#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Benefits & Care For Black Vets, TX Police Terrorize Black Family, Dems Debate Voting Strategy

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Starting point is 00:00:41 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 always had to be so good no one could ignore me. or wherever you get your podcasts. stars. Workers skill through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers

Starting point is 00:01:30 at taylorpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Today is Monday, July 31st, 2023. Coming up on Roland Martin, I'm filming live on the Black Star Network. The Department of Veteran Affairs announces a groundbreaking initiative to address health access disparities among black veterans.

Starting point is 00:01:47 We'll be talking with the VA's press secretary to discuss the PACT Act. A black family in Texas faced terror at the hands of police officers who mistakenly accused them of driving a stolen vehicle. We'll show you the chilling video highlighting the racial disparities in law enforcement and the urgent need for accountability.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Democratic Party finds itself at a critical juncture, grappling with internal divisions over the path forward for voting rights litigation. The lead up to 2024 presidential election. We'll speak with the founding partner of Hint Strategies to unpack also how the Democrats must focus on black voters and how they must change their language and strategies in doing so. Also, I talked with Teresa Runstantler, a professor and historian of race and sports at American University about her new book, Black Ball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the generation that saved the soul of the NBA. Also, folks, we will share with you what took place at the Alpha Phi Alpha Convention last week where General Brown, the brother who Biden touted to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was honored by his fraternity.

Starting point is 00:02:56 It is time to bring the funk, a roller mark, and a filter. With Black Star Network, let's go. He's got whatever the piss he's on it Whatever it is he's got the scoop, the fat, the fine And when it breaks he's right on time And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling, yeah It's Uncle Roro, y'all

Starting point is 00:03:24 Yeah, yeah It's rolling, Martin, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah of Veteran Affairs, they have a new agency, it's called New Agency Equity Team, called IDEA, standing for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access. IDEA Council was established last month to ensure the VA delivers on its promise to provide world-class care and benefits to all veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors, regardless of their race, age, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, or sexual identity. Some of that includes the most significant health care and benefits expansion in the history of the VA. It's called the PACT Act, which was signed to law by President Joe Biden last year. It may benefit veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Since the

Starting point is 00:04:30 law took effect, officials said they have received more than 744,000 PACT-related claims and 103,000 enrollments. Terrence Hayes, the Department of Veteran Affairs press secretary, joins me right now to discuss this. This was not easy to pass. You had a lot of, initially, Republicans who were opposing it. You got people who were running out there talking about they love the military and let's fight for veterans, but they were fighting against this. And so folks who don't know, what does it exactly do? How comprehensive is the PACT Act?

Starting point is 00:05:02 Roland, this could potentially impact more than 6 million veterans. Six million? More than 6 million veterans and survivors. So we're talking Vietnam War veterans. We're talking Gulf War veterans. We're talking post-9-11 veterans like myself. Those who may have come in contact with Agent Orange, burn pits, or other toxic substances because of their service. So this gives us at VA the opportunity to really get more folks enrolled

Starting point is 00:05:28 into our healthcare system where they will receive better outcomes, but also there's benefits due to many of these individuals, and that's why we're doing a full court press right now to inform and educate as many veterans as possible. So what is a burn pit? What is that? Burn pit is anything that, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:42 I was in Iraq myself, and it's where we dispose of anything you can name of. You're talking about food waste. You're talking about garbage. You're talking about feces. You're talking about jet fuel. All of those things go into this burn pit to burn it away. And unfortunately, it's on the camp that many soldiers and service members reside on. So as a place in there are burned and as we see that photo there, go back to the photo that you actually showed, and then those toxins obviously in the air and then going across the base. Absolutely, absolutely. So again, this is critical that we ensure that on the VA

Starting point is 00:06:16 that we deliver on our promise to give care and benefits to those veterans potentially impacted by those burn pits and their survivors. Now, you talk about this enrollment period. Is it a set number of years? Is there a cutoff date? No, there's no cutoff date. The great thing is that you can apply for PAC-DAC benefits today, 10 years from now, 30 years from now. That's not going away. However, there is a sense of urgency where we're approaching the one-year anniversary of when President Biden signed the bill until last year. And it's important that veterans impacted and survivors please enroll or actually, excuse

Starting point is 00:06:50 me, apply for benefits on or before August 9th, because then you're potentially eligible for backdated benefits to when President Biden signed the bill last year. So that's 12 months worth of monetary benefits on top of other benefits that survivors may have as well. We're talking about education benefits, stuff like that. Now, when you say survivors, so let's say the family member has someone, they've since passed away. Can they apply? Exactly. Spouse, children, if you know that your loved one, your veteran passed away because of any of those conditions, and you can find those conditions at our PACT Act website, va.gov slash pact.

Starting point is 00:07:25 If anyone passed away because of any of those conditions, we are encouraging them to stop what they're doing, apply today. There's benefits due to them. Let's go to questions from our panel. I'm Dr. Julianne Malvaux. She's a dean, College of Ethnic Studies, California State University, L.A. at the Amakongo Dabinga Senior, professor of lectures at the School of International Service at American University.

Starting point is 00:07:46 Glad to have both of you here. Julian, you first. Sure, brother. First of all, thank you for this information. It's very important information. I think, how does this especially affect black women? I know that we have significant numbers of black women vets who are very often overlooked. Can you talk specifically about

Starting point is 00:08:02 this PACT Act of black women? Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I was just in Boston this past week at the NAACP convention where we signed an historic memorandum of agreement to where now the VA, for the first time, will collaborate and work alongside the NAACP to figure out better ways to ensure that we're delivering world-class care and benefits to veterans, specifically black and brown veterans. The NAACP will help us be able to look at ways where we can bring in more black and brown physicians, clinicians, nurses, frontline workers. We know that when you go to a doctor and that doctor typically looks like you, you have better outcomes. So again, that's one

Starting point is 00:08:42 of the things that we are doing and we're hoping that we can collaborate with the NAACP to do better at that, to ensure that when women veterans, specifically women veterans of color, come to VA, that they have a doctor that they can trust and that provides them the actual care that they deserve. I'm a Congo. First of all, thank you, sir, for this incredible announcement and the wonderful work. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Bannock-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

Starting point is 00:10:09 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 multi-billion dollar company

Starting point is 00:10:36 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.

Starting point is 00:11:07 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.

Starting point is 00:11:24 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. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

Starting point is 00:11:49 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.

Starting point is 00:12:03 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.

Starting point is 00:12:24 ...you are doing. My question is about outreach. You talked about how people have until August 9th to be able to get, you know, to have file back claims and the like. What is it that you all are doing, one, as relates to the outreach to getting to people who already feel like, oh, the VA is not doing anything for me and already stopped and gave up on even filing claims. So they may not get this information and what can the rest of us do out here to help spread that information great question uh that's one of the things we're challenged with and you know the va of old would have just you know put the information out there and hoped and prayed that you know veterans would find that information but what we're doing now is we're going into the backyards of those veterans we're going to where veterans are to ensure that they have that information

Starting point is 00:13:05 so they can apply for these benefits. And then another thing that we're doing, we're trying to earn and many times re-earn the trust of veterans who may have been denied in the past. The beautiful thing about the PACT Act is that because of now what's called presumptive conditions, and if you have a presumptive condition, the burden of proof is no longer in the hands of the veteran. So if you have any of those conditions because of that, basically all you need to do is sign up, apply, and it's automatically assumed that that condition is because of your service. In the past, it would have been very difficult. So to any veteran out there who may have been denied multiple times, I'm encouraging you as a veteran myself, a black veteran, to please apply today.

Starting point is 00:13:45 Give us another shot to get to yes. A lot of people really don't understand. Again, if you may not have someone who is a family member. But many of our organizations really focus on our black veterans. You speak of NAACP. They have an annual luncheon there this year. Go to my iPad. This was the first year the Alphas had a military luncheon. General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., he gave the keynote speech.

Starting point is 00:14:13 He, of course, is the chief of staff for the Army. This was, they had a long, long photo line. He couldn't get to everybody, so he said, I'm going to go down the line and do fist bumps with everybody. But that's the thing. So many of our black organizations, they have veterans initiatives, Rainbow Push and so many others. And unfortunately, our black veterans are not as connected to many of the organizations out there. So that's why reaching out to these entities is critically important.

Starting point is 00:14:43 Roland, I'll take it a step further. You know, several years ago, you and I may not have even had this conversation, you know, but because President Biden's determination in, you know, telling us that we will be a transparent VA, that's why we're having this conversation. That's why we're partnering with organizations like the NAACP. That's why we're looking into data that shows that we are having disparity issues in delivery of care and benefits to black veterans versus white veterans. We're dedicated to getting this right for our veterans and specifically to our black and brown veterans because this is personal for me. But Secretary McDonough is totally committed to ensure that all of our veterans get the benefits and care that they have earned.

Starting point is 00:15:22 See, this is the thing that is interesting. So y'all know disparity is there. And you have folks on the other side of the aisle who fight diversity, equity, inclusion. They've been attacking the military. They've been attacking Secretary Austin and the Pentagon, saying all these things are not needed. But the reality is we know what's there in terms of that disparity.

Starting point is 00:15:48 Individuals who have been fighting for this country, again, not necessarily, you know, getting the same level of respect. Some people love talking about, oh, how things are equal, but it's not equal when it comes to treatment. Right. Absolutely. And while we are getting better, you know, we are nowhere near where we need to be. And again, we have openly acknowledged, Secretary McDonough has acknowledged on record multiple times

Starting point is 00:16:14 that there has been institutional discrimination when it came to the benefits of black veterans. Again, we're dedicated because of these new teams that you mentioned earlier, the IDEA council, to be able to basically peel the onion back, determine why these disparities exist, and totally eliminate them. Again, earlier you said six billion impacted. In fact, do we know if there's a breakout number for African Americans? We don't know. We don't know how many, but, again, we know that historically many African-Americans have served in our military. So, again, this is vital that anyone who knows somebody who may have been impacted by these toxic substances and served this country, please tell them so they can get the benefits that they've earned. All right, then. Again, tell folks where they can go.

Starting point is 00:17:03 You can go to va.gov slash pact. You can also call us at 1-800-698-2411 to find out information about the PACT Act. Again, this is critical. We have an August 9th timeframe, so you can maximize the amount of benefits that's due to you. So please take advantage of it. Again, this is the website folks, va.gov, P-A-C-T. So you go there, you see all the information. And again, you see right here,

Starting point is 00:17:32 it says there's no deadline to apply for PACT Act benefits. But if you file your PACT Act claim or quickly submit your intent to file by August 9th, 2023, you may receive benefits backdated to August 10th, 2022. So don't wait to apply today. And so all information is right there on the website. Questions, all kinds of things here where you'd actually go to. You see it says Gulf War era and post-911 veteran eligibility, Vietnam era veteran eligibility, and lays out getting benefits and all information that you will need. So please go there, va.gov forward slash P-A-C-T. Terrence, we appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:18:15 Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me, my brother. All right, folks. Got to go to break. We'll be right back on Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Don't forget, download our Black Star Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV.

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Starting point is 00:19:08 Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zale, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Be sure to get a copy of my book, White Fear, How the Brownie of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. They're available at bookstores nationwide. Barnes & Noble, Target, Books and Mail. You can also get your book on Amazon,

Starting point is 00:19:26 download your copy on Audible. We'll be right back. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well-off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits?

Starting point is 00:19:52 Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn minds there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital we're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.

Starting point is 00:20:50 I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women.

Starting point is 00:21:26 This is white fear. Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherri Shepherd Talk Show. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching, Roland Martin Unfiltered. Folks, the Frisco, Texas Police Department, they've released body camera footage of a black family being racially profiled and terrorized after an officer mistakenly accused them of driving a stolen vehicle. This video has been circulating on social media, folks, and it shows you what black folks have to contend with. And what's crazy about this story is that it all started because the officer typed in the wrong letter of the license plate watch this whatever is in your hand put it on the roof that's fine open up the car from the outside yes Hey, move your car back.

Starting point is 00:22:50 Move your car back, bro. I don't want them to hit me and then slam into me. Open up your car door and step out of the car. Unlock your car. Unlock your car. Exit the vehicle. face away from us face away from us face away turn around turn around it's okay turn around do not face us everybody Everybody in the car, hands outside the window.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Hands outside. Maintain your hands outside. Basketball tournament, bro. Hey, listen. Listen, sir. This is my wife's car. We're just in a basketball tournament, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, my son.

Starting point is 00:23:39 That's my son. I don't know. Don't worry about it. Listen, bro. We're just here for a basketball tournament, bro. We just learned. We just learned right now. That's why we stopped. Man, don't do this Don't worry about it. Listen, bro, we just here for a basketball tournament, bro. We just learned. We just learned right now. That's why we stopped.

Starting point is 00:23:46 Come on, man. Don't do that to my son, bro. I'm coming out, bro. Come on out. I don't know. Come on out, please. Can you fit that way or no? I can't fit that way, bro.

Starting point is 00:23:56 Here. Come on, man. I'm a basketball coach, bro. It's okay. Look, listen. Look at this, bro. No, no. Listen, bro. I'm a basketball coach. I got concealed carry and everything. That's okay. Look at this, bro. Listen, bro.

Starting point is 00:24:05 I'm a basketball coach. I got concealed carry and everything, bro. That's why we told you. Y'all put a gun on my son for no reason, dog. Can I explain to you? We ran a tag.

Starting point is 00:24:15 The tag came out stolen, but it was the wrong state. Come on, man. Y'all has all goods on this, dog. Come on, man. That's standard protocol. When that dude broke, baby, my brother just got killed not too long ago, bro.

Starting point is 00:24:27 We put our, we didn't. That's bad, that's bad. That's a terrible experience, dog. I mean, I understand y'all got to do y'all job, man, but we all legit, bro. Yeah, I know. We all legit, bro. Where's the keys at?

Starting point is 00:24:39 Oh. What the hell was that? This is my wife's stuff right here. Myra Heard. Heard. I'm actually paying. So I stop you in this thing, okay? So I just...

Starting point is 00:24:51 That's your wife's thing? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So over by the... Let's step over here. Jesus Christ. You know, man. Hey, you're good, man.

Starting point is 00:24:59 You're good. You're good. All right. So it looks like I made a mistake. So I ran an AZ or Arizona instead of AR. And I ran a mistake. So I ran an AZ or Arizona instead of AR and that's what happened. And you can open up the cold water.

Starting point is 00:25:13 I made a mistake. And now we're in the crib and you're probably here. No. It could have went all wrong buster. What do you mean by that? I'm just saying I wonder, like I said, I dropped my phone here. They yelled out, don't move or we'll shoot. And I dropped my phone. If I would have reached for't move or we'll shoot. And I dropped my phone.

Starting point is 00:25:25 If I would have reached for my phone, we could have all been here. That's why we get clear instructions. That's why we're giving you instructions. There's so much shit going on. This shit ain't nothing. No doubt. No, we're so sorry it happened like this. We had no intent on doing this, you know?

Starting point is 00:25:44 We're humans as well, and we make mistakes. I'm not justifying anything. I'm just saying, like, it wasn't a computer that read it. It was our human error that did this. So please forgive us, man. I made a mistake. I made a mistake. No, it's the stuff.

Starting point is 00:25:59 Whatever happens to me, I'll deal with that. I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry, brother. Okay? If you have no aid, you're late for now. We need you to be here. Look, man, I'm going to be honest, man. Being on the scene, knowing that children were involved,

Starting point is 00:26:29 that's why we were moving so slow. We were apprehensive, brother, you know what I mean? We weren't trying to be all fast and stuff. That's why we were moving. Yeah, so I found out that's why I didn't pull you guys out because I figured out the tag, everything was good. Is that already? Yeah, oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:43 He's just going through the whole motions of what it could have been. Best of luck today. What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up?

Starting point is 00:26:53 What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up?

Starting point is 00:27:01 What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? This is a statement from the Frisco Police Department. Due to recent burglaries and vehicle thefts, first of all, let's be clear, this family's from Little Rock, Arkansas. The family was not speeding.

Starting point is 00:27:19 The family was not engaging in any wrongdoing. What happened was these cops, and everybody listen to me very clearly, these cops, go back to the statement, these cops saw the vehicle pulling out of a hotel parking lot and they noticed an out-of-state license plate quote due to recent burglaries and vehicle thefts in which chargers are

Starting point is 00:27:59 frequently stolen an officer conducted a computer check of the vehicle's Arkansas license plate. However, when entering the information, the plate was mistakenly entered out of Arizona. The error resulted in an incorrect registration return, leading the officer to believe that the vehicle was possibly stolen. Goes on to say, when they were pulled out, quote, about that time, a Frisco police sergeant arrived. The sergeant realized the mistake and immediately ordered officers to stand down and ended the high risk stop. Fresno Police Chief David Shilson. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Starting point is 00:29:14 Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

Starting point is 00:29:58 So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 00:31:05 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 two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Starting point is 00:31:22 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.

Starting point is 00:31:48 We 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.

Starting point is 00:32:02 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. said they made a mistake quote in our department will not hide from its mistakes okay here's the problem and we have done numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous, numerous stories on black people who have been shot and or killed in traffic stops.

Starting point is 00:33:14 When we had the story just last week, the brother who was tased, he had an incorrect mud flap on the truck. A mud flap. We have covered stories where black people have been shot because they had an item dangling from the rearview mirror and the cops said, oh, that was obstructing their view. Why was that? That was a grown black man. Who was crying like a baby. That was a baby. That was a groan.

Starting point is 00:34:08 I need people to understand. If you want to understand why black people. Die early. Because of stress. That brought. because of stress. There have been people who've had heart attacks in situations like that. That man was in tears because in a split second,

Starting point is 00:34:42 he literally saw that he and his son could become the newest hashtag. And that was a black female cop. In that video, y'all, see, this is where people need to understand. It's not a question of, we talk about the blue. It's not a question of always white and black. This is a black female cop who says, oh, I made a mistake. This black female cop could have cost them their lives. You heard the white officer say that's why we're taking our time, taking it slow.

Starting point is 00:35:34 That brother, his wife and his son are lucky because we've seen other cases where cops from three seconds to 20 seconds would open fire. Mistaking the cell phone for a gun. Oh, my gun accidentally went off. I mean, I could go down the line. Like, literally, y'all, as I am sitting here talking,

Starting point is 00:36:13 I am thinking about the number of stories that we've done like this dating back to when I was on TV one and those black people are in cemeteries right now. It's not enough. I'm a Congo to say we made a mistake and the reason is not enough because we've heard before where the cops said my bad. And we've seen

Starting point is 00:36:50 we've seen where even when they admitted mistake, they weren't charged. And that black family is left to bury somebody. This is not something

Starting point is 00:37:08 just to easily move past. To listen to that grown black man crying because he knew he was that close to being a

Starting point is 00:37:26 hashtag on the Congo. You know, there was a Harvard study that came out early this year or late last year that talked about the community trauma of a police shooting where it's just not the family that deals with it, but the

Starting point is 00:37:42 entire black community for a radius of miles can feel the after effects. But with social media and everything now, it's the entire nation, all of us, all of our hearts raised watching that because we know easily that it could have been us. And you talked about the fact, Roland, that sometimes people can have a heart attack when situations like this happen. The brother didn't have a heart attack then, but it can happen later. We all know what it's like sitting in our rooms, thinking about how we just barely missed getting shot,

Starting point is 00:38:13 barely missed just getting tased, barely missed. I also thought about those sisters who were coming back, I believe, to a university in Delaware, coming from the South, who were athletes on a bus that we talked about in this. That's psychological trauma that can last forever. You know, we've seen situations where family members die after their child gets killed or their mother gets killed. They can't live in their homes anymore.

Starting point is 00:38:33 And the cops just pat you on the back and say, oh, we made a mistake. Go about your day. You think they got, they were able to play effectively that day? What was that car ride like? You know, we're putting that mindset of inferiority and that anything we can take your life at any moment into the minds of our youngest, into the minds of our youngest. And as a father myself, there is nothing that that father did that I would not have done. Begging, pleading for my child's life, not even talking about my own, right in front of these people for the world to see.

Starting point is 00:39:10 So now he's traumatized forever. That child is traumatized forever. And there's more extra video out there where the mother is losing it. And if you had played that part, Roland, I probably would have lost it here as well. People need to understand that this is real for us.

Starting point is 00:39:30 And like you said, it's not just black versus white. When it comes to the cops, it's black versus blue. I'm going to pull this. I'm going to show that video, but I want to show y'all something. I'm going to go back to this story here. While they were talking to the father to show that video, but I want to show y'all something. I'm gonna go back to this story here.

Starting point is 00:39:49 While they were talking to the father and the son, go back to my iPad, it says another officer interviewing the female driver of the vehicle who identified herself as a mother traveling with her husband, son, and nephew, so that were three black men, tells police that a registered gun is inside a locked glove box in the vehicle. Quote, occupants in the car leave your hands outside the car.

Starting point is 00:40:13 We know there is a gun in there. The officer with the loudspeaker is heard saying after learning that information, if you reach in that car you may get shot so be careful. Do not reach in the car, you may get shot, so be careful. Do not reach in the car. About three minutes later, that officer's colleague tells him, the wrong tag was written, this isn't a stolen vehicle. Julianne, the reason that is important, because I think of Philando Castile.

Starting point is 00:40:40 Yeah. Well, Philando Castile told the cop that he had a concealed handgun. That cop quickly fires and kills Philando Castile. That mother likely is losing it because, again, by her saying there's a gun in the glove box, she also saw we could all be in the bed. You know, Roland, this is a family that has been unfairly traumatized.

Starting point is 00:41:16 I don't care if the people are sorry or not. There have to be consequences. You just can't do that. I know. I'm looking at my keyboard right now because she says she put in A, Z as opposed to A-R. But Z and R are not anywhere near each other on a keyboard. If you said it was A, Z, A-R as opposed to A-T, that's not a state, of course. But, you know, I would say, okay, maybe she made a mistake.

Starting point is 00:41:41 Her finger twitched. No, I'm not saying it was deliberate. It was careless. It was stupid. And basically this sister, these beyond counseling, she needs to be suspended without pay for at least a year. The white boy, oh, we sorry, we sorry, human. I don't want to hear that you're human when you reduced my child and my spouse to tears. I don't want to hear about your humanity. I mean, your humanity is incidental to the fact that we could have been killed. I think Richard Wright years ago said,

Starting point is 00:42:11 when there's a lynching in Mississippi, I can feel it in Chicago. And what he was talking about was the universal trauma that black people experience when we see these kinds of things happen. I don't know how many other little black boys who learned about this felt themselves at risk and at danger, felt their own stomachs not up. I don't know how many sisters seeing their man being treated this way and crying and crying. I mean, we know brothers don't let loose like that too often.

Starting point is 00:42:42 He was holding a lot in. And I don't know how many people are sitting saying, spit, that could have been me. And so these little specious apologies, and I mean specious, they're necessary. It should never have happened. There must be consequences. And this is a racial trauma, not a family trauma. We are all feeling this. Yep, absolutely. Folks, hold tight one second. We come back.

Starting point is 00:43:08 Democrats are looking at trying to hold on to the White House in 2024, as well as hold on to the United States Senate. Black voters will be a key, but it is a Democratic Party. And it's white strategists listening to Black people? Or are they going to be stupid again and end up costing themselves the White House and the Senate? We'll break it down next on Roller Martin. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding,

Starting point is 00:43:51 but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

Starting point is 00:44:25 I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 00:44:55 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.

Starting point is 00:45:16 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 Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod.

Starting point is 00:45:47 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.

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Starting point is 00:46:45 content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. ...cultured on the Black Star Network. Up next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes, our special guest, Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. We're going to discuss her new book, The Purpose of Power, How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. We live in a world where we have to navigate, you know, when we say something, people look at us funny.

Starting point is 00:47:18 But when a man says the same thing, less skillfully than we did, right? Right. Everybody flocks towards what they said, even though it was your idea. Right here on The Frequency on the Black Star Network. On a next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how are you being of service to others? Doing for someone beside yourself is such a big part of living a balanced life. We'll talk about what that means, the generation that missed that message, and the price that we're all paying as a result. Now all I see is mama getting up in the morning, going to work, maybe dropping me off

Starting point is 00:47:56 at school, then coming back home at night, and then I really didn't have any type of time with the person that really was there to nurture me and prepare me and to show me what a life looked like and what service looked like. That's all on the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, here at Blackstar Network. Hey, what's up? Keith Tony in a place to be. Got kicked out your mama's university. Creator and executive producer of Fat Tuesdays, an air hip-hop comedy. But right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? All right, folks.

Starting point is 00:48:42 Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Washington Post dropped a story today that those of us in black-owned media, well, look, we're quite familiar with. And that is the struggles that are existing in the party when it comes to attracting black voters. So now let me be perfectly clear. Black women are the largest voting bloc in the Democratic Party. Black men are number two. Yet what we have seen over the past 10 to 12 years has been a decline, if you will, in black voter participation. Now, you look at also what happened.

Starting point is 00:49:23 You do see this uptick, if you will, of black voters, namely black men supporting Republicans. It is not major, but it is still insignificant. Now, the reason this is all important is because there's always been sort of this one size fits all strategy reaching black voters. But as black older voters get older and become ancestors, fewer African-Americans self-identify as Democrat, even though they may end up voting Democrat, but they don't self-identify as Democrats. And so the story in the Post, which we talk about all the time, we've been talking about for years, is nothing new for us. The question is, will the party leaders listen? Terrence Woodbury is the founding partner of Hit Strategist, one of the top pollsters in the business.

Starting point is 00:50:14 He joins me now from Washington, D.C. And this earlier, I'm going to say what the Washington Post would not say and would not write and what the New York Times will never write and what CNN will never discuss and what all these people never say. The fundamental problem is white campaign strategists first refuse to hire, no, let me take it further. White candidates refuse to hire African Americans to run campaigns. Black candidates often times don't hire black campaign strategists they ghettoize black pollsters and if they do hire folks they don't listen to them

Starting point is 00:51:16 and then what they do is those white strategists put all that money in television when you saturate the air and then it just becomes a waste of money because that's how they get paid. They don't put money on the ground. They aren't putting money in black-owned media. And then a week before the election,

Starting point is 00:51:35 when you look at polling data, they freak out and they start trying to figure out how to go spend money with black people, and now it's too late. I pretty much summed it up. I mean, that is, you know, that's a lot of the problem with black people and now it's too late. How about pretty much summed it up. I mean, that is, you know, that's a lot of the problem that we're dealing with here, Roland.

Starting point is 00:51:51 We have, you know, black voters are acutely aware of the role that they play in the body politics, specifically the role that they play electing Democrats. They know exactly the role they play, not only electing Joe Biden, but nominating him. They know what role they play electing Democrats. They know exactly the role they play, not only electing Joe Biden, but nominating him. They know what role they play delivering the House and the Senate in 2020. And Black folks in Georgia damn sure know the role that they play delivering the first Black and—I'm sorry, a Black man and a millennial to the U.S. Senate, again,

Starting point is 00:52:21 securing the control of the House for Democrats. The problem is now they just don't see enough progress on that agenda. Despite Democrats and despite the Biden administration achieving many of the things that black folks were demanding, we have not done a good job connecting folks to the progress that's being made. I keep telling a lot of my friends in the Democratic Party, legislation doesn't necessarily equal progress. It's the ability to access the things in that legislation that equal progress. And that's where we got some work to do ahead of the next election cycle. So let's unpack that because we spend a lot of time on this show explaining what's going on and walking people through. And the reality is, what you just laid out, there are a number of things.

Starting point is 00:53:08 And you've done the data. You've had the focus groups where people said, this didn't happen, this didn't happen, this didn't happen, this didn't happen. And then when you present, well, actually, this happened, this happened, this happened. Then they go, wow, I didn't know that. Correct? I mean, I'll take you even further than that, man. You know, we did a, we created a black agenda with black, with Alicia Garza and the black future labs that, that actually took an account of what black folks wanted to see done on their top five issues on things like criminal justice reform, economic security, climate change, public safety, not just which issue is most important, but what do they actually want to see done?

Starting point is 00:53:52 And when you look at something like criminal justice reform, the top five things on that agenda have all been achieved by this administration. Banning no-knock warrants, banning chokeholds, mandatory body cameras, National Registry of Police Misconduct. This is—I want to be clear. This is not just us giving credit to Democrats. This is us as a movement taking credit for the things that we demanded, that we marched for, that we protested for, that we lobbied for. Those things are getting done. And stating facts. So this ain't like hypotheticals. It's like this happened.

Starting point is 00:54:29 You say you want this. This happened. And as to your point, that's what we fought for. That's right. This is our progress. And we need the movement leaders from Black Lives Matter to Color of Change and Campaign Zero and the rest of them to start taking credit for what the movement is achieving. Because as long as Black folks, look, this was an NAACP survey I conducted last year that showed that seven out of 10 Black folks said that their lives had not improved since Joe Biden became president. Seven out of 10. Roland, if that number is true,

Starting point is 00:55:02 in November of 2024, if 70% of black folks cannot tell you how their lives have improved, Democrats are going to have a problem. The thing that we talk about all the time is messaging. And here's a perfect example. Last week,

Starting point is 00:55:20 Kristen Clark goes before the cameras and announces Patterson practices investigation against the Memphis Police Department. This Biden-Harris Department of Justice has launched eight or nine of these investigations. That's right. One during the Trump years. One. Trump years. One, I have personally said to the White House, how in the world are we seeing the DOJ putting wardens, corrections officers in prisons, convicting people of hate crimes,

Starting point is 00:56:01 convicting officers of abuse and sending them to prison. And y'all don't even put it, you don't even discuss it at the White House podium. You're not giving any attention to what they're doing. And I'm sitting and I'm going, hello? This is basic. How hard is it to stand there and literally say, because again, I get the press releases. The DOJ is making the announcements. And I'm like, why are you not taking victory laps? If Kareem Jean-Pierre is saying that and Biden is saying that sprinkling in a speech, you can sit here and say,

Starting point is 00:56:46 we are holding people accountable. That's right. They ain't not doing it. They are holding people accountable. They just aren't talking about it as much as they need to. And so look, this is the real problem, Roland, about how when we wait too long to start these conversations, it enforces and reinforces the cynicism that people feel.

Starting point is 00:57:07 Because, you know, when you look at some of this economic agenda, tax credits and insulin being capped at $35 an hour, housing vouchers, the work that's been done, when we present that to people in focus groups, the list of progress that's been made, you know what happens, Roland? I'll never forget sitting across from a young black man in Philadelphia who started getting pissed off as he was reading the list of how much progress we had made. And I had to stop and say, wait, I'm showing you the money that is being distributed, the

Starting point is 00:57:40 resources that have been distributed. You just said you need it. Why is that pissing you off? He said, because I can't access any of this. I can't access these tax credits. I can't access these housing vouchers. I can't access these jobs created by the infrastructure bill. And so if we don't connect them to these resources now and instead come around next year and tell them how much we've done for them that they weren't able to access, it just reinforces their cynicism. And when we say, when we say connecting, we say those things. Let me be very specific, Roland. When we needed their votes in 2020 and in 2022, we put in the palm of their hand, click here to access your ballot, click here to find your polling place, click here to commit to sign this pledge that you're going

Starting point is 00:58:32 to vote. Well, now they need to click here to apply for those tax credits. Click here to apply for those millions of jobs created by the infrastructure bill. And the example that I often give is Obamacare. Look, passing the Affordable Care Act was one of the most significant legislative achievements of the Obama presidency, but he didn't stop at passing it. He spent millions of dollars connecting people to it, counselors, you know, stopgaps, websites, apps, all types of ways of connecting people to the health care that they needed because just passing the legislation was not going to. Well, I mean, that's that's why I'm just going to use as an example.

Starting point is 00:59:13 That's like me sitting here going, hey, I need y'all to support Roland Martin Unfiltered and the Black Star Network. But I never give out the cash app. I never give out any information. I never explain what we're doing. I never show people how we're progressing. I never show them what we've done with the money and how we bought new cameras and done things. And if they don't see it on the screen, it's like, well, what did you do with the money? That's right. That's why we do it. And the thing is, it's also understanding language. You said something that was important. Actually, I'm going to do this here.

Starting point is 00:59:55 I'm going to go to break real quick. I'm going to come back. We're going to come back. I want you to talk about language. Because we had you on right before the 2022 election, you explained why they can't use the phrase voter suppression in talking to younger voters. It's language. And even stuff like that, people are not getting.

Starting point is 01:00:14 So Terrence, hold tight one second, folks. We're talking to Terrence Whitbury, his strategies, right here on Roller Martin Unfiltered, the Black Star Network. We'll be right back. On a next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how are you being of service to others? Doing for someone beside yourself is such a big part of living a balanced life. We'll talk about what that means. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Starting point is 01:00:45 Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday

Starting point is 01:01:10 lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 01:01:47 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.

Starting point is 01:02:24 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.

Starting point is 01:02:50 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.

Starting point is 01:03:01 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.

Starting point is 01:03:21 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

Starting point is 01:03:35 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. ...that missed that message and the price that we're all paying as a result. Now all I see is mama getting up in the morning, going to work,

Starting point is 01:04:04 maybe dropping me off at school, then coming back home at night. And then I really didn't have any type of time with the person that really was there to nurture me and prepare me and to show me what a life looked like and what service looked like. That's all on the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, here at Blackstar Network.

Starting point is 01:04:29 When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture, you're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. A lot of stuff that we're not getting, you get it, and you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us.

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Starting point is 01:05:25 Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hey, what's up, y'all? I'm Devon Frank. I'm Dr. Robin B., pharmacist and fitness coach, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Welcome back. Roland Mark on the filter. We're talking with Terrence Wilbury, hit strategies,

Starting point is 01:05:47 one of our top pollsters, Terrence, uh, language, what you say, how you say it, what resonates with voters. Two things.

Starting point is 01:05:56 One, talk about, talk about your, your, your voter suppression data. But one that blew me away was when you said, when you say we need you to vote because folk died for it, they ain't feeling that. But when you say your vote could be the difference,

Starting point is 01:06:13 that speaks differently and resonates with black voters. Explain. That's right. You know, we've done a lot of work around messaging and narrative with black voters, which is where a lot of the challenge is. It's not as much a governing problem as it is a messaging problem in some cases. And one example of that is the way we talk about voter suppression efforts, right? We found that using that language, voter suppression, it incites this expectation that that is something that we've dealt with before. That was something that we marched for in the 50s and 60s. That was a civil rights challenge.

Starting point is 01:06:50 And, in fact, there's just a distraction from the real challenges that we have today. But instead, when you talk about efforts to make it harder for just enough people to vote to make the difference, that is something that's familiar to people. And you've got to be specific. Your data says, say, they are closing voting locations. That's what you say instead of voter suppression. That's exactly right. That's right.

Starting point is 01:07:17 Voter suppression sounds like something from the civil rights movement. But when they're just trying to make it hard enough for just enough people to vote by doing things like closing a few locations, by ending early voting periods, that these are things that people are familiar with and they know people that have been impacted by it. And then they become more resilient. They become what we call voter vigilance. They're expected to overcome those barriers. Another example, Roland, that? They're expected to overcome those barriers. Another example, Roland, that I think is going to be very important in this next election, because in 2022, defending democracy was the second biggest issue that Democrats spent money on, second only to abortion. The second issue that we spent the most money on was defending democracy.

Starting point is 01:08:01 I expect those two issues to rise to the top again this cycle. The only difference now is that we can't keep expecting folks that have had mixed results from democracy, that don't always win from democracy, that those may not be the people that are most likely to defend it. The simple language shift that we have to make here is from defending democracy to fixing democracy. And fixing democracy includes a bunch of things that Democrats agree with anyway, getting big money out of politics and reforming the electoral college and automatic voter registration. But what it does is acknowledges to folks that we know that there's something wrong with it. And we're not asking them to just stand in line and defend the status quo,

Starting point is 01:08:46 but that we need to fix it through some of these common sense democratic reforms. I laid out a series of things that I think need to happen, and I've been very vocal about this on the show. And this is what I've said. Right now, this is the end of July. This is in August 2023. said right now this is the end of july this is we're in august 2023 i believe that right now we are in what i call the education period that's right so i so i sort of in television we use a phrase called uh back timing mean you build a show from the end of the show backwards so if i'm

Starting point is 01:09:19 building this from the election from the election year backwards uh Election date is how I'm looking at this whole deal. That's voting. Before voting, I got to get you registered. Before I get you registered, I got to educate you. I believe what they should be doing, and the CBC is doing some of this. They're not well

Starting point is 01:09:39 attended town halls. I was at one when we were at Essence. It wasn't well attended. In fact, Friday, Congressman Terry Sewell hit me up just today, and she asked me to moderate the one that's happening in Birmingham on Friday. I'll be in Birmingham beginning tomorrow for NABJ, and she asked me to do this one. I'm going to show you the graphic in a minute. And hopefully that's going to be well attended. But you have to walk people through. You have to teach people.

Starting point is 01:10:12 And I think what you're talking about and what I'm talking about, there should be literal town halls, voter engagement, low propensity, high propensity. It should be micro-targeted. There should be specific conversations with black men, specific conversations with black women, specific conversations with black entrepreneurs, specific conversations with different groups

Starting point is 01:10:34 because you have to tailor messaging to those different people. I experienced it when I was in Georgia. There was a black woman who, a black woman who owned a coffee shop, who supportive of Roe v. Wade, but she said her number one concern was tax policy. And she was listening to Hershel Walker.

Starting point is 01:10:57 So you can't look at her and just go, oh, talk about the Dobbs decision. She was like, no, I'm looking at, I own a business. I've got employees. I'm looking at taxes. And that's the kind of micro-targeting Democrats that better understand that should be happening right now. These constant engagement conversations and not always going to the damn barbershop and beauty salon. That's exactly right, Roland. You know, I appreciate you, brother, because you are doing a lot of the civic education that we need. And when you start to disaggregate

Starting point is 01:11:29 the black community, you know, we've created these clusters amongst black voters that really begin to put them into these categories of groups of black voters beyond just age and gender. Right. Because when you when you start to break them out, there's a very cynical group of black voters that are closest to the pain, that haven't felt like democracy has been working for them. For a lot of them, they are choosing to withdraw. They are choosing to not participate in a system that does not seem to work for them. But then there's another group that's the exact same size, 30 percent, that is not cynical. In fact, when you ask them, they say they participate in every election.

Starting point is 01:12:09 But the record shows that they didn't miss a few. That's just a lack of information. When I talk to them folks in focus groups, they actually get pissed off that they missed the last election. Well, there's a different intervention for the cynic that says this doesn't matter, that voter, in fact, needs to be persuaded to re-engage, while this other voter, this lower information, aspirational voter that thinks they vote in every election, they need to be informed and empowered. And so we got to make that difference. And the last thing I want to, you know, as we talk about this language shift, and I've been responsible for some of this this as I've been trying to close the gap

Starting point is 01:12:45 between black men and black women. We have to stop talking about the problems with black men because it seems to imply that they're the problem. Yep. Instead of talking about the barriers that have been erected against black men. And there are barriers that we need to start tearing down. And it ain't black men's fault that they're there,

Starting point is 01:13:04 but it's our fault if we know that they're there and we don't start removing them. Before I go to Julianne and Omicongo, here's the other thing that you also got to do. You got to give black men credit. Doug Jones, when he won the election, it was very interesting. All of these stories, nearly every story,

Starting point is 01:13:25 and let me be real clear. I done put a bunch of sisters on the air. I have higher heights, named and so. Can't nobody see me and try to question my credentials to come to black women. But damn near every story, black women elected Doug Jones. Because it was 96%.

Starting point is 01:13:45 It was 92% for black men. And so what happens is, and this is a very, what I'm about to say right now, is a very touchy subject because I've seen it play out and

Starting point is 01:14:01 Siobhan was on the panel with us at the Alpha Convention where she talked about this here, this pitting of black men and black women. But the reality is, and I'm going to say this, and brothers, y'all can act a fool if you want to, we do have to acknowledge ego. We do have to acknowledge misogyny. We do have to acknowledge sexism and paternalism.

Starting point is 01:14:26 But there is this sort of thing where brothers are voting but folk act like they ain't important. That's right. And so psychologically for a certain group of black men, when all they hear is black girl magic and black women this and black women that

Starting point is 01:14:41 and black women this and black women that and they never actually hear black men being affirmed politically, then they go, well, shit. What about us? Out of hell with this. We ain't interested. And that is also what Republicans are seizing on. That's right.

Starting point is 01:14:57 And because the other side of only hearing black girl magic and black women deliver, which they are, both delivering and magic. The other side that black men hear a lot is toxic masculinity, you know, and the problems with sexism and chauvinism. And look, I got to remind a lot of Democrats often that not all masculinity is toxic. And we cannot allow Republicans to claim these values that are so inherent to who black men are. Black values like family, like masculinity, like Jesus, not just God, but also Jesus is critical to a lot of the foundation of who a lot of black men think they are. I mean, believe that they believe they are. And far too often we've ceded those values to Republicans, and that's how they're starting to make progress.

Starting point is 01:15:50 Also, wealth creation and independence. You know, not all black folks is poor. This ain't always about reducing poverty. Some of it's about creating wealth. Hey, look, I was asked by the White House after President Biden's State of the Union speech, and they said, hey, what do you think? I said, yeah, it was a good speech. I said, but y'all need to focus on business creation and building scale.

Starting point is 01:16:10 I said, I'm telling you right now. I said, the numbers are real. And see, people don't want to own up to some stuff. Look, I found a school choice is the black choice. Andrew Gillum learned that in Florida. Nobody can explain why 18% of black women voted for Rhonda Santus because he was talking about opportunity scholarships. It's a whole bunch of black women want to make sure their kids get educated,

Starting point is 01:16:33 and school choice is one of those issues. It's a lot of Democrats who oppose charter schools. They oppose vouchers. But guess what? It's a big percentage of black people where that is important, and if you go so hard against that, they like, yo, I'm a single voter issue. And so these are the nuances of the 21st century black voter that these white campaign strategies and candidates don't seem to understand. It's happening in real time. That's right, Roland.

Starting point is 01:17:05 Look, man, I appreciate you giving these platforms some voices that just have an alternative perspective because, look, there is an opportunity here to really mobilize and catalyze the progress that's been made. I think we have to do a few things different, change some of the language. We've different, change some of the language. We gotta change some of the messengers,

Starting point is 01:17:27 not just the message, but change some of the messengers. We need us telling us how we have made our lives better through by voting. That's not always gonna be because of some hero in Washington. Sometimes that's gonna be because you and I stood together and voted last cycle. We were able to do X, Y, Z, but we're not done yet.

Starting point is 01:17:49 And that's a very different message than just trust these politicians and keep voting for them and they'll fix your life. It was a young man in Florida who told me, Roland, in a focus group, my hood didn't get any better under Obama. It didn't get any worse under Trump. So what does Joe Biden have to do with me? And for that young man, his cynicism is based in his proximity to the pain. The best thing we could do for him is not a message. The best thing we could do for him is relieve that pain. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one.

Starting point is 01:18:33 The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Starting point is 01:19:04 Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 01:19:36 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.

Starting point is 01:20:04 Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at

Starting point is 01:20:20 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.

Starting point is 01:20:36 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.

Starting point is 01:20:58 Brent Smith from Shinedown. 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.

Starting point is 01:21:13 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. And the thing here, and again, I'm coming to you, I'm a Congo Julian, trust me, I am.

Starting point is 01:21:42 When I talk about black-owned media, the reality, so here's a perfect example. We've been talking now for 34 minutes. MSNBC, Fox News, definitely not Fox News, but CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS,

Starting point is 01:22:02 they ain't dedicating this type of time to the nuance of walking us through that. And what these white strategists are going to have to do is respect black-owned media, and they should be sitting here going, okay, you've got black podcasters, you've got black-owned media sources, and they've got to stop the game of saying we're going to throw them some celebrity influencer money no you're going to pay out of the media budget i know that experience where and i had a member of congress said roland martin owns a media company why is he why why are you trying to pay him out of celebrity influencer money when you should be paying him out of the media budget where you're running spots like everybody else?

Starting point is 01:22:50 And that's the thing. And they can't nickel and dime us. I told two campaigns to go to hell in 2022 where they came to me with some small amount of money to run ads. And this thing and everybody listening as well, this is not just a message for Jamie Harris and the DNC. It is for Senator Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senate Congressional Committee, the DSCC. It's for the DCCC.

Starting point is 01:23:15 It's for the Democratic Governors Association. But it's also for all these progressive PACs and progressive groups. It's for the environmental lobby. It's for the reproductive rights people. It's for the environmental lobby. It's for the reproductive rights people. It's for... LGBTQ. It's for LGBTQ.

Starting point is 01:23:30 That's right. I'm sick of these folks sitting here spending all this money out here and they're not including black people and then when their asses get in trouble, they didn't want to come to us and play Superman and Superwoman and save the day.

Starting point is 01:23:46 And I said this when we were in Atlanta together. All these progressive groups, the number is very clear. They should be putting a minimum of $500 million into progressive groups on

Starting point is 01:24:02 the ground to drive black voter turnout in at least 10 to 15 states. That's just grassroots. That ain't black-owned media. And I've said this to the Biden folks. That little nice announcement in 2016, or 2020, oh, a $6 million historic investment

Starting point is 01:24:24 in black-owned media. Fat Joe said it. Yesterday's price ain't today's price. I mean, listen, I'm glad you're making some demands here, because we gotta there are some voices and some trusted

Starting point is 01:24:41 messengers that are going to be necessary to have in this conversation. Otherwise, we're going to keep engaging the same folks, the folks that are already watching CNN and MSNBC, as opposed to the folks that are tuning in here that are in touch with the community, that know that there's civic education, civic awareness, that there's things that we need to be, information that we need to be armed with so that we can correct the record on some of these things. I'm happy to come on anytime and continue these conversations. Omokongo, your question for Terrence.

Starting point is 01:25:15 So one of my questions, and thank you for all of your incredible work. I'm wondering if you are fearful that as we get closer to the election, some Democrats are going to intentionally try to play the middle, which will lead to them ignoring more black voices and basically end up what happened with Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance in Ohio, where he tried to play the middle and basically said, you know, something to the effect that Obama was wrong, which immediately lost him a lot of black votes. Do you feel like that's going to happen? People are going to try to even ignore more black voices by trying to

Starting point is 01:25:48 play towards the middle in some attempt to get more white independents or white conservatives? You know, unfortunately, I think it takes, unfortunately, like Roland said, he's been having this conversation for a very long time, long before I headlined in the Washington Post today about the need to prioritize black voters. But unfortunately, I do think it takes that headlines like we saw in the Washington Post to jar people's attention, to get them to realize that the key to success is to mobilize your most loyal voters. I mean, this is what Republicans have figured out. We know Donald Trump isn't reaching to the middle. He's not trying to persuade some mythical swing voter.

Starting point is 01:26:31 He's trying to juice his base. Everything he says, every stage he walks on, every headline out of that campaign is to juice his base. And it works. He surges the right. And we have an opportunity to surge the left. I think that a lot of the surge that we saw from the left in 2020 was a response of the movement. A lot of that was the Black Lives Matter protests and the groundswell that we saw from young people. And in 2022, a lot of that was from the reproductive justice movement. Well, this time, either we have to recreate those movements or we have to find new ways of harnessing that energy that is oftentimes coming out of young people and multiracial coalitions. Julianne?

Starting point is 01:27:18 First of all, Mr. Woodbury, thank you for your work. Yeah, thank you for your work. I think you've created some nuances here that we need to pay attention to. At the same time, I'm just going to say this to y'all, both of y'all brothers. I love my black men, always have, always will. But y'all got to back up off of some of this stuff with your own sexism. You know, I appreciate what you said, but let's be clear. There has to be a conversation among black men, bringing people like Siobhan to the table to say, Siobhan, the sister who's head of NCNW, to say, how can we talk about getting out of this?

Starting point is 01:27:55 Because there's sisters who will walk around with their mouths poked out. They believe they're wrong, but they believe that black men cost Stacey Abrams the election. That's an example of that. We as black people, but we as black people refuse to talk about sexism in a way that's calm, holistic, and forward thinking. Do you have any thoughts? You seem to have a lot of ideas, which I appreciate. I wish I could talk to you a little longer. Roland going to cut me off. He has a bad habit of that. But do you have any thoughts about how we have this holistic conversation? And I'd love to talk to you more about how these folks, you used to talk about energizing the base or surging to

Starting point is 01:28:33 the base. How can they surge to the base when they're so paranoid about blackness? Yeah, you know, a part of that is, and this is a part of what we've been trying to do, is use data to correct the record, right? The gender gap that exists between black men and black women and levels of turnout or levels of support for Democrats, it's not unique to black folks. There's a gender gap amongst all racial groups. Women vote more than men of every single race. Women vote more democratic than men of every single race. Women vote more Democratic than men of every single race. Now, that is a little, it is more concentrated amongst Black folks, and that's a part of where

Starting point is 01:29:10 we've got to crack the code. But that's a part of what we have to do here is just start correcting the record. And the second way we do that is to stop talking about the problems within our community, the problems with Black men or the problems with black millennials and start talking about the barriers that have been erected to make it harder for these groups to participate in the same way and with the same conviction. Well, we also got to do, Julian, your question, though, is we got to be honest about what is actually being said. What I mean by that is when you talk about Georgia, there were many people literally a year before the election who was saying to Stacey Abrams and her campaign,

Starting point is 01:29:56 there is a black male perception problem. What's your strategy? And in many ways, stuff wasn't done. See, so when we talk about these things, we gotta recognize, Terrence, there are people who were giving those warnings. Hey,

Starting point is 01:30:16 this is what we're seeing on the horizon. Y'all may want to address that. That was actually happening. Terrence, go ahead. But, Roland, let me just... I'm sorry, my brother, for interrupting you. Roland, this black male perception came out of nothing but misogynoir. I mean, it came out of black, some black men, I'm not saying all, but some black men's absolute hate for seeing black women in positions of power.

Starting point is 01:30:40 And so, hey, you have a black male problem. No, black men had a problem with a powerful black woman. No, no, no, no. Let me walk you through. You say there's a portion of that. You're absolutely right. But it metastasized. And what I am saying is when black men like myself and Terrence say stuff a year in advance, you might want to listen to us. So if then, so what is the perception? What do they say? Perception is sometimes folks reality.

Starting point is 01:31:12 So the perception then doesn't become the reality that you actually counter it beforehand. This is part of what we're talking about. What happened? Hold on, Julian. I'm telling you, and I'm speaking from experience. I know black men who reached out and said, hey, y'all, we're seeing this rumbling. Let's counter this very early. Folk didn't listen to them.

Starting point is 01:31:45 And that's what we're talking about here. We're saying listen to black men, listen to black women, talk to them before it's too late. Terrence. If I could just respond from the data, you know, what we saw after the 2018 election was that had black men voted for Stacey Abrams at the same rate as black women, she would have been governor. And Stacey Abrams was very acutely aware of that statistical fact. And where I might disagree a little bit, I think that she built a campaign to address what Stacey has always done, built data-driven strategy. And so she saw that gap and that gender gap between black men and black women in her first campaign. She made investments and programmatic shifts to address that, and black women in her first campaign. She made investments

Starting point is 01:32:25 and programmatic shifts to address that, and not just in barbershops, but in actually recruiting and enlisting a team of black male surrogates and strategists to go out and pursue those black men. And the result was that Stacey closed the gender gap. The trends that we saw in Georgia bucked all national trends amongst black voters. So I don't want to speed bump that. So all of the stories in mainstream media were black men not supporting Stacey.

Starting point is 01:33:01 No. You're saying the data shows that was a lie. Empirically. I can prove it in the data. It is a lie. Stacey closed the gender gap between black men and black women smaller than it was anywhere in the country. The gender gap between black men and black women

Starting point is 01:33:19 was smaller in Georgia than it was anywhere in America. So it's a lie also. It is a lie. It's also a lie when people say if black men had voted in 2022, she would have won. Folks are putting that by saying that black men cost her the election. You say the data is clear. That's also a lie. It is clear in the data that the gap between, because I did a deep dive to figure out, well, what was the difference between Warnock and Abrams? Who were those voters? I almost suspected that it was going to be some black men in that difference, that more black men supported him than supported her.

Starting point is 01:33:55 It is a lie. They ran even amongst black men. They ran even amongst black women. The gap, the gender gap that Stacey experienced with black men was the exact same as Warnock. The difference in the margin of victory was in moderate white voters that Warnock was able to convince that Hershel Walker was an existential threat. And we did not do the same with Brian Kemp. We did not disqualify him and connect him to the crazy of Donald Trump and the crazy of Hershel Walker. We let him distance himself from that and appear moderate and appear sane. And that worked with white moderates. That's where the gap was.

Starting point is 01:34:34 And what Brian Kemp also did was Brian Kemp didn't do what other Republicans did. He actually showed up at various black events. And so that blunted what typically happens is, oh, you can't even show up. He actually showed up. He actually had it wasn't a huge one. He actually had a black strategy. That's right. He was formidable.

Starting point is 01:34:59 He was a formidable candidate. And in many ways, and I've said this on the record, I don't think Stacey lost that race. I think Brian Kim won that race. He did formidable politics, appealing to the right, appearing to stand up to Trump while still maintaining Trump's base. I mean, he did what I did not think was possible. And he defied a lot of what I expected to be the conventional norm, which was if you do not capitulate to Donald Trump, then his base will make you pay a price for it. And the last point here, what you just laid out, and this is part of the problem, when you allow mainstream media, mainstream media, mainstream white media ran with that story. Black men are the problem. Black men are the problem. black men are the problem, black men are the problem, black men are the problem.

Starting point is 01:35:47 And people start thinking, well, black men are the problem. And you know who they were not listening to? Black-owned media, where we were actually saying, y'all, that ain't the problem. On this show, we laid out the things that Stacey Abrams was doing in terms of reaching black men. But you had some brothers, oh, it was too late. Dude was there the whole time.

Starting point is 01:36:08 But that's what happens when you let white-owned mainstream media set the agenda. Final comment, Terrence. You know, this is one that we're going to have to continue to correct the record on, both within our community and to folks that claim to serve our communities. We do have to correct the record on the gender gap between Black men and Black women. You've heard me say this, Roland. The one that I'm even more concerned about is the generation gap between younger Black voters and older Black voters. I say all the time, Black seniors are my favorite voters because we know they're going to vote and we know who they're going to vote for.

Starting point is 01:36:42 That is not the case of Black voters under the age of 50. They need to be convinced to vote. And more and more frequently, they need to be convinced to vote for Democrats. Absolutely. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things

Starting point is 01:37:11 we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters,

Starting point is 01:37:24 and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

Starting point is 01:37:41 I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 01:38:18 From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Starting point is 01:39:01 I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

Starting point is 01:39:14 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.

Starting point is 01:39:35 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.

Starting point is 01:39:48 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. Terrence Wilbury, Hit Strategist. We appreciate it, brother. We'll have you back again.

Starting point is 01:40:16 Thank you, brother. We come back. I'm going to pick up on that particular point there, talk about it with Omokongo and Julian. We come back right here in Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. I'm Faraji Muhammad, live from L.A., and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me.

Starting point is 01:40:43 We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. Blackstar Network is here.

Starting point is 01:41:04 Oh, no punch! I'm real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart.

Starting point is 01:41:25 Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Hello, we're the Critter Fixers. I'm Dr. Bernard Hodges. And I'm Dr. Terrence Ferguson. And you're tuning in to... Roland Martin Unfiltered. Thank you. 2012, 2016, 2020, 2022, 2018, we are on this, my TV1 show, this show. I often would show people various studies when it came to black voters.

Starting point is 01:42:25 The point that Terrence Woodbury is making at the end there, people need to understand. The folk who are going to show up, 65 plus. I remember National Coalition on Black Civic Participation had their phone banks. And I think they were called in Florida. And so they reached this one household was the sister she was in like her 70s and 80s she said baby let me be clear with y'all my son is picking me up tomorrow at X time and taking me to the polls to vote y'all need to stop calling me because I got my voting plan.

Starting point is 01:43:08 Call somebody else. It was too funny when they relayed that story to me. And so the numbers are there. They are going to turn out. I say to millennials and Gen Z constantly, you may have the numbers, but you're not maximizing your numbers. I say the exact same thing to Latinos. In Texas, there are 2 million eligible but unregistered Latinos in Texas. There are 700,000 eligible but unregistered Latinos in Texas. There are 700,000 eligible,

Starting point is 01:43:46 but unregistered Latinos in Texas. A study was done in 2022, the exit poll show, that 75% of all Texans under the age of 30 did not vote. 75%. And so when we're talking about what's happening now, this is where the voter education comes in.

Starting point is 01:44:11 We've got to have real conversations about two young voters to explain to them you sitting out elections means that those who are Gen X or Baby Boomer, they're the ones who are deciding your future, so you can't complain about the old folk deciding our future when you're not showing up, which means that, and I say this all the time, Julian, I'm a Congo, I say it all the time how we got to go back to Schoolhouse Rock 2.0, 3.0,

Starting point is 01:44:42 and literally walk folks through basic civics, not saying, well, y'all are stupid, but saying you never actually was taught these things because that's really a fundamental problem here. I remember 2016, I'm a radio show. Black woman, she was in her 20s. She called to the show, and she said, I ain't feeling Hillary. I ain't feeling Donald Trump at all.

Starting point is 01:45:16 So I'm not voting in the presidential election. I'm focusing on state issues. I said, where you from? Again, I think she was like 23 or 24. Activist, engaged. So you would think, what I'm about to tell you, she knew. She said, I'm from North Carolina. I said, okay. I said, what are the three issues that you plan on focusing on?

Starting point is 01:45:49 And so she threw the three issues out. I said, okay. I said, now you said you're not going to vote in the presidential election, right? She said, absolutely not. I'm not feeling Hillary or Donald Trump. I said, are you aware that your two U.S. senators have blocked two black women who President Obama nominated for the federal bench. It was Tillis and Barr.

Starting point is 01:46:30 I said, are you aware of that? She says, no, I'm not. I said, she said, my number one concern in North Carolina, voting rights. I said, interesting. I said, are you aware that it's federal judges who have ruled against North Carolina's voter suppression bills? I said, so if you telling me that voting rights is your number one issue in North Carolina, but you're sitting out the presidential election, then you're sitting out the person who picks federal judges.

Starting point is 01:47:13 Then you're sitting out the U.S. Senate race where they confirm federal judges. I said, so sister, I'm confused. How can voting rights be your number one issue and you're completely ignoring the individuals who play a direct role in the issue that you say

Starting point is 01:47:39 is your number one issue? Julianne, she was stumped. I said, sister, I said, sister, you're not connecting the dots to how federal policy has a direct role on what's happening in your state.

Starting point is 01:48:01 She was blown away. Well, you know, one of my favorite stories that I'm told not to repeat is of a young lady who told me she could not vote for Hillary. And she got very emotional at the 16th Democratic Convention. I had played some role in her getting there. So, you know, I was a little fried when she jumped up. She could not vote for them. So I stopped speaking to her.

Starting point is 01:48:26 Two years later passed. Here we got gorsuch and kavanaugh baby girl calls me doc and she's all emotional again what are we going to do about our abortion rights and i said baby girl i'm over 60 i don't have abortion rights but what you have is a problem because you did not have forward thinking politics are not personal this is what our young folks need to say you don not have forward thinking. Politics are not personal. This is what our young folks need to understand. You don't have to like the person. You have to look at what their platform is. I think it was Bill Clay, senior, said, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just

Starting point is 01:48:57 permanent issues. And that's what our young people need to understand. I don't care if the person is charismatic. I mean, if Trump had a brain and he was pro-affirmative action, well, I can't say I would vote for it, but I have a lot of ifs there if he had a brain. But in any case,

Starting point is 01:49:13 they have gotten this stuff so personalized and you said something earlier, Roland, about, what is it, Schoolhouse 2.0 or 3.0? No, no, Schoolhouse Rock. Those of us who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons, they had Schoolhouse 2.0 or 3.0? No, no, it was Schoolhouse Rock. Those of us who grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons, they had Schoolhouse Rock, and we'd be watching cartoons, and they would have all these jingles teaching you about politics.

Starting point is 01:49:36 How Bill becomes a law. Yeah, that's the one. There's only a Bill. It was only a Bill sitting on Capitol Hill with a nice little... We don't have any of that anymore. Somebody needs to do that. Roland Martin, you got a have any of that anymore. Somebody needs to do that. Roland Martin, you got a lot of stuff to do. Maybe you can do that too.

Starting point is 01:49:49 Well, the thing is, again, here, I'm a Congo, it's not saying y'all ain't nothing, y'all ain't trash, y'all dumb, y'all dumb y'all ignorant it's literally acknowledging that the problem is there is an education gap that no longer exists that teaches people these things i had a brother uh he and i went at it on twitter today and he goes by name done nothing for about the about the national minimum wage and nothing about student loan debt. I said, brother, first and foremost, Congress has to pass a bill to increase the minimum wage before Biden can sign it. Two, Biden did cancel student loan debt.

Starting point is 01:50:46 The Supreme Court overruled him. I said they've used other procedures that have canceled billions of dollars in student loan debt. But what was crazy to me on the Congo, I've had some people actually say, even with the limited cancellation, ah, this is bullshit. It's only $10,000. Right.

Starting point is 01:51:15 Only? Only. I mean, you have some people who are mad that Biden has only canceled $10,000 or $15 15,000 student loan debt, that's 10, 15 grand your ass ain't got to pay back. That's right. That's right, man. It's, it's, it's sad and it's scary. You talk about the information gap. And one of the challenges is that we have people who are

Starting point is 01:51:42 filling that information gap with a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation. So that education that you gave that woman who called you earlier, they're not getting that in other places, even outside of Schoolhouse Rock and places like that. We have in social media spaces, you know, TikTok and YouTube and all of these places, people who are influencers who are out there talking about, yeah, I think I may just sit this one out. Biden hasn't done enough. They're uneducated. They don't even have the knowledge. And so they're really helping create a generation of people who are going to feel like they don't need to get involved, unfortunately, until it's too late. When I teach at American

Starting point is 01:52:19 University, one thing I did last semester was I asked students from January, I started asking them every month, how many rights have we lost in this country? Are we about to lose? And it kept growing every month. And then the other question I would ask them is, what have any of you done about it? And, you know, have you contacted a congressperson? Have you funded an organization that does voting rights? And, you know, fewer and fewer hands would go up. And I'm saying this is why the problems exist, is because of your lack of engagement. You know, you have this idea that you're invulnerable, things aren't going to bother you. And even if some legislation does happen, it might affect poor members of our community in the United States versus you. You think you've got resources and the like, but it's just a matter

Starting point is 01:53:02 of time before they're coming from you. And so when I think about those students who are majority white, I'm thinking, what's happening with the black students? What's happening with the black youth? Where are they getting their information from? Who's filling that void? We haven't seen an uptick from the hip hop community that we saw when like Obama was running and the like. We haven't seen people embracing Black Lives Matter and Black Voters Matter and other organizations like that in the last three or four years like they used to. Right. Or like they did, I would say, seven, eight years ago.

Starting point is 01:53:31 And those types of things are problematic. And so, like you said, this is education time. This is education period where we got to listen to Mr. Woodbury, listen to you, and start really generating the information systems again, because they already exist. We just got to revamp them so we can handle this thing come next year. So again, so folks out there who don't know what we're talking about when we say schoolhouse rock and listen, they probably gonna, they probably gonna put a strike against us on YouTube.

Starting point is 01:54:00 So we probably gonna have to edit this out later. But again, for the people out there who think I'm making this up, y'all, this was actually real. Watch this. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek

Starting point is 01:54:59 editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

Starting point is 01:55:48 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 one, Taser Incorporated,

Starting point is 01:56:15 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 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 two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

Starting point is 01:56:38 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.

Starting point is 01:57:03 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.

Starting point is 01:57:18 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. To find one son Gonna have a three-ring circus someday People will come from miles around

Starting point is 01:57:51 Lions, tigers, acrobats And joggers and clowns galore Tide row walkers Pony riders, elephants and so much more guess i got the idea right here at school felt like a fool when they called my name talking about the government and how it's arranged divided in three like my circus, circus. Step right up and visit ring number one. The show's just begun, meet the president. I am here to see that the laws get done. The ringmaster of the government.

Starting point is 01:58:50 On with the show. Somebody just posted on YouTube, watching this with a big-ass bowl of cereal on Saturday morning. Again, as kids growing up, you're sitting there, you're going, okay, president, Congress, judiciary. This is how our bill gets done. We were seven, eight, nine, ten. That thing was real.

Starting point is 01:59:16 And there really is, Julian, a really, a colossal gap today. I can't tell you. I traveled this country, and I have conversations, I have conversations with people with advanced degrees, with undergraduate degrees, high school grad, so people might be thinking,

Starting point is 01:59:41 and we'll be thinking, well, you talking to people who don't know. No, it's a lot of people ain't got a clue how government works and who has power and how they use it. That's absolutely the case, Roland. It's very frustrating. We've taken civics education out of our high schools where it used to be. Reverend Jackson, of course, as you know, has constantly pushed for having high school seniors. When you graduate, you also get a diploma. So that's a great thing.

Starting point is 02:00:13 But we've taken civics education out. And so when it's out, you have people who don't know anything about how government works. They have assumptions, like the young man you said Biden hadn't done anything for him. Well, Biden's done a heck of a lot more. You know, Maxine Waters used to always say to me when people talked about the Congressional Black Caucus and people say, oh, the Congressional Black Caucus hasn't done anything. And she says, well, you may not have seen what we did, but you also did not see what we prevented from being done. When people understand the way that government works, they understand both aggression and prevention. And so, you know, it's really a call for us to go back to our Saturday schools, because our curriculum right now is under attack. Not only do you have those fools in Florida trying to change the way you teach black studies, but you have state legislators who are cheap trying to take certain things out of the

Starting point is 02:01:10 curriculum. So civics has been one of them in many other ways, which also affects the long-term body psychic. Music and arts have been taken out in some schools where young men are able to get rid of some of their aggression. See, I think of our brothers every now and then, sports have been taken out. And so, you know, we look at it, they want to go down to the three R's, and the three R's does not serve the long-term development of a civil society. All right, I'll hold tight one second. Can I go to break? We'll be right back and roll about Unfiltered on the Blackstone Network.

Starting point is 02:01:44 I'm Faraiji Muhammad, live from LA. And this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation. You and me, we talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey, we're all in this together.

Starting point is 02:02:06 So let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture weekdays at three only on the Black Star Network. Next on the Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin, who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin.

Starting point is 02:02:57 The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. Hello, I'm Paula J. Parker. Trudy Proud on the Proud Family. I am Tommy Davidson. I play Oscar on Proud Family, Louder and Prouder. Hi, I'm Jo Marie Payton, voice of Sugar Mama on Disney's Louder and Prouder Disney Plus. And I'm with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. All right, folks, welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered here on the Black Star Network. So last week I was in Dallas and Houston for the Urban League Convention, also for the Alpha Alpha Fraternity Incorporated Convention.

Starting point is 02:03:40 And I flew back from Houston early on Saturday morning because I wanted to be at our first military breakfast. And the guest speaker was General Brown. He, of course, was named by President Biden to be Secretary of the Joint Chiefs, excuse me, Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once Tommy Tuberville stops screwing things around. And General President Lanzer presented him with the highest honor in Alpha Phi Alpha. And I can tell you, I'm sitting in the front row, and here you see this 38-year military veteran just tear up and begin, tears began to get in his eyes when he was given the highest honor of the fraternity. I just want to share some of that with you folks.

Starting point is 02:04:30 President of Alpha Phi Alpha, we are afforded great privileges. I think my predecessors would agree. This is one that I value highly because the decision to award you the Alpha Award of Merit was mine. I was not even pensive about it. It makes sense. You are deserving.

Starting point is 02:05:04 What I love is that you can maintain your commitment to Alpha Phi Alpha as all Alpha men pledge to you. So today, by the authority vested in me by the General Constitution and Bylaw of the Alpha Phi Alpha as the general president, I am honored to present to you the Alpha Award of Merit, the highest award, the highest award that any initiated Alpha Phi Alpha man can receive from his fraternity. You, my brother, are the prototype, you are the pinnacle of leadership.

Starting point is 02:05:51 In the military, we esteem you in our brotherhood because you have maintained our stand. We thank you for your service to our nation, your love for our brotherhood, life member, and your commitment to take time out of your schedule as the leader of all in this world in the United States and your soon to be as Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Starting point is 02:06:20 Now, we thank you for coming. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Starting point is 02:06:31 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Starting point is 02:06:39 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anytime you see the folks in the military, they love having these challenge coins. And so I was able to get one of the ones from General Brown. I got a whole collection here. These are, it says on one side, United States Air Force.

Starting point is 02:06:53 And the other side says General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. With the four stars, CSAL 22. That stands for Chief of Staff of the Air Force. First African-American Chief of Staff of the Air Force. First African-American to become Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and now he'll become, if confirmed, once the Republicans figure out what time it's time to get out of the way, he'll be the second African-American ever to be head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The moment that we're living in right now is it is is is a historical moment

Starting point is 02:07:27 on the Congo because you have again if the confirmation and just go back to the general go back. Just let me say thank you. I wasn't aware this was going to happen. I am so honored to stand here before you today as an outlaw. When folk talk about something that's performative, under this president, this vice president, for the first time, an African American, the Secretary of Defense, retired four-star General Lloyd Austin. I give him credit. He ain't no mega, but whatever.

Starting point is 02:08:31 Then you have, of course, General Brown, who will be once confirmed chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And for the first time, you also have a four-star black general in the U.S. Marines. I think he's an Omega, too. And I think— I think he's an Omega with a loud, proud voice. Okay. Well, first of all, that's a little youth group.

Starting point is 02:08:57 But, again, so for people who understand, again, black folks inokongo, we've been fighting in this military since day one. It's important for us to recognize when African-Americans are ascending to these type of positions. Absolutely. And, you know, we commemorate 75th year of the military being integrated. But without it being integrated, you know, even before that, we fought in every war, fighting for the promise of freedom that never came. And, you know, a lot of times younger people talk about, you know, they see their parents who are veterans or a grandfather fought. And they say, why do you hang up that American flag in our yard and so on and so forth? Because it's our flag. We fought. Nobody fought harder for this country to be free than us.

Starting point is 02:09:46 And we are still making history today. Excuse me. No, we go ahead. Let's go ahead. OK. And so and so even and even to this day, we are seeing that. And I'll be very honest and I think we can admit it. I mean, we can talk about Tuberville and his stance on abortion. But we know there's some racism behind it and all of the blackness that's in leadership there. Why the secretary, you know, the secretary of defense, the counterpart in China won't even pick up the phone and talk to Secretary Austin. We think some of that is there as well. But every single day we have to stop and recognize these moments. And furthermore, going back to our last discussion, we have to recognize the person who is making this possible. Every night we can talk about things that Biden could be doing better.

Starting point is 02:10:27 But like you said, you say it all the time. You do good. I'm going to talk about you. You do bad. I'm going to talk about you. Either way, I'm going to talk about you. And so we have a very distinguished history of service in this country. And we have to continue honoring it. Black Star Network and everybody else, because the humility that we bring to the military is only comes in second to the pride that we bring in making this country better by our service. This is a photo, Juliano, General Michael Langley. This took place in August of last year. His family pinning that fourth star, taking off and putting that fourth star again, becoming

Starting point is 02:11:01 the first African-American four-star general ever in the U.S. Marines. That, all of this has happened under a black secretary of defense, under President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris. You know, people have to give President Biden the credit that he's doing. I think, I don't understand why people feel so reluctant to do so. He deserves credit. These are victories. I mean, there are undeniable victories. I'm an anti-militarist, quite frankly, but I still stand up and applaud these victories. This is such an oscillating moment in history for black people. On one hand, we have this

Starting point is 02:11:34 enormous, you know, this pride, these brothers and sisters who are sending into these military positions that they could not have gotten 50 years ago, 100 years ago. I mean, the military just being integrated under President Truman. At the same time, this pride has sparked a backlash that you've written about, that others have written about, with these hateful people who see this progress and so resent this progress that they take over the Capitol, that they go against affirmative action, that they basically want to put us down. The Congressional Black Caucus's press conference last week, when they talked about a, I forgot what they called it, but it was race and democracy.

Starting point is 02:12:16 I don't know. Anyway, they talked about the attack on Black people, the systematic attack. So we must be doing something right if they feel like they have to double down and attack because, frankly, as General Howard said when he wrote about Howard University, tell them we are rising. No matter what they do, tell them we are rising. And that's the praise story.

Starting point is 02:12:40 We're rising. Indeed. All right, folks, hold tight. Once again, I'll be right back. Final break. Be right back in a moment. I'm Phil Chittenden of the Blackstone Network. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's wealth coach, the studies show that millennials and. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Starting point is 02:13:08 Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters,

Starting point is 02:13:30 and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

Starting point is 02:13:51 So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 02:14:26 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.

Starting point is 02:14:39 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.

Starting point is 02:15:09 I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. 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.

Starting point is 02:15:23 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.

Starting point is 02:15:39 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.

Starting point is 02:15:54 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, 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. And Xers will be less well-off than their parents.

Starting point is 02:16:27 What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits? Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network.

Starting point is 02:17:03 Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin, who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network.

Starting point is 02:17:52 Hey, what's up, y'all? I'm Devon Franklin. It is always a pleasure to be in the house. You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay right here. All right, folks. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. All right, folks, welcome back. Roland Martin, unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Starting point is 02:18:08 We talked earlier about a Washington Post story dealing with black voters, but there was another story today that I found to be quite interesting, and that was in Axios that dealt with this split, if you will, between the Biden campaign, the DNC, and Attorney Mark Elias. He is the one, of course, who has been leading in many ways these strategies, fighting these voter laws. And it has been really, really interesting reading this story about how Bob Bauer, who is a top attorney for Biden, also is the husband of Anita Dunn, who is a top official for Biden.

Starting point is 02:18:55 How they've been disagreeing with Elias and his aggressive strategy, suing everyone, saying, oh, the story said that Bauer has been saying that he needs to be more understanding of these conservatives in the federal judiciary. It's all sort of, you know, backroom drama. This was a tweet that Eric Holder put out, the former attorney general. Cy, here's the deal.

Starting point is 02:19:18 The party and the nation owe Mark Elias a great deal. I'm proud to work with him in defense of our democracy. And of course, he's talking about this Axios story, why Biden's team soured on Dems' election lawyer. Now, they say that, well, they hire other lawyers for the DNC, that Elias' law firm represents the DSCC and other Democratic organizations. But here's what's—and I tweeted that this was, you know, stupid.

Starting point is 02:19:46 And this is real clear what I said here on Macongo. And that is this here. Mark Elias, and it's not just Mark Elias, to be very clear, it's Mark Elias, it's NAACP, LDF, it's Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Transforming Justice Coalition, a number of people. They have been very aggressive. And what they say, and Elias is one of those folks who says, you sue everywhere.

Starting point is 02:20:10 You do not give an inch. Every law that is passed by Republicans running these states, he does it all the time. He says, if they pass this law, we are going to sue. We will see them in court. And what's been killing Republicans is they hate Mark Elias because he's been winning. And look, Lou Dobbs was even the one point when he used to be on Fox Business. He said, Republicans, can y'all go raise $500 million and just hire this guy? He's been kicking butt. And I'm sorry. I disagree with anybody in the Biden orbit. You must have a all out war fighting for voting rights.

Starting point is 02:20:54 And this is part of the problem. You know, one of the things the article talked about was how Biden and Bauer wanted to be more strategic and going after certain cases. As slow as this Justice Department has been, as slow as the Biden administration has been, it took, what, 14 months or something before the DOJ decided to actually go against Trump for the insurrection? You can't do that. They move too slowly right now. And so Elias and others that you mentioned as well, you have to target them. You have to have Republicans and these governors spending their resources trying to keep up with this legislation because it also helps put them on blast. He was the one who helped win the case with the Alabama situation that the Supreme Court decided on. And now Alabama is saying that the governor is saying we're not going to listen. So these types of cases, it puts them on blast. This has put ego aside time. This is kind of what we talked about in the last segment.

Starting point is 02:21:46 This is why I asked Mr. Woodbury that question, because I'm fearing with decisions like this, they're making a decision to kind of go towards this middle of the ground stance, this tempered approach. And Republicans do nothing in a tempered manner right now. So people can say Elias had an ego and all this other type of stuff, you know, EGO, edging goals out. We're edging goals out by putting him out like this. And really, this is a mistake by the Biden administration. And you talked about those internal politics, you know them better than most, but really we have to put the eagles aside and keep the eyes on the prize. And Elias should have stayed part of that process. This is one of the tweets that Mark Elias just put out. This tweet went out, let's see here, almost a couple of hours ago. The Elias Law Group sued the Wisconsin

Starting point is 02:22:32 Elections Commission, alleging that a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision prohibiting the use of drop boxes in the state violates voters' rights. Now, Julian, why is this important? Because tomorrow, guess what? The Wisconsin Supreme Court flips to Democrat majority, four to three. So by suing them, it now will go before the Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court can invalidate

Starting point is 02:22:56 the previous ruling and declare drop boxes to be constitutional. There you go. You know, I think Oba Congo is absolutely right about this whole issue of ego. We need pit bulls. The problem with Democrats is they don't want to be pit bulls. They want to be nice. That was President Obama's problem. He wanted to get along with everybody. Well, how can you get along with everybody? If you are taking the food off my plate,

Starting point is 02:23:19 I'm not going to say, would you please remove your hand? I'm going to take my fork and stab you. I mean, literally. So we Democrats want to play nice. White Democrats are afraid of alienating the white middle. And that white middle will flip to their own convenience. This guy's a pit bull. Democrats need to lift him up, applaud him, keep him going. And the fact that we don't do it is why we had that orange man as a president and why people are now worried about whether or not uh president biden can have re-election but without getting president biden needs to just get a backbone i mean i know he 80 and maybe if you haven't had one all this time you're not going to get one now but if you want to keep this position and lift up the values that you have believed in all

Starting point is 02:24:05 your life, then you need to start. Put the boxing gloves on, dude, and let's start fighting. If Democrats don't fight, we won't win. Well, again, this was what tweet allies responding to Michael Steele. Steele had a tweet from a story. He said there's a big problem awaiting us at polling sites in 2024. For example, North Carolina wants to allow observers appointed by county political parties to move freely around polling locations, record poll workers, and stand just five feet away as voters cast their ballots. Eli says, and he does this all the time, if this is enacted into law, North Carolina will be sued. You're absolutely right, Julian. Pit bulls are needed. And so sometimes you got to ruffle feathers. And you know what? Everything can't be done quiet. Sometimes you got to be noisy. Now, Mark Elias

Starting point is 02:24:50 spends a lot of time going on MSNBC. We were trying to get him on the show. So Mark, come on over to Roller Mark Unfiltered. Trust me. Don't only talk to MSNBC. Come talk to us as well. You represent Black Voters Matters and a lot of other groups. And so come holler at black folks as well, because we think what you're doing is right, but it's also important for our audience to hear directly from you. And so we're going to keep inviting him to the show. Julian, I'm a conglomerate. I appreciate y'all joining us on the panel today.

Starting point is 02:25:16 Thank you so very much. Everybody who's watching, thanks for watching us as well. Don't forget us. We want you to support us in what we do. First and foremost, we should easily be y'all at a,000 downloads of the Black Star Network app. Kenan, tell me what the number is. We should be there y'all.

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Starting point is 02:26:16 Minds. And so, get it at all bookstores, you name it, you can get it. And of course, download it on Amazon and download the copy. First of course, download it on Amazon. First of all, get it on Amazon and download a copy. It's audible. Watch us on Amazon Fire TV, Amazon News.

Starting point is 02:26:34 You can see Alexa, play news from the Black Star Network. You can also watch us on Plex TV as well. I'm going to close out the show, y'all, with my man General Brown. Again, it was a long line of brothers at our military breakfast on Saturday morning. And so he could not take photos with everybody, but he wanted to be sure that he give a fist bump to all those military brothers who attended the luncheon. And so we're just going to close the show out with that. Showing that brother some love.

Starting point is 02:26:59 06, I'll see y'all tomorrow. Holla! All right, let's see here. We'll be right back. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have time to stop, brother. All right, all right. Let's shoot videos. Let's shoot videos. Let's go. Guys, shoot videos.

Starting point is 02:27:50 Shoot videos, guys. Hey, hey, hey. Man. Y'all should be shooting videos. Shoot videos. I'm trying to tell y'all. Shoot a video. Shoot a video.

Starting point is 02:27:58 Shoot a video. Y'all should be shooting videos. Oh, oh, oh. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Shoot a video, shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video.

Starting point is 02:28:08 Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Shoot a video.

Starting point is 02:28:24 Shoot a video. Shoot a video. Oh, y'all should be shooting videos. Watch out. I'm trying to tell you. This is just a. I got all y'all. I got y'all. I talked to the gentleman earlier. Please protect me. I got y'all. All right, you're both mine. not good folks black star network is Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now.

Starting point is 02:29:06 I'm proud. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Rollin. Be Black. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

Starting point is 02:29:19 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? Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Tape.

Starting point is 02:29:41 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. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering in the weight and pressure of the world that's consistently on your shoulders, well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Blackstar Network for 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.

Starting point is 02:30:35 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 Blackstar Network. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

Starting point is 02:31:11 Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

Starting point is 02:31:38 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.

Starting point is 02:32:10 A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.

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#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Benefits & Care For Black Vets, TX Police Terrorize Black Family, Dems Debate Voting Strategy

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