to say, duh. I mean, it seems as if that would be something that people would understand, that everyone wants to be represented. We want to see ourselves. And I believe for a long time, you know, they thought it was sufficient just to put a black person in an ad and that would be enough.

And we answered with absolutely not enough. We don't want to, we just don't want to see the diversity. We want to see the authenticity. We want to see that we are represented fairly. We care about how we show up. And but I'll be honest, my experience has been that I am not seeing diverse PR teams, diverse marketing teams making the decisions. And I feel as if there is somewhat an arrogance where people feel as if they can speak to the black experience almost more than black people. And that's why we're seeing these mistakes. So I'm very excited about the study, but I really question how much corporations are

going to answer this call, this obvious information that tells them they have to change. It's so true. And I mean, you hit the nail on the head. And one of the things that we really talk about is that presence is not the same as authentic representation, right? It's not the same. And by having this data and really, you know, with Nielsen putting out this data to the market and hoping that brands will actually look at this and say, look, these are huge missed opportunities. Black people gonna stop buying these products because it's not authentic. I'm not gonna buy something from a brand

where I'm like, that was a huge miss. That doesn't resonate with me. And so I'm really hoping if we as black people really take a stance to say, you know what? That was a miss. You won't get my money. You won't get my dollars. I know we're spending billions of dollars in products and services each year,

but we're not going to do it any longer. Brands will definitely start to take more notice then. Well, we're taking a stand just by the fact that we're leaving. I mean, they need to look at the fact that we're not watching mainstream television anymore, and we go and find what speaks to us, what represents us, And now they're choices. This is not like when I was growing up and there were three stations, right? Right. Exactly. People have choices and they're leaving. And so, you know, I have found that the greatest way people make change is the bottom line. That money does talk. And so I really do hope to see some significant change. But what

I will say is what I'm seeing is all white staff almost making decisions about black content, about what we like and who we are. And the arrogance that it takes to do that, to say, I know what black people will want and what will resonate to them more than black people. I mean, that takes a level of arrogance that is just ridiculous. Definitely makes my blood boil a little bit too. And that's one of the reasons I'm so happy that, you know, Nielsen, now we have the tools. And one of the things that we talk about a lot throughout the report too, is we have the tools and research now to go behind the scenes. So for so many years, we've always focused on, okay, people's perceptions and

consumption of media, but we got to take a step back and go behind the scenes. And to your point, not only understanding like, okay, we see the diverse, you know, content creators, but let's get behind the scenes and who's the producers, who's the screenwriters, who are the people that's really working behind the scenes. And then on the flip side of that, when it comes to advertising and marketing, who are the people sitting in the boardroom making those decisions? Who's creating the content? And like I said earlier, if someone in the room is making content for me but no one in the room looks like me, I have a problem with that. Because how are you going to speak to, you know, what you think I'm going to be engaged in?

And so if you don't have that person in board, we need to go find the person. Well, what I want to see is I want to see these companies stop trying to now go hire black content creators and deal with, but why are you not spending money on advertising on black-owned media? And so the new game is, oh, no, we've hired the black firms to go make the ads. Yeah, no, no, no, no. But we also want to be on the other end of seeing the ads on black-owned media. Michael, no, no, no. But we also want to be on the other end of seeing the ads on Black-owned media. Michael, go ahead. All right, Erica. Hey, thanks for coming on. This is valuable information. And about 20 years or so ago, I worked in radio sales here in Detroit. And

Arbitron was what determined our rates, which determined revenue. When it comes to A.C. Nielsen ratings for TV shows, you know, African-Americans have never really been taught how all of this works, okay? What determines the ratings of a Black TV show which keeps it on the air? I remember years ago on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, Tom Joyner partnered with A.C. Nielsen to get more African-Americans as the surveyors or the testers to watch TV to determine the ratings. So can you explain to us how TV ratings actually work? OK, what determines if I sit and watch a show on NBC? Does my does me watching that show calculate to the ratings? How do TV ratings actually work?

Well, I'm not a ratings expert. I'm a survey expert, media analyst expert, but I will tell you just across the board with all ratings, basically, if you are tuning into that show on linear television, you will be counted as a viewer, depending on how much time that you're spending with that show, right, across different platforms. So by way of technology, we are collecting how long you watch, which, you know, which show you were watching, how long you were actually engaged in the different platforms. And that information comes back to obviously, you know, Nielsen to kind of, you know, look at that information by market level, by ethnicity. And so we are also looking at it by age and gender as

well. And that's across all platforms, not just TV, but even with, you know, radio and digital, really being able to understand who's engaged with the media, how long they're spending with the media, and just, you know, even further consumption habits as well. But you're absolutely right. I think it starts with educating people on how. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

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

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

What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when

you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

How it really works and how we really understand what they're engaged in. Taffa, thank you. Erica, thank you so much. I actually was one of those Nielsen Raiders a number of years ago. You know, it's interesting. I want to go back to the conversation around infrastructure, because I think it's critically important. I'm curious about, you know, we saw the statistics around streaming and how people are moving to digital sort of platforms and formats. We have the Black Star Network here. do we take the information that you all are capturing and really engage with decision makers

around better supporting our own platforms and our own infrastructure to make sure that we have that content and so we have sort of a circular type of a paradigm in place so the dollars move into our system and stay in our system? Absolutely. That's a great question. And really it starts here with the data. I'm, like I said, I'm passionate about making sure that I speak to black owned media owners and have been for the last couple of years of taking this information and insights to marketers and agencies,

really speaking to the fact of one, of who your consumers are, who your audience is. And it starts with knowing who your audience is, right? How many people are tuning in and viewing what they look like in their demographic makeup and talking about the importance of that viewer, their household income, how much money that they're actually spending and fueling the marketplace. As I mentioned earlier, when I talk about the black buying power and how we spend so much on different product services and good each year, that number should be shared with every

advertiser because at the end of the day, we're the ones we are the the groups that are spending the money on their products and services so why not advertise and why not make sure that we're getting our fair share of the dollars on our you know own networks and so i think it starts there is really taking these insights and really sharing that we're the ones fueling the economy we're driving uh you know we're putting dollars back into the economy we're driving all the you know, we're putting dollars back into the economy. We're driving all the, you know, new recent sales and products and services. Data shows that, you know, almost 59%, again,

of black viewers are more likely to buy from brands that share someone who had their same identity. And it goes for black media owners, right? Like I'm going to tune into this show because I know I'm gonna get, you know, the, not only is it authentic, but I'm going to get, you know, not only is it authentic, but I'm also going to get, you know, truth in it. I have that level of engagement with, you know, the talent. And so these are the things that are important.

But definitely take these insights back to, you know, your marketers and particularly even agencies. I think a lot of it has to do with education. We have to spend more time, I know, than we want, but just educating marketers on why it's important that they understand our buying power and our level of engagement. As, you know, Roland said earlier, I mean, we're spending 48 million people are tuning in to TV every day. We're spending hours on hours of engagement across media in general. And so, I mean, we're being bombarded with advertising every day. And that advertising obviously works because our purchase intent is high. We're spinning.

So, yeah, I definitely say take these insights and share with your marketers and key stakeholders. But the reality is what you laid out is we know what we watch, but then those same agencies go, oh, but you're not brand safe. And so then all of a sudden they want to run. And then they come up with all these other different high impression marks you have to hit that you can never hit. And so trust me, look, I've experienced this whole game the last four years with this show and Black Star Network. And even when we hit the numbers, then they create a whole different category that you can never reach. And so I know people who are smaller than us

can't reach them. It's all about not trying to get the dollars to us. That's what it boils down to. And we keep seeing it over and over and over again. And I keep saying it. These are largely white ad firms. And what I keep telling these companies is you need to learn how to tell your ad agencies

it's actually our money it's not yours and this is also part of the problem so so I would love to see uh Nielsen do break down something on the lack of ad dollars going to black owned media from these very same agencies in these uh these fortune 500 companies so Erica we appreciate it thanks a lot thank you we appreciate it all right folks we. Thank you. We appreciate it. All right, folks, we come back. We're going to talk the case of the former cop in Fort Worth who was convicted of killing Artiella Jefferson. How long will he spend in prison? We'll find out.

We'll also talk with the family attorney and black folks being erased from history. I'm going to tell you about the comedy store and the tale of two documentaries, one done by black people, one done by white people, and how we were totally ignored, as if we didn't exist, but we actually saved the Comedy Store and why it's even still open.

Wait till I give you the whole deconstruction on this right here on Roland Martin, on Phil Chipps, on the Black Star Network. If you're watching, of course, hit the like button on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, on Instagram. Also, download the Blackstar Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Of course, support our Bring the Funk fan club.

Send your check-in money orders to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal's R Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zale is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. And get a copy of my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America

Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. Available at all these platforms. And of course, download from Audible as well. I'll be right back. I am on screen, and I am representing what a black man is to the entire world that's going to see this. And this might be the only black man, a representation of a black man that they see. Right.

So I am responsible. Right. For how they see black men. And it's my responsibility to, if I am not playing an upstanding, honorable, someone with a strong principle of moral core, to make sure that this character is so specific. Right. That it is him, not black men. And I wish that more actors would realize how important their position is as an actor, as an actor of color playing people of color on screen.

Because there are people that see us all over the world in these different images that we portray. And not everyone knows black people to know, yes, that's not all. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know. So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Eric Nolan.

I'm Shante Moore. Hi, my name is Latoya Luckett, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. And again, if you are watching, y'all, hit the button. Okay? Hit the button. That's all you got to do. Hit the like button, okay? The impact in terms of the algorithm, what folks are seeing.

So we want you to actually hit that button. And so we're driving our numbers up. We should be doing 1,000 likes every single hour. And so you shouldn't have to take me begging you to hit the like button for us to go there. We should be ending the second hour with 2,000 likes as well. Let's talk about black homicides, folks. And that is, a new study says homicide is a trending, first of all, is a leading cause of death for children in the United States. The overall rate has increased on average of 4.3% each year for nearly a decade. The rate of homicides in black children increased 16.6 percent from 2018 to 2020. Black and Hispanic children have been victims of a steady increase in homicides since 2012 and 2014. From 1999 to 2020, 38,362 children were homicide victims, folks, in this country. Researchers found that overall,

homicide rates increased the most for boys, rising 16.1% between 2018 and 2020. The JAMA Pediatric Study also found that black boys were killed more than any other group with firearms as the most common weapon used in these deaths. When you think about that, Michael, we have to look at these homicide deaths also in a different way. You're now talking about that number of black men, boys, who would never be fathers.

Right. Who would never be husbands. Who would never be wage earners. Now you're talking about that number having a negative impact on the economics of the black community because they're dying. Oh, the funeral homes are doing gangbusters. But if you're talking about a black boy dying before he's 20 or 25, you're not talking about somebody who is not even a part of this life for 50 years and the impact, the negative impact

that has on families. And what I keep saying in this country, the problem that we have when we talk about homicide rates, the response in America is send more cops. Cops do not prevent violence. They catch perpetrators. If you are not dealing with the underlying issues of violence, you're not going to deal with the homicide issue. Yeah, you know, that is a big part of it. And then also another part of this is that all this is operating within a system of white supremacy and racism. And the reason why I say that is because you only protect what you respect. You only protect what you respect. So when we look at black boys were killed more than any other group, you have to see African American boys as across the nation as a whole, not just

talking about the African American community, but the nation as a whole. You have to see African American boys of being worthy of saving to understand why this is so important and why resources have to be allocated to deal with the underlying causes of violence, especially gun violence and deaths, especially gun deaths, as opposed to seeing African-American boys as criminals or future criminals. When we when we look at the research from Dr. Philip Atiba Goff. OK. And his study is at the American Psychological Association's website. This is just an example.

It talks about how African American boys as young as five years old are perceived to be more dangerous, okay, and perceived to look older than they actually are, okay? And it talks about the relationship between African-American boys and police. And just to give a quick example here, when we look at Tamir Rice, I know this goes beyond police violence, but I'm just giving a quick example. When we look at Tamir Rice, Tamir Rice was 12 years old, but the Cuyahoga County white prosecutor said Tamir Rice appeared to be 20 years old. Okay. And he was treated like a 20-year-old old man as opposed to a 12-year-old boy. I know it's

a specific case, but it gives some insight into how we're treated here in America. So this is, I think, something that we really have to look at and legislation and resources have to be allocated to address this issue. But at the same time, when we deal with violence in our communities, where we are killing one another as well, black lives do matter, but black lives also have to matter to black people as well. Okay. So this is extremely important and it's a multifaceted problem. And the thing here, Mustafa, matter, but black lives also have to matter to black people as well. Okay. So this is, this is extremely important and it's a multifaceted problem. And the thing here, Mustafa, black lives do matter to black people, but you still have to deal with what is causing that. John Hope Bryant, Operation Hope founder, says it all the time. You've never

seen a riot in the neighborhood with a credit score 700 or higher. There's a direct correlation. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

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

Glod. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,

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

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Sh Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

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

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens.

Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Between homicide rates and poverty and education and opportunity. Exactly. You know, we've created these sacrifice zones across our country and we never really want to unpack what that actually looks like. So you talked about a couple of those elements. One of them, you know, is around education and making sure that we have these holistic strategies where we're not just dealing with education,

but we're also dealing with the food insecurities that are in there because kids can't learn and families can't actually thrive if they don't have the nutrition that's necessary. We often don't talk about also what's happened in relationship to banking and how we have had these disinvestments inside of our communities that create these sacrifice zones, you know, and then we also have to look at the pollution. That's also in there. There are a number of studies that show when temperatures increase, when pollution increases, then we also know that violence inside of communities increases. I bring all this in because it is about these cumulative sets of impacts that are happening inside of our communities that destabilize the communities. And this destabilization has happened because of policy and the decisions that were made and continue to be made. And it has also happened because of the

lack of investments in a holistic way to actually change the dynamics that are going on inside of our community. See, we will continue to put Band-Aids on things. We will continue to make these sets of investments where there's these one-offs, but we refuse to actually change how we're funding, how we are doing policy, how we are actually honoring these communities by making sure that we help them to move from surviving to thriving. And if we're not willing to do that, then we're going to continue to see these lives that are being lost by black boys and black girls and adults and others. So we have. Looks like we lost Mustafa for a second there. Randy, go ahead. You know, I agree with what my brothers are saying here today. It's such the statistics.

I believe I become extremely angry, though, when I hear people say, but what about black on black crime as if our young brothers are monsters or something's wrong with them, whereas one homicide is a crime of affiliation, association and proximity. You know, white on white crime is about the same stats as black-on-black crime, that's one. But our young brothers are being raised in communities that, you know, they can barely survive. They're trying their best, and it literally is for some of them, they're having to fight to just stay alive. And no one wants to look at that. They want to look at the individual young people and not a system that has not invested in our children, that has left them with poor schools, with a family structure broken,

with transportation where they can't even get out of those communities, and just trying to make it. And so when desperate people will do desperate things, it's hard to also get a person who hasn't been taught to love themselves because everything tells them they shouldn't to all of a sudden value the life of somebody else. So I really want us to look at these stats in a holistic way and understand all the systems that have contributed to us being there and to fix the systems and not act as if there's something wrong with our young men. They need our help. You're muted, Roland. When we come back, we're going to talk the sentencing of the former cop who killed Artilla Jefferson. The jury has made their decision.

We'll tell you about that next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Back in a moment. It's time to be smart. Roland Martin's doing this every day. Oh, no punches! Thank you, Roland Martin, for always giving voice to the issues. Look for Roland Martin in the whirlwind, to quote Marcus Garvey again. The video looks phenomenal, so I'm really excited to see it on my big screen.

Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. I got to defer to the brilliance of Dr. Carr and to the brilliance of dr carr and to the brilliance of the black star network i am rolling with rolling all the way honestly on a show that you own a black man owns the show folks black star network is here i'm real uh revolutionary right now rolling was amazing on that i love y'all i can't commend you enough about this platform that you've created for us to be able to share who we are, what we're doing in the world and the impact that we're having. Let's be smart.

Bring your eyeballs home. You can't be black on media and be scared. You dig? Folks, Black Star Network is peace. Hold no punches. We'll be right back. The momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home.

You dig? What's up, y'all? I'm Will Packer. Hello, I'm Bishop T.D. James. What's up? I'm Lonnie Wells, and you are watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks. Aaron Dean, the Fort Worth police officer, was convicted of manslaughter on the death of Ron Taylor Jefferson. Now the jury has decided his fate, and that is 11 years in prison. He'll be eligible, though, for parole after five and a half years. The jury deliberated this decision and of course came back with that

particular decision. This is of course quite significant because finally you have some justice, if you will, in this case. He sat motionless as this decision came down and so here is the actual reading of that. Good afternoon. And so here is the actual reading of that. Mr. Dean, we the jury having found the defendant Aaron York Dean guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the offense of manslaughter, assess his punishment at confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 11 years, 10 months, 12 days. They do not assess a fine. And it is signed by the presiding juror.

You may be seated. Thank you very much. Members of the jury, as we went through before, I'm going to call your juror number and ask you if this verdict is your individual verdict. Juror number one, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number three, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number four, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number three, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number four, is this your verdict?

Yes, Your Honor. Juror number six, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number nine, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 14, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 15, is this your verdict?

Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 21, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 31, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 32, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Juror number 37, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Jury number 31, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Jury number 32, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Jury number 37, is this your verdict?

Yes, Your Honor. Jury number 38, is this your verdict? Yes, Your Honor. Your verdict will be received and filed. Thank you very much. Mr. Gill, Mr. Brissett, is there any legal reason why sentence should not be pronounced? No legal reason. Mr. Dean, it's the jury having found you guilty of the offense of manslaughter and assessed

this punishment. It's the order of the court you be remanded to the custody of the sheriff be delivered to the director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to serve your sentence as required by law. You will receive credit for all the time that you have served in custody on this case from the date of your original arrest up until today, which would be the date of sentence. You have the right to appeal the jury's decision. You do so by giving written notice of appeal to the Second Court of Appeals here in Fort Worth within 30 days. If you are indigent and cannot afford a lawyer, I would conduct an indigency hearing to determine if you are indigent.

And if you are indigent, I would appoint a lawyer to represent you on appeal and provide you a record of this trial at no cost. Mr. Gill, Mr. Bursetta, if y'all will remain on this case pending his decision whether he wishes to appeal, and if you'll furnish the information for the trial court certification of appeal before you leave here today, I would appreciate it. Is there an allocution? I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

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

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

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

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown. And never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it. And never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there no it can happen one in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out never happens before you leave the car always stop look lock brought to you by in the ad council seated thank you very much

he's your prisoner sheriff Locked. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Thank you very much. He's your prisoner, Sheriff. Now, before he was taken away, Ashley Carr got a chance to speak to the man who killed his sister. All right, folks. Actually, we had the sound bite, but since she's joining us, we're going to talk about that. Joining us right now is Ashley Carr and family attorney Lee Merritt. Ashley, in the sentencing phase, there's a victim impact statement. And so let the audience know what you wanted Aaron Dean to know. I think you're muted.

I think you're muted. We can't hear you. There we go. So there was no repentance in what he did. He showed no remorse through this whole entire process. If it was such an accident, why didn't you render aid? Why wasn't that given to my sister? It just showed that he looked at her as not being human

and actually came in here gun-charged and ready to kill. And of course, we also saw here where his own partner testified that he didn't even, that he claims he saw a gun, but he didn't even shout that he saw a gun. Her life potentially was in danger. Everyone's life was in danger because of him. There was no protocol followed the whole entire thing.

We saw that throughout the case. And it was just more and more apparent how reckless he truly was. Lee, what was crazy to me, even with all this testimony, even with the chief saying he broke all protocols, having his own partner testify against him, this jury still refused to convict him of murder. That's right. And this is the only conviction of a police officer

that we've seen in the history of Tarrant County for involving an officer who was on duty to kill a black person, a white person, anybody. There's just no real history or precedent for officers being convicted of crimes in this region. But yeah, the evidence, of course, was overwhelming. And it was important that the prosecutor got Aaron Dean to stay from the stand. You know, when I pointed my gun at the person I believed to be on the other side of that window and pulled the trigger, my intention was to kill them. That's the intentionality that should have got us a murder conviction.

But I believe in the sentencing, when the jurors here actually gave him more time than, for example, Amber Geiger got for the murder of Bolton Jean, what the jury was telling us is that they didn't buy his story, and they want to see him serve serious time. And there's so many of these cases. These cops, they sit up there, and they talk about, oh, my life was in danger. Totally contradicted by his own partner. That's right. We're sitting here now in the home of Yolanda Carr. That is Tatiana Jefferson's mother, Ashley's mother.

And it's almost surreal to be here three and a half years later and know that there's still a lot more fighting ahead of us. But this family has gone just through so much in the past three years that it is a huge relief to know that Aaron Dean will not be going home and going to sleep with his family and spending another holiday season with them without facing some form of accountability. It obviously was a lot for your family to have to go through this, you know, and I just keep saying, I mean, black folks, even if you have a weapon in your home, inside of your own home for protection, you can still end up dead. It is as if the rules for us

are completely different than everybody else. That's right. And prosecutors in this case, they said this case is so rare, we'll never see it happen again, as if they forgot that this didn't happen until the weekend after Amber Geiger was convicted for doing the exact same thing, shooting a black person to death without any justification in their home. You and I know, Roland, because you get the phone calls

and hear from the families, that we live in the deadliest police culture in the modern world, that we kill over three and a half people on average every day. And this should not happen as frequently as it does to any American and certainly not as disproportionately as it does to the black and brown community. I mean, first of all, it's also rare to see the cops indicted. It's even rare to see them actually convicted. So thank goodness your family has a semblance of justice. Yeah, it's definitely, look, it's, I just was sitting with Pamela Turner's daughter,

talking to her about the different things. She was just telling us about the process of their trial. It did not come out with this outcome, even though all of us saw that she was murdered as well. So it's just a reality that this system is really messed up, that we have to sit and hope and pray that something does come of it in the form of accountability. Absolutely. Ashley Carr, Lee Merritt, we certainly appreciate you both of us joining us. All right, thanks for having us, Roland.

Thank you so very much. Randy, I want to go to you first. It is, you know, all these people who sit here and talk about, oh, you know what, you guys are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is not as bad as you think. Atiyah ain't coming back. Even though this guy goes to prison, his family gets to visit him. He's going to shout at parole.

He can actually have a life after this. She's dead. You know, it's heartbreaking because, you know, as Black Americans, they oftentimes try to blame us for our own deaths and put us on trial. And you think about how this young lady had done everything right, you know, graduate of Xavier University, taking care of her nephew. I've oftentimes been thinking about Zion, like what a brave young man, you know, he is and how this will affect him for the rest of his life.

Being at home and yet still shot. I mean, you can't even feel safe in your own home. I am wondering about also when they did the psychological testing of Aaron Dean, they're saying that he had narcissistic tendencies. Why was that not picked up before he was even hired? Because that testing is done in about 90 percent of before you're hired to be a police officer. And now they're telling us after the fact, after someone is now dead, that this man should not have even had a gun, should never have

been on the police force because he, as we see, he has shown no emotion. There's something wrong with this person. And then even going on with the psychological test, are they doing tests to test people's unconscious biases? I mean, if black and brown lives matter and numbers show that we are being killed disproportionately, if these police departments care, why are they not ensuring that they're not hiring people who show a fear of black people? Like, they shouldn't even be on the force whatsoever. I mean, there's just so many questions, and it's just absolutely upsetting. And, yes, there's a measured level of justice, but I would say very measured. You know, Michael, we should this year, the family of Ayanna Jones should be celebrating her 17th birthday yeah here in Detroit and here is your sorry for

19th birthday here's a young lady gun disges, hits her in the neck, she dies. Officer first mistrial, second mistrial, judge dismisses the involuntary manslaughter. Second mistrial, then the prosecutor chooses not to try him again. This cop gets off. Seven-year-old black girl in Detroit, killed. Nobody held accountable. She's dead. He's free.

Yeah, you know, Ayanna Jones was a real tragedy here in Detroit. I was on the Carl Nelson radio show talking about the developments in that case. I can't remember whether it was the first trial or second trial that Carl had me on the show talking about the developments in that case. I can't remember whether it was the first trial or second trial that Carl had me on the show talking about it. That was a tragedy. That was Prosecutor Kim Worthy here that prosecuted, her office prosecuted both cases. And after basically two mistrials, she didn't prosecute a third time. So when we look here at a Tatiana Jefferson, I talked about this. I talked about the conviction Sunday night on the African History Network show.

And, you know, you look at some of the details here. The case is very disturbing because Officer Dean admitted he did not announce himself as a police officer. Also, he did not tell his partner that he saw a gun either. And then to read that there was a psychologist during the trial who said that Officer Dean has a narcissistic, had a narcissistic personality style. Okay. Psychologist Kyle Clayton said this about Dean, and it said that it makes him more likely

to engage in behaviors that could put himself and others at risk. So even though Dean's defense attorneys said that he passed a psychological evaluation of the Fort Worth, Texas police officer, that Fort Worth, Texas police officers had to go through, you have to wonder then why wasn't that caught? What has to be improved in that psychological evaluation to screen out police officers? What has to be improved to keep something like this from happening again. So this is still, even though he's convicted 11 years, this is still a tragedy all the way around. This is the one to be a doctor, okay? And she'll never get to fulfill

her dreams. Mustafa? Yeah, I mean, all this hits home for me. I mean, I agree with what the panelists have just shared. I think that there needs to continually be psychological analyses that are going on throughout law enforcement's career because, you know, the stressors that folks deal with, the biases that they may have may not show up early on, but they might come into play later on. So I think that it continues to happen. You know, I've lived this before. One of my good friends was actually killed by a police officer back in 2000.

His name was Prince Jones. And it just brings back all these memories of the reforms that we continue to ask for that are slow at best and many times are nonexistent. And then you've got to ask the question, well, why is it that folks won't move and make the changes that are necessary to better protect folks? And, you know, one of the factors is that we continue to die disproportionately, black folks. And, you know, so that seems to be one of the reasons that folks refuse to pass significant legislation on Capitol Hill and in state houses. And they continue to place our lives in the crosshairs. So until we're willing to make those reforms and to hold people accountable and to make sure that the police unions and others who back up cops that are bad cops, then we're going to continue to see this. Yes, folks in support,

good police officers. But when we have those who are not, then they have to go and they have to be held to the same level of accountability that each and every one of us has. Because if this gentleman hadn't gotten 11 years plus, if you follow the case, if he hadn't gotten 10 years or less, he could actually be out on probation very soon. Folks, hold tight one second. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

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

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

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

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus

on Apple Podcasts. You say you never Plus on Apple Podcasts. store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. We come back. I want to talk about black erasure from history. And what's even more stunning is when I explain to you how it was black people that literally saved an iconic institution in Hollywood, but they act like it never happened. Also coming up, the Exonerated Five.

They're honored in New York at the place where they essentially were almost tried and convicted for life. We'll talk to one of them next on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Download the app. Apple phone, Android phone. Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV.

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I'm Coco. And I'm Lili. And we're at SWB. What's up, y'all? It's Ryan Destiny. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Martin! All right, folks, welcome back to Roller Mark Unfiltered. So when I was traveling, we were in Atlanta, I finally got a chance, I had some downtime, I finally got a chance to watch the documentary Fat Tuesdays. I interviewed Guy Torrey for a Rollin' with Roland, and then I interviewed Guy Torrey

again at Essence, where he talked about Fat Tuesday, his creation at the famous, the comedy store and the role that it played. But he said something that blew me away in our conversation. Watch. Let's talk about your doc, Fat Tuesday. Yeah, man. Folks have been talking about it.

It's finally out because last time we chatted, y'all were finishing editing. And so now it's out. And the thing that I think when I think about it, I sort of compare to the doc that Summer of Soul that Questlove won the Oscar for. And there's so many things about our culture that cats didn't know about. So you see these documentaries of these other people, and you swear black people didn't do anything. Right. But when you think about the things that black people have done, and then this is where we're having to tell our own story

because otherwise folk wouldn't know. Right. And it's funny you say that too. And Fat Tuesdays prayerfully were up for any consideration. So, you know, prayer warriors out there, you know, we get that nod. But Fat Tuesdays is a documentary about a night I created at the comedy store

to showcase black comedians. And it turned into the best damn comedy show period, the most important comedy show period because so many comics came through there that are box office stars today that are touring, you know, Kevin Hart, who opened, you know, Essence Fest, man. He came through Fat Tuesdays.

And Nick Cannon discovered that Fat Tuesdays and Mike Epson came through. So it's such it was such a platform to showcase comedians. And you know, it was me bringing the hood to Hollywood. Because after the riots in 92, industry quit going to the hood to see us. So I said, you know, let me create a night

on Sunset where we should be anyway and showcase black comics. And it's funny you say that how you would square black people who didn't do anything because there's another cable network that did a documentary on the comedy store where I held Fat Tuesdays

and there was no mention. Are you serious? There was no, they had a five-part series and there was no mention. A five-part series? And there was no mention of Fat Tuesdays. And Fat Tuesdays

might not be out of the mouths of the Comedy Store owners, even when we were shooting our doc there, said, man, Fat Tuesdays, if it wasn't for Fat Tuesdays, we would have been shut down a long time ago. He said there were times that if it wasn't for Fat Tuesdays, they wouldn't have made payroll on Friday.

And there was not one mention of... That is crazy. And the was not one mention. That is crazy. In the documentary that was done on the comedy store. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. But again, that's the story of black people in terms of we've saved a whole bunch of folks' asses. What?

Networks. And then when the story is told. Leagues. It was as if we didn't exist. Exactly. When I saw Fat Tuesday, I remembered God telling me that story. So today, I literally, y'all can go to my iPad, I literally went to Showtime, and I went through all five episodes. And in episode three, in episode three,

they talked about in episode three, the financial problems they faced and how it was on its way to being shut down. And episode four goes, Joe Rogan returns. So if you're watching this five-part series on the Comedy Store, you would get the impression that the Comedy Store was about to go under, but all of a sudden Joe Rogan comes back and he resurrects it from the dead. Yet if you go watch, if you go to Amazon Prime Video and you watch the three part docuseries Fat Tuesdays, you will discover all of these black comedians. You will discover the story.

You will discover that the money that black people spent on that one night kept the comedy store afloat. Now, why does this matter? Because for the purpose of history, 30 years from now, 50 years from now will say let's look at that five-part docuseries of those on Showtime where comedian Mike Binder or Bender I'm not sure in his name how he detailed the Comedy Store and when the person in the future goes to it, they're going to say, wow, this is the history of the Comedy Store. ever know about Fat Tuesdays and Guy Torrey and what he created, even though that saved the same club. Now, why is it important that Guy Torrey partnered with Reggie Hutland to do the documentary Fat Tuesday?

Because of the mural that is on the wall in my studio. This right here is in the third paragraph of the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, written March 16, 1827, we wish to plead our own cause too long have others spoken for us. If they don't do the documentary Fat Tuesdays, no one knows what Guy Torrey did. No one knows that black people

saved this iconic comedy institution. Shame on Mike Binder or Bender and the folks at Showtime for not including Fat Tuesdays. Now, it's great, it's important that Fat Tuesdays has its own docuseries. That story should be told by itself. But it is still shameful that it was completely erased from the five-part Showtime series. In fact, y'all, nearly every comedian that's in Fat Tuesdays Who's Black wasn't even in the Showtime doc. Here you have,

and see, I know somebody watching me right now, and they saying, okay, Roland, I mean, why are you talking about this? What's the big deal? of how we as black people take our money, save white institutions, and never get the credit. It's a perfect example of how we create something and somebody else benefits from our talent,

they stay rich. We got to go elsewhere. See, we can go in the annals of history. When you are watching the NFL on Fox, do y'all know how that happened? The NFL on Fox does not happen if rock didn't exist, if in living color didn't exist, if South Central didn't exist. Black eyeballs built Fox. There were three national networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Fox launches. What's the first thing Fox do? Let's go find some black people. Y'all, I had the woman from Nielsen on a little bit earlier. I need y'all to understand that when it comes to television and media, black eyeballs follow the content. Black eyeballs build institutions. Elon Musk is acting a fool right now with Twitter. If black Twitter said we out and we going en masse to black owned fan base,

the remaining advertisers of Twitter would say bye-bye. I'm trying to get y'all to understand that black people are the trendsetters in America. Black people, we actually create the culture, define the culture. Everybody wants to be us. White America could not stand big asses and large lips until Kim Kardashian. Black women had those physical features she had to go to a doctor. But now all of a sudden, it's in vogue. White women did not want to wear braids with beads until Bo Derek was on the beach in 10. I can go on and on and on to show you how in American history, black people, we have taken our meager dollars,

and y'all hear me say this, y'all hear me say, individually, we are poor. As MLK said, collectively, we are one of the richest economists in the world. So here we collectively took our money and showed up at Fat Tuesdays at the Comedy Store every Tuesday. They were in a small room, 80 people. But they graduated to the big room, 400 people, and were packing them in, packing them in. I can take the same story and show you in every major American city,

the hot restaurant, not black owned, we packing it out. The hot club, we packing it out. Somebody that don't look like us own the club. I could go on and on and on. So at what point are we going to come to the conclusion, can we stop making everybody else rich and make ourselves rich? You got people right now, prominent black people,

they love sharing clips on Twitter and Instagram of what somebody said on CNN or MSNBC or ABC or CBS. And I swear, we said the same thing two or three weeks earlier. But those same so-called tastemakers never share clips from this show. You know why? And this probably is going to be my next book. My next book is probably going to be called White Validation. I'm probably going to write the next book because that really is part of our fundamental problem.

We will gladly make other people rich and then ask them to invite us to the table. And we literally save the table. Hell, we made the table. Hell, we made the table. All I'm trying to get us to understand is we have got to change this. When we stop saving everybody else and begin building up our institutions, and all of a sudden, black America will look totally different. Watch the Fat Tuesdays documentary on Amazon Prime Video. Give Guy Torrey his praise.

Look at what those black comedians were able to do by leveraging their talents. But I'm going back to the other piece. We saved a club that we don't own. In fact, the folk at the Comedy Store should have given Guy Torrey equity in the club because he's bringing in that much money. Ain't no Fat Tuesday, ain't no Comedy Store. The lesson for black people is we have got to stop being the show

and be the show and the business. When our stuff is hot and we blowing up, make it clear, I'm going to take this thing and go somewhere else with it unless we get a piece of the pie. And there are people out there, Mustafa, Randy, and Michael, the last thing they want to see is a prominent black basketball player doing a shoe deal with a black apparel company. The last thing they want to see are black actors and actresses hiring black PR agents.

The last thing they want to see are black big companies hiring black law firms and black bond firms. We cannot continue to complain about our economic condition in America when we are making other folks rich and then we'll turn up our nose at somebody black who owns the same thing. Randall, you first. Michael, Mustafa, you close. One, I'm trying to find shock and awe to give you about us.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

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

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown. And never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it. And never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there,

no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Again, being left out of history,

it happens all the time, right? From the time we're starting to study history in schools, we're not mentioned. We learned about, I think we learned about Martin Luther King and that's about it. It's unfortunate, but it's true. When we talk about systemic racism, when we talk about economic strength in the black community, I believe we have to be honest with ourselves and talk about how we too have been affected by this the biggest marketing campaign that has ever happened on the face of the earth has been to teach us that white is better and and we need to sit and be honest and say that we oftentimes will laud and elevate brands just

because it has an italian name or a french name and not give any credence to our own black-owned brands. In fact, Randy, Dapper Dan just said he had to do a deal with Gucci because if he had done his own deal, they wouldn't have bought it by saying Dapper Dan. It had to have Gucci's name on it. And he's telling the truth. And, you know, you talk about the influencers.

I oftentimes see people post these grand videos when they're opening up because they've gotten a Prada bag or a Versace bag, and I don't see it when I see black. I purposefully actually will only do that when it's a black-owned brand. Even when it comes to travel, where we go, we have been brainwashed to think that going to Paris is so much more beautiful than it would be to go to Kenya. I mean, we have to

admit that we put, we love a brand because it's white, and that's brainwashing, right? And we need to work on that. We need to work on our mindset. I think about how rappers, if instead of calling out Louboutins, if they would call out others, how much money that we can make within our community. That's why I love that Beyonce did call out Telfar Baggs, a black-owned company,

in her last album. Actually, in fact, Beyonce will not take a meeting with a company if there's not black representation around the table. Right. And that is power. And when we recognize, if we first of all are honest

about the brainwashing that we've been through and decide to change it and work on ourselves and start to elevate our own brands so we can have real economic strength is when we change that's when it changes and we're not dependent on people who are not elevating us yeah michael you know roland um this topic is extremely important topic especially going into the new year and it's important for us to understand that racism is a system of advantage and privilege distributed based upon race.

When you showed the quote from the newspaper dealing with how we need to plead our own case, they're talking about power. And power is the ability to define and shape reality and have other people accept your definition of reality as if it were their own, as Dr. Wade Nobles correctly teaches us. The Fox TV network, I remember when the Fox TV network started in 1980s. I was in high school. It was like the mid-1980s. They started out only with programming on the weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And then they went to all the day, seven days a week, prime time.

They started out with TV shows like 21 Jump Street. They started out with TV shows like Clare Corn. And the comedian Thea had her show. So they focused on an African-American audience. Yep. Then they broadened it to a white audience. And then they get NFL football. No, no, no.

They dropped all the black shows. Right. They dropped all the black shows. Like. They dropped all the black shows. Like the CW did. Like WB and CW. You know, when they merged, they did the same. Same thing. They ran the same game because it worked.

They ran the same play because it worked. But I want people to understand, the Fox TV network is owned by Rupert Murdoch. This is the same Rupert Murdoch. No, no, no. First of all, Fox Broadcasting used to. Well, Fox Entertainment is now owned by Rupert Murdoch. This is the same Rupert Murdoch. No, no, no. First of all, Fox Broadcasting, well, Fox Entertainment is now owned by Disney. But the Fox Network is still owned by Rupert. Yes, go ahead.

Right, right. The Fox Network is owned by Rupert. The same Rupert Murdoch that owns the Fox cable news channel that attacks African-Americans on a daily and nightly basis. Okay, so understand how all this is connected as well. And real quick, he owned a number of the independent stations

in different cities that had black programming, so black viewers watched those programming. He got advertising dollars. Those ad dollars allowed him to launch Fox News. So it was black eyeballs that led to higher ratings on the Fox independent stations that led him to have the money to launch Fox News. Y'all better learn some history.

Michael, go ahead. Exactly. So and we have to understand how there's a history of Europeans co-opting African-American culture. This is, I mean, we go back to T.D. Rice, 1828, 1829, who created the Jim Crow character. He's known as the father of minstrel shows. And he's imitating enslaved African people, puts on blackface, adopts a Southern dialect, puts on Tattletorn clothing.

And minstrel shows become the largest form of entertainment in this country. And then you talk about the Kardashian family. This is a whole family that got rich off of, excuse my language, that got rich off of a black man's penis when you look at the sex tape before the reality TV show. It's the sex tape, the largest,

this was the largest deal with Vivid for celebrity sex tape. This leads to the reality TV show, which brings them into people's homes for year after year after year. So we have to understand the game that's being played on us. And it's being played very, very well, and we fall

for it every single time. Mustafa, your comment? We're going to get played if we allow ourselves to be. You know, I was raised with teachings of Marcus Garvey, who shared with us about us owning our own and about the collective power that we have when we come together. And we have to live our values. I have a black dentist, a black doctor, a black accountant. I have a black real estate agent. So you live your values by the choices that we make.

So we're coming to the end of this year. Folks are going to be making their New Year's resolutions. Why don't we make a resolution that we are actually going to support our own in a collective fashion so that we can build that power that we continue to talk about on this show. And that's the way we do it. And I hope people now understand

my Deion Sanders commentary when I said, if you're going to be critical of Deion leaving Jackson State, but you don't support black institutions, shut the hell up. Because you can't complain about him if you ain't doing it. Folks, going to a break, we come back. I'm gonna talk to several members of the Exonerated Five

about the monument to them is now in Central Park, the place where they tried to bury them about the monument to them is now in Central Park, the place where they tried to bury them and actually Donald Trump wanted them killed. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered. And again, unfiltered, black owned, we don't ask nobody's opinion and get permission to discuss what we do. That's what happens when you own.

We don't seek permission. There's only one person above me, and that's God. Ain't no boss but got him. That's the difference between when you own and when you work for somebody else. Back in a moment. I'm Deborah Owens, America's wealth coach, and my... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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

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

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

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet, MMA fighter, Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store.

So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know.

So watch Get Wealthy on the Blackstar Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for a balanced life with Dr. Jackie. We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on. So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network, A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not.

From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Pull up a chair, take your seat. The Black Ta. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. My name is Charlie Wilson. Hi, I'm Sally Richardson-Whitfield. And I'm Dodger Whitfield.

Hey everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. who whose lives were turned upside down when forced into confessions raping a white woman in central park we now know that's a lie. People were calling for them, like Donald Trump, were calling for them to get the death penalty because of what happened. Now, when you go to Central Park, there's actually now a monument to the exonerated five.

That was unveiled this week. Joining us now is Yusuf Salam, Raymond Santana, who joined us right now. And I'm going to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be

the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be

the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be the one to be that what y'all were accused of, well, they wanted to bury y'all. Now when folk walk through that park,

they now have to see Exonerated 5. Just share your thoughts about that. Ain't that something, right? Ain't that something? You know, to come back and it's 33 years later, and to come back now and to see that this gate exists now, it just shows people. It sends a message. It tells people that as long as you never give up, you can overcome any obstacle.

You know, the Exonerated Five, we were the Central Park Five then, right? And we had this 10-year census, 5-10-year census. Corey had a 5-15. And it wasn't just a prison census. It was a death census. It was a social death. We were considered outcasts, we were level three sex offenders, right? We weren't supposed to survive prison, if we did, we would be given a social death, we weren't supposed to survive out in society. And so to have this gate now, it speaks volumes. It shows people that you can overcome obstacles no matter how

no matter how no matter how how much you feel that you have to last rope or you drink or you can't do anymore. There's always that little extra step that can take you over the hump. And we are examples of that. Definitely.

Yeah, you know You see, when I travel the country, I love to see black monuments. And if I'm going through the train station, it's A. Philip Randolph. When I'm going through the airport in Jackson, Mississippi,

it's a display for Medgar Evers. When I'm going through Austin, Texas, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. When I'm going through Harts Texas, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, when I'm going through Hartsfield Jackson, the plaque on the wall of Maynard Jackson, and I always stop and read it. And what's important is that the story is also on this gate. Folk have to see what New York City and America did to y'all.

That's the whole situation. You said first, you said first then Kevin. Okay, great. Yeah, they didn't want us to become who we became. And the truth of the matter is that they buried us alive and forgot about us, but they forgot that we were seeds. They forgot that man plans and God plans and God is the best of planners. And so in the era of truth, in the day where all things good are coming back into the forefront, here we are being able to receive our flowers while we're still alive, uplift our family's good name, and be restored in a way that is magnificent and powerful and that also leads the way forward for younger generations to see we got to keep

persevering. We got to keep pushing forward. This is such a momentous occasion. Twenty years after we were exonerated, that whisper that was dwarfed in the same way when you think about the juxtaposition of when they shouted our guilt. When they thought we were guilty, they shouted it from the mountaintops. But when they found out we were innocent, they whispered it in a way that only the rats in New York City had heard. And so to be able to appreciate this, for people to walk through this, for people to be able to touch us and and commune with us and break

bread with us and see man those guys right there because of them we know we can do anything powerful powerful. In many ways Kevin was all dealt with was a modern day lynching. You simply hear the tell a story. Yeah, it is.

You know, and we always compare ourselves to the modern-day Scottsboro Boys. You know, this is legacy what just happened. You know, we must always tell people don't forget what happened to us. You know, we must remind people what we've been through. And we've been through the worst. And to still be here and be relevant and let people know that we're here is definitely monumental and something that I'm still processing right now, man,

because this is talking about legacy. We was already inspiring people, but now this is on another plateau right here. And also, I think this is important because every NYPD cop, every NYPD cop, when they walk past that, they got to see that monument. They got to see that, Raymond, because it was the actions of those cops and those prosecutors that led us to this point. And that's the reason why, you know, for me, that became the reason why, you know, I was so eager to, you know, to push and to put out mediums

because at the end of the day, it took them two and a half years to charge us, try us, and convict us and send us to prison. But they never knew that we were going to become fighters, and they never knew we was going to come back and come back stronger. And now you got to deal with us for the fighters. And they never knew we was going to come back and become and come back stronger. And now you got to deal with us for the rest of your lives.

So we want that. We want those mediums that are shown to keep a constant reminder. Every time you see us in the newspaper, every time you see us on TV, every time you see us writing a book, every time you see us now when you see this wall, you see this gate, you have to constantly be reminded of what you did to us. We never want you to forget that. And the reality, Yusef, there are so many brothers and sisters who are forgotten,

who are sitting in jail right now. The brother in Missouri on death row, where they have evidence he did not do it, they are still trying to kill him. Man, you know, we represent them. I've always said that we are the microcosm of the macrocosm of cases just like us. Systemically, they want people to believe that we are anomalies, that this is just, you know, we don't do this. This is not how America gets down. This is absolutely how America gets down. This is absolutely how America gets down. This is what they call the American nightmare. And for black and brown bodies, we struggle through this.

We try to figure out how do we fit in this place where we become, they look at us by the color of our skin and judge us, not by the content of our character. They deem us to be dead men walking by telling us that we're going to be dead or in jail before we reach the age of 21. And for many of us, we believe that because we play that out or it's played out on us. We didn't escape. We didn't escape that. We were 14, 15, and 16-year-old children. And so now we represent something bigger. We represent something better, something noble, that all of the individuals who are in prison, all of their cases need to be reexamined, especially the ones who are saying that they're innocent. Because when people are guilty of crimes that they have committed, they usually say,

Mesh, you do the crime, you do the time. But the individuals who did not do the crime, they are the ones who often speak of their innocence, just like us. And so I think we represent those individuals whose voices have been turned down and muted. We need to echo and uplift their voices because these cases need to be seen and need to be heard. There's a problem in America. And the problem is a problem that they look at the color of your skin and not the content of your character. And they judge you by that. And then they make you part of the disenfranchised people. But the question is, have you ever really been part of the franchise? Constitutionally, which has never been reformed, we were always seen as three-fifths of a human being when it

was being ratified. That document has never included us as full human beings. And so I think that that same sick mentality that found its way to making black bodies and enslaving them when they were kings and queens, princes and doctors, mathematicians and scientists. We still have that same DNA inside of us, and we need to fight to push it forward, to pour it out, to deliver it, to gift it. That's what we need to do. Kevin, there were a lot of people in white media who wanted to bury y'all. And we talk about why our voices matter. Black-owned media were carrying that story.

We get penalized on this show from advertisers. We're not brand safe because we show police shootings and beatings, and we cover these stories. And the reason I tell people why they got to support us is what we do because we're getting frozen out of the $322 billion. But if we don't cover the stories, the families don't have a place to go. Mainstream media will only cover because of the national story.

And so people have to understand that what y'all were going through, as far as the major media in New York, every single one of y'all were guilty and they were like, throw the key away. Yeah, because we was, you know, to their eyes, we was guilty already. You know, we were guilty before innocent.

And when you look in the courthouse and you see that sign, you know, it's a scale, it's unbalanced. And that's the system, It's still unbalanced. And it's been unbalanced from the beginning. I remember when we went to trial, we were already lost, even though we were innocent of our crimes. And that's been going on way before the exonerated five. It's been going on over 400 years.

The same thing has been happening. So we must change that. And shows like yourself must speak the truth and let people know that this is nothing new, you know. And now that we have the platform, we must keep raising awareness about this and bringing this issue up because it's not, it didn't go anywhere. And that's having this gate. It's a spark. The struggle still continues. We still have a lot of work to do. So this is beautiful, but there's still a lot of people that don't have voices.

And we are the voice for the voiceless. And that's why we're so passionate about what we do, because it's personal. Well, gentlemen, we appreciate that you are here to tell the story. And again, New Yorkers, anybody visiting, they've got to read,

they've got to see that wall. They've got to see that monument., they've got to read, they've got to see that wall, they've got to see that monument, and they've got to know the real story, and it's not about the Central Park Five, it's the Exonerated Five. Always appreciate y'all coming on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Hey, Uncle Roland, listen, thank you, brother. We need black media, y'all.

You've got to support black media. They tell the truth. We need them. That's what we've got. That's what I'm doing. Definitely. Yusef, go ahead. You want to make a comment? No, I said we appreciate you. And I just wanted to say that that last shot of the sign in the park and the gate, the entrance to the gate itself, it feels and looks so good, man.

Look at that. It feels good. Yes, indeed. Gentlemen, I appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thank good. Look at that. Yes indeed. Gentlemen I appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thank you. All right folks. I got to go to break.

We come back. Our marketplace segment. Definitely. We'll focus on black businesses. Y'all do me a favor. Y'all hit the like button on YouTube. Seriously. How is that.

We were two hours into the show and barely hit a thousand likes. Y'all right for free comment, hit the doggone like button. It ain't that hard. So we'll come right back with our Marketplace segment. And of course, our panel as well. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. I am on screen and I am representing what a black man is to the entire world.

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

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six

on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch.

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

And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car

and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. The entire world is going to see this. And this might be the only black man, a representation of a black man that they see. Right. So I am responsible. Right. For how they see black men.

And it's my responsibility to if I am not playing an upstanding, honorable of someone with a strong principle of moral core to make sure that this character is so specific that it is him, not black men. And I wish that more actors would realize how important their position is as an actor, as an actor of color playing people of color on screen. Because there are people that see us all over the world in these different images that we portray. And not everyone knows black people to know. Yes, that's not all. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know.

So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Eric Nolan. I'm Shantae Moore. Hi, my name is Latoya Luckett, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, y'all. Two sisters with degrees in science said, you know what? Let's have food-based products that's about the science. Their love for ginger and holistic health benefits improve digestion of the benefits as well. So let's get right to it with Sandra Reed, Shaylin Haywood. They created

Gensation Ginger. They joined me now from Fairfield, California. All right. So what is, so I'm looking here. Y'all sent me a note and y'all said that, hey, what's happening? We have no audio. Okay. They have no audio. What's up? What's up?

You hear me now? We can hear you. All right. So y'all sent me a note and y'all said, Gensation is a daily drink made with all natural ingredients and no artificial sweeteners. Gensation is the drinkable version of a ginger shot.

What's a ginger shot? A ginger shot. First off, thank you so much for having us rolling and your team for finding us i'm shaylin and i'm sandra and so most people have some type of experience with ginger and usually it's a ginger shot most of us run to those when we're not feeling well we have a cold or a flu. So you mean like right now, I have a bad cough because I'm allergic to smoke, and we were at the tailgate at the SWAG Championship, and that was about three weeks ago, and once it gets in my system, it takes a long time for that cough to get out.

So people take ginger shots for stuff like that? Typically, ginger is excellent for everything. Okay. Especially immunity, digestion, weight loss, detox, common cold flu symptoms. So you have several there for you to go ahead and try. And what's different about our beverage is it's made with organic Peruvian ginger, which is the highest premium quality of ginger you can find. And it is the main component in ginsation. And just so you know, ginsation is a ginger sensation.

All right. So we've got citrus mist and it says ginger, lemon, and honey. Then we've got cherry delight, ginger, honey, cherry, ACV. Yes, apple cider vinegar. Got it. And lemon. All right, let's see here. Okay. Sunshine burst, ginger, lemon,

tangerine, and honey. Okay. And then ginger beverage, ginger and elderflower. This is the fresh zest. Yes, that is the fresh zest. And that is our vegan unsweetened flavor. It has ginger and elderflower.

Marble cough. So which one of these is better for the cough? And y'all said you can enjoy this chill or even room temperature as well? Yes. You can enjoy it chilled. You also can warm it like tea. It's excellent with frozen fruit. You can make smoothies with it, and it's also a mixer.

Oh, cool. All right. Yeah, many ways you can enjoy it, Roland, but I will tell you, my personal favorite is Sunshine Burst, and Sandy's favorite is the Cherry Delight. I'm an apple cider vinegar lover as well, and so that's why it paired really well with the ginger. But to your question for the common cold, I mean when you go to the doctor they recommend honey lemon and ginger and so upset stomach so definitely the citrus mist one so your question would be a great option for you.

All right, which one the citrus mist. Yes, it just missed. Okay, all right. You say it can be warmed up or just room temperature or chilled? Correct. Cool. All right. Okay.

Before I go to my panel, how many of these can you drink in a day? Should you do one, two? Like, is there like, what do y'all recommend? Because on the back here, it says, of of course the amount per serving serving sizes one bottle is 60 calories yes and the great thing about ginsation it's all natural ingredients no artificial sweeteners so it's ready to drink right out of the bottle and you can have multiple a day our drink it's not concentrated it's, you know, you have to mix it with something. It's ready to drink. Right. So there's no dietary

restrictions. You can have as many as you like the same way you would enjoy any other juice or beverage. I'm sure anyone, because this cough is driving me crazy. And I go to Jamaica on Thursday. I don't want this cough going with me. Go ahead. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Take them with you. We promise you ginsation will change, no, absolutely. Take them with you. We promise you Gensation will change your life, Roland. Okay, all right. I'll tell you, Angela Rye swears by Ginger. Every time when I first got sick, she's like, Roland, Ginger! Ginger! I was like, girl, I'm going to start calling you Ginger.

Let's see. Mustafa, I'll start with you. Yeah, well, thank you all for putting this product together. I'm a huge fan of ginger. And there's so many scientific studies that have come out about a number of the different things that it helps with. I'm curious because there are so many different forms of ginger, you know, in different locations across the planet. How did you choose the one that you are currently utilizing? What benefits did you see the one that you are currently utilizing? What benefits did you see in choosing that particular one? Well, that's an excellent question. And, you know, we chose it

because most forms that people see on the market are a form of Chinese ginger, which is very yellow in color. We chose to go with organic Peruvian ginger because it's very potent. And where it grows, it's actually a part, it survives. So it's like survival of the fittest. So where it grows, where it survives, we have like one of the most strongest, one of the most potent versions out there. And that's why when you're sipping ginseng, you can really be sure that you're going to get the heat and you're going to get the potency along with it, and especially with it being the main ingredient and not just a flavoring agent in the bottle. And I'll just add to that, we have organic Peruvian ginger that's grown in the Amazon basin, and Peruvian ginger, it has the highest content of natural oils, which is why you're going to get

that spice. With every sip, you're going to notice the difference. It's not just the flavor. Typically, some ginger ales and drinks are flavors of ginger. We have the real deal. It comes from the actual ginger root. Cool. Randy? I just want to say I'm so intrigued by the product. I mean, you are right. You know, ginger and the health benefits of ginger has long not been indisputed. So, but I have a question. Can it replace like a ginger beer? You said it could be used as a mixer. Yes. A lot of people love making Moscow mules, which calls for ginger beer. One thing that I asked you guys to take a look at is most people, one of the biggest things we're doing is working on educating. Take a look at your nutrition panel. Take a look at the nutrition facts. They speak for their self on ginsation.

So I will tell you the difference is we are non-carbonated. Ginger beer is carbonated. But we are very low in calories, sugars, and carbs. We even have one that's zero added sugar and carbs. So you definitely can go ahead and have this. And I also want to add to that, you know, none of our flavors have sodium in them as well. And Shailen and I both have backgrounds in sciences and her degree is actually in kinesiology and health nutrition. So when she was putting together this formulation and working on it, there was a lot of thought that went into

it. We wanted to be able to have something for everybody, but yet we also did not want to cause that reoccurring circle that can happen a lot of times in our communities, which is our palates being conditioned to very sugary drinks. You can have something fun. You can have something good. You can have something that you can have on a day-to-day basis and not feel guilty for it. And that's why we also avoided, you know, white sugars and sugar preservatives and processed sugars. And we went with a natural form of wildflower honey. Michael. All right, Sandra and Shayla. Hey, this is a great story. And as somebody who used to teach entrepreneurship at a local

community college here in Detroit, these are stories I love to hear about. I was wondering if your product is available in grocery stores, how can people buy it besides online? And do you also wholesale to small African-American owned businesses? You have vendors who add festivals during the summer and things like this and have booths. Do you wholesale to small African-American owned businesses as well? Yes, absolutely. We wholesale to all small businesses and particularly in the black communities when we're doing our sampling for all people, when they actually taste it, it's a spice. And when you have ginger ale, you think it's sweet, it's sugar. But we just can't wait for you guys to try them and for Roland to have them and be feeling better in no time.

But to finish answering your question, we are in 10 retail locations in California at Nugget Markets, and we're rapidly expanding in 2023. And we're also available online. But we have a lot of small businesses. Julo Shop, which is a black online store, they sell our products. So, yes, we are trying to help each other. All right. Well, look, this is absolutely great.

First of all, and again, where can people go if they want to get their products directly? Yes, you guys can go to our website, which is drinkgensation.com. We have a special for Roland and you

use code Roland today. We're doing it for 48 hours. Um, so it'll end on Thursday. You buy six bottles. We give you six bottles for free. Wow. Yeah. You can play, have fun with the flavors, even send some, um, to your friends

and family. And we're also available for those in California. We're at Nugget Markets. And you're going to be seeing us in some other retail stores very soon. We're really excited about it. Well, that's awesome. And trust me, I will be drinking one of these going home because this cough is driving me crazy. But it's all good. I'm fighting through it.

Again, folks, it's Gensation Ginger. Follow them at Drink Gensation. You see their social media there on Twitter and Facebook as well. Go to their website. Thanks a bunch for both of you being on

the show. Thank you, Roland, for having us. Thank you so much. And if I can tell you this, we follow you on Instagram and we see you live working out perfect pre or post refreshing drink. Most of our consumers love doing that because it's low sugar, low calorie for their workout.

So we're having a 24 day challenge. We would love for you to join us at the top of the year. So we're having a 24 day challenge. We would love for you to join us at the top of the year. So we look forward to connecting with you, being able to do that. All right. Thank you so much. Sounds great. Can I just add one thing? When you go to our website, please sign up for our email list. You will continue to get updates from us as founders, as black business women. We are out there to help. We're a Christian-owned company. And, you know, we know God gave us this platform to spread the word, to educate, and to turn nonbelievers into believers. So please sign up. There's lots

of information always coming from us. And we are ready to share what we're learning on our journey. Oh, someone in our chat asked, where should I go to college? I went to UC Riverside. And I went to California State University, Fresno. And we are both members of Alpha Kappa Alpha. So folks, I'll go ahead and ask that question. All right, then. We appreciate it.

Good luck with the product. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And I'll let y'all know what I think about it. Yes, we can't wait to hear. Thank you, Roland. Thank you so very much. I appreciate it. Mustafa, Randy, Michael, I appreciate it.

Y'all be on the panel as well. Thank you so very much, folks. That is it. I'm here tomorrow and last day in the studio before I go on vacation on Thursday. I told y'all I ain't talking to nobody. Don't be texting me, don't be calling me. I ain't hollering at nobody. I already told my CFO and assistant,

if it ain't that major, don't hit a brother up. Let him know right now. Cause I don't even wanna think for 10 days. I don't even wanna think. So that's what I'm trying to get rid of this dadgum car before I go. So I appreciate it. Folks, I'll see you all tomorrow.

Don't forget, download the Black Star Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Check your money orders. Go to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash, Shapp, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal's RM Unfiltered.

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Lose Their Minds. Available at all bookstores, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, and of course, you can also download your copy on Audible as well. Okay, folks, that is it. I'll see y'all guys right here.

Yep, I'm repped yesterday. I rocked North Carolina Central. Today I'm rocking Jackson State. And so the Southern people, calm down, calm down. I'll be rocking y'all powder blue and gold tomorrow on Roland Martin Unfiltered. I'll see y'all then. Holla! You say you never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos.

You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, know it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock.

Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the

War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year a lot of the problems of the drug war, this year a lot of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.