#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Black Unemployment Rises, Tulsa Race Riot Not About Race?, Twitter's Rival, Spill, Legacy Admissions

Episode Date: July 8, 2023

7.7.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Black Unemployment Rises, Tulsa Race Riot Not About Race?, Twitter's Rival, Spill, Legacy Admissions The June jobs report indicates the black unemployment rate contributes to the 90-percent rise in the nation's unemployment rate.  We'll examine how much the black unemployment rate rose for the third consecutive month.  #WE-TRIED-TO-TELL-YOU Conservatives are doing their best to rewrite history.  Oklahoma's state superintendent says teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre is OK.  Just leave the part about race out of it.  Justice for Greenwood Foundation founder, Damario Solomon-Simmons, will be here to give his thoughts about this foolishness.  New York legislators are going after legacy admissions.  The executive director of DEFER will join me to explain the "Fair College Admissions Act." Chicago leaders are accusing the school system of racial discrimination and unfairly firing seven black principals.  Twitter has a new rival.  One of the founders of Spill will be here to explain how his former company inspired him to create a platform celebrating black culture.  Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The Biden economy, Bidenomics continues to do well. June job numbers reports indicates the black unemployment rate contributes to the 90% rise in the nation's unemployment rate. We'll also, though, examine the overall numbers

on how we've added more jobs. Also, conservatives are doing their best to rewrite history. In Oklahoma, the state superintendent of schools, this idiot actually said teaching about the Tulsa race massacre is okay, just leave out the black part. How?

Justice for Greenwood Foundation founder, Demario Solomon-Simmons, will join me to talk about how stupid this fool is in Oklahoma. New York lawmakers are going after legacy admissions. The executive director of the FURB, will, Democrats for Education Reform, will join me to explain the Fair College Admissions Act. In Chicago, leaders are accusing the school system

of racial discrimination, unfairly firing seven black principals. Speaking of principals, remember that white teacher, a white principal in Philadelphia who wouldn't give the sister a diploma? Guess what? She ain't a principal anymore.

Plus, Twitter has a new rival. One of the founders of the app, Spill, would join me to talk about their app. It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin, unfiltered, on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it.

Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling. Yeah. Yeah. To news, to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Roland Martin

Rolling with Roland now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know, he's rolling, Martin. Martin. Overall unemployment dropped again. The June jobs report came out today, and the Biden White House shows that they say that their economic policies are working for the country. 209,000 jobs were added last month for the third month. Unemployment is 3.6 percent. It fell to that. But in those numbers, the unemployment rate for

African-Americans rose, causing blacks to account for 90% of the recent increase in the country's unemployment rate. Here to break this thing down for us is Anthony Barr, Research and Impact Director at the National Bankers Foundation. Anthony, how you doing? First and foremost, and so again, so let's walk through this.

Folks kept saying, recession's coming, economy is tanking. All these doom and gloom people, you get the likes of Larry Summers who was saying, oh, my God, we need unemployment to skyrocket to lower inflation. None of those things have happened. So what's going on? Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here tonight. And yeah, as you said, we're seeing inflation coming down without this huge hit to the labor market that some and others expected that we needed. And yet it's two different labor markets, right? There's the overall labor market and then there's labor market for black workers. And so Biden economics is working for the country in the aggregate. But when you break it down for black workers, starting to see that that might not be the case for them.

And so, as you pointed out, black unemployment increased again for the second month in a row. It is now at the highest it's been since August. And breaking it down a little bit, we went from record low in April that we were all celebrating at 4.7 percent, that's the lowest on record, to almost a full percentage increase now at 6.0 percent. And to put that in perspective, that number of 6.0 percent is the same as all workers without a high school diploma. So that kind of puts in perspective just how detrimental that number is. It's, of course, double the

overall rate and double the white rate as well. And when you disaggregate it a little bit by gender, it's a story that's across the board. Black unemployment for black men increased by 0.3 percent to 5.9 and increased for black women by 0.1 percent to 5.4. And drilling down even further, the participation rates, the labor force has shrunk. The participation rates are lower. The employment ratio rates are lower as well. And so it's not just a case of, you know, increased Black workers competing over jobs. It's the case that there's frictional and structural unemployment barriers that the Black workers who are looking for employment aren't finding those opportunities, which is in direct contrast with white workers who increased their labor force

and were still able to drop their labor, their unemployment rate down slightly. Roland, you still there? Did I lose you? Yep, still here. Now, so the question again, is there any way to fully understand why these what's happening fluctuating with the black numbers? So when I look at it from a sector standpoint, I'm not seeing anything stand out in terms of specific sectors. And so this seems like kind of a broad pattern where as we're seeing the labor market start to weaken and cool,

the employers are able to be a little bit more discriminatory about who they're hiring. And so this is a pattern that we see throughout the literature where you've got last in, first out. And as the labor force cools, black workers are the first to not be hired. And so the way that I'm reading this is saying, OK, as you're increasing the number of white workers in their labor force, employers are filtering them into jobs, and they're overlooking black workers who may be talented and able to take those jobs because they have that ability to show preference. And so overall, though, when you look at this,

and so if you're looking at the unemployment numbers, if you're looking at stock market, if you're looking at, again, lowering of interest rates, if you look at gas prices, if you are assessing the economy as a whole, I mean, it literally is a stark contrast to obviously what Republicans say is going on. But also, when you look at the polling data, where a lot of people think that the economy is just, oh my goodness, just awful and terrible. That's simply not the case. Yeah, so again, that seems to be the two-track story, right?

That overall, the economy is doing quite well, despite these interest rate hikes that are supposed to slow down the number of jobs being added and cool consumer demand and things like that. We're not seeing that really reflected in that side of things. But then in terms of the situation for Black workers in particular, it does seem like all

of the gains that we've seen in the last several months are starting to be erased, and there's an increased inability to be sorted into jobs. And this is a question about what the Fed will do moving forward. So they paused their interest rate hikes last month. That's in part because they kind of looked at the turmoil in the banking sector and wanted to make sure that they weren't going to add to it. But now their own staff economists are projecting some form of a recession later in the year or early next year. And so it's a question, are you going to hike into that? Are you going to, you know, make those conditions even worse and do that in a way that will have a disproportionate impact on Black workers?

Or are you going to say, let's continue to wait and see if this two-month increase in Black unemployment is a trend? And if so, maybe we'll pause a little bit further into the future and allow some time for the current rates to already work their way through the system before we see how much further we need to push on it. All right. From a banking standpoint, too, that, you know, the financial turmoil that you could see there as, you know, banks fail or as credit tighten conditions, those things impact minority communities too, right? Because it means less capital being deployed or borrowers who are on the margins or small businesses that have less collateral get denied for those loans. And so I think that's something else that should be factored into there as we're thinking about, can we retain a strong economy moving forward?

See, this is why, again, I think we start to try to break down this economy and break down what's going on and why these things are happening. You simply can't look at one thing. You can't solely look at the monthly unemployment numbers. You can't solely look at the stock market. And frankly, we treat the stock market like it's an NBA game, but we want to see as many points as possible without realizing that you just can't keep going up and up and up and up and up, and everything's just going to be perfect, and this thing's going to keep rising. That's simply not the case. Even if you look at inflation, all these people who are complaining about, oh my God, this is what happened to Biden. We literally had an artificial economy after the 2008 housing debacle.

So you go from 2008 to 2022. I mean, when's the last time you had interest rates that were damn near zero for a decade or more? Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, thinking about the stock market, if you push a little bit on that, you know, the tech, the big tech companies like the Googles and the Facebook, they're the reason that that stock, you know, stocks are up slightly. You know, if you're comparing the last couple of months or, you know, compared to last year when stocks were down, I'm worried that that's not necessarily indicative of the broader Fortune 500 companies or other publicly traded companies. So there's a question, too, about so far the Fed's attitude seems to be they can kind of really keep hiking and there's ability to absorb that. But I do wonder if there's some fragilities that if you start to kind of push a little bit, you start to see them and then you say, okay, how does that translate to heightened risk

for minority communities and minority workers? All right, then. Well, certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. And again, we'll just continue to hope things get better for black workers. But what I keep also saying is this is why we've got to see greater capacity for black-owned businesses as opposed to when you look at the low numbers that exist right now for many of us. Anthony, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Got to go to a break. I'll be right back. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered to talk to my panel about this here. Also, we'll talk about the efforts to get rid of legacy in college admissions in New York State. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

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

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

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

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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. Everybody keep talking about merit. No, they can't stand affirmative action.

They don't say nothing about these white folks who keep getting to the school on legacy. You're watching Roller Marker Unfiltered on the Blackstone Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not be white. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot

tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise 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. This is white fear. Black Star Network is here.

Oh, no punches! 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.

Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Farquhar, executive producer of Proud Family. Bruce Smith, creator and executive producer of Proud Family. Louder and creator and executive producer of the Proud Family, Louder and Prouder. You're watching Roland Martin. All right, folks, joining me today is Michael Imhotep, host of African History Network show, Detroit, Matt Manning, civil rights attorney

out of Corpus Christi, Texas, Kelly Bethel, communications strategist out of D.C. Here's a thing that I'm still not understanding with these folks, Michael, and this is very simple. That is, if you are Biden-Harris, when you start looking at polling numbers, people keep talking about the economy, how awful these things are going bad. Obviously, Republicans are driving the narrative as well. Right. And so now they're running around talking about Bidenomics and some people saying,

oh, my God, you know, that makes no sense whatsoever. Phrases are great. But I think what is critical, it's literally explaining to people in real clear, stark terms how much money has been going out, what money is being spent, putting your name on projects, all of those different things. You have to tell the narrative. You cannot expect people to just assume they know all of these different

things. And so if I'm this White House, I'm taking, I'm not chilling this summer. I'm this White House, I'm taking, I'm not chilling this summer. I'm sitting here in July, August, September, October. I'm going to hardcore taking credit for every damn thing. Yeah, you know, the tour that Biden is going on, dealing with Bidenomics, and then also championing the $1.2 trillion

infrastructure bill because at the beginning of this year, you had about 30,000, at least 30,000 construction projects that started all across the country because of that infrastructure bill. That's a good start with Bidenomics and explaining what has been accomplished, but you have to break it down to the granular level. OK. And you have to not just explain the bill that got passed or how much the bill was. You have to explain how this bill being passed in Washington, D.C., OK, that is not even technically a city. I mean, you know, the mayor doesn't have full control over the city like other cities. Explain how those policies are impacting the economic conditions of everyday people. OK, reduce it to the ridiculous.

That's what you have to do because everybody doesn't follow this. Most people don't. OK, so you have to explain that and you have to claim it. And then also you have to explain most of these Republicans showing up to the groundbreaking for these construction projects voted against the infrastructure bill as well. You have to explain how the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would save the U.S. economy, how it helped keep people in their homes, how it gave $5.8 billion in funding to HBCUs, that and other policies from the Biden-Harris administration. Talk about the 13.2 million jobs created in the two and a half years that Biden- Harris have been in office. So you have to reduce this to the ridiculous and show how each one of these policies are helping people and then tell them, compare this to what Republicans are talking

about. Compare this to their policies, because overwhelmingly Republicans voted against these policies. See, I believe in being even more. Guerrilla with it, gangster with it, Kelly, every Republican event where they are holding a news conference touting the spending or whatever, I would be sending folks there. In fact, I'm going to pull up in a second.

You think about this fool, James Comer. He held an event. I got to find the tweet. He held an event talking about an airport in Kentucky. And he thanked Trump for the money, but there was money in the infrastructure bill that Biden passed forward as well. I would have people of the state Democratic Party at every event. Every event with, thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe, for the money signs. That's how you have to counter these lies. That's exactly right. And it's funny because, you know,

state-level DNCs, they have that kind of money and they actually can hire people to do that. I've actually seen hecklers or professional hecklers, rather. I forgot what the original name for it is, but basically a professional heckler on the Republican side come to Democratic events and heckle candidates, heckle their staff,

and try to get them caught up in saying something that could be a soundbite for the opposing party. I don't see that as much on the Democratic side. And that's actually, while some may argue unethical, it's an effective calm strategy to do so because it's not like you're lying when they say that they said that. They said it. It's videotaped. It's on the record, what have you. And Biden, the Democratic Party at large, I believe, is a little bit soft on these issues as far as pushing what they actually do. I feel like the opposing parties that be are really controlling the narrative as to what this administration is doing. And that's simply not fair to anyone. It's not fair to the American people who, frankly, don't know what the truth is. It's not fair to the administration who is trying to do everything they can for American citizens.

And it's not fair to just how the political landscape is as a whole, because what's going to be on record is a lie, not what actually is happening. When I was at Texas A&M, Matt, Peter Roussell, he was deputy press secretary to Vice President George H.W. Bush. He was an adjunct professor at Texas A&M after he left the White House. And Peter said something to me that I'll never forget. He said,

you know, Roland, he said, never not pat yourself on the back. I was like, interesting. Because we always hear, oh no, don't pat yourself on the back. You're going to break your hand doing so. He said, no.

He said, you know what? Pat yourself on the back. Because there ain't no guarantee somebody else will. He said, always tell your story. And again, to me, this is exactly what Democrats should be doing. Pat themselves on the back saying, if we didn't do this, that wouldn't have happened. And if we didn't do this, that wouldn't have happened. If we didn't do this, that wouldn't have happened. And so,

you got to be as brash with it, as arrogant with it, as cocky with it. I don't care what phrase you use, because what did Joe Namath once say? It ain't bragging if you can do it. So, take that damn victory lap.

I think they should. And I get that sentiment. I do think there's probably some trepidation at the White House about him trying to get moderate voters and people that are maybe undecided. I don't know how many of those are out there for the upcoming election and maybe not doing it with the braggadocio that I definitely would. But in terms of patting themselves on the back, they have to do that. I do think, though, they've got to kind of under promise and over deliver going forward, because one of the metrics I thought was particularly interesting about this jobs report is that we added something like four hundred and fifty thousand people to part time employment. And, you know, the great recession that was supposed to be coming has not come. Obviously, the Biden economic approach has been successful. But I do think they've got to temper some of that with, you know, a regard for the fact that the future

may be a little different, not knowing what's coming down the road. But they do have to tout the victories that they've had thus far, particularly because, to Kelly's point, you know, the Republicans have a loud megaphone and they make it a point to attribute everything negative to this White House. So if you've got a lot of positive, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't, you know, put that out into the sphere for everybody to know and understand. Yeah, I mean, that to me, I mean, that's just how you do it. And again, you can't be afraid. well, what happens if things take a turn? Well, last I checked, if you have been showing improvement for 18, 20, 21 months, and things change in a month or two, I can still say the last 21 out of 23 months, here's what happened. I mean, to me, this is not hard, but there's no one who can sell your story better than you.

Nobody. And if somebody else has created a false narrative, it's your job to correct it and not allow that false narrative to coexist. Folks, hold tight one second when we come back. Supreme Court's affirmative action decision has put the issue of legacy admissions back in the spotlight in New York State as an effort to actually get rid of it. We'll talk with Democrats

for Education Reform leader next about that very issue. You're watching Roland Martin on the filter on the Black Star Network. Download the Black Star Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, folks, you can also, if you're watching on YouTube, hit the like button as well, folks. We should easily be over 1,000 likes in our first hour. Be sure to join our Arena Funk fan club, see and check in money orders. PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash App, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, RM Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back. Early days in the road, I learned, well, first of all, as a musician, I studied not only piano, but I was also... I know a lot of cops,

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

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

it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. 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.

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava

for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set right back. up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. So drummer and percussion, I was all city percussion as well. So I was one of the best in the city on percussion. There you go. Also studied trumpet, cello, violin, and bass, and any other instrument I could get my hand on. Mm-hmm. And with that study, I learned again what was for me. I learned what it meant to do, what the instruments in the orchestra meant to each other in the relationships. Right. So that prepared me to be a leader.

That prepared me to lead orchestras and to conduct orchestras. That prepared me to know, to be a leader of men, they have to respect you and know that you know them. You have to be the teacher of the music. You have to know the music better than anybody. There you go. Right? So you can't walk in unprepared.

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I don't do Stallone, but I could do all that. And I am here with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. As I broke down last night, you look at all of these folks out here who yell, holler, and scream. They oppose affirmative action. Race should not be used. It's merit. It's merit. It's merit.

But then they get mysteriously silent when you talk about legacy admissions. Anybody who looks at legacy admissions can go, who do they benefit? Let's be clear. It wasn't until you look at the majority of these PWIs in America. It wasn't until the late 60s, early 70s, you start seeing black students across the board. At first, they were black athletes. So we were not attending these schools,

which means that, let me just put this thing in context. I was born November 14, 1968. That means that my parents didn't go to these PWIs. My grandparents didn't go to these PWIs. My grandparents didn't go to these PWIs. That means that when I applied to Texas A&M, I couldn't make a legacy argument

because I had no legacy. So I have 13 nieces and nephews, nine nieces, four nephews. So my nieces and nephews are the first generation in my family who could actually make a legacy argument. Now, several years ago when Bob Gates was the president of Texas A&M, when all these white folks were complaining about race being used in admissions, this is a post-Hotwood decision, I was at the news conference. You know what Gates said? We're not going to use legacy. Oh, my goodness, them white agas lost their mind.

So these white Texas A&M graduates lost their mind when Gates announced he wasn't going to use legacy. But they were so pissed off with affirmative action. Because white people only see race when it's black, Latino, Asian Native American. They don't see it as them. Legacy benefits more white people than anybody else in this country, yet they never

want to talk about that. Well, we talked about earlier this week, the lawsuit filed in Boston by a civil rights group against them. Well, in New York, they came close last year to actually banning legacy in admissions in its colleges and universities. It was Senate Bill S-4170A, the Fair College Admissions Act, will prohibit legacy admissions policies at colleges and universities in New York, declaring such policies and practices discriminatory and inequitable. Well, the executive director for Education Reform New York, Jacqueline Martell, joins

me right now. Jacqueline, glad to have you here. So how close did y'all get? We got super close. We actually got it through the Senate and our assembly. But then we had some groups who were against it that obviously endowment from these schools and from families who, you know, give huge contributions to the school. And so it is something that we will continue to push in the next legislative

session. We got very close. We knew that this was coming. You know, when we look at the data for legacy admissions, one, it is equivalent to 160 point bump SAT, SAT bump, SAT score bump. You know, there's more legacy students that are admitted through legacy preference

than there are through affirmative action. And so to your point too, in New York, one of the most diverse school systems in all of the country, but yet one of the most segregated students, we inadvertently are not allowing for students who identify as first-generation college students to even get this preference.

And so it is something that we really, really are continuing to fight for. We have over 70 colleges and private universities in New York who have the legacy preference question still on their applications. It's a problem here in New York. Yeah. And see, and again, for the people who don't understand, you know, these nuances, this is very simple. A white student today who is invoking legacy is benefiting from Jim Crow. Right. And then the same white folks want to tell us, oh, it's unfair for you to benefit and I don't because of Jim Crow. They are literally benefiting from racist policies. Right, right. They're benefiting from racist policies because they have access to affluence

and to wealth, quite frankly. And to your point, this is not even a partisan issue. Our national affiliate actually conducted a poll after the SCOTUS decision around diversity in schools. And I have the data here. Eighty-one percent of Republicans, 93 percent of Democrats, and 83 percent of independents know that diversity within our higher education system is imperative to, one, our democracy, but also the future of the workforce in this country. And so this is a partisan issue, but I think that people really understand the fact that diversity within institutions of higher education is important for all of us. But also, too, when we talk about preferential treatment and preference in the higher education

admissions process, we need to be looking at that holistically. And this country has this ideology of meritocracy, that you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps. That is not true. We live in our state in particular where we're seeing gross amounts of economic disparity, housing disparity, and quite frankly, as I talked about when I was on your show last time, access to quality education within our K-12 space. We need to make sure that we are leveling the playing field for all students in this state and this country. Absolutely. My panel here. Matt, your thoughts about these lawsuits, first with a lawsuit towards Harvard against legacy admissions, and then also this

effort here. I mean, just like Ed Bloom and his folks, you know, in terms of where they were successful at, the data doesn't lie, Matt. Legacy absolutely benefits white students, and it literally is taking advantage of Jim Crow era policies. Yeah, I mean, and I understand that. But if I'm completely honest, I'm struggling because not knowing the data, I would be interested in what percentage of the incoming students at any given school in New York, let's say, Jacqueline, if you have this data, are legacy in middles. And the reason I ask that is I understand all of those phenomena, and I think it's all abhorrent. I don't disagree with any of it. But I'm wondering

if there's a different usage of effort that can be applied to make it a more equitable process. And what I'm getting at is I don't know if 50 percent of people who are admitted are admitted by a legacy, then I understand the enormity of the issue and why that is something we attack, as opposed to college affordability or any other number of things that might make it more equitable. And not knowing that data, it's difficult for me to see how legacy is the primary thing we should attack. I understand attacking it, but I'm interested in that data and whether there's a different- Well, I'll show you this here. I'll show this here. Okay, pull it up. I'll show this here, Matt. Pull it up.

A study was done. Forty-three percent of white students at Harvard were either legacy athletes or related to donors or staff. Forty-three percent. The same study says right here, the study found that roughly 75% of the white students admitted from those four categories labeled ALDCs in the study would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-AODCs. So the reality is this is almost 70% of all legacy applicants are white compared with 40% of all applicants who do not fall under those categories the office found. And so this is just, this is obviously just a Harvard. But what we do know, what we do know is that schools all around and the legacy admissions is really for the donors. It's for the phone with the hookup. But again, I think what this does is it also exposes the hypocrisy of those who want to yell. Don't you? I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time,

have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th, ad free at lava for good. Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg. And this is season two of the war on drugs. 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 a Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've 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. News, race, and college admissions

when this is absolutely race-based. Yeah, and there's no question they're getting a very clear leg up. I'm merely asking in terms of the things that can make college more accessible to us writ large. What are those phenomena and whether legacy falls at the top of that? I don't disagree with you. There's a lot of intellectual dishonesty. And we know that we know that they scream meritocracy. And they're the first to put down legacy because they know they get some of the shoe in where they're otherwise not qualified. I understand that. But in looking at the overall picture, Jacqueline,

what does the data say in terms of first year admits and legacy as opposed to non-legacy students? What percentage in New York, for instance, are legacy students, if you have that? So so one of the that's a great question. One of the key issues that we actually have when it comes to understanding the data is that we don't get disaggregated data within this state. We actually at Earn, our national affiliate, and Earn New York have actually called for more transparency when it comes to data. What we do know, though, nationally, similar to the poll that Roland just pulled up talking about Harvard, is that 23 percent of students we know nationally are admitted through legacy admissions. There are more students admitted through the legacy preference than there are through affirmative action. That's

a fact. But what we do need in this state and also nationally, and it is one of our calls to action, is we need more disaggregated data and transparency around it, because my guess is that those numbers are higher. What we do know in terms of the ecosystem here, as I mentioned before, within New York, is that we have 70 colleges, public and private, who have this question on their application. Fifty-nine percent of the public and private colleges within New York in 2022 had the legacy question on its application. And we live in a state that is, particularly a city, that is so diverse. We have a huge conglomerate of students, a huge population of students who identify as first generation, similar to what Roland was speaking about before. Listen, I went to an HBCU. I went to a city university, part of our public university system here in New York.

And I also went to an Ivy League school. I've been through all types of modalities in New York. And I also went to an Ivy League school. I've been through all types of modalities in New York. And what I can say is when I was going to the public university here, I had to hold down a full-time job while going to school full-time and also doing extracurricular activities. So the playing field is not equal. And I think that it isn't fair to necessarily relegate this to just that question as well. It's also about access to opportunity. Students need to have access to top universities within our country,

but it shouldn't be necessarily only based on if your parents who had access when other groups who have been disproportionately marginalized in this country didn't have access. I don't think that that's fair or equitable. Well, we look forward to seeing what happens there in the New York State Legislature. It will be very... I can't wait to see what the arguments are as well for the people who are going to be defending it, but they also

are against affirmative action. Always show the hypocrisy. Jacqueline, thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Folks, we'll come back. A white state superintendent who supposedly overschools.

This fool literally said we should talk about the Tulsa race massacre, but we should leave out race. This shit is called the Tulsa Race Massacre. I'll be back on Roland Martin on the Black Star Network. Next on A Balanced Life, we're talking everything from prayer to exercise to positive affirmations and everything that's needed to keep you strong and along your way. That's on a next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie on Black Star Network. On the next Get Wealthy, did you know that the majority of households headed by African-American women don't own a single share of stock?

No wonder the wealth gap continues to widen. Next on Get Wealthy, you're going to hear from a woman who decided to change that. I've been blessed with good positions, good pay. But it wasn't until probably in the last couple of years that I really invested in myself to get knowledge about what I should be doing with that money and how to productively use it. Right here on Get Wealthy on Blackstar Network. Up next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes. The shooting of Megan Thee Stallion and the subsequent trial of Tory Lanez. Megan has been treated like the villain. The experience that Megan went through is something that all Black women face

when we are affected by violence. This is something that all black women face when we are affected by violence this is something that's called massage noir there's a long history of characterizing black women as inherently bad in order to justify our place in this society next on the frequency with me, Bea Barnes. Hi, I'm Joe Marie Payton, voice of Sugar Mama on Disney's Louder and Prouder Disney+. And I'm with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. Oh, Lord, I tell you,

there's always some stuck-on stupid white folks in America. One of them is Ryan Walters. He is the Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools. This dumbass, and I'm talking about dumbass, actually said this about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Tulsa Race Massacre not fall under your definition of CRT. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't address that part.

I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of your color of your skin, or your gender, or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist. That doesn't mean you don't judge the actions of individuals oh you can absolutely that historically you should this was right this was wrong they did this for this reason but to say it was inherent in that because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory you're

saying that a race defines a person I reject that so I would say you'd be judgmental of the of the issue of action, of the content, of the character of the individual, absolutely. But let's not tie it to the skin color and say that the skin color determined it. One more follow-up. How does the Tulsa race massacre not fall under your definition of Samartianism? I answered it. That's my answer. The Tulsa race massacre was a race massacre. How does it not fall under CRT? I'll answer your question. I do appreciate it. Very respectful. The 100 years of silence was about race. How does that

not fall? How does that not qualify for CRT? I appreciate your question. That's how you light his dumb ass up. DeMario Solomon Simmons, co-founder of Justice for Greenwood, joins us right now. He represents three of the survivors of the Tulsa 1921 Tulsa race massacre. I mean, this goes to show you, DeMario,

the extent that, this is why also I wrote my book, White Fear. These, the white folks like this guy who want to act as if, yeah, let's discuss the Tulsa race massacre, but let's leave race out of it. And this fool is over all schools in Oklahoma. Yes, sir.

Roland, good to see you. First, I want to say congratulations to you. One million subscribers on YouTube. Very proud of you for that. Appreciate it. And Roland, listen, you're right. This guy, he's the Oklahoma Secretary of Education, the superintendent for all schools.

And people like Ryan Walters, this is what he said. It's so absurd, ridiculous. It's ahistorical. He's trying to brush aside the facts and the reality of what the massacre was about. Listen, they said their stated goal of the massacre was to run the Negro out of Tulsa. When they bombed and burnt down 40 square blocks, as this picture shows right here, it was for all of the 10,000 to 12,000 black people that lived in Greenwood.

After the massacre, listen, look at the postcard, running the Negro out of Tulsa, not making this up. And then in the newspapers days after, in the city of Tulsa government, in the Tulsa County government, they said, we want to make sure that we police these Negroes more aggressively so quote unquote nigger town does not rise up again. These are the things that these people said at the particular time. And this is why it's so important to us at Justice for Greenwood that we continue to move forward this work because we have to fight these false, absurd, ridiculous, false narratives that people like Ryan Walters want to put out into the world. And another reason why we are so hopeful that our case, our current case that's pending right now in the Tulsa County District Court will be allowed

to move forward to trial so we can get the truth of what happened with the massacre and we can forever shut down people like Ryan Walters. So this sort of reminds me of the white folks in Virginia who did not want to deal with when the law was passed that the governor had to, when they kept folks with felony conviction from voting. And literally, the law was passed and the lawmakers said on the floor, this is to keep the darkies from voting.

That was the actual intent. Being years later, it's like, whoa, no, no, no, no. That's not why we're continuing this. No, the record is clear. It was intended to keep the darkies from voting. No different than law in 1890, where they changed the Constitution and added a whole slew of felony convictions in Mississippi to keep black people from voting. So, there are white folks in this country who want to deny exactly why laws were created

and those same laws are still impacting us today, but they didn't want to say oh, no, no, no, the intent and the motive has changed. The motive is the same. Well, it's racial gaslighting rolling at its finest because not only do they want to be able to talk about

laws that we know are specifically based upon race or things like the massacre specifically based upon race. When it's something that's going to help us, then they say, oh, we don't want to do it that way. Think about the 14th Amendment. You know, the Supreme Court just gutted utilizing the 14th Amendment just passed some terrible laws last week dealing with college admissions, LGBT rights, et cetera, right? But the 14th Amendment, what is the original intent of the

14th Amendment? It was to help empower Black people who are coming out of enslavement. It is a race conscious law, and yet the Supreme Court is saying we cannot use this in a race-conscious matter because we don't think that's the way it should be interpreted, even though that's the original intent. So it's racial gaslighting. We deal with it each and every day

all across this country and double time here in Oklahoma. The good news is, the good news is of people like Ryan Walters, people like Donald Trump and others who are making it very plain to our people that this is a war that we're in. We're in a war for our freedom, our liberty, and our very lives. And we must organize. That's why I tell everyone that's looking at this right now, work with us at Justice for Greenwood.

Send us a donation. Get on our newsletter. Connect with us and organize to fight against this because the other side is very organized, they're very motivated, and they have a very clear path of where they want to go. When they say make America great again, that means putting us in chains again,

that's putting us back on plantations again, and that is taking away all our rights again. You know, and when you talk about fighting the monarch... 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 the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

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

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

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher.

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

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive.

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Let's also be clear. These same white folks for nearly 100 years wanted no mention of the Tulsa race massacre in any book in the state of Oklahoma. That also was deliberate by white folks. Deliberate specifically in the continuing harm is because of race-based. It's all about racism. It's all about power. They want to continue to subjugate our ability to be free, independent, wealthy,

healthy individuals and communities in this nation. And the Tulsa Race Massacre and Greenwood and Black Wall Street was the greatest example of Black wealth, Black excellence, Black education, Black health. And they destroyed that specifically. And they wanted to keep that story hidden from the history books because they don't want us to take our lessons and our cues and our inspiration from Greenwood. But the deal is this, Merlin, that Justice for Greenwood and people like you, we're still fighting, we're still organizing, and we're meeting this threat head on.

We said to Ryan Walters, I put out a statement today here in Oklahoma, and I'm standing on your airways. Ryan Walters, we will continue to talk about the massacre. We will continue to fight for reparations for the massacre. We'll continue to fight for truth, justice, and equity for our three living survivors and all of the descendants throughout this entire country. There's nothing that Ryan Walsh can say that will stop us from fighting until we get the justice and reparations that we absolutely deserve. And what also is needed, we need more white folks like the one who was questioning him

doing that, whereas not just black folks having to do all the work? That's true allyship. You know, that white person who showed up, that was a Republican, a Cleveland County Republican meeting. So that meant someone had to go out of their way, go to that meeting, which was in a library in Norman, Oklahoma, sit on the front row and specifically say, I'm going to challenge you.

I'm going to challenge you firsthand, right on hand. And I'm going to say that's not an easy thing to do here in Oklahoma because Oklahoma is a right-wing, deep-bred, Republican MAGA state. So we need those type of allies that will stand for it and be out on the front lines and will provide us the necessary power that they bring just with their white bodies. If a black person

was maybe making those same questions at that location in Norman, Oklahoma, the police probably would have been called, no doubt. This is also why, DeMario, why we have to show up at events like that. And I say this all the time. The elections are the end of one process

at the beginning of another. You're there in a red state. Ryan Walters has pissed off Republicans for being stupid. Even they have said, he's a dumbass. They've stripped him of his powers. But this is the kind of stuff where I'm saying we've got to show up at

town halls and events like that to challenge these folks out of camera rolling and to force them to got to show up at town hall, at events like that, to challenge these folks, add a camera rolling, and to force them to answer to show how stupid they are. I totally agree, Roland. And we have to have the courage that the black men and women of Greenwood had when they showed up at that courthouse in 1921 when a white power structure wanted to lynch Dick Roland. Downtown Tulsa, you had about

100 of the most prominent, wealthiest, most educated black men in the entire country that put everything on the line because they had the courage and the love of Dick Rowland to show up and say, you're not going to do this in our community. And that's what it takes. You have to sacrifice some time, your time. You got to sacrifice your comfort to go show up and be strong in the face of adversity. That's what the legacy of Greenwood is about. It's not just about the massacre and the destruction, but it is a legacy of power.

It's a legacy of education. It's a legacy of wealth. It's a legacy of showing up for one another. And that's what we have to do in this moment as a community throughout this nation. We have to show up for one another. We have to organize together. We have to do in this moment as a community throughout this nation. We have to show up for one another. We have to organize together. We have to get money, put our money together,

and fight these people as hard and as fast and as powerful as we possibly can. All right. Absolutely. DeMauro Solomon-Simmons, I appreciate it, brother. Thanks a lot. Roland, always good to see you. Peace, brother. Holla.

Kelly, again, I'm trying to get our people to understand that we are in the middle of a war. Not a battle of a war. These people, first of all, we know it's been going on, but the election of Barack Obama really heightened this whole deal. But I still contend it was the death of George Floyd that caused many of these races to go, oh, shit. And it wasn't because of us. They freaked out when they saw young white kids out in the streets protesting. They freaked out when they saw them inside of offices demanding change as well. So this attack, if you will, this attack on anything black, anything dealing with DEI, anything dealing with race, it absolutely is because they are, it's white fear.

They are scared to death of losing power. Because at the end of the day, Roland, I feel like that's all they have. They don't have the numbers. They don't necessarily have the influence. They absolutely do not have logic on their side. All they have is a power that they stole for centuries that they're trying to maintain and keep. And when you have a generation that, frankly, in my opinion, is probably the freest generation on record as far as thought, as far as movement,

as far as culture is concerned. Yeah, you're right. They are scared because it's like, oh wait, we didn't teach this generation how to be as racist as we are. We didn't teach this generation how to be as bigoted. And we kind of can't anymore because it's out the bar now. It's out the door. So they are doing everything they can in their power to

rewind the clock a little bit by way of these policies, by way of this rhetoric, by way of the superintendent thinking that he can get away with saying that the Tulsa race massacre wasn't about race. It's like if you say it enough times, maybe it'll be true. And I feel like that's the logic that they're trying to perpetuate. And it's frankly not going to work as effectively as they think it is because this generation is so smart, is so free, is so cultured outside of Eurocentricity, outside of the whiteness that my generation and generations prior are used to. You know, Matt, again, when we start looking at what is happening here, a lot of people were blowing off the

attacks against critical race theory. But they were very clear. Christopher Ruffo made it clear. They were trying to lump anything dealing with race under that banner to stoke white fear. How did Glenn Youngkin win in Virginia? Because white turnout increased. That's how he won.

What they understand is, to Kelly's point, we look at the numbers. If they can stoke white fear and if they can see this last election was supposed to be the first time, was supposed to be the first time in American history that the total electorate of white voters fell under 70%. In Virginia, it was around 74. In the 2020 election, same thing, was above 70. And so they understand when you start dropping below 70% of the total electorate being white, then you are hitting that you're moving towards that nation becoming a majority of people of color. That is what's freaking them out. And so they are trying to find every racial button to push in order to keep that white fear machine going. And every mechanism to aid that machine. I like it, Roland, when you pass it to me

and you basically make the arguments I'm going to make. But you're right, 100%, particularly with CRT. I mean, we've talked about it a million times on the show, but that has become a dog whistle for anything race. And what's particularly insidious about people like Walters is they try to paint it like they have some moral high ground. If you listen to what he said, what he said is, oh, yeah, I want you to decry the action,

but you don't make it applicable to the person because of their race. Well, we all know that Tulsa race riots were about race, as the brother just said, right? I mean, that's all it was about. But what they try to do is repackage it and try to make it about some individual analysis of an individual person, despite the fact that

whiteness is the primogenitor of all of it. It's the thing that's driving everything. So I think you're 100 percent right. And that goes part and parcel with things like voter disenfranchisement and trying to make it harder to vote. Right. Because those it's a numbers game. Anybody who's been involved in any political campaign, it's all numbers. It's all where you're going to get the biggest turnout on your boxes, you know, what's the best precinct, all that stuff is all numbers. So it's all metrics and it's all a matter of decreasing the numbers of us participating and increasing relatively the numbers of them participating as the overall number dwindles. So I think you're exactly right in your analysis. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time,

have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

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

Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and 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. We are back. In a big way.

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

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

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

but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you've 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 right here, this right here, Michael, is why I spend so much time trying to explain to black people, don't get caught up in dumb shit. Don't get caught up in these silly arguments and these silly debates, things along those lines. I mean, here's a perfect example. And I had to sit here. And so you take Breonna Joy Gray. She tweeted this nonsense earlier. Endorsing Joe Biden now is a betrayal of progressive interest. It was true of Bernie Sanders' endorsement and is true of AOC.

Most Democrats don't want Biden to run. Bernie and AOC are tragically out of step with the movement and the moment. Well, first of all, most people don't want to run because he's too old, but he's running. So I responded to her and I said, oh, please, that's utter BS. You must enjoy losing. The moment Biden won in 2020, we knew he was running for reelection. This ain't the Sims. It's reality.

Bernie Sanders knows it, too. This is the rationale that led to Trump winning and getting three SCOTUS picks. She then goes, people like Roland Martin will try to guilt and shame you into selling your vote cheap. The corporate Democratic Party cannot exist without your cooperation. It's your right to stop cooperating. Demand more. And then, of course, you know, I couldn't leave it there. So I had to respond to that foolishness.

And I said, nah, Breonna, I'm not stuck on stupid. I'm in Virginia. I saw white turnout increase to elect Youngkin. I saw what happened when CRT was bullshit and used to drive white fear. You have taken L's in elections because you desire the perfect. I understand power. Losers have none. The thing that we have to understand

that we have to keep saying to black people, Michael, all across this country, and I don't care whether your ass call yourself a freedman, FBA, B1, ADOS, whatever the hell, the folk on the other side don't give a damn what letter you use.

You can holler Friedman, FBA, B-1, Ados. You can call yourself whatever the hell. Their whole deal is to keep your ass in your place. And what I understand is I understand the simple math. There are two parties, Republican and Democrat. One don't give a damn. One empowers Stephen Miller, who's stopping the black farmers from getting their money. He's threatening law schools. One appointed three Supreme Court justices who rule against us in critical cases. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't fight,

challenge, push, go hard against Democrats. But if I know evil wants to take my ass out, I ain't trying to coexist with evil. And what I'm not going to do is sit my ass at home and allow the other evil folk to vote and elect people. And then I sit back and bitch and moan and go, I can't believe they did that. I can because they told your dumb ass they were going to do it. Yeah, you know, as much as I loathe and despise Donald Trump, practically everything he did, he told you ahead of time he was going to do it. Your ass was just too stupid to believe him and do the research. He told you he was going to do it. He told you he was going to only nominate

Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe versus Wade. He told you he was going to nominate federal judges. He told you he was going to unleash the police. He ran on the platform of Blue Lives Matter. OK, so all the things that he did, he told you he was going to do ahead of time. But people like that see now this is one of the problems with the 2016 presidential election. You had a lot of these woke ass progressives out here, people like Dr. Eddie Glaude on MSNBC who sat his ass on MSNBC and told people

don't vote for president. In 2016, he said vote for everything except president. My TV one show said it, and I was like, nah, bro, I ain't feeling that. Yeah, but then he found out fat meat is greasy. I don't know why they still have them on MSNBC.

Now, on Deadline White House, on Nicole Wilder's show, he said he apologized, you know, for saying that. This was maybe a year or two ago. He said he had too much faith in white people. Wait a second. You got a PhD and you're that ignorant not to see this domestic terrorist threat coming named Donald Trump, who ran on the platform of law and order, which was a throwback to Richard Nixon in 1968, who ran on the platform of law and order, which means protect white people and lock up African-Americans. But the person that you tweeted with, I don't go back and forth with people like this. This is what I do. I drop this on them. Proper documentation

ends all conversation. Read fact sheet. The Biden-Harris administration advances equity and opportunity for Black Americans and communities across the country. That's at whitehouse.gov. It's about 36 pages. It breaks down how the policies of the Biden-Harris administration are helping and benefiting the African-American community. Now, you compare that to what Republicans are doing. You compare that to what independents are proposing. This is stuff that's actually happening or they are working on. So we have to understand you're not going to find perfect candidates just like you don't have perfect constituents. And this is one of the problems with a lot of these people who are so idealistic, don't understand history, never read the U.S. Constitution, and sit up here. If they can't find somebody that's perfect, then they're not going to vote. One of the most important things I learned from the 2016 presidential election is how much BS

white people would take to achieve their goal. For many people who voted for Trump, he wasn't the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth candidate. He wasn't the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth choice. But they said this is about the Supreme Court. They said this is about controlling the federal bench. They said this is about overturning Roe v. Wade. They saw him as a means to an end, okay? They were willing to hold their nose and use him as a tool to accomplish what they wanted. We have to do the same thing. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican, but I sure as hell ain't stupid.

We need to understand how to use politicians and the Democratic Party as a tool to accomplish what we want, and that has to be by mastering history, economics, law, and politics. Speaking as a tool, coming up next, we're going to talk about a new social media app that aims to offer an alternative to Twitter. It is Black-owned, Black-controlled.

Some of these people are still whining about here. Oh, I can't stand the people who complain about stuff and they ain't never launched a damn business in their life. We'll be talking about one of the co-finals of the Spiel next on Roller Mark Dunn Filtrated on the Blackstar Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. The United States is the most dangerous place for a woman to give birth among all industrialized nations on the planet.

Think about that for a second. That's not all. Black women are three times more likely to die in this country during childbirth than white women. These health care systems are inherently racist. There are a lot of white supremacist ideas and mythologies around black women, black women's bodies, even black people that we experience pain less, right? Activist, organizer, and fearless freedom fighter, Monifa Akinwole-Bandele from Moms Rising joins us and tells us this shocking phenomenon, like so much else, is rooted in unadulterated racism.

And that's just one of her fights. Monifa Bandale on the next Black Table here on the Black Star Network. I'm Faraj Muhammad, live from L.A. And this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me. We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture.

Weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. Hello, I'm Jameah Pugh. I am from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, just an hour right outside of Philadelphia. My name is Jasmine Pugh. I'm also from Coatesville, Pennsylvania. You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay right here. Two former Twitter employees joined forces to create

what some are dubbing Twitter's rival or the true black Twitter. Daveris Brown was a product manager lead. Alfonso Fonz-Torrell was the global head of social and editorial. The duo created the social platform Spill, which navigates nuances of black culture and rewards users. Alfonso Fonz-Torrell, Spill's co-founder and CEO, joins me now live from L.A. Alfonso, glad to have you here.

And so, jump right off to it. You heard, people used to kill me when they would holler, black Twitter, black Twitter, black Twitter. And there were some people who would just hold it onto that. And I kept saying, we don't own that shit. I'm like, we're contributing to it. And then what we do, what we do as black people, and I say this all the time,

we make everybody else's stuff sexy and we make them rich. We did it with Clubhouse, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We could go on and on and on. Yet when somebody black creates something, folks they want to be perfect. Y'all, Lawrence Spiel, it dropped

you dropped it what, this week? About three weeks ago. About three weeks ago. And so let's just start out this way. Y'all are in beta mode. Please explain to the slow-ass people what beta mode means. Sure, sure. So, again, Roland, thank you for having me. We're excited to talk to you.

You know, Spill, our journey began about seven months ago. I was part of the first wave of layoffs when Elon Musk took over the company. And me and Devaris, my co-founder, we had met originally at Twitter, really set out to solve exactly the problems that you're laying out. You know, black culture, queer culture has always driven all the coolness on every single platform and in popular culture in general. And we're often uncredited, undercompensated, and more importantly, we get the majority of hate on these platforms. And so that was really the core problem we set out to solve with Spill. We were just a ragtag group. We had a really small team that announced the project about seven months ago. We had over 50,000 signups in the first week, and we've been building for basically the last six months. And so three weeks

ago, we released our invite-only beta, and beta means we are still testing. We have a lot to build. We're a very new company, but we were just overwhelmed with some incredible outpouring of support over the past week when there was a interest in checking out other new alternatives. And so we find ourselves here today having been the number one social app in the Apple apps, excuse me, in the Apple App Store. And over 150,000 people have joined Spill in the last week. So we're really excited. So let's deal with this here because you said invite only. And again, for the people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, I had to jam up some woman this week who was going off on Twitter to April Rain.

You know, how dare they make this invite only? I know the answer, but explain to people when you're launching a product and let's be clear, you don't have Facebook money like with threads, how you have to- I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things.

Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Properly build and grow. Yeah, exactly. So invite only really is a tool not to gatekeep. I want to be clear about that. It's really to ensure that we can gradually grow and make sure that we're getting the right amount of testers into the product so we can learn and adapt and adjust. This is a process that takes a good amount of time.

We're going to be an invite only for a little while longer. But I assure you and to everyone out there who's on the wait list or on an Android phone, we're coming. We're going to get to you. But we really want to make sure the platform is really strong and can deliver on the vision that we've laid out before we let all the folks in. Okay. So I want to stay there. So again, for the really slow people, what they don't understand is server time costs money. And so if y'all just made it through this thing out there, all of a sudden, if this thing totally blows up, your expenses all of a sudden shoot up dramatically because the servers have to be able to handle that level of traffic.

Server space, server time, that's money. Well, and especially it's server time. It's support, customer support. When you have thousands of people who might have misspelled their email wrong and are emailing us constantly, we need to have those tools in place. It's moderation. It's making sure that, you know, the platform, you know, is as safe as we can make it so that when you arrive, you're having an amazing experience. But for us, it's really important that the communities that we have set out to serve, again, black folks, queer folks, other marginalized groups, when you come to the platform,

that's what you're going to experience at Spill. Anyone can join, but you are going to see these communities that we come from and that what we're supporting. And yeah, this Spill here, and shout out to Questlove and everyone. It's been really beautiful to see that happening in real time, but we have to make sure we build this intentionally so that it doesn't turn into what we already know social media can devolve into. Well, and again, as somebody who created this show, the goal was always a network. But I couldn't build the network first. I had to build the show.

I had to do proof of concept. I didn't start off with 15 people. We started off with three and built from there. That's how you grow a business. And the other thing is this here and I saw this with Isaac Hayes III's

fan base and I see this all Isaac Hayes III's fan base, and I see this all the time where a lot of black people are super critical, again, of black creators. Let me remind people, Twitter and Facebook was shit when it launched. What I mean by that is it had glitches, it had technical problems, they were constantly updating things,

so people are looking at Spiel going, why do they have this and this and this and this? Twitter didn't have those things. Okay? I remember Instagram, you couldn't even do, I think, what was it? Initially a 10-second video. And then

they went from there. And so that's also the thing that people have to understand. We got black, and I'm going to say this, you ain't got to say it. I'm they went from there. And so that's also the thing that people have to understand. We got black. And I'm going to say this. You ain't got to say it. I'm going to say it. Black people. We have got to give black creators the same runway we give white folks. Go ahead. Billion percent. And I would just add to that, I think, you know, I'm super proud of our team. We have a team of black folks. I am black. My co-founder is black.

The team that is building Spill is black. Our lead funders are black. The majority of the vendors that we raised on our own in an environment where black founders raised less than 2% of venture capital every year to be able to raise money in this environment and build a platform in less than five months that could withstand a surge of traffic that would grow our audience by 30x. And we didn't go down. We had a couple little glitches. That's normal. But I'm just so proud of my team and I'm so proud

of what's happening and I'm so appreciative of all the people that are checking it out and helping spread the word about Spill. That's all I have to say there. Well, now when you talk about, and I saw some tweets on this here, because you've

got some people who are saying, why isn't this for black people only? And I think you put a video out where you sort of spoke to this. Yeah. Yeah, I think the most important thing for everyone, we were clear about this from the beginning. We wanted to build a platform that centered black folks, queer folks, and other marginalized groups from the beginning. We've been consistent about this for the last seven months. And I think what we saw was in the excitement of people coming onto the platform, there were some assumptions made and honestly, people reacting to seeing, you know, a couple of white folks here or there on spill that this was,

you know, atrocious or something like, and behaving badly and just not really upholding decorum, respect for anyone, which is antithetical to the values of what we're building. And so I put out that message really intended for the community to really recenter and say, hey, this is for us. We are building this for us unequivocally, but that doesn't give us the license to bully other people on the platform. Why would we do that when we've experienced that ourselves? So that's really where we come from. But the mission of Spill will always, again, to be building and center black folks, queer folks, other marginalized groups,

because it's a problem that no one else is going to solve but us. Well, it's so like it's so like me. I mean, look, I have this show here and obviously with my content, with my guests and my subject matter, I'm targeting African-Americans, but I got white guests who come on. I've got white folks who watch the show. So I can't see his, I mean, literally I got a, I got a letter from a 70 year, a guy, a 70 year old white gay man who contributed to our Bring the Funk fan club. So what am I supposed to do? Say, oh, no, you're a white gay dude. I'm sending your money back.

Hell no. And I'm glad that he's watching the show. And he said, I am learning things I never even knew existed. Hello. Exactly. And that's exactly the point, right? Like one, we want a space that anybody can benefit from what we're building. But when we come to like the creator economy, for example, and you've talked, you know,

probably heard so much about other social platforms promising black creators or queer creators. Oh, you get a party this month or, this month or you get a fund over here. We want creators that we are centering on our platform to be able to benefit from any audience that wants to come and enjoy their content. And that's a big part of this. We're really trying to create an ecosystem here. And I think that's something that maybe people haven't seen before that, yes, we can build, we can be Black, we can build for black communities, and everyone can enjoy it, and that can be an amazing business.

I think that's really, we're overdue for something like that. Hold tight one second. I've got to go to a break. When we come back, Pamela got some questions for you as well, folks. We're talking with the co-founder of the black-owned and created app, Spill. It's a social media app that if you want to get on Twitter, be on Spill. Yes, I'm on Spill, like all of my other accounts,

at Roland S. Martin. So, we'll continue our conversation when we come back. Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Remember, YouTube, hit the like button. If y'all watching on YouTube, hit the like button. We should easily be at 1,000, 2,000 likes. It impacts the algorithm, which also impacts it being recommended, which impacts money that we make. So, one, that,000 likes. It impacts the algorithm, which also impacts it being recommended,

which impacts money that we make. So, one, that's important. Two, download our Blackstar Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, contribute to our Breeda Funk fan club. Y'all, this show ain't cheap. And so, bottom line is, this stuff actually costs. We're fighting the good fight for advertising, but it's real.

So your dollars make a huge difference for us to do what we do. Send check-in money orders to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash App, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, RM Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinunfiltered.com. And be sure to get a copy of my book,

White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds at bookstores nationwide. Download your copy on Audible, order on Amazon. We'll be right back. Hatred on the- I know a lot of cops

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

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,

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

We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams,

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

of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.

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

I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tetherpapersilling.org.

Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. The streets, a horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not replace us. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.

I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. 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. This is white fear. Black Star Network is here.

Oh, no punches! 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.

Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? 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. All right, folks, talking with the co-founder of the app Spill. You can follow them on Twitter at Spill Mob,

same thing on Instagram. You can download the app. Right now, it is iPhone only. Y'all, that ain't new. It's a whole slew of apps that have always been iPhone first, and then Android came second as they developed the app. And so that's important. Let's go to our panel. Let's see here. Kelly, you first. Sure. First of all, thank you for even creating this platform. I absolutely love it. I'm on it all the time. Actually, I check that now before I even check my Twitter because I love it so much. My question to you is actually a personal one

because I would actually love to spill while I am doing Roland. Is there in the future going to be a desktop version similar to other platforms? And also, how can I help out? I'm already on Spill. First of all, amazing. Thank you. We are so happy to hear that. That means so much. We do have desktop on the roadmap. I won't say it's coming

immediately soon. The priority next is going to be Android, among a few other things. But it is definitely on the roadmap, and we know we want to make the tools, especially for journalists and other content creators in the space, to be as easy as possible to use the platform. So more to come there.

And then, yeah, how to help spread the word. We are dropping a special code just for you guys here on Roland Martin. If anybody wants to join Spill, the code is Spill Mob, S-P-I-L-L-M-O-B. So just share it with your friends and your networks and let them know that this is really for us. First of all, repeat that again. Say it again. S-P-I-L-L-M-O-B, Spill Mob.

So that's the promo code for the Roland Martin Unfiltered family? Yes. You guys got it. All right, folks. Y'all got it right there. So stop sending me tweets saying, yo, how can I get the hookup for a code? This is why you got to support this show and watch this show. Let's see here.

Let's go to Matt. So first, Fonz, congratulations. This is extraordinary. I'm super happy for you. And it sounds like y'all have done everything you could possibly do to make an extraordinary platform. But to that end, I actually had a question for you about less about the platform and more about your venture capital kind of progress. So what advice would you have for other Black creators who want to create things but maybe don't know how to go through the VC process? What did you find in terms of best practices to really optimize that process? It's a great question. This is my first venture-backed

startup, so I had a lot of the same questions when we began. And I think it really does underscore the importance of Black-owned media networks so that we can tap into the incredible emerging black tech community. We're happy to share some information. In fact, if you guys pop on spill, we'll share some of this after the show. But, yeah, I reached out. I was just fortunate enough to be in the circles having joined Twitter. I would have known no one in the venture space. But I reached out to, you know, other black employees at Twitter and I was just like no one in the venture space. But I reached out to other Black employees at Twitter, and I was just like, how do we do this? And my co-founder has an incredible

amount of experience in fundraising, and that was really how we began. But it really underscores the importance of these networks that if you don't ask, and we're available again on Spill, you can hit us up. You will never know, and we need to distribute this information amongst our community. But there are incredible funds out there. I want to shout out Mac Venture Capital, our lead investor who is Black-owned. They support macro films as well. There's an incredible network of, again, Black-owned firms, black VCs who are out there and looking for us. And if I can, you know, offer any advice just for people thinking about starting something or building something, do it, just do it. The whole, the only difference between you

and anybody else you've seen out there is audacity. That's the one message I would love to pass along because that's how we got here. All right, then, Michael. Yes. Hey, Alfonso, this is fantastic. And I'm trying to sign up right now. Now, did you say that this is only for iPhone users because it's in my Google Play Store? Is it available on Android? It is not. So thank you for calling that out. Okay. There are some imposters out there. So just so everybody knows, we are not on Android yet. We're working on getting that taken down.

But, yes, just for iPhone only right now. But we will have Android as soon as we can get it out. Okay. So very quickly, I have a million followers on my fan page and 66,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. If I were to buy an iPhone, are there easy ways that I could market and bring those subscribers over to Spill? It's a great question. Yeah, for right now, we're actually working on a QR code that anybody who can zap it. So when you create your profile on Spill, this is to come. But if

you just post that QR code, anybody can join Spill and automatically follow you. That's something coming down the pike that we're working on. So more to come in that realm. We know that's a priority for everyone who's trying to migrate their audiences over. But our adventure, based on the growth that we've seen over the last weekend, there might be a lot of people who already know you over there. Right, yeah, the African History Network. Okay, we'll talk. I'll get you a number from Roland, we'll talk.

So, in terms of, and again, the reason we have this Tech Talk segment where we feature African Americans who own technology platforms is to introduce folks to many folks who don't even realize some of these things exist. And the thing that I'm always talking about is a lot of people just really have no idea, no clue what it means to actually launch a business, to build a business.

Pre-COVID, there were 2.6 million black-owned businesses in America. 2.5 million had one employee. And so the reality is only 100,000 black-owned businesses in America, 2.5 million have one employee. And so the reality is only 100,000 of our black-owned businesses have one employee. And so just talk about why it's critically important for you to temper expectations, also to temper the urge to grow, grow, grow, to ensure that you don't blow up, you aren't great for three, six months, and then all of a sudden you're out of business because you ain't got no money. 100%. For context, again, eight months ago, I was fired.

I didn't have a job. And I think a lot of people in tech and just broader corporate America have been going through this all year. And it's been incredibly, it was incredibly risky to even consider taking on a venture like this, especially with not having personally a proven track record in starting companies from the beginning. And what we've accomplished to raise $3.2 million to have built a beautiful platform that works and is, you know, unlike any other social experience I believe that has ever existed before to be number one in the Apple app store, in the social application section,

ahead of WhatsApp, ahead of Facebook, and to be mentioned in the same, you know, as a competitor already to a trillion-dollar company's new product, you know, it's just remarkable. And at the same time, we are a small, small team. We are just getting started, and we have a lot more to build to make sure that our vision becomes the reality that we've laid out and that everyone can enjoy. So we are not actually chasing massive, massive growth at this moment. We want to continue to welcome people who are willing to join the community on Spill and help us test and help us make it better. But you haven't even seen anything yet. We've got a whole bunch of stuff coming when we get more towards our general launch, which is not too far off.

But, yeah, you're exactly right. Platforms come and go every single day. We are building Spill for the next 20 years and beyond. So we're not going to rush it at the expense of the experience of the product. We'll ask, how long do you anticipate being in beta mode? I'd say, you know, I will never, it's tempting to give concrete dates. We're not going to do that. I learned the hard way earlier this year. I would say we're going to be in beta mode as long as we need to be in beta mode. And we are going to be, but we're moving as fast as we

possibly can. Of course, we are, you know, to have built the platform that we have to even be in beta mode, and we are going to be, but we're moving as fast as we possibly can, of course. We are, you know, to have built the platform that we have to even be in beta in less than five months is truly remarkable. So expect, you know, stay tuned with us, stay close. You've got the code, you know, build with us, and we'll have, I'm sure, a lot of exciting announcements to come later this year. All right, then. And, you know, I would look what I would suggest. Look, I've been in black media, black on media for a very long time. To me, I'm a firm believer locking down the base. And so I think it is also critically important for you guys targeting black, black radio, black newspapers, you know, again, letting folks know because the reality is,

and I just know this from experience with a lot of our companies that we featured, look, the dollars y'all raised at $3.2 million, look, you got to keep that in the company. It's very difficult trying to compete against these trillion-dollar companies when it comes to marketing as well. And so that's why word of mouth and growing organically. And a lot of people out there, again, I love it how everybody and their mama is a business expert who gives y'all advice, and they ain't never opened a damn business. But we just crossed the million threshold on YouTube. We're growing our app. It's the rally is we've done virtually, you know, no dollar spent on advertising because, frankly, we didn't have the money.

And so growing organically is so much more important because once you go down that road of dropping crazy money on marketing, then you're like you're like an addict. You're just going to keep dropping it. So I think the way y'all are doing it is absolutely smart. And the only advice that I would give all the people who are all people who are haters is let them keep chirping and then just keep building because they're going to always be there running their miles. I appreciate that, Roland. I appreciate that.

And congratulations on the million threshold. That's incredible. Appreciate it, Alfonso. Thanks a bunch. Folks, as he said, if you're looking for the code in order to download the app Spill, it is Spill Mob. And again, they're on iPhone.

Android folks, calm down. It's not our fault you got an inferior phone. But again, they're going to be on Android very soon. And remember what he said. If you see Spill right now on Google Play Store, that's a trash BS imposter app. Do not download it.

They are not on Android. Be sure to spread the word. I'll be sure to post that on social as well. Alfonso, thanks a bunch. Good luck. Thank you so much, Roland. See you on Spiel. All right.

Yes, indeed. All right, folks. Let me just say this here, and I'm going to reiterate this because it needs to be said. I love black people. I fight for black people. I've spent

more years in black-owned media than any other platform. But one of the things that absolutely drives me crazy is when I watch black people launch something and then other black people bitch, moan, and complain, and tear it apart. And I watch us give white creators loads of runway to make mistakes. It angers me when I hear black people say, Ooh, I once hired a black electrician. It didn't work out. It angers me when I hear black people say, ooh, I once hired a black electrician, it didn't work out.

I've hired a lot of white people who didn't do some stuff right. I didn't go, well, I ain't never hired nobody white again. We can be our own worst enemies. We can be the biggest critics of our own people when it comes to something. I literally watched this with Isaac Hayes and Fanbase.

Folks were saying, you don't have this and you don't have that and you don't have this and you don't have that and you don't have this and you don't have that. They were literally comparing a black-owned, black-created app that at that point had raised about $3 million to an app over here

where $500 million to a billion had been invested in. Let me explain something to y'all. If you can drop 500 million on developing an app, and you've got 100 engineers, and you've got marketers, and you've got all these different people, but then over here you've got a team of 10 or 15, that ain't hard to figure out. So what I'm going to ask is'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna ask a lot of our folk to literally shut the hell up

allow the spill team to methodically build because a lot of y'all who run in y'all miles, y'all ain't never built shit. You ain't never spent your own money. You've never built a business. You've never hired. You've never fired. And then when you're putting your own money into something, your ass is on the line.

Your family's well-being is on the line. So it's real easy to sit in the comfort of your home and say, well, they should be doing this, they should be doing that. But you ain't never built nothing. So let's praise Spielmeyer for what they've done and watch them grow. Let's praise Isaac Hayes and Fanbase for what they're doing and watch them grow. And let's give them the same runway to be able to make mistakes and correct them as we did Facebook, as we did Twitter, as we did Vine, as we did Snapchat, as we did TikTok, as we did Instagram, as we did Clubhouse,

and as we did LinkedIn, and I can go on and on and on and name you all of these apps and tech companies that black people never owned, that we never built, that few of them even employed us, yet we gladly gave them all of our talents and energies, and now they're worth billions of dollars, and then we're running around hollering about the lack of black wealth creation. If all the folk out here, if you download Spill, they grow. They become valuable. If everybody watching or listening downloaded Fanbase, they grow.

They build. And when they grow and build, they can raise more money to get better, to improve the product. And then all of a sudden, we're now competing on an equal playing field. Just be

mindful of that when you start running your mouth criticizing some folks who actually had the courage to create a product that serves the interest of black folks. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

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

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

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

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves.

A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's Dadication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I'll be back. I'm Roland Wagner-Pilchard on the Blackstar Network. 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. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it when 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. Invest in Black-owned media.

Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month. Rates $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that.

Y'all money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash app is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Early days in the road, I learned, well, first of all, as a musician, I studied not only piano, but I was also

drummer and percussion. I was all city percussion as well. So I was one of the best in the city on percussion. Also studied trumpet, cello, violin, and bass, and any other instrument I could get my hand on. And with that study, I learned again what was for me. I learned to what it meant to do what the instruments in the orchestra meant to each other in the relationships.

So that prepared me to be a leader. That prepared me to lead orchestras and to conduct orchestras. That prepared me to know, to be a leader of men, they have to respect you and know that you know the music. You have to be the teacher of the music. You have to know the music better than anybody. There you go.

Right, so you can't walk in unprepared. I am Tommy Davidson. I play Oscar on Proud Family, Louder and Prouder. Right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Yo, call it a viral video of a black girl trying to get her diploma. And she did a little dance and the principal decided not to give her diploma. Well, guess what? That principal, she's out.

Lisa Messi, the former principal at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, was replaced following a public outcry calling for accountability. Although the students eventually received their diplomas after the ceremony, the incident left them and their families feeling embarrassed and unsatisfied with the resolution. After the incident, the Philadelphia High School for Girls temporarily appointed Janice Butler as the substitute principal. It remains unclear whether Lisa Messing will return to the school.

Good, Kelly. That's exactly what the hell should happen. I'm sick of these dumbass principals and these college presidents and other people acting a fool because somebody does a little dance. Yeah, it's graduation. Just stay in your ass there. Give me 10 seconds, 15 seconds, and say, appreciate it. Thank you much. Move along.

Exactly. And it kind of takes away from the point of a graduation, which is supposed to be celebratory. It's supposed to be jubilant. And again, it kind of goes back to my point regarding the Tulsa race massacre and these kids who really are the most free generation that we've ever had. They are the freest as far as thought,

as far as culture, as far as autonomy. And for you to basically cultivate these children to think for themselves and think critically and basically be like, you can do whatever you want to do. And then they finally do what they want to do. And then you, and you punish them for it. It's incredibly disingenuous as a principal, as an adult in general, to stifle that child's life and that child's light, especially for ceremonies such as graduation. So, yeah, good riddance because clearly that principal didn't get it. I mean, it just I mean, they drive me crazy with this matt um we had one video that we showed where they actually had cops at the graduation snatching folks for celebrating that's stupid i mean it's stupid people should be able to enjoy it it's a momentous occasion in

their lives you know and honestly it's not like anybody's going to remember if they violated decorum. And all of that is really to use the term gatekeeping. I mean, it's this idea that you can't even express joy, happiness, pride in your your accomplishment unless you do it in the way that we prescribe and that we sanction. And that's stupid. So, I mean, it's dumb. This principal should not have wasted her time on this, and she's gone for a good reason. And I hate that this kind of thing happens. I think people should be able to enjoy themselves.

I mean, when my kids graduate, I'm going to be there with an air horn. Mark my words. Look, look, now I'm going to show you this here, Michael. So, first of all, it's a bad, it's a bad, it came from a personal video on YouTube. So I'm going to need my Grambling people to do me a favor. I'm going to need y'all to get me a real quality copy of the commencement speech I gave at Grambling 12 years ago. I got the audio version, but I need the video version. But this is the cell phone video that was shot by somebody who was in the audience.

So let me tell you what happened, Michael. So the then president, he comes up and he, first of all, he says that, you know, graduation is a solemn occasion. And then they give the whole speech asking people not to make lots of noise and withhold your applause and all that stuff that they always do at graduation, which makes no sense to me.

And by the way, I hate pomp and circumstance. I'm like, can y'all jazz that sucker up, please? In fact, when I did the Lamar Owen graduation, my brother was playing the piano. I said, hey, can you blacken that up? I need you to put some stank on that pomp and circumstance. He did. So I'm trying to sit and play this video. Are we having a problem with Wi-Fi in here? Is that what's going on? Not sure why I can't play this video. So we're at the Granley graduation. I then say, okay, here we go. So let me reset it. So I say, listen, I ain't come down here. Way the hell down. Because I had to fly from D.C. to Dallas, Dallas to Shreveport, and they drove me

to the Grambling Campus. I said, I ain't come here for the Symphonic Band. So y'all got 60 seconds to make this thing funky. And this is what happened. Let's go! This is what happened. All right. All right. There we go. What happened, Michael?

I was like, y'all got to make this thing funky. Yeah, you know, graduations are supposed to be a celebration and there's a lot of sacrifice that parents that family made for this person to be able to walk across the stage and get their diploma you know now as far as administration goes i can i can understand if you had like in my graduating class from high school it was like 500 people right so i can understand uh you wanting to move things along i can understand you wanting to move things along. I can understand that. Hold on, hold on. How many people you said? 500. Man, that's a small graduation.

Go on ahead. This was high school. I got you. But that's still small. I'm like, but just do your little thing. But most people are doing the dance offstage. Right, right. So looking at the video here with the Philadelphia High School

for Girls, the little dance she did, she wasn't holding things up. Right! She was moving along as she was dancing. And then the video that Channel 6 ABC did with her, she was saying she was trying to calm her family members

down because she didn't want them to give a big response. Things like this. So to withhold her diploma because of that, there's a tens of racism in here also. That's all that is. That's all that is. But it's not even...

But Lori, she didn't slow nobody down. She did just a little thing. But the problem is when, again, this is a little thing. But the problem is when, again, this is the basic thing, when we act like it's supposed to be

a party. There are people who are walking across these stages who literally are first-time graduates. They first-time graduates. And I can't stand, listen, somebody put in the chat, they And I can't stay. Listen, every somebody put in the chat, they said Rogers took a graduation. Listen, my ass, the speaker, I got speak. I got commencement speaker rights. And so and what gets me is when people don't understand the moment.

Eight years ago, I did South Carolina State graduation. And they were going through some issues, some financial issues, all kind of stuff. Man, the dude who was with the alumni, his ass gave one of the most soul depressing

speeches I have ever... I turned to them. Y'all think I'm lying. Y'all know the show unfiltered. My ass unfiltered. I said, who let his ass speak before me? I said, man, this is a graduation. I said, this man just threw a whole wet blanket over his joint.

Well, when I got up there, same thing. I said, hey, this is a celebration. This is a graduation. Same thing. South Carolina State, I'm going to need y'all to send me a quality copy. I wish these people would send me these videos because I'm tired of these bad cell phone videos, especially when they're shooting vertical,

not horizontal. But here was somebody, look, I told them to the South Carolina State band, hey, it's graduation. These folks went broke making sure these kids come through school. Let's rock this joint. I said, graduates, y'all ain't got to sit here and be all bougie and sadistic. Nah, let's go and enjoy graduation.

Go to our pad. Hey, come on. Let's dance. Yeah. Go to our pad Come on Yeah Yeah Hey Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy

Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy

Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Get it boy Look at Jerry! Look at Jerry!

Look at Jerry! Look at them Q-Dogs! Woo! You gonna remember that graduation or that poppin' circumstance bullshit? I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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

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

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

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote

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

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

you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-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. You know, Roland, this is like the difference between the black church and the white church. Right! And black church service and white church service. This is like the difference between those as well. You know, we bring that African spirituality. We bring that Afric-ness to it. So, yeah, you know, and if you make graduation boring,

you will turn other people off from wanting to go to school, possibly, because you just, you have to be enthusiastic about this. So, yeah, you know, more politics. There's just more Sigmas out there. The Sigmas probably already graduated, though. They just needed some more Sigmas out there, though.

But, you know, probably the Sigmas already graduated. You there, though, but, you know. Probably the sigmas already graduated, you know. Those are the ones left behind. Oh, shout out to Cass Seneca High School. I meant to say. Oh, damn. Even the look on Kelly's face right now, he just say that bullshit.

The look on her face like. Kelly's wearing blue. She knew it was coming. Kelly ain't wearing y'all blue Kelly go ahead Kelly go ahead cause Mike I don't know what the hell he think he doing I was listen it's 8.05 I was just like

don't start nothing right I don't know why he's sitting here wanna throw that nonsense in knowing damn well he knew them Sigmas on scholastic probation. Oh, no, no. Again, again. Again. Right.

I was trying to get through the show. Look, I was trying to get through the show without taking a shot, without taking a shot at you little Sigmas. But you just want to go ahead and run your mouth.

I'm going to hit y'all with this one here. This is the last one. We're about to go. Again, let me thank Kelly, Michael, and Matt for being on the show. When I did the Jackson State commencement, y'all, in December, y'all seen that video of the former Jackson State drum major

just going off at the graduation? That's only because I told the band, stop playing that damn symphonic music. Y'all need to play some Jackson State HBCU music. I'm gonna say this for, look, I done done about 20 commencement, 18 HBCUs. For the last time, if you gonna be a black school, be a damn black school.

Stop having them symphonic ass bands and them choral ass choirs singing them tired, boring ass songs. Okay? Y'all think I'm lying. I did Central State. What'd you say, Kelly? I was like,

I was part of those choirs, but it's fine. That's fine. Look, I give y'all one damn choral song, okay? But damn it, if you're going to be at a black graduation, you better sing a gospel song. A gospel song we know. We did. We did.

Sing something black. We did. All right? How you go through four, five, six years, you holler, I'm an HBCU, and then you say I have like a white graduation. Enough of that. You need a black national anthem.

Black national anthem. Enough of that. I was a signal man, by the way. I was a soloist for that. I was a signal man, by the way. What'd you say, Matt? When I graduated from Howard, we came into African drums.

It was magnificent. So that's how it started. I'm just saying. I shouldn't have to be the commencement speaker to say blacken this shit up. But the Jackson State band, and look, I was in a symphonic band in junior high, but graduation is a party.

So for all y'all principals, would I stick up your behind, and you college presidents, and you college provosts, I need y'all to sit your asses down and realize graduation ain't about you. It's about celebration of the graduates and the families. I'm glad this principal is gone. And again, this was at Jackson State when I told the band, yo, let's get this thing

lit before I speak. My man got it going. Get it. Get it. I know there's some alphys in here. That's how you're supposed to celebrate graduation. Just letting y'all know. You're inviting me to be the commencement speaker.

We're going to bring the funk. Kelly and Michael, man, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Y'all, we got to go. Tomorrow, tomorrow on the campus of Crampton Auditorium, they are going to have the celebration of life for Dr. Bill Spriggs. Normally, on a day like today, when the jobs report came out, Bill would be one of the folks we would call to be on the show.

Bill passed away a couple of weeks ago. Certainly saddened by that. Bill Spriggs was an amazing economist. He was, of course, someone we often called when it came to issues of economics. And so this here is the flyer here. And so remembering labor economist William Spriggs, celebration of life. And it's going to take place on the campus of Howard University, Cramden Auditorium, tomorrow, doors open at 10, 15, the program begins at 11 a.m.

And so, if you are in, and I'm not sure if they are live streaming this, and so we're gonna reach out and try to find out if they're gonna be live streaming this. And so, if they are to be live streaming this, we're going to carry this on the Black Star Network. Bill was an amazing guy. We love Bill dearly.

He, of course, was a friend of this show. We're saddened by his passing. And so the celebration of life will take place tomorrow. Folks, that is it. Y'all take care. Have a good one. I'll see you next week on Rollerball Unfiltered. Holla!

I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.

I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

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