#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Buffalo 911 Hang-Up, AZ Police Roll EX-NFL Player Out Of Hospital, Marvin Sapp, Primary Results

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

5.18.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Remembering the victims of the Buffalo shooting, Biden on White Supremacy, LA & TN Cops Charged A woman caught in Saturday's line of fire called for help and got hung up on by a 911 operator. Plus, a white New York corrections officer gets suspended without pay for his tasteless post about the massacre perpetrated by a white domestic terrorist. We'll also talk about the results from last night's primaries. Get this, a white woman who has a black son is suing a Virginia school district for teaching her 13-year-old critical race theory because she's noticed a "drastic change" in his perspective and behavior. A former NFL player dealing with several medical issues says a Phoenix hospital kicked him out. He can't walk unassisted, so they call the police to roll him out in a hospital bed. Louis and Lacey Leonard, who has been on our show before to talk about CTE, will be here to share their latest story on what they are calling Health Care Racial Disparities. Gospel recording artist Marvin Sapp will stop by to talk about his latest project to drop for the first time on his own label. And in today's Tech Talk, an app for those who want to get in shape but think they are too big to go to a gym.   Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You dig? Today is Wednesday, May 18th, 2022. Roland Martin Unfiltered broadcasts live from Cedar Hill, Texas, where later I will be moderating a town hall with Jasmine Crockett, state representative who is seeking to become the next member of Congress. We will be there will be, of course, in a couple of hours after our show. But coming up next on the Black Star Network, we continue to cover the tragic white domestic terror attack in Buffalo. A woman says she called 9-1-1 and was rudely treated by the 911 dispatcher who hung up on her. Wait until we show you what she told a local television station. Also, Democrats are

moving to establish white domestic terror offices all across the country. They're looking to pass that bill in the House. Also, Representative Stacey Plaskett blasts Republicans for advancing the white supremacy theory, replacement theory. We'll show you exactly what she said today on the House floor. Also, on today's show, we're covering election results that took place yesterday.

A number of African-American candidates won their races. We'll show you exactly what happened. Some folks are also lost in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. And of course, as I said, the runoff here in Texas is on Tuesday. And as you see, I've already voted. Also, folks, on today's show, a former NFL player who has been dealing with massive injuries, dealing with all kinds of problems, literally is moved out of the hospital

by 15 police officers. We'll explain to you what happened to Lacey Leonard. It is a shocking, shocking story as he continues to battle his post-career injuries. Also on today's show, what's up with this white woman out of Virginia who literally says that her biracial son has stopped doing his chores and she's suing because of critical race theory? These white folks have lost their mind, I told y'all. Plus, Marvin

Sapp's about to talk about his new CD. Folks, it is time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the biz, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the find. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics.

With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling. Yeah, yeah. It's on go-go-go-yo it's rolling Martin rolling with rolling now he's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best you know, he's rolling Martin He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's rolling Martez now.

Martez. Live at... All right, folks, we are live here in Cedar Hill, Texas, at Community Missionary Baptist Church. We're in a couple of hours. I'll be moderating a town hall featuring State Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is running for Congress. She is in a runoff against Jane Hamilton. And so I'll be moderating that town hall in a couple of hours. Tomorrow's show, Jane Hamilton, will be on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

As you see, yes, I did vote today. My parents, they actually worked the polls. I was there. You have runoff races taking place in the Democratic and Republican primary. The election is on Tuesday. Early voting ends on Friday. And so we are still in the midst of a primary season. And, of course, we're also looking still in the midst of a primary season.

And, of course, we're also looking at what is taking place across the country, a number of primary races. We'll get to that in a second. But first, we want to talk about Buffalo, the continuing fallout over the mass shooting, the white domestic terror attack which took place in Buffalo on Saturday. Ten people gunned down in a Topps grocery store. Folks, but one of the most disturbing things took place when a woman called 911 and was treated rudely, and they hung up on her. She called into a local television station to describe what took place in the store and how she was treated.

Here is that particular exchange. What you saw this afternoon. I didn't really see much at all. I just heard the gunshots and just dropped down to the ground and just waited for him to stop. And he just wouldn't stop. So I tried to call 911, and I was whispering because I could hear him close by.

And when I whispered on the phone to 911, the dispatcher would start yelling at me, saying, why are you whispering? You don't have to whisper. And I'm trying to tell her, like, ma'am, he's in the store, he's shooting. It's an active shooter. I'm scared for my life.

And she said something crazy to me, and then she hung up in my face. And I had to call my boyfriend and tell him to call 911. Well, that is certainly unfortunate, Leticia. Folks, here's a statement from the Erie County 911. So here's the statement. Here's the statement. Here's the statement I'm reading right now. Erie County, which So here's the statement. Here's the statement. Here's the statement I'm reading right now. Erie County, which runs a 911 communication center through Central Public Police Services, this is the statement that they actually released. Immediate action was taken, and the individual who took that call is now on administrative leave pending a disciplinary hearing, which should happen within a couple of weeks. Again, on leave, folks talk about absolutely crazy here. Seriously? And so when

you listen to that, she said that they hung up on her? Man, talk about absolutely crazy. Now, here's the deal. In New York State, unlike many other places, 911 calls are not publicly released without a court order. So we have not been able to actually get the actual 911 call. Folks, it just, man, again, just makes no sense whatsoever. We're going to talk about that in a second with our panel. This also happened. A New York correctional officer has been suspended for literally making fun of the shooting. What happened was he actually made this post, sent out this post.

Gregory C. Foster, who's a corrections officer at the Attica Correctional Facility. This is what he posted. Too soon. This should weed out some of my Facebook friends. Yeah. Yeah. They actually said that. Okay.

This is a statement that came from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Early this morning, DOCCS had been made aware of a despicable social media post by an employee of the department. The comments made by this correction officer are in violation of multiple department rules and will not be tolerated. This vile posting does not represent the morals and values of the thousands of staff members in the department. The individual responsible has

been suspended without pay and DOCCS will be seeking termination. The department has engaged the Civil Rights Task Force, which we are members of, for potential criminal prosecution. The department also launched an internal investigation to identify and discipline any staff who may have engaged with the posting. Talk about absolutely crazy. My panel, A. Scott Bolden, former chair, National Bar Association, Political Action Committee, lawyer there in Washington, D.C., Robert Petillo. He is executive director of the Rainbow Push Coalition Peachtree Street Project. Also an attorney, Monique Presley, legal analyst and host.

Of course, joins us as well, crisis manager as well. All right, folks, let's just, okay. I got to deal with this 911 call because this woman says that the 911 would be back here. Why are you whispering? And admonished her and hangs the phone up on her. I mean, look, I get you have procedures you gotta go through, but man, if what that woman described actually happened, Monique,

that person to be fired so quickly, I mean, that is just sickening to think that that's how this woman was treated by a 911 dispatcher. Right, I mean, and we hear these stories all the time. It unfortunately is not rare. And I am not sure if there's any more information that's going to come out that would justify it. But from what it looks like right now, she should not be in that job. I mean, I'm sitting here, Robert, and I can only imagine this white domestic terrorist

is walking around shooting folks in the head with an AR-15. People are diving into coolers. They're hiding, trying to survive. And you call 911 and the dispatcher is going, why are you whispering, admonishing the woman and then hangs up on her? Well, you know, it comes down to a lack of training, lack of supervision, and a lack of vetting of people who have these jobs. We see these issues far too often, particularly in areas that are predominantly African-American and minority. We're not just hanging up on people where dispatchers take calls and then never actually send emergency care to the other location, letting phones ring. Very often there's a lack of supervision, lack of training in these occupations and

a person like this should have never been hired, let alone able to stay in that job. Not only should she be fired, they should look up the entire chain of command to see who was supervising her, who's tracking her call logs, who was doing her performance reviews. How many other times has this happened? We know about this particular occasion, but what other crimes has this particular dispatcher or others who work with her done these sorts of things? I think you have to dig deep down into the system to find out where the actual rot begins.

Don't simply cut off the surface level. Dig down in there and put in some systemic reform to prevent this from happening again in the future. Scott, you would think that a 911 dispatcher has been trained that when somebody's calling up, it's a good bet they're not talking in my tone because they might be hiding. I mean, to me, that's sort of basic. Yeah, you know, 911 support is not a job where you can have a bad day.

Pilots can't have bad days. Police officers, to be honest with you, can't have bad days. And she's whispering because there's the shooter. But she could have been whispering because a burglar was at our house. And the 911 caller, remember the young kid who was 11 years old? Right, right. She's whispering. She's whispering.

But, again, I'm trying to demonstrate how important these calls that come in are important. These calls that come in are important. The kid that got killed in Cleveland, another dangerous piece, had to do with the 911 dispatch not giving the police all the details, that it might be a toy gun and so forth and so on, and the police show up and shooting within four seconds. That's the police fault, but the dispatch is is also responsible they can't have bad days and whether they were trained or not they've got to implement their training every day because it's the first calm voice you hear should hear when you're in trouble or you're in danger that voice has got to comfort you but send help right away and get the details and send the details right away. That didn't happen here. And who knows how many people were killed out of that 10 because that

call didn't get handled properly. Indeed. Now, yet on yesterday's show, we talked with Attorney Ben Crump and one of the family members of one of the folks who was killed, and they said they wanted to see action from President Joe Biden, from Democrats in Congress. Well, today, Democrats are moving to actually pass a bill that would establish offices around the country to deal with domestic terrorism. That's one of the things that is happening. CBC members are also very active on this front, trying to take some legislative action to

deal with these type of shootings. Today on the floor, Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands did not hold back. And she did. She did what President Biden wouldn't do. That is, she was specific in calling out Republicans for advancing the white supremacist replacement theory conspiracy that this white domestic terrorist wrote about in his manifesto. This is what she had to say on the floor of the U.S. House today. Speaker, this Sunday in the state in which I was born and raised, New York, a man drove three hours

and 200 miles to terrorize members of a local black community. This man shot 13 people, 11 of which were black. This was not a random act of violence. This was domestic terrorist attack, was an act of hate ignited by replacement theory rhetoric that is fueled by white supremacists, Fox News, and indeed some of my Republican colleagues. This false, ignorant, race-baiting theory called the Great Replacement has been used in multiple race-based domestic terrorist acts, including the synagogue attack in Pittsburgh and the El Paso shooting attack

in 2019. There are a number of my Republican colleagues who spew this vile and venomous rhetoric. The silence of Republican leadership and their ranks in condemning this rhetoric that is not just ripping our country apart, but contributing to the death of Americans that shows that they are no longer the party of Lincoln or even the party of Ronald Reagan. I yield back. Well, that's exactly how you should do it. That's exactly how you should do it, Robert Petillo.

Again, people were talking about they want to see things happen. Democrats are trying to move in the House to establish these domestic terror offices. Your thoughts on that? Well, I think we have to dive a little bit deeper into great replacement theory because people, for some reason, think this is a new idea. I first heard this from David Duke in 1988, when they started talking about birth rates in the white community. This was after Reagan passed amnesty in 1986.

So the whole concept is that the white race is not reproducing at a sufficient rate, not just here in America, but also in Northern Europe, to replace themselves generation over generation. And because of that, they are slowly dying out as a group. This is why during the Republican convention in 2020, we kept hearing them talk about Western civilization, because it goes deeper than simply America. They are fighting for what they believe to be their legacy as white people on this planet. And if you look at the numbers, in 1960, white people made up 90 percent of the U.S. population.

In the year 2000, they made up right around 70 percent of the United States population. The last census, they make up 57 percent of the U.S. population. And originally, people thought the singularity date when white people would become a no longer majority was going to be the 2040s. And now it's projected to be about 2036, when they will drop under 50% of the United States population. So almost all Republican policy over the last three decades has been based upon the conceptualization of slowing down this singularity event, where they will no longer be the majority. Why are they fighting so hard to repeal abortion?

Well they need white women having more babies, and they can't have them having more babies, so they're out here on birth control and having abortions. Why are they trying to build a border wall? Well, because when you're having 200,000, 300,000 immigrants coming to the country every month or so, it's beats of that pace of them being dying out in this country. Why do they fight so hard against African American rights? Why do they do mass incarceration? Well, try to keep those population numbers down in the black community. For most of our lives, all of us on this panel, black folks have been between 13 and 15 percent of the population not growing at the rate that was initially anticipated, if you go back to some reports

from the 1960s. So everything in Republican policy is based upon this idea. Indeed, the entire cassia bellae of the GOP right now is in furtherance of this great replacement theory. It is not a fringe theory. Indeed, it is central to Republican Party politics and Republican Party policy. So when we talk about rooting this out, it's not simply a question of, well, let's get these racist and white supremacists and these lunatics who go on shooting sprees and take care of them. We have to fundamentally carve it out of the American body politic because it's caustic

to everything that it touches, because it's predicated on one singular idea, which is the survival of the white race here in America. And until we realize that and understand that and see how it dictates public policy, there's no way that we can properly address it. So of course we should be setting up these offices of domestic terrorism, but more so each of these shootings should be taken out of the Department of Justice and put into the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. We should be investigating Charlottesville the same way we investigate Al-Qaeda.

We should be investigating Buffalo the same way we investigate ISIS, so we can find out who supplies these weapons, what chat rooms are there in, what are the commonalities, who are the deep pockets behind this, how deep does the organization go, and go in and break them down the same way we would break down a terrorist organization overseas. We have to do that right here in this country. Well, part of the problem, Scott, is when you have that, which is one of the reasons why Representative Plaskett said what she said, when you have Republicans who just refuse to even say anything about it. The folks at Raw Story actually questioned a couple of senators.

One of them was Texas Senator John Cornyn. I'm here in my home state. And what was interesting is this is what he said, quote, I think it's tragic. I don't know if you could call it a trend or not. Now, this is somebody who also was on way to a closed-door intelligence briefing. Now, keep in mind, you had the white supremacist attack. It took place in El Paso, 2019, 23 killed, 23 injured. We saw what happened in Charlottesville.

We saw what happened January 6th. Then we also, of course, saw what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, at Mother Emanuel. We saw just what happened in Buffalo. And this is what he said. It's just a cop-out trying to blame this on, I mean, it's violence committed by either criminal people or people who are deranged. Now, this is the former chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, former Attorney General, now United States Senator. He said, and if people want to put that in a pigeonhole or category, whether it's hate crime or whatever, it doesn't make it any

less evil. Now, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin, this is what he said. He actually had a problem with the question itself. He said, quote, I think it's awful. I think it's grotesquely divisive. Okay. What it is, is the media's showing themselves for who they are, which are advocates for the radical left. And they're just trying to cover up for Biden now. Oh, who is Ron Johnson? The most recent chair of the U.S. Senate's Homeland Security Committee. This is why I keep saying, Scott, that if Democrats lose that lose the Senate these are the people who are going to be in control of the Senate the people if they if

Democrats lose the house in November you're going to have crazy deranged Republicans who believe in the white supremacy view of replacement theory who are going to be in leadership in the U.S. House. That is what is at stake. Well, you're absolutely right about that, but they sound like sympathizers, and they can't see a hate crime in front of their face, and they don't want to see a hate crime in front of their face. I wish I could cross-examine them on each of the cases that you just named, because what do you do when you find the racist manifestos that monitors

and mimics the white supremacist manifestos, even with Trump and with those senators and even those who would support January 6th? The evidence is overwhelming. What do you do with a shooter in Baltimore who puts the N-word on the length of his gun? He also has written a racist manifesto similar to white supremacists and shoots 10 black people, wounds or shoots at a white person. Oh, I'm sorry. While he continues to go on his rampage, there is so much evidence that this was race based. There is domestic terrorism and it this was race-based. There is domestic terrorism, and it's domestic terrorism for Black people. Now, if they don't want to recognize that, then everything my colleague said is manifestly true, that it is all about keeping the numbers down, keeping white people in power. And while Ron Johnson and others may not be pointing guns

and going on shooting rampages, they certainly sound like, when asked that question, they sound like they're conceptually sympathizing with the shooters of these race-based shootings. Why would they ever want to sound like that? It may be in their heart, but they're not pulling the trigger. That's bad. That's really bad. That ought to motivate Democrats in the White House to call them out. And not only that, but to win the races in the midterms. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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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 this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by aarp and the ad council oh it gets better monique uh this is also what Senator Johnson said, who is running for reelection in Wisconsin.

Quote, we see gangs. We see cyber threats. I mean, I think there's actually more threatening threats. I mean, there's more serious threats facing the nation than what's posed by white supremacists. Now, again, I condemn it, obviously. I guess he forgot the FBI director saying the most dangerous threat in America is white domestic terrorism. Oh, but then, of course, Ron Johnson had to go to the white Republican go-to crime in

Chicago. He says, quote, now I'd be concerned about that. Again, a black-on-black crime in Chicago. Now I'd be concerned about that. Again, I'm concerned about all violence. But I mean, I would focus my attention on where the murders are actually occurring, as if we didn't see murders in Buffalo. This is what he said. And I'll be focusing my attention on what can we do to start preventing overdose deaths.

Then, of course, there is the senior senator from Indiana, where his raw story says it, that there are more than 15 white supremacist hate groups being tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Indiana. Well, this is what good old boy Todd Young, Republican, had to say. Monique, oh gosh, I'll tell you. What's on most Hoosiers' minds is inflation, border security, war in Europe. I think the president and our national Democratic leaders will be well served by finding some solutions to our most pressing challenges. Now, these are the Republicans. He's right. Who?

He's right. Go ahead. He's correct. That is what's on Hoosier's minds. He knows his constituency, and they don't give a damn about us. Well, hold up. That's on white Hoosiers' minds. I would think there's some black folks in Indiana who probably care about the issue. Right. I mean, and we don't know how many black folks are actually part of his constituency and are voting for him and are responsible for keeping him in office. But he's a money, money, money. He's a U.S. money, money.

He's a U.S. senator. All black people in Indiana are constituents of this guy. Oh, I know he may not care about saying what they are constituent. I'm talking about who he's serving, who he cares about, who he speaks for, who he's thinking about, and what they care about. And he spoke plainly about those issues. And they do not care about us. We are so dehumanized that when police kill us, it doesn't matter. We are so dehumanized that when the white supremacy and racism is in their faces and they cannot deny it, they'd rather compare and contrast and find issues that are more important than white supremacy. They'd rather find danger and threats that are more dangerous than what is happening

to black people in the manner in which we're being targeted as citizens of this country. So when people like him tell the truth of their experience, their existence, their work, and their issues, I just believe them. I take them right where they are. He meant what he said, and he said what he meant. And Roland, I want to talk about this what about Chicago argument that we always hear from these people whenever we start talking about crime in the black community. We start talking about police brutality, white supremacy. All crime is terrible. Yes, we understand that.

But there's a reason that we treat, let's say, radical Islamic terrorism differently than two white guys fighting in the Chili's parking lot. It's because there's different ways that you handle and address them. These are organized events. So the same way that we go after al-Qaeda, that's the same way we have to go after white supremacy because these are organized organizations. Do you really think an 18-year-old went out and bought all this equipment,

body armor, front and back, level 3A, a tactical ballistic helmet, an AR-15 of multiple magazines, that tactical training and shooting was in order, all this stuff. Most of the things you can't even order before you're 18 years old. So clearly there's organizational backing behind what he was doing. They try to play this off as simply being one lone wolf crazy person who had a bad day, quote unquote. No, we need to find out and use all the tools in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security to find out who he co-conspired with, who helped him write that 180-page manifesto, what chat rooms was he in, what organizations was he part of.

Find out where the rot begins. Don't simply take this at surface level. In the same way that we treat terrorism differently than we treat white-on-white crime, that's why we treat white supremacy and white domestic terrorism different than black-on-black crime, because the solution to both is different. Therefore, you have to treat them differently. So every time they do this whataboutism, I just simply say, well, then why exactly do we even have a war on terror? All murder is bad murder, so why should we even fight terrorism overseas when you still

have white-on-white crime here at home? Until we can take care of all white-on-white crime, then we should not be addressing radical Islamic terrorism or anything else. But the fact is they're simply using a canard in order to try to distract people from the fact that they know a big chunk of their constituency agrees with that shooter, and that's why they never want to address it. Nor do they believe in racism. You sound surprised somehow. Oh yeah. Oh no, they don't think this exists. White people are afraid of the race question, racism, but that being the basis for anything in America, including critical race theory that they don't want taught in the school. So I'm not surprised at that. They should be better, but they've never

been victimized by racism. They don't even believe in racism. They take point by point until you get a George Floyd where they have no choice but to say that was police misconduct. Well, let me remind people, in Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson is running for re-election. You know what you should be doing? Booting his behind out of office. All right, folks. We've got to go to a break. We come back more of today's news. As we're broadcasting here from Cedar Hill, Texas, where in about 90 minutes, I'll be hosting a town hall with Texas State Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is in a reelected, excuse me, in a runoff battle to replace longtime Congresswoman Edna Bernice Johnson here in Texas. We'll be right back.

Roland Martin unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Next on A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, summertime when the living is easy, or is it? Summer vacations, class reunions, kids in summer camp, all fun but stressful. You need to get into a summer mindset and have a plan. Oh, yes. our panel gives us their favorite summer planning hacks. On the next A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie here at Blackstar Network. Pull up a chair, take your seat at the Black Table with me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Blackstar Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in.

Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Teresa Griffin. Hi, my name is LaToya Luckett and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. I'm All right, folks, as I said, I'm here in Texas where there are a, well, the runoff elections from the primary taking place on Tuesday. Last night across the country, there were primaries in a number of states, of course, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Nebraska as well, Idaho, Oregon, all across the country. In North Carolina, former Supreme Court Justice Sherry Beasley, African-American woman. She won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate.

She is going to face off against Republican nominee Ted Budd, who beat the former governor by 30 points for that. There'll be, of course, Budd has been already been endorsed by Donald Trump. And so that is going to be a critical race that we're looking at. It's going to be a tight race. Bottom line is Beasley can win, but it's going to take a significant turnout, especially when it comes to rural North Carolina. May 24th, of course, that's six days from now, Beasley will be on. Roland Martin-Unfiltered will be talking about her race. Also, there in North Carolina, Don Davis beat Erica Smith for one of the congressional seats there. Of course, we had Erica Smith on the show. He was endorsed by a retiring congressman, G.K. Butterfield. And so he goes on. Remember, Republicans changed that

district. It is not a solid Democrat district, but it's also going to be a tough race as well. In Kentucky, Charles Booker, remember he ran against a couple of years ago against Mitch McConnell. Well, he's back. He won a Democratic nomination. He is going to be facing Senator Rand Paul in Kentucky. Here's the deal, folks. Only 20 percent, only 20.7 percent of all Kentucky residents voted in the primary. Don't think Booker can't beat Paul. It's about driving the ground game. That's going to be critical uh in that race as well let's go to pennsylvania where lieutenant governor john federman won the democratic nomination over congressman congressman connor lamb and also pennsylvania state representative

malcolm kenyatta of course uh federman uh remember uh suffered a stroke on friday also had a pacemaker installed as well uh and so he does not know who is he going to be facing because it is an extremely tight race on the Democratic side where Dr. Mehmet Oz is slightly leading, slightly leading in that race. And so we'll see exactly what's going to happen there. But in Pennsylvania, Austin Davis won the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor. He's a brother. He is going to be running on the ticket with Josh Shapiro, a Democratic candidate for governor, who he also endorsed Davis in early January. If successful, Davis will become the Pennsylvania's first black lieutenant governor

if he won in the fall. Now, folks, you need to pull this photo up. I don't know why we don't have it here. There was a congressional race, the Pennsylvania 12th, that everybody was paying attention to. And that is you had this young sister. She's a state representative. Her name is Summer Lee. And, folks, APEC dropped $3.3 million, various political action committees, to stop her from winning. Well, guess what?

It didn't work. It failed. Summer Lee has won that Democratic nomination by about 400 votes. She is a progressive. She was supported by Senator Bernie Sanders. And again, she was she worked the ground. She had a very, very strong, strong message. And in a second, we're going to play exactly her speech from last night where she addressed her supporters, folks. The controlling option look I just posted it.

And again, this is an important race because this is what folks were told. In fact, not just this race. You had a moderate Republican who was in Oregon. He got blown out by a progressive challenger. You saw in North Carolina, progressive district attorneys, they still were able to win and in fact Mondale Robinson is a brother who worked with of course black men a voting initiative he actually hit me up he sent me a text just give me one second y'all let me find it so Mondale Robinson ran for mayor in Enfield, North Carolina, a rural town there. He was running against an incumbent. He ran as a strong progressive. This is what he tweeted me a couple

of hours ago. I did it. I defeated an incumbent by 50 percentage points and got 76 percent of the vote. I outperformed everyone on the ballot. no candidate running for any office in, North Carolina Outperform me with infield voters He said I'm telling the world that you can be as progressive in the rural black South as you can anywhere And it's a better way to turn out low propensity sporadic voters In some of the other states as well. we saw the exact same thing. Bottom line here, Robert, all of the folks who have been saying that, look, progressives, look, you got to run

different. We have seen where folks actually are winning. Now, yeah, you have, of course, moderates still winning. And yes, this is the primary. But the reality is this here. If you look at that race, Summer Lee is a perfect example. That sister, they put the work on the ground. They didn't sit here and bombard the airwaves with television ads. You can only buy so much TV and folks just start tuning in out. I'm telling you, what these candidates should be doing is telling I'm in a church. I ain't going to cuss, but they should be telling these Democratic strategists to go to hell by

always trying to put money in television. If you put money on the ground and turn people out and reach the low propensity voters who align with your values, you can beat these Republicans in November. You're absolutely right, Roland. I think this is the problem that we've had with the DCCC, with the Democratic National Committee. They still want to be kingmakers. They still want to have the power behind the curtain. They still want to be able to tell people who the candidates are going to be. Back in 2009, I was running the attorney general's race here in Georgia for Ken Hodges. Shout out to everybody on the campaign who's old now.

But from the attorney general spot, we did a 159-county grassroots strategy, knocking on doors all the way down in Oglethorpe, up in Hart County, all around the places where they tell you the Democrats aren't supposed to be out knocking on doors and looking for voters. We got more votes from the attorney general spot than the lieutenant governor or the governor got during that primary. So grassroots work works. What it takes is people willing to actually hire local strategists. Quit flying in people from D.C. and New York and L.A. to run your campaign in Lowndes County, Alabama. Get people who know the grassroots, know the ground. And this idea that progressives can't win is a pernicious lie that's been created by the kingmakers in the party politics. President Trump blew all that up. He blew up the entire concept of having to run to the middle,

of having to be this kind of neutral candidate that can appeal to both sides. We are in a tribalistic campaign season right now. You see the campaign right there in Pennsylvania, where you have three candidates running. One was running and being crazy. One was running and being crazy as hell. And then one was running and being crazy as all hell. They are not trying to get moderate votes in the middle. So when you're running as a progressive, you have to run on that agenda. They got 81 million votes in 2020. Make the promises, bring them through on the local level. And that's how you win, not by being this kind of blank canvas, white guy with brown hair, smiling in a cornfield

with a dog that campaigns used to be. You have to motivate voters and get out there, bring them to the polls, get them motivated and tell them exactly why they need to vote for you. And you can win if you do. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a 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 Glod. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban 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. 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 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 gotta 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 thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. You know, this is the thing that, as I'm looking at here, Monique, again, here we are six months out. And the reality in a lot of these campaigns, what you often see is you see this intense focus on, again, television ads and, oh, let's appeal to the independent voters. Bottom line is this here. You go after the people who you likely can get out. When I was in Kansas City last week, they were talking about how their goal is to get 40,000 people, is to get 40,000 people focused, and that is to try to

get local control of their police department. And again, that's just old school politics, is looking at the numbers, is studying the prec precincts is looking at where the turnout was where's the best turnout who are your likely voters and and it happens every year and look yeah you can call me being selfish it also means putting the money in black newspapers and Latino newspapers utilizing grassroots organizations when you have these strategists who, frankly, you know what? They really don't care if they win or lose because they're going to keep getting their checks. Bottom line is this here.

You've got to put the money on the ground to turn your voters out. And I really hope, I really hope some Democrats who are running are looking at what Summer Lee did and say, how did you beat back $3.3 million of APEC money flooding into that particular district? I mean, I think that's why organizations like Black Voters Matter are so successful and why people who have any sense of supporting them and supporting their endeavors as they're running these campaigns. Those of us who have been around campaigns for a long time, like Robert, like me, like Scott, we know that the ground game really is the only game.

And so while there is, as Latasha Brown always says, you can't out-organize voter suppression, there are still methods and mechanisms that you can use to win in a fair fight, and that's what we saw happen. Yeah. Yeah, you know, Roland. Again, as I look at a lot of these races, and again, I spent a lot of time last night, I spent time last night just looking at a lot of local races,

looking at DA races, looking at some state representative races, and the races where you have these strong progressive voices, they were outgunned, they were outspent, they were outraised, but they were not out-hustled. Yeah, but that's true. And it's all about the ground game. It's all about get out the vote. You know, Mary Berry used to say to me when I represented him before he passed on with the aim, we counting those voters. He used to put,

he used to have these cards. Whoever he knocked on the door or his people knocked on the door, they got their name, address, were they a super voter or not, and he kept those cards. By the time his campaign came around, he knew how many votes he needed to win. He knew where those votes were going to come from. And on election day, it was about implementation. Did you have the money for buses? And each bus leader on his campaign had those cards that they have taken in interviewing super voters and general voters across the city, across the District of Columbia. And so by the time election day came, he was counting votes. And when they would turn in those cards, he would know or have a good idea how many votes he got out of Ward 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. He would know that already.

And so he would go into election night after the polls closed with a really good idea of where he'd gotten his votes from, what the number was, and then whether he was going to win or not. That's political science, and that's what you're talking about. And, Roland, on that same point, just a little bit. And here's what's crazy, Monique. You can actually see who voted and who didn't. I mean, you can literally go, they will have the data, and it says these are the registered voters, these are people who actually voted in this precinct.

And so, if you've got a precinct of 800 voters, and 60 voted in the last election, I'm just saying, that's what knocking on those doors, that's what touching them, that's what going to them. And again, we see Sherry Beasley, again, who is a U.S. Senate candidate. She lost. She lost as the chief justice of North Carolina Supreme Court by 400 votes. That's statewide in North Carolina. She lost by 400 votes. Look, this race in the Senate race, I think it's now down. I think Oz's lead is down to 1,500 or 1,400. It's actually going down. Summer Lee won her race by around 400 or 500 votes. Every vote

matters. But in this insane idea, because we saw this in Georgia, and I want Robert to speak to this after Monique, where, look, there was no more TV time to buy. There was no more TV time. They were sitting on millions of dollars of the Ossoff and Warnock campaign, and the Democratic strategists were thinking, let's just buy more radio and more TV. It's like, yo, you're not going to just win by blanketing the airwaves. You've got to touch the people. You're not going to just win by blanketing the airwaves. You've got to touch the people.

And I say if Democrats want to hold to the House and hold the Senate, they better be going and find those low-propensity, high-turnout voters that Reverend Barber and the Poor People's Campaign have been talking about consistently over the last several years. Monique, then Robert. Right. I mean, there's no mystery to it, As you pointed out, we know exactly who they are. We know where they are. We know what the voting patterns are. All that information is available for what you need in order to have a successful ground game as foot soldiers. And that's where what we're always saying on the show actually comes in. Every single person can participate.

Every single person does matter, not just with your vote, but with your willingness to volunteer to get out the vote. And there is something that everyone can do. I've said before on this show, I'll say again, I was probably 10, 11. First campaign I was associated with was for Governor Ann Richards. I've been hooked ever since. But I was walking door to door. door, sticking, asking people permission to put signs in their yards. That stuff still matters. It still matters. And people still appreciate who would not have voted this time around will appreciate somebody asking them, can I talk to you about what would make a difference in your vote? Are you planning on voting in this election? What are your issues in vote for this election? I would like to have your vote. Here's what I plan to do. What can I do better? I mean, that's person to person.

If you're in it to serve somebody, then you ought to actually care about the people you're trying to serve. And Monique tapped to the right. Robert, I want you to comment on that point Monique made about yard signs. I mean, it's crazy how all of these newfangled candidate campaigns. Oh, that's old politics. We've now got our phones and we've got our iPad, our algorithm. In 2016, voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania were calling Hillary Clinton's offices going, where are the yard signs? We're driving all around and always seeing our Trump signs.

And literally, the Clinton campaign was like, oh, that's old politics. We don't need that. And they were like, no, seeing yard signs builds momentum, gives you a feeling that things are building. And so all of these and I'm look, look, y'all, y'all know I'm a techie. Okay. Again, I got two phones, three iPads, an Apple computer, but at the end of the day, politics is still basic. I need to get one more vote than you. You better use every advantage you can, whether that's technical, with digital, yard signs, flyers. I don't care.

Pigeons. Take your pick. Everything that you can use, that's what you better use. And look, Roland, a lot of this comes out of the DNC campaign school that started right after the Obama campaign. So I used to go to those DNC campaign schools and they let the nerds take over. And just as you said, the particularly younger candidates, this is a segment I'm going to call Free Game with Attorney Robert Petillo. You cannot win a campaign on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook ads, so on and so forth. That's a part of it. That is a tool. That is not the totality

of the tool. You're not going to win elections going to cocktail parties and fundraisers and meeting groups. You're going to have to go to those old folks' homes and senior high-rises. You're going to have to go not door-to-door counties you don't want to go to. You're going to have to actually wear your shoes down to the point you have to get a new pair because you put a hole in them. You actually have to have a ground team that can go door-to-door because particularly in local and municipal races, you can actually have the names and phone numbers of every single vote that you need to win before election day. And then on election day, you can just simply call through those lists to

make sure that your voters are turning out on election day to vote for you. Let's say you're in a district where you need 1,500 votes to win. You can call 1,500 people with a team of five folks in one day to get them out to the polls. So put the actual work in, quit votes to win. You can call 1,500 people with a team of five folks in one day to get them out to the polls. So put the actual work in, quit trying to outsource it, quit trying to use vote builder and algorithms and think you're going to outsmart the system. It's still going to come down to who works the hardest, and that's what it takes to win. And Roland, real quick. Well, you know, Scott, one of the things that, you know, Scott, one second, Scott, one second.

One of the things that Robert just laid out there, again, about getting back to basics. When you talk about that old shoe leather. Again, what Reverend Barber has consistently talked about is that there are people,, low income, poor workers. They actually represent more than 90 million voters. He said if Democrats literally, literally turned out, bumped that number by 5 percent, they win. But you've got to be willing to actually talk to those voters and that's why hey i'm talking all these democrats you know the ones who were whining and complaining oh my god we didn't win because defund the police well there were actually some people who won in purple districts uh who

still won because of that in spite of that the bottom line is this here. What are you saying to voters? And you know what? It's a whole bunch of lazy politicians who get outworked. Okay? And they're used to just doing the minimum. And so they should be studying a Cori Bush, an AOC, studying Ayanna Pressley, studying these newer members to say, hey, how are you putting the new with the old? The people who whine, oh, my God, I lost my position,

it's likely they got outworked. Yeah, you still got to hit the ground. Those yard signs, what's important about those yard signs is the more yard signs you see, people believe that you're going to win. And why do they believe that? Because if you're a voter and you're willing to put a yard sign and tell the world that you're voting for Hillary Clinton or voting for Cori Bush, people are going to believe

you. And if they're in their neighborhood, they're going to believe you. And then you're willing to go public. You're going to tell the world who you're going to vote for. That's just powerful. But you've got to go get those other voters. If you're down in the poll, because most polls were poll super voters, right? That's voters that vote in every race.

That's people on this show right now. But there are a lot of people who aren't touched because they can't talk about the issue. You go touch them. You listen to them. You get a commitment for their vote. This might be the first time. That 90 million Reverend Barber talking about? That might be the first time a candidate

or somebody in the campaign knocked on their door, registered them to vote, and listened to what the issues are they're facing, whether you're in rural Georgia or rural North Carolina or suburbs of Chicago. It may be the first time, because they're not super voters. You've got to go get them.

There's a big-ass pool of voters, as you said, that have never voted or don't vote all the time, and ain't nobody asked them to vote. Go get them. You ain't got to have 50-50 in the Senate. Just go get them. But that takes work and commitment, Roland. That takes work and commitment, boy. That takes work and commitment,

boy. You gotta have volunteers. You gotta blanket that junk. And you know what? You're right. A lot of politicians don't have the money to do it. Or they don't have the commitment. And then look, I also don't buy... I saw this piece earlier today

by Jake Sherman. He's like, oh, the Democrats are getting destroyed across the country. And I'm going, um, what election were you watching last night? See, one of the things that happens, Monique, this becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy because I've literally seen where Democrats have picked up seats that were actually red seats. This is real simple. If you all these people in D.C. who keep saying, oh, they're going to lose, going to lose. Y'all ain't on the ground. Y'all aren't going to these places.

You know this. You've been out there with Cliff and Latasha and Black Voters Matter. Well, they have been going to these small towns with food and other different things, talking to people. Look, Joe Madison says it all the time. You got to put it where the ghost can get it. You ain't going to win nothing sitting your behind at home. You are going to have to go out there and get them. And I'm telling you right now, I do not accept this worldview that, oh my goodness, it's going to be a colossal tsunami. It will be a tsunami. And yes, the numbers are there. The Republican enthusiasm is high because these MAGA people, that's how primaries actually work. It's really your hardcore people.

But here's the deal. It's May 6th, it's May 18th. And if your primary is already over, you better be in hardcore general election mode. You better be having the town halls like we're about to have here in an hour. You better be doing things in your, in these cities, in these states, going after the voters, not trying to go after the mythical Republican white woman in the suburbs who you ain't going to flip. You better go after that low-income worker and speak to them about what you've done and what you are going to do. I don't believe this notion that Democrats are going to get wiped out. They will get wiped out if they don't work for people's vote.

Monique, final comment before I go to break. Well, absolutely. And that's one of the things, you know, we had a president who was a skilled master organizer, a community organizer, and that is what is necessary to get this done. People say the reason why they don't go to certain communities is because those communities don't vote. But if you go into communities, they say,

we don't vote because nobody cares to come in here and talk to us. So it becomes this crazy circle and cycle that the people who care about these elections have to break. I was talking to some people in Memphis, Tennessee last night, and they told me what their concerns were. And these were lawyers, Black lawyers. And they said, we're concerned about low turnout in our primaries. We're concerned about our at-risk neighborhoods.

And we want vehicles to be able to increase turnout, early turnout for our voters there, and for them to know that it matters that they vote. So these candidates, that's what they have to do. And it's not as scary as you think. You ain't got to wander off into the Bronx by yourself. The goal of organizing is to turn leaders in the community. And then those leaders walk you in to that community. They go door to door with you.

You have to get somebody to give you an okay in that area. When I first started going door to door, I was going from 50 to 50 5th Street. I knew everybody by name. That's why that was my neighborhood. And that's the way that it has to keep happening. We need to get workers in our communities. And that means that somebody who's in high places has to see the necessity of the common touch. Before I go to break, I will say this uh president obama was good at him getting votes he was awful when it came to his party now i mean i i understand your point being skilled organizers no i actually actually was actually it was the job but uh his dnc uh was awful but his dnc was awful

rolling just one point on what no actually they could they could have replicated no hold up hold up robert hold up they hold up robert they could have replicated i know you're about to talk about the money everything out of the dnc and go to no, no, no, it wasn't the money. They stripped everything out of DNC and sent to Obama for America. OFA was one of the biggest mistakes that, and individuals who were in his administration even told me that that was a big mistake, but that's the past. Robert, go ahead with your final comment, then I got to go to the press. I'm talking about this year's votes, this year's votes. I got you, but no, but no, you referenced the past. I had to go ahead and go there. This year's votes. I got you. But no, but no.

You referenced the past. I had to go ahead and go there. Robert, go ahead. Robert, go ahead. Thinking back on what Monique said, I tell this to people who ask me about running for office all the time. And they say, well, what about going to XYZ neighborhood, XYZ community? It's dangerous. If you're scared to go into a neighborhood, how the hell are you going to represent those people?

So maybe you shouldn't be running if you're scared to go to certain parts of your district or you're not welcome there. So if you can't go talk to those people, you can't represent them. Maybe you should find another hobby to get into. Politics ain't to be cute. It's not Hollywood for ugly people. It's for servants, not for people who want to just be on TV. All right. Hey, folks, got to go to a break. We come back. We're going to talk with Lacey Leonard. Man, just what the brothers, what he is going through.

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 the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir.

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

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine 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 through his wife is holding it down but uh just unbelievable what this former nfl player is going through when it comes to his health Human Services and the same thing. We actually on Facebook today, so they were blocking us on yesterday. And so if y'all on Facebook, hit the like, hit the share button as well. Folks, if y'all want to support what we do, please, if you want to hit 50,000 downloads, the Blackstar Network app. And so please, download the app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku,

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on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. We welcome you to the launch of the Mass Poor People's Low-Wage Assembly and Mara March on Washington, D.C., June 18, 2022. We are a new unsettling force and we are powerful. A new unsettling force and we are powerful. A new unsettling force and we are here. We're rising up to demonstrate the compelling power that we poor and low income people have to reconstruct society from the bottom up. And we need to do it with the loudest voices possible, the biggest actions possible.

Because we know that there is no scarcity in this land. The only scarcity is the moral will to do what's right. Hold on just a little while longer We are those with sub-minimum wage jobs who can't afford sky-high rent. People with disabilities are the fastest-growing minority group. It's crazy to me that in 2021, it's still legal for workplaces to pay a sub-minimum wage

to people with disabilities. There's still so much trial and tribulations that we go through as indigenous people. We can't get a decent wage to sustain ourselves, nor can we get adequate housing. Veterans across this nation say enough is enough. We can't pat essential workers on the back on one day and then cut their health care the next day.

Health is a political choice. What more do I need to do to prove that my voice is just as valuable as anyone else's? There are still forces in denial that would try to slow walk our transition to a clean economy and a just future for us all. We have an immoral system run by immoral people. But together we walk, and we walk and we fight. It's time for a change! Reconstruyamos esta gran nación!

See, we are people of resilience as we fight these interlocking injustices together. When we work together, mobilize together, and rise together, we become a voice for the voiceless, and we become an agent of change in a time where great change is needed. We need the third reconstruction to ensure that deaf people, people with disabilities,

and all people can have the right to live and to thrive. We know what they are doing, but the question is, what are we going to do? Reconstruction begins when we change our mentality and say, it's time for you to get your foot off of my neck. I know justice is coming soon. Hey! Do you believe that? I'm today!

Hi, I'm Eldie Barge. Hey, yo, peace world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roller Martin, Unfiltered. All right, folks, we've told you numerous times the the trials and tribulations that former NFL player Lewis Leonard has been going through when it comes to his health his wife Lacey has also been with us as well they recently posted some video that was that was just shocking on social media on how he was treated. Literally, cops moving him out of the hospital. This was the video that was posted. We saw it and we reached out to both of them.

They join us right now for Phoenix. Lacey and Louis, glad to have y'all back. Hate to do it, have you back on these circumstances. What happened this time? Well, essentially, Lewis was in the hospital. He had been in the hospital for a little over about two weeks. Sorry, a little over two weeks. And it started off he had went in, of course, like his gout had flared up really bad and he was dealing with a lot of inflammation, a lot of pain. They ended up admitting Lewis. He was there for about a week. And then last Monday, he had an accident in the restroom of his hospital bedroom where he sat on, what one of the nurses left a sprout down that actually rinses out urinals. They're supposed to put them up

and they actually left it down. And I went in to use the restroom and actually sat on that metal sprout. And sad to say, it was, it entered my rear end. And from there, excessive, excessive, excessive. I mean, you could think about the pain, but I mean, I'm talking about blood everywhere, you know, just a bad situation. And from then on, the hospital did not give me any x-rays, did not give me any imaging

to kind of see what was going on. We asked for this for numerous days. So all the way, this happened on Monday the 9th. They kicked me out the hospital on Friday the 13th. From Monday to Friday. Wait, wait, wait, hold up. They threatened to kick you out of the hospital? No, they didn't threaten.

They kicked me out. Got injured? They kicked me out. Wait a minute. You get injured because they screwed up. Yeah, after I got injured, and it was negligence on the nurse's behalf because the nurse is supposed to pick the sprout up.

Whenever they go to do what they got to do, they to pick it up she failed to do that um i got injured and it was i mean i got i got pictures and videos and there's some of the like the worst thing you can see when you talk about uh uh blood and and and waste you know it was he it was a bad experience. He was already not even really mobile. He was in a walker, so he was already considered a fall risk. So he really probably shouldn't have been in there by himself trying to use the restroom anyways. But that's neither here nor there.

When he had the injury and I expressed to them that, hey, you know, what's our plan of care at this point? Because he had already been in and was almost to recovery until that incident happened. Unfortunately, they're just kind of very dismissive. You know, some of the nurses in their reports, they said, oh, well, we, it didn't interact early. And I'm like, well, I'm sure he understands if something interact early, is there any way we can get, you know, some scans done? That never happened. I did ask for an incident report to be written just for his records. And if something was to happen later down the line, we can make sure that we had some type of paper trail of what he might possibly be dealing with. I was informed that an incident report was done after I requested it. But I think being that I

did request it, I think the hospital was already very like, we got to get this guy out of here. And so from there, it just kind of escalated with, you know, them not giving him any type of pain medication. You know, not, he was requesting doctors, doctors really not being, you know, communicating with him as far as like what was going on. And then what led to him being essentially kicked out of the hospital at four o'clock in the morning when I got the call was one of the hospital directors in Lewis had a conversation and this particular director had informed Lewis, you know, basically you've, you violated a behavioral contract. So we're kicking you out. Lewis had not signed no behavioral contract. Lewis had not gotten no type of altercation with nobody

at that hospital. Lewis was not aggressive. Lewis could barely walk. He couldn't walk at all. I mean, he's in there in a walker and at four o'clock in the morning, they essentially told him you have to leave. And when Lewis was saying, I'm not, I'm not going to be able to go anywhere. I can't even move. They, they, that's when they threatened with the police and Lewis was like, okay, well, you're going to have to do what you have to do, but I can't even move. And I guess they called Phoenix PD and Phoenix PD came deep, as you can see in the videos, which I've never experienced anything like that in my life. I was terrified because by default, Lewis is 6'5", over 400 pounds. He's, he looks aggressive. American, by American standards, he's an oversized black male

and you're aggressive. So I was scared for his life because I didn't know what these police were going to do. They were threatening. Like if you don't, you know, collaborate, we will take you to jail. You know, they even offered to take him in a police car to the hospital. And I'm like, wait, what? The hospital wouldn't even offer him a transfer to another hospital. And I'm like, wait, what? The hospital wouldn't even offer him a transfer to another hospital. And I'm like, okay, if you guys decide that you're not going to provide him care, why would you not transfer this patient to another hospital? And they failed to do that. And so it just, to me, was really disgusting because I know they wouldn't have done somebody that looked like them like this. You know, Lewis was not no threat. He could not have harmed anybody. And the fact that

even on their discharge paperwork, they, he wasn't discharged because they said he was healthy. They discharged him because they said he violated their, uh, I guess some type of behavioral contract, which, which came out to being Louisville nurses in his room. And he told a nurse in particular, I just want to let you know for my safety, I am recording. And then that nurse then told the director and that director said, okay, he's out of here. I think they were just frustrated. And anybody that works in health care, you are going to be frustrated with patients. Some of these patients are dealing with physically, mentally.

That's something I had even expressed to this hospital the week prior, and everything was just kind of left to the wayside. It was something I had never seen in my life. I was just totally just disgusted by it, honestly. Racial disparity in health healthcare is a thing. Yeah, we did reach out to the hospital and have not, of course, gotten a comment from them. We hate that y'all had to go through this, but we do appreciate you sharing your story with us.

Lacey, thank you so very much. Louis, thank you so very much. Louis, I can't tell. Are you wearing an Omega hat on my show? See, there you go. See, I know. I know that you're such a – look at the mantra I said. Is he wearing an Omega hat on my show?

I thought I told you about that last – I appreciate you, man, because you always tend to put a smile on my face. So I appreciate you man because you always tend to put a smile on my face so I appreciate it we talk about some serious stuff and so I always I said you know what I always got to do that but Lacey next time

if he wear that purple and gold go ahead and just snatch that off his head y'all take care we'll be praying for you doc uh and uh uh what happens y'all y'all take care we certainly appreciate thanks a bunch uh thank you again folks uh uh it's uh now people need to understand i you know we talk about this all the time and one of the reasons why uh we we continually haveacey and Lewis on here is because, I mean, a lot of people need to understand. People watch NFL. They watch sports.

They watch college football. But they never see what life is like after that or what these families deal with in terms of these health issues. Some breaking news just coming in. President Joe Biden is in. They said they lost my mic. Hey, y'all still hear me? OK, you hear me now? Got it. Again, some breaking news here. President Joe Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act to address the nationwide nationwide shortage of baby formula. The part of the problem here is that only four countries, four companies essentially dominate baby formula in America. One of the things, though, Monique, that and Democrats have done an awful job with this.

Donald Trump actually by opposing NAFTA and whatever the heck that new thing he called it, he actually made it difficult to be able to import baby formula for Canada from Canada and so that's actually exacerbated the problem. The FDA took one of Abbott's manufacturing facilities offline because they had contaminated baby formula. This is what happens in a country when you only have four companies that are dominating a market.

If one goes down, you're absolutely screwed. And so we've seen all of these different stories, Republicans blaming the baby formula problem on President Joe Biden. No, blame it on the companies who screwed up, who were actually sending out a baby formula that was actually making kids sick. Absolutely. Blame it. Blame it on them. Blame it on the prior president because of making it much harder for us to access imports that are necessary. But it also,

Roland, I want to point out, it further highlights the disparities that exist. When anything goes wrong, it affects our community disproportionately more so and worse than others. So, for instance, there was all this information going around saying, ladies, if you need formula, just go on Amazon, click from your United States to Canada and go ahead and order and it will come to your door. And you know what? That worked. That worked for people who have Amazon, have Amazon Prime, people who have Wi-Fi service, people who are not on government assistance, who don't have WIC or Snap because you cannot use online purchasing for items for that. So there are a lot of issues that people

don't necessarily understand who are not dealing with this part of their lives anymore. I was just thinking earlier today how freaked out I would have been if I had young children during a time like this. I was fortunate enough to be able to nurse mine, but then in the transition from nursing to regular milk, being supplementing with some formula in the middle, and it is a... There's nothing scarier for a mom

than not being able to provide proper nourishment for a baby and to hear a crying hungry baby and that is something that should never happen. 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 Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

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

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

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

your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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 thisispreetirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council....happen in the United States for any child. This is the thing that to me is crazy. Look, that's crazy. I don't understand how, if you are the administration, you allow folks to somehow blame you for a problem you have nothing to do with uh scott uh and and

this is where you say no it's the idiot all of you idiots who voted for uh tossing out nafta and then approving that whatever that crap trump passed that's what made it difficult you put the blame exactly where that where it is and, monopolies in this country. Four companies control 90% of the baby formula in America. Anything happens with one of those companies, it's a massive crisis in this country. And this is the problem with monopolies. Here's the other problem, though. Watch this.

Under Trump, they let that company, that factory shut down appropriately because of the formula. But they did nothing. The regulators did nothing under these circumstances where 90 percent is covered by those four companies, they did nothing to get that factory back up and running on a timely basis. In case we hit this shortage, whether it was during COVID or pre-COVID, it didn't matter. Their administration did that. Had that factory been back up and running on a timely basis, it's likely that you wouldn't have this delay or debate, but it's an election year. This is all politics. And so Biden is going to get blamed and he's going to have to respond because he's in the president's seat right now. this particular National Defense Act because it allows them to import, to bypass that ridiculous law and import baby formula in order to actually alleviate this problem, Robert. And look, Roland, I think this also highlights the fact that baby formula is exceedingly expensive without government assistance, primarily because of the monopolies that exist. Back when I was in

college, I was a security guard at Kroger, right there by the AUC. We did the night shift. You know the number one thing that people stole out of that Kroger? Baby formula. What they would do, they would steal large amounts and then resell it because they could resell it for a premium. It was literally like a day didn't go by that we didn't catch somebody stealing baby formula. A lady ran off, one of the guys I worked with chased after her.

I made $8 an hour, so I ain't chasing nobody. And she hit him upside the head with one of those big cans of baby formula, so he came back covered in powder. It was hilarious. But that's beside the point. I think what President Biden needs is a better communications team around him, because what we don't see is him being able to send out surrogates on shows just like this, to hit the late night show, to hit all the cable news shows, so they can get the administration's part of the story out there. You still see more pundits and more spoke people for President Trump than you see for President Biden. So because of that, you don't have anybody carrying the message. And going into November, you have to be able to show

the American people that you're putting points on the board, that you're actually doing something to address these problems, that when they're solved, they aren't just mysteriously going away, but it's because of presidential action and the ability to show that the deregulation the Republicans have been talking about for the last 30 years, cutting taxes on millionaires and billionaires result directly in the problems they have right now. And we actually need to have a functional federal government which is willing to put the measures in place to put competence in the market, keep safe products on the shelf, and then address the failures of the last administration by actually putting together a competent federal government to address these issues. All right, folks. Let's talk about this story out of your state, Georgia, Robert.

Some high schools, some students, they are actually suing their school district for racial discrimination. Five black students at Cusa High School got suspended for wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, while white students were allowed to wear Confederate paraphernalia. The black students claim the school's administration failed to act on reports of racist behavior from white students. The lawsuit is requesting the five-day suspension be deleted from their records and that the school does more to handle racist bullying.

Really, Scott? Black Lives Matter is a problem, but Confederate flags is cool? Really? It's a First Amendment issue, first of all. I've never believed it was a political statement. But in these rural counties, in Will County and Joliet, Illinois, where I grew up, in these southern counties where, you know, it's not on the national political or economic

map, it happens all the time. When I was in high school in New Lenox, Illinois, one of the things I had to deal with, which is why I went to Morehouse College, was because once was a Catholic high school, they couldn't understand or deal with the racism or my rage in response to it. And it went through several forms and formats. But in the end, many of these kids, they were never really disciplined. They had a conversation that I was called sensitive. I was told to ignore it, blah, blah, blah. All kinds of excuses were made, which simply made no sense. And so it's these rural school districts where this is happening. They don't care what the national laws or state laws are. And it sounds like this school, the administrators

don't know either. But this is a really interesting lawsuit because if they filed under the Equal Protection Clause or Equal Rights Amendment, then the regs and the activity, the facts of the case, are going to be closely scrutinized by the court to see if there's really evidence of unfair and unequal treatment. If it is, you've got a constitutional violation, civil rights violation. And this case, whether it's local, if you will, and it's against the administrators of the school, it's really going to be about the school district, right? And if it gets appealed, this case in and of itself, long way away, could go to the Supreme Court. It'll be interesting to watch if the school district doesn't settle. Robert, you're there in Georgia. Your thoughts?

I think the school district is absolutely going to settle. I think they're lucky that these parents are only asking for a clean record and for a change in policy and not for monetary damages, because frankly, in cases of this nature, we have multiple plaintiffs. You can probably file a class action against the district and frankly go directly after the county in order to get monetary damages. So I agree with Scott that this will probably go up the ladder if it's not settled. But I think the school district understands that right now what they're asking for will be them getting off light. And if they don't end up settling with the students and doing the specific performance that they're requesting, they could end up in a monetary suit, which would be very deleterious to the school district.

Monique? They'll change the lawsuit also. The right lawyer will amend it, put in the constitutional violation. Monique, your comment. And then ride it out until it can't go any further, even if they try to sell them. It'd be a big case. You done, Scott?

Yeah, I have one other thought, but it's your show, so I'll pass for now. I mean, man, I said, Monique, your thoughts three times. Oh, I didn't hear you. I didn't hear you. You're honest, I didn't. Yeah, that's the problem. Okay, when you keep talking, your thoughts three times. Oh, I didn't hear you. I didn't hear you. Honest, I didn't. Yeah, that's the problem. Okay, when you keep talking, you can't hear.

Well, I'm very insightful. I'm sorry. Monique, please. Yes. Yes. I agree with Robert and with the chatty one, Scott, on this. Whatever they do has to be uniform. Carrying around a flag is not the same as wearing paraphernalia that maybe the policy says that they can't wear. I don't know the specifics on what the policy did and did not say. It has to be uniform across the board and hate speech. The Confederate flag

in certain circles can be viewed as a threat in and of itself, as it should be. I think there's actually case law about that. Scott's the smart one in the family, so he would know. It's in the fighting word language. He's not the smart one. We're not going back to Scott. No, he's not. smart one we're not going back to Scott

no he's not I was just referencing him I don't want to go back to him but what I do want to plug and say is your friends from the NFL Lacey and Company they need a med mal lawyer I understand what NFL players go through

but what they're going through right now is medical malpractice, and it needs to be handled. Just thought I'd add that. Okay. We'll be happy to afford them your number. All right, y'all. Not my number.

In Ohio. Yeah, no. One of y'all lawyers can take it. All right, let's talk about Ohio, where some parents are upset that some whites-only signs and black-only signs were placed on water fountains. School officials say the signs were taken down within 30 seconds. No one saw them. The principal, Aaron Davis, sent this letter to parents.

Earlier today, Coleraine High School administration was made aware of an inappropriate and racist message that was displayed at CHS. The administration is taking this incident very seriously as matters of racial insensitivity are not condoned or tolerated. We're currently in the process of investigating this matter. At this time, we have identified two students who were involved. Additionally, we have been made aware that the posting has been shared on social media. Any student, including those who are found to have taken part in sharing the post online will also be subject to disciplinary action.

The actions that were displayed do not reflect the values and culture of Coleraine High School or the Northwest Local School District. CHS stands firm on creating a culture of inclusivity, respect, kindness, and compassion. As a school community, it is our responsibility to make sure that our CHS family uphold and live out these values. We will not stand for intolerance of any kind and will discipline any student who participates in displaying intolerant behavior. The three students involved, they were indeed disciplined. All right, then. Well, got it. Now we know exactly how y'all feel about that. All right, y'all. Got to go to a break. We

come back. We're going to talk with Marvin Sapp about a new CD. He has also our Fit Live Win, excuse me, our tech talk segment. It deals with a Get Fit Go app. We'll talk about that as well. And then, of course, I'm here in Cedar Hill, Texas, folks. In less than 20 minutes, I'm going to be moderating a town hall with Texas State Representative Jasmine Crockett. We're here at the Community Missionary Baptist Church in Cedar Hill. She is in a runoff against Jane Hamilton to get the Democratic nomination to replace Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson,

a longtime member of Congress who is retiring from that position. And so we'll be having that town hall after this. Folks, if you're on Facebook and YouTube, be sure to hit that like button. Let's hit 2,000 likes, y'all, on YouTube. If it's more than 3,000 of y'all watching. Go ahead and hit that button. Let's make it happen. If y'all also want to support us, please download the Black Star Network app. If you're having issues watching on Facebook or Twitch or Instagram, on YouTube,

then all you actually have to do, folks, is download the Black Star Network app. And, again, it's available on Apple Phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV as well. You can download it again on any of those devices, your iPad, you name it, you see right here. I've got them right here on both of my devices right here. Come back to me, please. Thank you very much. And you'll see today's show. Again, you hit that button, you can watch live.

And then of course, it's gonna come up in a second. Let me do a full screen. And so you can actually see the show on your phone right here. And so another way for you to actually see it. And so again, download on any of these, if you got multiple devices, download them on all different devices. And so there you go right there.

Also, of course, join our Bring the Funk fan club. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on a minimum 50 bucks each for the year. That's $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day for them to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Of course, there's no minimum, there's no maximum. And so we appreciate all the support. Cash or money orders, excuse me, checks and money orders, PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app is dollar sign RM unfiltered. PayPal is RMartin unfiltered. Venmo is RM unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered. Venmo is rmunfiltered. Zelle is roland at rolandsmartin.com.

Roland at rolandmartinunfiltered.com. We'll be right back. . Why is it so hard to see Panthers? Wow. I mean, if you go to AMA, I think I tried. So I have a collection of black DVDs. That's a hard movie. They tried you $300 on AMA.

I was like, I'm not about to pay no $400 for a VHS copy. What's the deal? Man, it is interesting, Rowan. It is the movie they don't want you to see. Power to the people. It's funny, I made New Jack City. You can get it anywhere. Posse, you to see. Power to the people. It's funny. I made New Jack City. You can get it anywhere. Posse, you can see it anywhere.

But a movie that says that it is not an accident that we medicated the black communities right around the time when they were getting militant, when you had the Panthers starting to organize, the people starting to vote and march on Washington, we let these communities get medicated. In fact, that comes up in The Godfather, where they say as long as it stays in the black community. So we asked the question. They tried to ask us questions. I asked the reporters when we did.

I said, listen, why is it a 13-year-old boy in the hood can find a way to buy a gun, some liquor, or a church, or some crack, and yet you can't find them to arrest those people? You can't arrest that deal. Why is that? -♪ Hi, this is Shira Lee Ralph.

Hello, everyone. It's Kiara Sheard. Hey, I'm Taj. I'm Coco. And I'm Lili. And we're SWB. What's up, y'all? It's Ryan Destiny, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks.

He is a 13-time Grammy nominee. He, of course, has released his 15th solo album. It is called Substance and it is the first one released on his own label. Joining us right now is gospel singer, preacher. And he also belongs to that little youth group. You know, they wear little red and white colors scott you should be happy uh i finally invited one of your fellow little kappa brothers uh on the show uh because i know you see you gotta understand marvin we so many alphas doing great things that nearly every wednesday is an Alpha on here, and Scott feels so lonely.

And so we had to go ahead and give him some company today by having you on. So maybe Scott is now. I'm shocked that you got him on. Go ahead, Uncle. No, I don't only invite Alphas. Alpha's simply doing great things. Very few Capas are. So, Marvin, let's talk about.

Give him his just due. Let's do a Kappa song. Will you let us do a song for about two minutes on your show? Who knows who's favorite Kappa hymn? You see, the only reason I ain't cussing is because I am broadcasting in a church right now. That's the only reason.

That's the only reason. But let me be real clear. You keep it up. I will go walk out of the parking lot and cuss you out. Don't do it. Don't do it. All right, Marvin, so tell us about. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Don't do it. We don't let him pass, Marvin. Go on with your interview. Do your interview. We'll get him later. Roland, you know I love you. You got to go ahead and turn Scott's microphone off.

You got to turn Scott's microphone off because he talking. Come on now. First of all, you ain't far from where I am. So are you in Fort Worth now or you are somewhere else around the country? Well, actually, I'm home. I don't live in Fort Worth. I just passed it there. But I stay in the DFW Metroplex.

And I love it, man. This is like one of the greatest decisions I could have ever made in this season of my life was to move from Grand Rapids to Texas. And so how long have you been pastoring here in Fort Worth? Because I remember we talked, and you talked about how difficult that decision was to leave Grand Rapids, the school you had there, to transition to Fort Party Worth to pastor. Well, I mean, let's see. It'll be three years in August. It'll be three years in August. When I first moved, which was a trip, it was great. I mean, a lot of people thought I left, you know, to come to a mega church, and I didn't. I moved down here to pastor a church of approximately 250 people, and the church grew in six months from 250 to over 1300 active

and then COVID hit and you know but you know we transitioned we shifted and made sure that we were able to be you know seen globally via all of our social media platforms and streaming and and we grew in spite of so I, I mean, I'm grateful. I'm thankful to be here. I'm chilling at my crib and just enjoying this 90-plus degree weather. Well, look, I'm happy to be home with 90-degree weather. I got sick and tired of those 50s and 60s in D.C. But I do want to pick up on that point that you just made because, again,

you said you left to pastor a church of 250 people. You know, we're living in an age where I guarantee you somebody's watching going, what was he thinking? I mean, why is he not leading a church with four or five or six or 10,000 members? Take us through that decision because, again, the average person would go, well, someone of his stature, I mean, that's just, that's beneath him. No, absolutely not. I mean, if you do a statistical study, you will find that, you know, the majority of the churches in the country, only 75 members. I mean, so, you know, and not only that, but, you know, less than 1% of churches are over 1,000.

So, you know, just having the opportunity to, I don't know what just happened, but just having the opportunity to come down here and to start. Somebody watching you on the show decided to Skype you. It probably was Jamal Bryant. That was Monique. That was Monique. But, you know, I needed a change. You know, I had a great church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I always tell people that mega churches are actually,

they're relative, depends on where you stay. And being in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have a church, having a church there that had an active membership of over 500. You know, we owned a college campus there where our charter school was and did all of the things that we were able to do and we're absolutely debt free. You that was a great situation but you never know how bad you

need change until you get there and with all of the things that had transpired in my life and with my kids being grown you actually begin to pray and really talk to God about shifting and changing and and moving someplace to start over fresh. And I had plenty of opportunities. Once I made the decision to shift, I don't know, it was like, you know, God just opened up the floodgates and there were a multiplicity of churches that gave me calls, wanted me to come and to move. And I just decided to come to Funky Town. So, you know, it has worked for me. I love it here. My kids love it here.

As a matter of fact, my son just moved here maybe about three months ago. He works at Amazon Services. So, I mean, like, it's a great church. It's grown. And we're doing some great things in our community. Let's talk about your new album. You opened your own label. Talk about that as opposed to signing with someone else.

What is it like owning, completely controlling your content as opposed to asking someone else for permission? Well, I mean, that's everything. I mean, for 33 years I've been in this industry. And honestly, for 33 years I've been on a major label. I started off with the company word Epic and then ended up signing with Verity, which was a division of Sony, and then RCA. So my whole entire career has been nothing but being controlled.

And I just said to myself after 33 years of being in this industry and having a great base, you know, it was kind of easy for me to make that shift and that transition to wanting to be my own boss and controlling my own personal destiny simply because of, you know, I got a good audience. So I just believe that they're going to follow me wherever I go as long as I keep doing what is consistent musically. And that's the way I try to keep it. I try to keep it churchy and funky all at the same time. So, you know, being on this side, though, is absolutely different because there were when I was so accustomed to going into the different companies as pertains to Walmart and talking to all

of the different distributors of music if they're doing a physical copy and or if they're doing digital. You know, so it's a whole nother world having to make sure you calculate royalty rates and things of that nature. So, you know, how to pay people. But honestly, it's been fun because i'd rather be on this side uh and be my own boss and cut out the middleman than to uh be on the other side where you know i was probably one of the last ones to be paid i can't hear 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. 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 Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

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

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

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to 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. Plus on Apple Podcasts. a setback, just save 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 thisispreetirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. I can't hear you. Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you now. I can't hear you now. Something just happened. I can't hear you, bro. There you go. All right. Not sure what's going on.

We got demons up in here. All right. Can you hear me now? There you go. All right. Not sure what's going on. We got demons up in here. All right. Can you hear me now? There you go. We can hear you now. All right. Let's go. That's those Kappa demons.

All right. Monique, you get to ask the first question, not you, Scott. I don't have a question. Pastor Sapp, thank you so much. Thank you for everything. God bless you, sir. God bless your life. Thank you for everything that you have meant to the gospel community, to this world.

You've been a blessing in my life and the life of so many others. And I'm just thankful for all of your latest accomplishments. Thank you. I appreciate it. I do. Thank you so much. Robert. What would be your advice for...

What would be your advice for young pastors who are currently entering the ministry? There's a lot of conflicting information out there, a lot of being pulled in a lot of different directions. Spoken at seminary school recently to students about activism and organizing. A lot of them say, well, I want to have a big house. They want to have a mega church. They want to be a celebrity. What would be your advice to getting started? What's actually drive you into the ministry as opposed to some of the pulling towards fame and fortune that many people are focused on now? What's so amazing to me is that they think that being a pastor is a

fame and fortune type of situation. I mean, you know, once you get into it, you will understand that, you know, it's a life filled with service. And, you know, there's no guarantee that you're going to have a 5,000, 10,000 member church, because the reality is, is that the majority of the churches in America ain't five, 10,000 members. You know, that's just, it's a fallacy. So I would just really kind of challenge them and tell them that if you're serious about ministry and if you're serious about serving people, because that's what this is really all about. This is a thankless job, to be perfectly honest with you, but it's also a rewarding job when you get the opportunity to see people's lives change and motivate them and encourage them to be better.

That's the reason why I got into ministry, because I understood that this was my life's assignment. It wasn't because I was looking for fame and or fortune. I got into it because I really wanted to see people's lives change through the word of God, and I've seen it. So that, to me, is what it's really all about. All right, Marvin. Well, we appreciate it. All right, I guess I go ahead.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I got a question. No way. No way. Oh, no way. And you're in church. Come on, Scott. Hurry up. Hurry up. Okay. Hurry up. Okay, this is going to be good. I want to talk to Pastor Sapp about another part of his life that you wouldn't even imagine how I met him for the first time. Three or four years ago, I was managing partner of Reed Smith, and Pastor Sapp and some colleagues of him came to the D.C. office, invited by Keon Pope, a former partner of mine, for Black History Week program. And he broadcast to probably 29 offices worldwide we had about 100 150 people there do you remember bastard i do and at the law firm of reed smith it was now he don't remember yes he does can i just get my question out and so he talked about his life well if you hurry up and ask the

question i mean you gave us that long gave us that long meet and greet. Come on. Can I just finish? It was a very powerful interview to people that you didn't think he would normally understand or appreciate his gospel music. Everybody, black, white, yellow, and brown was there. And so I want to thank you for that. And I want to also ask you, how often do you do that? Because it doesn't

matter what music and what your calling is. I thought your interview was just super powerful about life, as well as how you develop your music and your calling from God. Well, I mean, you know, I do it often because, I mean, I just think that if you just keep it 100 and you be real about what you do and who you are and be as translucent as possible, I struggle with transparency because I just don't see everything about your life. But you need to be selective and discreet

about what you show people and what you share. So, I mean, I, you know, I get the opportunity to share my life with a lot of people. As a matter of fact, on the 21st of August, we just finished filming and it will be out on TV One, the Never Would Have Made It story, Never Would Have Made It biopic. So this has given me an opportunity to be able to share aspects of my life

and allow people to see things that most people don't know. They just know never would have made it. They know the preacher and singer, but they don't know the gay man mess. So I'm really excited about having the opportunity to really share some things about my life with people so that they can see that no matter where you come from, no matter

how bad things might have been in the beginning, that you still have the opportunity to shift, change, and make things better and make something better out of your life. Yeah. I certainly look forward to seeing it. Thank you, Roland. Ro, listen, the album is available right now.

It's available right now. You can all pre-order it. It actually comes out on June the 10th. It comes out on June the 10th. It comes out on June the 10th, but you can pre-order it on any and or every one of your media platforms. You can go to my website if you want physical copy, because I do still understand that everybody is not, you know, tech savvy. There's a whole lot of people that still want the CDs so they can read the credits and stuff. But you can go to Amazon, any place that you get your music.

I promise you it's going to be a great blessing to you. Substance is going to be hot. Well, also what some folks don't know is that when they download music, they don't realize they don't actually own the music. You're actually licensing the music. Those of us who grew up, we have relatives who pass down albums. You actually can't pass down digital music without that username and password.

And so the physical copy is still, is still worthy. So yeah, I understand that. And Scott, you had no idea what I just said, trust me. So you probably one of them physical copy people. All right. Marvin Sapp, always glad to see you. Again, one of the two or three capitals I tolerate in my life, along with Jamal Bryant.

You know you like me. You know you like us. You like us. You like us. We family. We brothers. You know we brothers. You know, look, y'all all need an alpha around y'all to hold y'all up,

to lift y'all up, and to lay hands on y'all when y'all get extra. So y'all be sure to get Pastor Sam to get his new CD. And if y'all are in Fort Worth, give folks a name of the church so they can stop by and leave their tithe and offering when they come by. Well, just come by first. Chosen Vessel Church in the city of Fort Worth, Texas. All you got to do is just Google my name and the church will come up, I promise you. You have a great time. You can watch me every Sunday, 11 a.m. Central Standard Time on any and all of our social media platforms. Now, Scott need to send you an Scott. Scott, I think you should see in your cap of brother, a five thousand dollar offering for a program at the church. I'm just going to go ahead and call it out. So. So, Pastor, be sure to let me know when Scott's direct deposit went through.

Let me know when you happened. Because if you were Alpha, if you were Alpha, I would have done that. My money is tight. Oh, now you no longer his capital brother. See how y'all are? You know, what did Jesus say about lawyers in the Bible? I love y'all, man. Take it easy. What did Jesus say about lawyers? Oh, is that the tax collector? The tax collector, Jesus spoke ill of, didn't he?

Scott, you ain't read your Bible in about 25 years. I know that. I talked to you like... I gotta go to a real... Yes, sir. I appreciate it. Real quick break. We come back for Tech Talk for our final

segment on Roland Martin Unfiltered. The Black Star Network is broadcasting live from CDL. I'm Deborah Owens, America's wealthalth Coach and host of Get Wealthy. Let me hit you with a few numbers. African-Americans spend nine times the amount on ethnic beauty products and yet only own 1% of the beauty supply stores. It's an $18 billion industry. On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to learn and hear from a woman who's turning this obstacle into an opportunity. We literally take you from A to Z on all of the things,

step-by-step, you need to have in place to open and run a very successful beauty supply store. That's right here with me, Deborah Owens, host of Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. -♪ Ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, yeah. Hey, I'm Antonique Smith. What up? Lana Wells. And you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. -♪ Ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, yeah. Got it. All right.

A lot of people are intimidated by fitness apps, things along those lines. They see the hard bodies and all that sort of stuff along those lines. So my next guest actually created this app called Ready, Get, Fit, Go. It is targeting folks who are plus size and also fitness newbies. Tamara Bentley experienced her own health transformation and wrote a book called How to Lose Weight Fast When You Lack Motivation. She joins us now from Cleveland, Ohio. Chamara, glad to have you. Hi.

Thank you for having me. What was the issue for you? And so was it you just didn't want to do it? And then what spurred you to get going well i started off at 403 pounds and i was just at a really low point in my life and i was so sick and tired of feeling how i was feeling and i knew i needed to make a change so it's just like one day I said enough's enough and I just, I got up and I just tried doing some workouts. I did discover that because I was overweight, my body wasn't able to physically do the kind of moves

that I was trying to do. So that's when, you know, I started just like making my own workouts and that's where I just started. So on your app, you focus on low intensity workouts. Again, a lot of people, they jump right into it, but they really aren't physically able to do so. And so is, because of what you experienced,

is that how you tailored your app? Yes, yes, basically, you know, I wanted to just make workouts for people who were like me, and I just wanted, like, all my workouts are just for beginners. And so I wanted it to be easy so people wouldn't become discouraged. And they, too, can begin a self-love slash weight loss journey as well. Well, if this was a segment about guns, Robert Petillo would be excited. So I know he appreciates hearing about these low-intensity workouts. Robert, you get the first question. Well, if this was a segment about guns, Robert Petillo would be excited.

So I know he appreciates hearing about these low intensity workouts. Robert, you get the first question. I do have a question. So we've heard a lot in the media, particularly recently about body positivity and kind of this campaign against fat shaming. How do you kind of balance that and also convincing people that it is good and positive to start working out and losing weight and getting in shape for their own personal health? Well, you know, it's okay to want to be healthy, you know. I mean, obviously, I've lost 116 pounds

and I'm still plus size, but I wanted to just be a healthier version of myself. And I just want to encourage, you know, just being healthy and happy, you know. The goal isn't to be skinny, just, you know, healthy. So I still love who I am. I still love my thickness. I love, you know, everything that I do. I just want to be healthy.

All right, Monique, question. Sure, where can people get started? You know, if they are stuck in a rut and are basically emotionally exhausted and not able to find the motivation to do anything at all what do you suggest I definitely you have to so I it's a weight loss journey but it's also a self-love so you definitely have to start with like putting yourself first and you have to change your mindset and it's not something this is a lifestyle change so it's not something that's going to

you know just happen overnight you don't have to be perfect. You just have to just, you know, make the initiative to make a change and you have to, you know, start off slow so you don't become overwhelmed. I feel like that's where a lot of people end up, you know, kind of not succeeding or wanting to give up because they're so overwhelmed with just wanting to just make a big old change. You know, you just start with a small goal. And, you know, we have a big goal. We see the bigger picture, but break it down a bit and make it a small goal. So eventually you will get to your bigger goal. So if you say you want to lose 100 pounds, that's great. But maybe bring it back and just say, okay, for the first month, I want to lose 10 pounds, and I want to lower my carb intake, and I want to increase my protein, drink more water, and then you'll get to that bigger goal.

But just, you don't want to overwhelm yourself. So you just start with just changing your mindset and just, you know, you just got to put yourself first. Scott Bolden. Yeah. Thank you for being on the show and congratulations on your weight loss. But there's an emotional and psychological side to weight loss as well. And can you talk a little bit about that, not just from a body image standpoint, but psychological dependence on food, how you interact with food, why you overeat, not you,

but you generally overeat. And really, what's that battle like, notwithstanding the workouts and the app? It's hard. That's why I call it a self-love journey because you do have to work on things mentally so it's really important to journal um everything's not going to work for every person but you should start off with writing down your emotions because a lot of people emotionally eat and um so definitely you know just um like said, journaling and just telling, like looking in the mirror and just telling yourself positive affirmations. And you have to do the work. So it's a self-love journey as well. It's hard when, you know, we all get cravings for certain foods, but that's what I talk about when it comes to setting small goals. So you can say

for the next three days, I'm going to, you know, eat this, drink this. So, you know, you can kind of not become overwhelmed and fall back into your old habits. You know, you become more proud of yourself and just stay encouraged. And it's like a mindset. So definitely just taking things slow and just writing things down is a big part of it because it is mental with any change, not just weight loss. All right. The app is ready. Get fit. Go. Take us on all the big platforms.

Jamara Bryant, we certainly appreciate you joining us on the show uh and good luck with the app thank you so much all right thanks so much take care all right scott monique robert i certainly appreciate y'all joining us on today's show that is it for us i'm clayton english i'm greg glad and this is season two of the war on drugs by sir last year a lot of the problems of the drug war this, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers.

But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.