#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Debunking Harm Reduction Program Misinformation, Black Dr. Sues Chase Bank, EatOkra App

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

2.9.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Debunking Harm Reduction Program Misinformation, Black Dr. Sues Chase Bank, EatOkra AppIt's Wednesday, February 9, 2022, ad here's what's coming Up on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network.Once again, the right-wing is pushing misinformation about harm reduction plans. We will break down the program already in existence and show you just how the right is willing to peddle lies.Check this out, a doctor. A black doctor gets a check. She goes to deposit the check, but the bank refuses. The bank thinks the check for $16-thousand is fake. Well, now she's suing. She and her attorneys will join us tonight.A black swimmer in Wisconsin is disqualified for wearing a Black Lives Matter swimsuit.Minnesota will pay journalists who were mistreated during the 2020 protests, and Colorado will be paying a black man's family almost three million dollars for his death at the hands of police.In today's' Tech Talk, it's an app that will direct you to all of the black restaurants near you. The founders of Eat-Okra are here to tell us all about it.  #RolandMartinUnfiltered partner: Nissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm real revolutionary right now. Black power! Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. Stay black. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scape. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Today is Wednesday, February 9, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Once again, the right wing is pushing misinformation

about something the Biden administration is doing. This time, when it comes to drug harm reduction plans, we'll break down to you the truth about the program that's already in existence. In fact, they've been in existence since the early 1980s. We'll break down how black media keeps falling for the lies. Also check this out folks, a black doctor gets a check.

She goes to deposit the check, but the bank refuses to take it. The bank thinks the check is for 16,000, the $16,000 check is fake. Well, now she's suing them. She and her attorneys will join us tonight on the show. A black swimmer in Wisconsin is disqualified for wearing a Black Lives Matter swimsuit.

What they gotta do with swimming? In Minnesota, they will pay journalists who were mistreated during the 2020 protest and also students have been walking out of classes to protest the killing of another black man there. In Colorado, they'll be paying a black man's family almost three million dollars for his death at the hands of police.

In today's Tech Talk, it's an app that will direct you to all of the black restaurants near you. The founder of Eat Okra is here to tell us about it. It's time to bring the funk. Roland Martin unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Let's go. From sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rollin' It's Uncle Roll-Royale Yeah, yeah

It's Rollin' Martin Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah He's bulk, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know He's rolling Martel Martel All right, folks.

One of the things that I am constantly trying to warn people about, how the right wing can take something, lie about it, drive a narrative that's totally BS. So yesterday morning, I had gotten some tweets and folks saying, oh, how you going to sit here and spin Biden giving crackpipes out to black people? And I literally was like, what the hell are y'all talking about? Like, I had no idea what the hell these people were tweeting about. And then all of a sudden, I see these articles citing the free beacon. Now, I'm in media.

I know the free beacon is a conservative-ass website. It's a conservative rag. Antenna shoots up. Uh-oh, double check. Not everybody did that. So how does conservative media take this? They see the story, then amplify it, and then Fox News starts talking about it.

Watch. The Biden administration now moving to make it easier for drug users to light up and get high on crack and crystal meth. A new program will hand out needles and pipes along with safe sex kits reportedly to make drug use safer while promoting racial equity. Also, they want to hand out the pipes so you don't inject. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is a Republican on the Judiciary Committee. And, Senator, good morning to you. Does this work? Bill, there almost aren't words in English.

The Biden administration, they just keep on rocking it in the free world. I mean, every single day reality calls and the Biden administration just hangs up. I don't think when moms and dads lie down at night in America and can't sleep, they're worried about clean injection sites and sterile crack pipes. The issue, Mr. President, is crime. The issue, Mr. President, is how to stop it, not how to encourage it. Hmm. The program is actually called Harm Reduction Programs.

There you had Senator John Kennedy, one of the biggest dumbasses in the United States Senate, with his fake country voice. Oh, I'm just a regular old boy. Hmm. Go to my computer. This is a press release that was sent out September 14th, 2020. Louisiana Department of Health announces award

of $34.5 million state opiate response grants. Guess what this grant is for? Oh, harm reduction programs. Yep, that's what it's for. Guess what? What does it say? With a budget of over $17 million for each of the two years, the priority population served by the grant will be under an insured criminal justice population, tribes, pregnant women or women with infants experiencing neonatal opioid withdrawal symptoms,

people who inject drugs, colleges and universities, school age children. Do y'all realize that numerous states around America have harm reduction programs. In fact, Mike Pence, when he was a governor of Indiana, there was an explosion of HIV cases in Indiana, and they had a syringe exchange program that curtailed the spread of HIV AIDS. Indiana, a red state. Senator Marsha Blackburn was highly critical of these programs. Do y'all know that Tennessee has harm reduction programs? Then, of course, you got this idiot, Senator Marco Rubio, who put out this video because he was just, oh, my God,

just appalled by these programs. Watch this fool. The Biden administration is going to be sending crack pipes and meth pipes targeting minority communities in this country, underserved communities. I know that sounds insane. I know that sounds too crazy to be true. They confirmed it yesterday. They call them smoking kits and they say it's about equity, but they have in essence confirmed that they're going to be mailing and sending pipes that can be used to smoke crack and meth to underserved communities in

America. This is insanity. This isn't even about liberal and conservative anymore. This is about crazy versus normal. Insane versus common sense. Hmm. Go to my computer. Here's an article for 2019.

Governor Ron DeSantis signs legislation authorizing needle exchange programs in Florida. That's a harm reduction program. Yep, sure is. It's what it is in Florida where Senator Marco Rubio is United States Senator. See, this is the right wing on how they're constantly driving a narrative

based upon this free beacon story. This is what came up, the question came up today in the White House briefing, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki answered the question from Fox News. Thanks, Jen. HHS just put out a statement clarifying around some reports

that crack pipes are not going to be part of the safe smoking kits that are funded by the administration. But can you clarify for us, were they never a part of the kit or were they removed in response to this reporting and this pushback? They were never a part of the kit or were they removed in response to this reporting and this pushback? They were never part of the kit. It was inaccurate reporting and we wanted to put out information to make that clear. What is in the safe smoking kit? A safe smoking kit may contain alcohol swabs, lip balm, other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases like HIV and hepatitis. I would note that what we're really talking about here is steps that we're taking as a federal government to address the opioid epidemic, which is killing tens of thousands if not more

Americans every single day, week, month of the year. We put out this statement though because there was inaccurate information out there, or I should say HHS put out the statement because there was inaccurate information out there, or I should say HHS put out the statement because there was inaccurate information out there. And we wanted to provide clarification on the allowable uses for the HHS harm reduction program. It's not a change in policy. This program, though, is focused on harm reduction strategies, including prioritizing the use of fentanyl test strips and clean syringes. And all of these harm reduction services that will be supported by these programs are intended to save lives from an epidemic that we know is devastating to communities across the country. Now, y'all know Recy Colbert. She don't mince words on the show.

Last night, this thing blew up. So she dropped one of her Recy specials. And this is what she said last night. Hey y'all, so I'm here to debunk this ridiculous piece of disinformation that I've seen not only on the right-wing outlets, but on the shade room. This is why you don't get your news from the gossip blogs.

The headline reads that the Biden-Harris administration is spending $30 million on crack pipes. They're not. They are absolutely the fuck not spending $30 million on crack pipes. They're not. They're absolutely the fuck not spending $30 million on crack pipes. Come on, y'all. Y'all got to be smarter.

Y'all can't believe that. But I understand we in that environment, everybody just takes you to run with it and be fake outrage on whatever. But I'm going to give you the facts. You can read this. It's an announcement. All government grants have public announcements.

This one is what they're referring to. It's called the Harm Reduction Grant Program. It came out of the American Rescue Plan. I'm going to read it to you verbatim, and you can tell me if that sounds like $30 million in crack pipes. The purpose of the program is to support community-based overdose prevention programs. Syringe services, okay. Syringe services, that's still not crack pipes, and that's not $30 million motherfucking dollars.

And other harm reduction services. Funding will be used to enhance overdose and other types of prevention activities to help control the spread of infectious diseases. It's a good thing because we're in a pandemic. and the consequences of diseases for individuals with or at risk of developing substance abuse, use disorders, support distribution of FDA-approved overdose reversal medications to individuals at risk of overdose, build connections for individuals at risk for or with SUD for overdose education, counseling, and health education, refer individuals to treatment for infectious diseases such as HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and viral hepatitis, and encourage such individuals to take steps to reduce the negative personal and public health

impacts of substance use or misuse. Where did you see crack at? There are 25 grants over the course of three years up to $400,000. There is up to $30 million in funding for the harm reduction program, which, as I just outlined to you, is not crack pipes. Not $30 million. So here's the thing, y'all. If you can't fact check, at least sanity check. Hmm. Y'all, this is not hard.

This is a statement the White House put out today. I got it early on. This is right here. Okay? From HHS Secretary Batera and also ONDCP Director Rahul Gupta. And that is the

Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's what that is, okay? And here's what it says. HHS and ONDCP are focused on using our resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives. Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.

The goal of harm reduction is to save lives. The administration is focused on a comprehensive strategy to stop the spread of drugs and curb addiction, including prioritizing the use of proven harm reduction strategies like providing naloxone, I guess what it's called, fentanyl test strips and clean syringes, as well as taking decisive actions to go after violent criminals who are trafficking illicit drugs like fentanyl across our borders and into our communities. We'll continue working to address the addiction and overdose epidemic

and ensure that our resources are used in the smartest and most efficient manner. Tuesday, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released details about this new $30 million harm reduction grant program. Again, as recently laid out, it's going to help increase access to a range of community harm reduction services, support harm reduction service providers as they work to help people not die from overdose deaths. Reduce health risk often associated with drug use. These are not new.

But you have people like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas who goes through all of his drama. Oh, the Biden administration is going to be giving out crackpipes. Right-wing media goes with it. And what pisses me off is when black media, like Black Enterprise, yes, I sent them an email. They rewrite a story based on the Free Beacon story and got quotes in there from the Washington Post and Time magazine. Not one quote from the administration.

Could somebody at Black Enterprise pick the damn phone up? Then, of course, the shade room. They go out and put it out there, okay? They posted yesterday. It gets 177,000 likes on their Instagram page. It's 66,000 comments. Three hours later, they put out an addendum because HHS said sit down on the statement. That only got about 20,000, that only got about 2,000 likes and a few comments. The lie spreads a lot faster. This is what happens

when you have right-wing folks who are twisting things for their purpose. Joining me right now is Lisa Peterson. She serves as the chief operating officer of VICTA. She joins us now from Providence, Rhode Island. Also, Cyril Skowens, sorry, Skowens, founder and president of CMS Institute of Addictonology. I hope I got that right, from Baltimore, Maryland. Okay, so glad to have both of you here. Lisa, I want to start with you. Already you can tell I'm a little pissed off because I hate when people can't read. I hate when

people see something that these right-wing people toss out and folks like Newsweek run with it and the rest of these people because they don't bother to fact check first. Your understanding of this grant program? Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for using your anger to raise the reality and get the facts out there. This is really frustrating for folks who are out here trying to save lives day to day for people who use drugs. My understanding is that this is a supplement to the work that's already been done, and we desperately need it. In Rhode Island in particular, the last two years have been more deadly for drug overdoses than we've seen in a decade. We know that people are overdosing of fentanyl. There is no real heroin left in Rhode Island. The drugs are

increasingly unpredictable. They're increasingly potent. And again, people are dying. So these measures will help us save lives on the ground, real people, friends, neighbors. When one of the speakers talked about, you know, parents don't worry about getting their kids clean crack pipes, they absolutely do. If their kids are using drugs, they absolutely worry about whether they're going to be able to use a clean pipe, a new syringe, et cetera, because there are a lot of risks that can be associated with drug use. And we are in a position where we're able to mitigate those risks and help people stay healthy and alive long enough to get into recovery if that's their goal and participate

in their families and communities. The thing here that is nonsensical, Cyril, is you have people like, again, who is one of the biggest idiots of all time. And that is, again, how Fox News works and then chief idiot Marsha Blackburn. And I'm saying that. This is a Fox News tweet from 20 hours ago. Time for an intervention. The Biden administration was just caught using your tax dollars to funnel crack pipes and more into poor communities. And they got Marsha Blackburn on here. Now, let's just break this whole thing down. First of all, so, Cyril, what do you, what, again, what do you make of the hysteria? Well, all of a sudden, it's like, oh, my God, we've got this, this, this, this crack epidemic that's going on and this just

makes no sense whatsoever? So first of all, where crack pipes came from confused me because crack isn't the issue right now. What we are trying to do, and you said it so eloquently, Roland, is if we don't save lives, then people die. And the harm reduction has been around. I'm 60 years old. So the harm reduction has been around pretty much since the 70s when they started with methadone, which was a harm reduction tool to help people stay alive. And the consensus that it's only going to affect poor inner-city African-American people is another miscanoma because the majority of the new heroin addicts,

or not even heroin because there's no heroin, the new opiate addicts are normally suburban Caucasian people that got addicted through the pill mills before the government shut them down. So the main focus of this whole harm reduction tool is we can't save you if you're dead. So there is no mysterious crack pipes going to filter through the community. That's just what we use as shop to try to scare people. But what should be really scary is the amount of deaths that continue year after year from overdoses that will rival what's been going on with the pandemic. Lisa, here's a tweet. And again, I'm walking through this because I need people to understand

why you can't listen to certain people, certain outlets, because their goal is to deliberately lie. Here's again, one of the biggest idiots in the United States Senate, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. This is her tweet. While the Biden administration is busy

filling vending machines with drug paraphernalia, Tennesseans want to see inflation halted, our southern border secured, and crime stopped. So let me just go ahead and just play this video. So listen to this. Weekend in Tennessee this weekend heard a lot from Tennesseans about the price of the pump, the price of the grocery store, how inflation is impacting them. The other issue that kept coming up in all sorts of conversations, the southern border and how concerned we are that it is porous, people are coming into communities, drugs, human trafficking, sex trafficking, gangs, a lot of that leads to crime in the streets.

These are issues we're watching this week. Really? Okay. So, Lisa, here's what I find to be real interesting because it's not hard to look it up. If you type Tennessee Harm Reduction Program, you're going to come across this. This is a link to the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services for the state of Tennessee. And what does it say right here? Regional Overdose Prevention Specialists are located throughout the state of Tennessee as a

point of contact for training and education on opioid overdose and for overdose prevention through the distribution of naloxone, is that how it's pronounced? Naloxone. Naloxone. Okay. From October 2017 through June 2021, the ROP has distributed more than 206,000 units of naloxone. Huh.

And documented at least 26,000 lives saved because of the distribution. This is called a harm reduction program in Tennessee. Lisa, go ahead. Absolutely. And we've seen that again. I can only speak to my specialty, which is the state of Rhode Island. But we heard similar arguments about widespread distribution of naloxone, which we've been doing for over a decade now. Rhode Island's always walk into a pharmacy and get naloxone, no questions asked. There was a lot of similar outrage that this was encouraging use. And we like to say the only thing that naloxone enables is breathing. So that's where we started. And each of these, I don't know, fears and discriminatory reactions are really interfering with what we know to be evidence

based interventions and an appropriate way to respond to a public health emergency that's only gotten worse with COVID. And when we talk about and zero to that point, I need people to understand these are these these reduction programs. This is established public health policy in the United States. This did not start with the Biden administration. It was in place when Trump was there. It was in place when Obama was there. It was in place when Bush was there. It was in place when Clinton was there. It was in place when the other Bush was there. It was in place when Clinton was there. It was in place when the other Bush was there. It was in place when Reagan was there. These programs go back to the late

70s, early 80s. Yes. Yes. These aren't new programs. These, this, because addiction is not new, we have been trying to save people for decades. And it's just that the drug has changed.

We went from heroin to now fentanyl, which if they don't understand this, it takes, if a heroin addict was back in the 70s and 80s, if a heroin addict was overdosed, we might have to give him one dose of naloxone to bring him back. With the fentanyl addicts, we're having to give them five doses. Wow. And if they don't go to the hospital right away, when the naloxone wears off, they will experience the same overdose again. That's what we're up against, and that's what, you know, we're fighting against.

So what I'm telling you is a gentleman overdoses at 5 o'clock. We give him three, four, five naloxones. He doesn't go in the ambulance to the hospital. He walks down the street, then the naloxone wears off. He experiences the same overdose again. And we run right back to him, and we give him two, three more Loxones. He gets him back breathing. He doesn't go to the hospital, and he could experience the same overdose again from the original fentanyl. So this is what we're dealing with, not heroin. We're dealing with a drug now that is consuming more of our resources to keep a person alive. And so along with the harm reduction, we have to provide them with 24-hour treatment

so those who want treatment can have treatment on demand, which is not prevalent in America right now. It's only prevalent in European countries. In America, treatment is still done from nine to five. Lisa, this is a tweet that was sent out by a reporter, Capitol Hill reporter with the Wall Street Journal. Senator Blackburn has just put a hold on the CR continuing resolution that cleared the House until she can get an insurance from HHS that taxpayer dollars will not be used to fund drug paraphernalia. Here's the thing again.

You have examples out there where you do have states and cities that may have smoke kits. Now, what people don't understand about this, we also have cities that are saying, can you create safe spaces for people to use drugs in a way where they're not dying in alleys or on the streets? Now, that may sound crazy to some people. You're encouraging drug use. No. What folks are saying is if you have people who are so deep into it that they're going to use drugs, you want them to do so,

frankly, in a safe way, not impacting others, and if something happens, they actually can get treatment. I think what we're dealing with here, we're dealing with people who are sanctimonious. We're dealing with people who want toimonious. We're dealing with people

who want to treat those who are drug users as riffraff. And then what you have is a racial component. So by Republicans trying to center on crackpipes, and when they said racial equity, what the Biden grant said is that groups that serve underserved communities are going to have an upper hand because they're also talking about communities where you also have impact. So they put the two

together. Biden, crackpipes, racial equity, and then black folks ran with it, and now you're trying to control the lie because it was all designed to create the very hype that we're having to deal with right now. I'm really glad you introduced the safe consumption site conversation. Actually, Rhode Island last year became the first state in the U.S. to authorize through state legislation the development and implementation of harm reduction centers, which will include a safe consumption component. And when we were developing the

regulations for this, which are now live and there's a lot of work being done to get providers set up and able to start saving lives in this way, we really had a racial equity lens. Realistically, we all know the reason that the overdose crisis is getting so much attention and so much funding is because it was creeping into white suburbs. The overdose crisis was people who accidentally got addicted to opioids through medications, et cetera, and that was a more palatable face. And the reality is, we can't leave folks behind who are using other drugs. And that's why I think it's important to have the conversation about safer smoking, safer crack consumption.

And that's an important component of safe consumption. So there will be both places where you can safely inject as well as a space where you can safely smoke. And that will include clean pipes. That will include clean syringes, as well as all the other things that the Biden administration is getting out into communities. So I think it's really important that we don't pigeonhole ourselves and think of the overdose crisis as one thing, because it's not, and it never has been. And Black folks in Rhode Island are dying at disproportionate rates of overdose. And every one of them is preventable if we have the political will, frankly, and the funding to support the work that is happening out here.

Lisa, Cyril, we appreciate both of you, the work that you're doing. Thanks for joining us to unpack this, because it's really important people actually get facts as opposed to listen to the crazed hysteria out there. Thank you so much. Thanks a bunch. Folks, last year, the U.S. reached a grave milestone, recording over 100,000 overdose deaths over a 12-month period for the first time ever in the Black community. According to Pew Research, there were 54.1 fatal drug overdoses for every 100,000 Black men in the United States in 2020. Since 2015, the death rate among black men has more than tripled, rising by more than 213 percent. The overdose fatality rate among black women rose 144 percent between 2015 and 2020, far outpacing the percentage increases

among women in every other racial or ethnic group during the same period. Harm reduction is a proactive and evidence-based approach to reduce the negative personal and public health impacts of behavior associated with alcohol and other substance use at both the individual and community level. I'm going to bring in my panel right now. Joining me right now, of course, is A. Scott Bolden, formerly of the National Bar Association PAC. We also have Monique Presley, who joins us as well.

Okay, legal crisis manager, lawyer as well. And, of course, we ain't talking about guns today, Robert, so you can hold off on all your weaponry. What you got, Robert? You ain't lying. Robert got something under his chair. Robert Petillo, executive director of the Rainbow Push Coalition, Peachtree Street Project. Glad to have all

three of you here. Monique, I want to start with you. I went off the other week on the route because they ran this NBC News story on HBCU funding. That was wrong. And then what they did was just rewrote it. It pissed me off when Black Enterprise and the Shade Room

ran with it as well. And I keep saying to these Black outlets, first of all, if that ain't what you do, stay the hell out that lane. Okay? And understand the game that's being played. The right wing purposely pulled out crackpipes. Purposely said, oh, they're targeting minorities. Because you got people out there who say,

oh, Biden don't give a damn about the black people. Now he's trying to kill black people. And you have all of that. Now they ain't talking about meth. They ain't saying meth. They specifically because by using crackpipes and then adding racial equity to it.

Targeting black people, that's what they're doing. Game, recognize game, Monique. Right. I mean, and it's just, it's sloppy and lazy, and it happens over and over and over again. I wish it was just this time, but as you pointed out, you had just taken them to task last week, I believe it was, on a separate matter. And so, you know, I mean,

we say it every week, but that's why programs like this are necessary. And that's why there should be more of them, because what are we to rely on if people are trying to come to Black news sources and they're not really news sources then it's dangerous me scott stop talking my name's talking what just happened scott just over there just just talking just scott hold on he was like me me chill. You're on the air. Robert, again, this is a public health strategy. That's what this is. Look, Roland, this is what I love about the Internet age. We live in a period of time where we all have access to supercomputers in our hands,

and that in milliseconds we can have all the knowledge of Earth. Think about that. We can have more knowledge than the Library of Alexandria, the Library of Congress, all right there in front of our fingertips. And we would rather depend on the shade room to tell us what's going on than simply Googling something and just looking it up for two and a half seconds. Look, of course there's a racial component to this. Nowhere in it does it say

the word crack pipe. But the reason right-wing media made it about crack pipes is that it immediately evokes those images from the 80s. Black crackheads laying on the street corner sucking up government money while welfare queens ride around in their Cadillacs. That's what they're talking about.

Because when it's Brenda and her addiction to Xanax or something like that, well, that's an opioid crisis. When this little Tyler who accidentally got hooked on painkillers, oh, well, we have to do something to ameliorate those issues and we have to come together as a community to help them. But if you make it about black crackheads, all of a sudden that means that they just need to lay there and die. They don't need any help. They don't need any assistance. They don't need any programs.

They are leeches on the federal government, and we have to stop this from taking place. And black media has to understand this. Don't just run with the sensational headlines to get clicks because you are playing into that exact same right-wing gangs. The Shade Room and all these other magazines that ran with this story are becoming tools of white supremacy. They are tools of COINTELPRO. They are doing more to destroy the black community than they are doing to help the black community. What do you think is going on by only reporting on celebrity culture, only reporting on beef and drama, only reporting on these fake stories? When do they actually go out into the community and report on some of the good things that are happening? So we have to make sure that we are addressing this head to head, point to point, and ensuring that we get the right

information out there, because this is a deadly issue. If they pull funding from this program because the shade room decided to run a story on it, there were people who are going to die from not having access to these drug kits, not having access to the to many of these programs. So we have to hold these folks accountable and they need to come out, put as much effort into into the retraction as they put into pushing the story in the first place. You know, here was a quote, Scott, from Tom, Tom Cotton. Last week, Biden talked about being tough on a crime. This week, the Biden administration announced funds for crack pipe distribution to advance racial equity. That's and then, of course, Marsha Blackburn in government funded crack pipes.

This is the this is how shameful and despicable they are. This is the game. And we have to understand. I keep telling these people, you've got to understand the game. I said, when you see something like this here, your antenna should go up and say, hold up, let me call somebody first, because I'm not just going to trust this. Yeah, you know, drugs is not a game, actually. It takes lives. Fentanyl is not a game at all. It's deadly, more deadly than heroin. And hey, Tom Cotton, here's a newsflash. Drug use and addiction is a health issue. It's always been that.

It's never going to stop that. And hey, white people and black people and brown people get addicted to drugs. If you've ever been addicted to drugs, it's hell getting off. And the continuum of care, which has shown historically and scientifically to work, whether you're dealing with homelessness or drug addicts or black, brown or white people, it helps because as many people that are dying of overdoses, right? Let me tell you what else they're dying of. They're dying of dirty needles. They're dying of hygiene. They're dying of bad drugs, but also bad syringes

and what have you. And they're spreading disease because of their addiction. And so we got to stop this race-based analysis and this irresponsibility by not only elected officials, but by the black media as well. It's embarrassing. The black media that reported this are serving as agents de facto of conservative Republicans. Conservative Republicans are responsible because they didn't read the legislation, let alone read the press release, because they don't care. Because if they can push the negative narrative, the racial narrative, that's the social war that they want. And that gets their conservative followers going. And they just jumped on this.

And let me tell you, Fox is still running with it. And all the people that watch Fox and support Trump say, see, they're feeding drugs to black people. We got to get a new president in there. So it feeds their narrative, but it's a false narrative. Oh, it absolutely is. And it drives me racially offensive. It drives me crazy when I see this.

And again, y'all, I just want everybody to understand I'm not making this up. I'm not. Go to my computer. This is black enterprise. This is what is still up. This is what's up right now. Biden administration to implement harm reduction program to promote racial equity and prevent drug overdoses. When you click the look, y'all, this was posted at 1030 this morning. I sent an email to the leadership of Black Enterprise at 1117 last night telling them what they were putting out was wrong.

They still sent this out. You click the article. If you click the article, it shows that 26,594 people have seen this story. And if you go through this story, boom, what do they do? They're quoting the free beacon. I told them. I told black enterprise leadership myself. Myself, at 11, 17 p.m. last night, this was bullshit.

You see this here, they're quoting Free Beacon. You go through it, you go through it, they're quoting in the store. I didn't wanna have to call out Black Enterprise, but damn it, after I alert you to the bullshit and you still put it out, you got to get called out. They're quoting the Washington Post. They're quoting

Times News. They're quoting all these people. Nowhere in the Black Enterprise story is a statement from HHS. The one that went out today. Nowhere in their article is Jen Psaki's comment. So, now,

the shade room, to their credit, that bullshit they put on Instagram, they took down. Because they got ripped for it. Now, what's still up is the quote-correcting one. You should take that one down as well, because it really isn't right as well. Joining me now is Tracy Gardner, Senior Vice President of Policy Advocacy for the Legal Action Center from New York.

So obviously, Tracy, I'm pissed. And I'm not pissed because people, this is what people, oh, man, you're trying to protect Biden. No, I'm angry because there are people who look like us and people who look like Lisa who's white and people who look like who are Latino, who are Native American, who are dying because of drugs and assholes like Senator Tom Cotton going out there saying we need to be putting people in prison because his belief is we have too few people in prison, which is why he opposed the First Step Act.

And what we're dealing with, again, are Republicans trying to sow the seeds of discontent among black folks. See, Biden tried to give y'all crack. Y'all want reparation? He gave y'all crack pipes. That's what they're purposely doing. Exactly. Roland, you know, this is not this country's first opioid epidemic,

right? Nope. The first opioid epidemic got us things like Rockefeller drug laws and sentencing laws and the crack cocaine sentencing disparity. To be honest, we can actually go back even further because the first attack on opioids were against the Chinese

immigrants because they were pissed off after they built the railroads on the West Coast. They were pissed off with how they were advancing economically in the United States. And then they started attacking black people as well in the 1930s and 40s, people like Billie Holiday. So we've got a long history of America targeting

people of color when it comes to opioids. That's right. And anything that is other, anything that is other is what is then used against us. They talk about stigma. What I call stigma is oppression. It's legalized or it's systemic oppression. And so harm reduction is a strategy scientifically based that we know works. But I also, having grown up as an HIV advocate, harm reduction is love. Either you want the person who's using drugs to live and be healthy or you want them dead. There's no in between. And so harm reduction, back 25 years, we were having the same discussion about clean syringes. Now that's not a problem because we recognize that opioids are injected by everybody, including white people. So clean syringes will also be supported by the government,

as they should be. But this red herring, this dog whistle about crack stems is exactly what you called it. And that black media in particular has a responsibility to give the correct information to black communities who are dying in higher numbers than anyone else. This is not just about Becky struggling with Xanax or pill prescription addiction. This is about the decimation of Black communities and then our complicit silence.

Now, if this whole program gets completely thrown away because of this dog whistle, as someone said earlier in your program, we will be the ones to die because we are the ones dying now. Now, let me just say, whether it's a clean syringe, whether it's a clean pipe, whether it's a condom, you can go into CVS or Walmart and buy condoms because we know people are going to have sex and we want them to do it safely. We know that people are going to drink, so we have safe consumption sites for them.

They're called bars. And the issue about fentanyl, we're not talking about, and we don't use the word drug addict. I am a co-founder of the Black Harm Reduction Network, and we are a collective trying to change the language and the talk around the impact of drug policies and the war on drugs on black people. But you can walk in to any bar and get unpoisoned alcohol, right? And that is really what we're talking about, is being real about the fact that people will do what they're going to do, and they deserve to live. You don't have to like what they do, but you don't consign them to death. And that's what harm reduction is fundamentally about.

You can survive drug addiction, but you can't survive the other blood-borne diseases that come when you are not using clean supplies. I want to, I'm going to show a couple of things here. First, this is from a piece in Salon.com. This is where the crack pipe thing came from. From the grant, it said, as one of the 20 harm reduction activities in Biden's plan, HHS will provide, quote, safe smoking kits,

which might include rubber mouthpieces for glass pipes to prevent injuries, as the fact-check site Snopes has noted. It's this relatively minor provision within a much larger program that provoked conservatives into spinning Biden's entire plan as a massive crack pipe giveaway. To be even clearer, no actual crack pipes will be given away and the rubber mouthpieces are on one small piece of a plan intended to save lives and reduce the public health consequences of drug addiction.

Exactly. Tracy, I made this earlier, this is what I said earlier, because people need to understand when you talked about harm reduction. This is a story from NPR, June 3rd, 2021. Indiana needle exchange that helped contain a historic HIV outbreak to be shut down. This was a program that was in Indiana, quite the red state. Correct. This is what it says.

In 2015, Indiana's rural Scott County found itself in the national spotlight when intravenous drug use and sharing needles led to an outbreak of HIV. Mike Pence, who was Indiana's governor at the time, approved the state's first syringe exchange program in the small manufacturing community 30 miles north of Louisville as part of an emergency measure. But this is what he said. I will tell you that I do not support needle exchange as anti-drug policy, but this is a public health emergency. Correct.

In all, 235 people became infected with HIV over the course of the outbreak, most of them within the first year. In all of last year, there was one new case. Health officials credit the needle exchange for the dramatic drop-off in cases. That's right. And a lot of conservatives were outraged over syringe exchange programs. They were trashing. This is not right.

235 infected. Program goes into place. One in a year. Even 20 years ago, the HIV infection rate among injection drug users and their partners was 30%. Once we put into place harm reduction strategies, including syringe exchange programs, it dropped down to 3%. Moreover, the babies born to folks who were HIV infected, New York used to have the number one cases of pediatric AIDS cases. Now we have no babies born with HIV because we get people engaged in care, not by stigmatizing them or been fighting for a quarter of a century to get, and it's all going to get flushed over what is not even a real crack stem,

but something to keep people's lips from bleeding, which would facilitate blood-borne disease. Come on. Absolutely. Tracy Gardner, Senior vice president of policy advocacy for the Legal Action Center from New York. And you also say a co-founder of co-founder of the Black Harm Reduction Network, which is a collective of advocates and harm reductionists who work in black communities to push against this kind of thing and to correct our own media. Well, this is precisely why I have this show and created it because

I cannot stand these black outlets. All they do is aggregate. They don't call nobody. They just repeat what somebody else said. I said, hell, you might as well just put their piece on your website because just slapping your name on it, you're just reporting the same thing they're doing, meaning you are sending out news to black people through the, through a

white prism because you just report, you just rewriting what they wrote. No analysis, no kind of, yeah. Thank you, Roland. Thank you very much for what you're doing. Cause this is, this is a very hard to get on a platform this widely seen about these kinds of issues. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I just I can't tell you how, you know, someone sent me someone sent me a text message saying, Roland, we need you calm down. It really does piss me off. It angers me when I look at the history of black-owned media and the role that they played. They didn't report the same bullshit that was in the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the rest of those papers. They actually understood the audience that they served.

And again, and I'm about to send a tweet out saying to Black Enterprise, take this damn story down. Take this damn story down. And again, the shade room, I'm glad they took it down. But I need people to understand it's a whole bunch of folk out here. They sit here. They follow that stuff. They look at them. And yeah, I get it. You know, we

do real stuff. Hey, we don't get 177,000 likes of something on my Instagram page that they do. But there's a responsibility that exists and I dare say to you, the Shade Room has they got 25.6 million fucking followers on Instagram.

25.6 million. And when they put this bullshit out, that's a lie. And it's reports say, you making enough damn money to go hire some people who can pick the phone up and make a phone call. It's called being responsible to your audience. And that is what this issue is. we, folks who are black, are feeding our people the same bullshit that the right-wing media is, well, hell, you might as well tell black folks, skip the shade room and just go right on

over to the free beacon and the crap that they put out. Yes, because it's the same, for sure. But if the priority is not accuracy or even news, then just passing on. I mean, actually, Roland, the story, as they reported it, fits their purposes because the salaciousness, whether it's correct or not, is what draws the views and the traffic. So nothing about that surprises me.

I didn't know that they had posted that until I saw your post because obviously, I mean, that's just not something that I follow. But it is unfortunate because there are people who will jump to immediate wrong conclusions and then pass those on at a time when yellow journalism is prevalent and where people are being manipulated through all manner of false reporting in other spheres. So it's shameful that it would also happen with our own. And again, Robert, they took down that post, but the numbers are right here in my head. I'm on the Instagram page right now. They posted that item yesterday, and it achieved, yesterday, it achieved, it had a hundred and, no, no, no, come back to me.

It had 177,000 likes, 66,000 comments. Three hours later, now go to my computer, three hours later, they posted this. TSR exclusive. US Department of Health and Human Services releases statement following reports of providing drug paraphernalia

to drug users. These comments are misleading. First of all, Shade Room ain't no damn exclusive to you. Because it was released publicly. And you still are putting the BS in the article. But here's the key.

The quote correction, go back to it. 28,000 709 likes. How many comments? thousand one hundred and fourteen so let me juxtapose the lie got a hundred and seventy seven thousand likes sixty six thousand comments. The truth got 28,000 likes, 3,100 comments, Robert. That is proof

of how misinformation spreads like wildfire. Well, look, just as Mark Twain said, a lie will travel around the world while the truth is putting on its pants. And the reason you know that's true is because Mark Twain never said that. This is part of the misinformation machine. People always want to

know. People always want to hear the part about the salaciousness. They want to hear the drama. They want to hear something that sounds good. And I'm less upset at the shade room than I am at Black Enterprise, because the shade room is basically a grocery store tabloid. You're not going there for hard-hitting news on what's going on with the administration. Black Enterprise, because the Shade Room is basically a grocery store tabloid. You're not going there for hard-hitting news on what's going on with the administration. Black Enterprise, on the other hand, is supposed to be dealing with the economic development and informing the Black community. They're supposed to have actual journalists on staff who can fact-check things, who can ensure they're putting out accurate information. There's not enough simply to say you were misleading. You have to put out a full retraction.

And the best thing that people can do if they really want to do something about this, go to the Shade Room's Instagram page if you follow them and unfollow them. Go to Black Interprod if you follow them and unfollow them. And once they see those numbers drop down by a few hundred thousand, well, then they will understand that they actually have to have real journalism. Because what they're doing right now is classic Uncle Tom activity. I know we like to think of Candace Owens as being an Uncle Tom or, you know, Diamond and Silk. This is the exact same thing. Because you're taking white messaging, the messaging of white supremacy about crackheads getting crackpipes from free government on your taxpayer dollar, you are taking that and

repackaging it and selling it back to black people as a way to influence them to submit to white supremacy. So when you're doing Uncle Tom activity, then I have no reason to support you in what you're doing going forward. Because as we said, if these programs go away, black people will die. It's not going to affect Timmy, who's addicted to painkillers. It's not going to affect Barbara in the suburbs who's addicted to Xanax. It's going to affect our families. It's going to affect our communities.

It's going to kill black people. I see no difference between what they're doing and those people who told on us when we tried to run away because they are so invested in getting the economic benefits to come with their proximity to white supremacy that they have forgotten about their duty to their own people. Y'all can go to my computer. I'm actually, y'all heard me typing.

I'm sending this right now. And I'm saying it. Hey, Black Enterprise, y'all need to take this article down now. This is wrong. The whole article is based on shameful reporting from a right-wing rag. It doesn't contain today's info from HHS and the White House. We should never repeat right-wing BS. Send.

Scott, final comment before I go to break. Yeah, you know, what's most disturbing, I mean, everybody's right. I don't think anybody's going to disagree. I guess what disturbs me most is the recklessness. And just if you get a story like that, and I'm not a journalist, I'd question it and say, let me do my research or let me backtrack and see where this is coming from, much like you did. And it's disturbing that Black Enterprise and the Shade Room didn't even do that. They just kind of went with it. But I guess it begs a question, Roland, when you have a conversation with Black Enterprise or the Shade Room, right,

what do you expect their response to be? Either we screwed up or they'll defend themselves. No, no, no. Here's the deal. First of all, Black Enterprise never responded to my email. That's first. But I'll tell you, this happened before. The Washington Post did a story that essentially said that Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, and Linda Sarsour were run out of the Women's March. Right. I remember that. News1.com and Blavity basically rewrote their story and then posted it with their bylines

on their sites, and it looked like Blavity and News1 now was repeating the same thing. I saw the story. I knew it was a lie because the Women's March, they could only serve two years on the board. Their terms were up. They wouldn't run out. They weren't reelected because they couldn't be reelected. No term limits. So I emailed Morgan Devon, the CEO, founder of Blavity, and I emailed at the time Natavio Samuels, who was the CEO of Interactive One, and I emailed the editor of News One and I said, take that bullshit down because y'all, it's wrong.

And I said, y'all should be able to pick the phone up and call black people directly to get information from black people. And they took it down. And so again, I got great respect for Butch Graves and Alfred Edmund and Derek Dingell at Black Enterprise, but the article is wrong. And Black Enterprise should never be rewriting an article from the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, ever, ever. And if you put a byline on it, that means somebody had time to write that up,

which meant they had time to pick the phone up and call to get the right information. Got to go to a break. We'll be back. Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network, where we know how to fact check and we know how to independently report on black people. We'll be back in a moment. ТРЕВОЖНАЯ МУЗЫКА I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know.

So watch Get Wealthy at the Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. Poet and author, Audre Lorde. Hey, y'all.

20-year-old Shannon Tripp has been missing since February 5th. The Birmingham native is 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 100 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing white and black leggings, a black tank top, yellow socks, pink flip flops, and a cream colored sweater. Anyone with any information on her whereabouts should please call the Birmingham Police Department

at 205-254-7777, 205-254-7777. Let's go to my home state of Texas, where a black doctor has filed a lawsuit against Chase Bank for racial discrimination for refusing to deposit her check or open a new account for her. Dr. Malika Mitchell Stewart wanted to deposit a $16,000 check from her employer associates at the bank, and they began to question her age, her occupation, and the check's validity, ultimately denying her service. She joins us right now, Dr. Malika Mitchell-Stewart, as well as her attorney, Justin Moore.

Glad to have both of you here. So, okay. So, Malika, what city was this in? This was in Sugar Land, okay. So, Malika, what city was this in? This was in Sugar Land, Texas. Sugar Land, Texas, suburb of Houston. Yes. So you go to the bank, and how long ago was this? A couple weeks.

Okay. So you go to the bank, you got a check, and you walk in, you got an ID, okay? On your ID, you got a check and you walk in you got an ID okay on your ID ticket you got Texas driver's license are you from Texas yes boy raise he's Texas cool so you got Texas driver's license and which has your date of birth on it which has all your information you go to the counter, and what happens? So what happened was I sign up to be seated with a specialist who can help me open an account. They call my name back. I go down and sit with her at her desk. I tell her that I want to deposit this check into a new bank account with you all,

and she takes my check, and then she looks at me and then starts looking at the check and just starts to ask me questions like what do I do for a living you know do you what company do you work for asking my age and all these different questions and then proceeds to say that this is probably a fake check and she wants to go talk to someone else to get, I guess, further information. Wait, she says this is probably a fake check. How did she arrive at that? I don't know. And that's why I was asking all the questions. And that's when she went to go get someone who I assumed was the bank manager to come talk to me as well, but actually was just a lead teller that also came and talked to me and they just said that it looks like a fraudulent check and we're not going to let you open a bank account and we're not going to let

you deposit this check okay um now first of all were both of these folks white what were they so one was white and one was indian okay now first of, last time I even looked at the physical check, been a long time. I don't even write checks anymore, but checks have routing numbers on them. Check, you had the name of the company. If they actually questioned the check, they could have actually called the company and says, hi, I'm so-and-so. Dr. Stewart says she works with you. We just want to verify employment. They could have actually done that. They didn't do any of that.

They did none of that. They just said, I feel uncomfortable, and we're not going any further. All right. Did the bank manager ever come over? No. She wasn't even there that day. Okay.

Was there an assistant bank manager? No. She wasn't even there that day. Okay. Was there an assistant bank manager? No. I was under the assumption that she was the bank manager. Okay. So, all right. So, you... So, when did they start asking you all these other questions, your age and other things like that? So, during the process, when I was trying to explain myself and just tell them, like, hey, this is my check, you know, I work at this new clinic that's opened in Houston now. This is my sign-on bonus.

You know, I can show you documentation of the correspondence between me and my office. Whatever information you need, I showed them a business card. I was just trying to give them all the information they needed. You know, I thought they would need to just believe me and believe the validity of the check. So I tried my best to give them as much information, but they still just kept saying, we feel uncomfortable and we're not going to deposit the check or open a bank account for you. So here's a statement the bank sent. Pull it up, please. We take this matter very seriously

and are investigating the situation. We have reached out to Dr. Mitchell Stewart to better understand what happened and apologize for her experience. Justin, have y'all heard from them? We've heard from their attorneys, and it's been a direct response from the lawsuit being filed. And, you know, with them responding to the lawsuit, they have expressed some regret as to what happened. But we have to realize that Dr. Mitchell Stewart filed a complaint at the bank a week after this incident occurred. So the incident occurred December 18th of 2021. She filed a complaint December 27th of 2021. She waited almost 30 days. She hasn't heard anything from the bank until this case started to go viral on social media. And after the case began to go viral, that's when the bank started to

send out overtures about some sort of apology. So we believe if there was an apology, which the bank has profusely apologized to multiple media outlets in response to media requests, we believe that those apologies are only coming from the fact that this story has gotten a lot of attention. And, you know, they basically shirked their responsibility to respond to the complaint that she filed, and they lost out on their opportunity to apologize then throughout that complaint process.

The thing that's really interesting here, Dr. Stewart, is they can deposit the check and they can place a hold on your account, no activities whatsoever, for five or ten days to see if the check clears. That's exactly my sentiment. I

try to ask them, is there a way that you can deposit the check, hold the funds, I won't touch any of the money, I won't use a card. You can keep the debit card that you give me if you want to. Regardless, they're mailed out to you, so I wouldn't have had it for a few days anyway. But I wouldn't have touched the funds until they were fully verified,

and they weren't hearing that either. Hmm. This is, you know, Justin, Chase has had a lot of issues before when it comes to black folks. They've had employees file racial discrimination lawsuits against them. They've had other examples like this. I remember a story of a brother in, I think it was Arizona, who they were trying to steer him away from.

I think he was a former athlete who had several hundred thousand dollars they wanted to invest and they gave him a hell of a time as well. And so, you know, and they've got their diversity and equity inclusion programs and, you know, things along those lines. But you would think Jamie Dimon and his bank would be actually moving a hell of a lot faster when it comes to this story if they heard exactly what happened. I mean, you would presume that, but I think Chase's legacy of racism goes far beyond what's happened in our contemporary times. His bank has financed slavery, and I think that's a story that gets lost in translation. I mean, through their Black Pathways program and things of that nature, I think a lot of folks seem to think that Chase is an equitable company, but we know that they have a long legacy of racism and is bearing itself out

now with the redlining that they're participating in by denying Black folks financial services at their branches around this country. So there is a pattern and practice that not only exists today, but it's existed for centuries now. So I'm not shocked at all that Chase hasn't come to the table with an apology that has some level of contrition to it and has some type of substantial, tangible type of redress that's being afforded to Dr. Mitchell Stewart and other folks who have experienced this type of racism. I'm not shocked whatsoever. And that's why we filed the lawsuit. I think it's also important to note that when Dr. Mitchell Stewart went back to that branch with her mother, the actual branch manager revealed herself and told Dr. Mitchell in explicit terms that they can refuse

service to anyone for any reason. And we know that's legally untrue. But the fact that the branch manager said that shows that there might be a pervasive issue of racism that's actually percolating within the rungs of Chase's retail banks. Dr. Stewart, did you go open an account elsewhere? I know you've got a black-owned bank there in Houston. Where did you take your money? So, I mean, I had a previous account, so I had to end up just using my other bank account that I did have. A previous account with Chase or another bank?

No, with another bank. I never had a bank account at Chase. I was trying to open a bank account at Chase. They're a well-known bank. They have multiple locations. That's what I was trying to do, but that didn't work out. Gotcha. Well, look, keep us up to date on this story and what happens next.

And we'll also reach out to JPMorgan Chase. Matter of fact, I'm just I'm probably going to go ahead and tweet them and hit them on LinkedIn and Instagram as well just to see how they respond. But they certainly need to answer a hell of a lot quicker to what happened to you here. We appreciate you, Dr. Stewart, and Justin Moore as well. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thanks a bunch. I'm going to go to my panel here.

Robert, I want to start with you. You know, the reality is we can take our money where we want to take our money. And a few years ago when I was in Chicago, when I was building New Vision Media, when I was building, which will lead to all of this, I wanted to get a business card. Actually, no, no, actually it wasn't a business card.

I wanted to get a personal, I wanted to get a personal credit card. I wanted to get a personal credit card. I wanted to get a personal credit card. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to get one that was where I took a couple CDs out, and that way it covered it. If anything happened, it was always covered. And I remember Chase denying me a credit card. And I'm sitting there going, y'all want to explain to me why I got $400,000 sitting in a bank account, and you're denying me a damn credit card?

And wholly insufficient, so I took all my money out. I'm like, see y'all later. Went to a bank that gave me a personal credit card and business credit card. And we see these stories all the time. But for this branch to question her occupation, her age, to call her check fraudulent, you don't even check, that's beyond foul. And look, Roman, I wish this was an isolated case,

but as she was speaking, it reminded me of something that happened when I was young, a baby lawyer practicing. I just got one of those big cases where you get the settlement check from the insurance company. So on my day off, I take it in to cash it. So I got like a hoodie and jeans and some Air Force Ones on. They actually called security over because they just assumed that I didn't, I wasn't supposed to have $120,000 check to put into my IOTA account. They just assumed that there had to be something not above board, brought out the branch manager and everybody else. So this is something African-Americans have to deal with on a daily basis.

And whether it's reported widely in the media, this is what we mean when we're talking about white privilege. In case somebody is wondering what we're talking about, that is what we're talking about. The fact that on a daily basis, things are just always made slightly harder for you based upon your rights. They don't ask about your degrees. They don't ask about how much money you have in the bank. They don't ask about anything except they see the color of your skin, and they make negative assumptions about you, and they make life just a little bit harder. So we have to address this thing from a systemic point of view. People get mad about diversity trainings. People are mad about CRT and having to learn the importance of having other people involved in this world besides cisgender, straight, white males.

But at the end of the day, if we want to actually have the pluralistic society that we believe that we should have, it's going to take making these things aware and also divesting from people who don't want you. If they don't want your money there, then take your money somewhere else. That's what I did. I took it over to Citizens Trust Bank, the black bank there in Atlanta, and had no problems. Because at the end of the day, as long as you keep giving these people your money who don't want to treat you right, they're going to continue treating you the exact same way. Money talks and BS walks. And Scott, this is also why they should be sued. This is, well, they've been sued.

And they've been sued under 1981. And they've been sued under a local statute. You know, this is just stupid. This is just stupid. And you know what? She's a credible witness. She's only about five foot tall. She's a doctor, excited about her bonus.

And this stress of being black while banking just jacked up her whole Christmas. Why does the color of her skin mean she's got to go through that? It's just stupid. And so I don't know whether the case is going to settle or not, it just boggles the mind why those workers in that bank had the aptitude. You have to have the aptitude to make a jump towards fraud simply because of the color of your skin. Or better yet, you made the jump towards fraud and you didn't go to any other suspicious levels. You went to fraud and cost you and you didn't go to any other suspicious levels.

You went to fraud and cost you business from someone who wanted to do business with you. Think about that. This person wanted to do business with you, give you a $60,000 check, and race played a factor, and you lose another client. It's just stupid. It's beyond racism. It's just stupid. And so I racism. It's just stupid. And so, I hope you continue to monitor that case. It'll be interesting as to whether

it gets resolved or whether it gets litigated. Monique, the thing that is interesting to me, so you're Chase, so she files a complaint and you only start commenting after she goes public? That's also pretty

dumb customer service. Last thing you want is a story to go public. Right. No, but she wasn't being taken seriously the same way, as Robert said, she wasn't supposed to have that money. I mean, that is what is happening here. There were several points. There were several fail points that they could have taken different turns. And frankly, there are two issues with respect to the manner in which she was treated and discriminated against. Even if they had some sort of policy with respect to opening bank accounts, new accounts with a check, a check over a certain amount of money, holding a check for whatever days or won't take the check period and requiring cash,

they still should have just gone through all of their regular procedure for this woman who presented with the necessary IDs, calling herself a doctor so they had the ability to check on that, the veracity of that, and then run her banking history and tell her, put your $25 cash down here and we'll open your account. And then they deal with what they're going to do with this check separately. But the reason why you know for sure, which is what many of our people don't get to see and don't know, that this was truly like a race-based discriminatory action by the bank, let somebody else come in there and they want to open an account and they've got a medical degree and they want to start the account with $16,000 at one time, you would get the private banking room. You would be able to go and be escorted. They would ask you if you wanted coffee or tea.

They would tell you that it might take a few minutes to get champagne, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They would offer you, you know, all of the different options for your account and, and look at it as if they were entering into a banking relationship, which is what Chase should have been doing with her. So no, they, they failed 15 different times along the way. And at this point, they get what they get. Oh, absolutely. And so, yeah, I'm sitting here because y'all know I can be real petty. So I'm sitting here. You know.

No, I don't believe that. I'm sitting here sending a post on LinkedIn. I'm also tagging Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO as well. So this goes right to his box. I'm also tagging Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO as well. So this goes right to his box. And you heard the attorney mention J.P. Morgan and their Black Pathways program. And I've had a couple of conversations with them

with regards to advertising stuff along those lines. And so I would say to the Black Pathways program, y'all need to say something. y'all need to say something. Y'all need to say something. Don't have JP Morgan, Chase sending y'all out here as y'all black mouthpieces when this kind of crap is going on. I'm just saying.

Just saying. Gonna go to a break. We come back. More of Roland Martin Unfiltered. Don't forget, of course, you can get our, download our app, the Blackstar Network app. All available platforms, Apple TV, Android TV, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Roku, Amazon Fire,

Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. You can also support in what we do here in Roland Martin Unfiltered by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show. Cash, half dollar sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RM Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandVisMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Guys, y'all also are using the wrong graphic. You should be using the one that has the P.O. Box on it. And if you want to send a check or money order,

you can also do so, folks, by sending it to P.O. Box. One second, let me pull up on my phone. And so again, please use the right graphic. P.O. Box 57196, Washington D.C., 20037. P.O. Box 57196, Washington D.C., 20037. Back in a moment. ТРЕВОЖНАЯ МУЗЫКА Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering

and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on.

So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network, A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. network. Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us. Journalist Susan L. Taylor. All right, folks, this is Super Bowl week. It's taking place in Los Angeles. And during this week, there's always discussions.

There's always a news conference of the state of the NFL with Commissioner Roger Goodell. Today, he held this news conference on the state of the NFL with Commissioner Roger Goodell. Today, he held this news conference. And Jim Trotter, who is a reporter for the NFL Network, asked this critical question of Roger Goodell. And Jim did not hold back. And I thought it was an absolutely amazing series of questions and statement. And so I wanted to play and talk about this with our panel. Watch this.

Hey, Roger. Jim Trotter. The question is more for the owners, but also for you. And since they're not here, I'll ask you, as I always say. In your initial statement, the league's initial statement, it said that diversity, equity, and inclusion were core principles of the NFL. And I need to provide some context before I can ask you about that statement. In the 100 plus year history of this league,

24 of 32 franchises have either had one black head coach or no black, excuse me, no black head coaches. And to make sure I get the names right, I'll read them off here. We've got the Bills, the Commanders, the Cowboys, the Falcons, the Giants, the Jaguars, the Panthers, the Patriots, the Rams, the Ravens, the Saints, the Seahawks, the Titans, who have never had a black head coach. That's nearly half the league. We look at the fact that there's never been a majority black owner. There's only been one black club president. We look at the GMs there's never been a majority Black owner. There's only been one Black club president. We look at the GMs, now we're up to seven. Five of those were hired in the last 12 months. We're now at three Black head coaches, two of whom were hired after Brian Flores

filed his lawsuit. So it's easy to focus on the owners here, but I want to put this to you here. When we look at the league office, of the top 11 executives there, there are only two people of color. When we look at NFL media group where I work, there is not one black person at the senior level in the newsroom who makes decisions about a league whose player population is 70% black. So as a member of the media group and as a black man, I ask, why does the NFL and its owners have such a difficult time at the highest levels hiring black people into decision-making positions? Yeah, Jim, listen, we look at the same numbers and they're really part of the effort that, again, looking at how do we become more effective in our policies and procedures. We work really hard.

We believe in diversity. We believe in it as a value. We believe it's made it stronger. People who have come into the league who are diverse have been very successful and made us better. And we just have to do a better job. We have to look, is there another thing that we can do to make sure we're attracting that best talent here and making our league inclusive? If I had the answer right now, I would give it to you.

I would have implemented. I think what we have to do is just continue and find and look and step back and say, we're not doing a good enough job here. We need to find better solutions and better outcomes. And so let's find more effective policies. Let's make sure everyone understands. Let's make sure that we're looking at diversity

and actually incentivizing that for everybody in our building, including with compensation. Let's make sure that when we're dealing with vendors outside the building, we're hiring diverse vendors and bringing them in and giving them an opportunity to succeed just like we do with white vendors or people of color. Well, how can they come in and contribute to the NFL? So I think it's not a single answer, Jim. The single responsibility comes on all of us in the NFL. And we have to be the ones that make that change. And we are the ones that have to make sure we bring diversity deeper into our NFL and make the NFL an inclusive and diverse organization

that allows everyone the opportunity to be successful. He's too funny. You know, Scott, if there's one phrase I can't stand is, well, you know, we've got to do better. And if that was one thing that we could do and to make it happen, I would be doing it. How about this? Job opens,

you hire somebody black. I mean, it's not that hard. You know, I'm a three-time board member of the National Association of Black Journalists. We met with the NFL Network more than a year ago. Galen Gordon at the time was there.

He was vice president for talent. He's now at ABC. It ain't that hard to find a black journalist. Roger, you can call us. We got a whole list. Long list. Long list of folks who you can talk

to, but y'all just don't want to do it. I'm like, man, come on. Just go ahead. Okay. Okay, so you know what was amazing about the race, racism, diversity, and inclusion that we've been doing? The amazing thing is whether it's the NFL, big law firms, accounting firms,

media, whatever industry it is, I don't believe in how we do diversity anymore, and you shouldn't either. Because in 40 years of this multi-million dollar, maybe billion dollar industry, the numbers at least in big law and perhaps other industries just hasn't changed. Because it's not that hard to do, especially if you have a plethora of qualified people to lead organizations. You just have to do it. All the money the NFL and other industries spend on diversity, stop spending it. Invest it in making excellent employees and senior people. Train them, invest in them, and make them outstanding contributors to your organization, and you will ensure that you have a diverse leadership in that organization, and it makes

you a stronger organization, not because I'm black, but because I'm talented, I compete against everyone, and I'm as competent and extraordinary as a lawyer, and I just happen to be black. I'm not a great black lawyer, because I compete against everyone else, right? Don't undercut my excellence. But people that don't look like you and me have a real problem. If you haven't been victimized by racism, right, and you don't look like me, you have a problem because you've never lived without privilege. And so your privilege blocks you from trying to give up something to somebody black or brown because you think somehow you earned that privilege and you're giving it to me by hiring me or promoting me. It's a false narrative. And so it's really not that hard. Just invest in people, make them great, give them every opportunity, inclusion, include them, not diversity, include them, right? And you'll have a diverse team. It's not that hard. You follow everything I just said. I've been in big law for 30 years, been in management for 10. it's not that hard. It's just, look, Monique, it's like,

if I walk into the room and it's like, damn, everybody here dudes, where are you going to hire some women? If you're the one in charge, say the word. So, Roger, stop bullshitting. Just do it. Go ahead. Right.

I mean, power conceives nothing without demand. He's not doing anything surprising to me. They're not doing anything surprising to me. They're only going to do what they are forced into doing due to pressure. I mean, y'all not boycotting no more? I don't watch the NFL anymore. I haven't watched for years. I don't really understand if I can just apply my action items

and my questions to a different area, which is us, because we're the only people we can control. Oh, you're right. That's right. That's right. Jay-Z. That's right. Remember Jay-Z said we were done with Nealon?

I guess he's supposed to fix all that, huh? Well, you know what I mean. Are said we were done with Nealon? I guess he's supposed to fix all that, huh? Well, you know what I mean. Are y'all done boycotting? This ain't about Jay-Z. No, actually, it wasn't a real boycott. Now it's part of the problem. That actually was part of the problem. But people were very vocal about not watching and they watch now.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me go back. Did not get the job and they watch now. Let me go back. Let me go back. What they said they were not watching until it happened did not occur. All I am saying is if we can boycott because of the offense of the one black player who stood out for social justice issues and for everything that that meant, then we can boycott. And I'm not talking about boycotting the games or even the watching of the games because the 70% of Black folks who earn their living doing that deserve

our support. It seems clear to me we ought to be boycotting the sponsors because the sponsors are who make the money, and the money is what drives Roger Goodell. It's not hard. It is. It's all very simple, but it's not as simple as walk in and there's no black people at the table, so put one there. Well, hell, they don't want to. So where

is the pressure? Because us sitting back and waiting for him to do it, ain't it? But I'm going to say again, I'm going to say again that this is, Robert, this was one of the things for me. When it actually happened, even that quote boycott, it wasn't a real boycott. It was a loose boycott. It wasn't a real boycott. It was a loose boycott.

It wasn't organized. There was some organization. But I'm talking about it was kind of like this area and this area. Part of successful boycotts are organized. There's a plan of action. There's a period where you are educating and you're enlightening and you're laying out what we're doing and you're escalating. Yes, there were

moments where you had preachers who showed up outside of NFL stadiums taking a knee, things along those lines. And so, Monique is absolutely right. If you're going to target the NFL for its racial, its lack of diversity, it has to be an organized boycott. I keep telling folk, go read Martin Depp's book on Operation Breadbasket. You've got to organize it. But it's also, people also got to also be a little smarter. I don't know if y'all saw Emmanuel Acho. Now, there's lots of people that disagree with him.

He criticized Brian Flores because the law firm that Brian Flores is working with to sue the NFL on racial hiring, according to Acho, they ain't got no black lawyers. It's all white. Now, we've been trying to get Brian Flores on this show to discuss his lawsuit because he's only done interviews with mainstream media. My producer, Carol, was emailing them. It was kind of like,

no, no, no. Then finally, I emailed saying, we got a problem if you've only been talking to mainstream media. If you're going to talk about suing the NFL because of racial discrimination, y'all might want to talk to some black-owned media. And then it was kind of like, oh, you know, we, Mr. Martin, you know, we understand about suing the NFL because of racial discrimination, y'all might want to talk to some black-owned media. And then it was kind of like, oh, you know, we, Mr. Martin, you know, we understand, but we're just sort of inundated with requests and stuff along those lines.

I'm like, okay, I got that, but you can still schedule. You don't only just talk to NBC, ABC, and CBS. And so I have, and actually I'm going to send that law firm an email to see if what Acho said is correct. But even in that case, that law firm should be called out. You can't be suing the NFL for racial discrimination if you're an all-white law firm as well. See, we've got to be willing to challenge people in every area. And so if people say organize a boycott against the NFL and its advertisers and its sponsors as a result of its racially discriminatory practices, it has to be organized, Robert. It can't just be whatever. You know, listen to Roger Goodell. I need Scott to hand me some of that white Hennessy behind him

because it's nauseating trying to get through a lot of this stuff. Y'all saw that bottle of white hen as soon as I saw it. But it's nauseating trying to get through what Goodell is saying because this is nothing new. This is nothing that we didn't know. You can go back to Denny Green. You can go back for generations of black players. But when they said that a black man couldn't be a middle linebacker because they didn't have the intellectual ability to call the defense,

a black man couldn't be a center because he had to set the protections on the offensive line. A black man can't be a quarterback, you know, other than Doug Williams, because they don't have the ability to read defenses. That's why Cordell Stewart was returning kicks while Neal O'Donnell was playing quarterback for the Steelers. You know, we've gone through this before, and guess what? You start letting black people play middle linebacker, they're pretty good at it. You let black people start playing center, they're pretty good at it. You start letting black people start playing quarterback, they're pretty good at it.

So how about we just start giving people opportunities instead of all this lip service that the NFL is doing because at the end of the day, it is still the same good old boys club, the same old white men almost unanimously that control the wealth, and they want to make sure they keep this control within the family. You can go out there and run around and hit your head all you want, but when it comes to running things and being in the room with the money and owning a team, then that absolutely is not going to happen unless you start having the type of litigation that Flores started. It's not a perfect lawsuit that they filed. There are errors in it. There are things that they could improve in. But this shouldn't stop other coaches or other individuals who have been aggrieved from coming out and filing the types of class action lawsuits that will get their attention.

The same thing that we saw with the tobacco industry, the same thing we saw with many other industries that would not change until they are sued. You get a billion-dollar settlement out of the NFL, you're about to see all the coaches be black for about a generation. So that's what it's going to take for people to actually start listening. So, Robert, let me ask you this.

Can you have an antitrust exemption and be suffering from race discrimination as an organization? Is there some link between those two that could defeat that antitrust exemption? I don't know you, then, lawyer! What are you asking? I'm asking Robert.

You asking Robert? I'm asking Robert that, because that antitrust exemption is what protects that league. And if you're engaged in racial discrimination, I'm just wondering, I need to research it, whether legislatively

or from a litigation standpoint, you could break that antitrust exemption, which protects them, which is why you may not get that much progress when it comes to the race question in the NFL. Well, I think what is required, yeah, I think what is required is going to be congressional hearings.

And it's going to be the point that we need to work with our friends in the Congressional Black Caucus to bring in Roger Goodell. Because right now, the NFL antitrust exemption is only based upon lobbying. There's nothing statutory that separates it besides the fact that they can pay off lawmakers through campaign contributions. Same as baseball. Exactly. So we start having some hearings, particularly where they can subpoena records and documents right now while we're in charge of financial services and those sorts of things.

Oh, you're going to start seeing so many black head coaches. We have congressional hearings. They're going to look like the Soul Train Awards. So I would compel our congressional black caucus maybe to step in on behalf of these coaches and players to have some hearings so we can find out exactly what's going on. That's when you really start seeing some change happen.

Certainly. Certainly. Sorry, Roland. The lawyers wanted to talk without involving you. So now you can ask the next question. No, you didn't. You just sitting here trying to be a smartass, you know, because you ain't done your own damn research. That's really what happened.

I'm talking to my lawyers on the panel. Yeah, whatever. I know you play own damn research. That's really what happened. I don't play with my lawyers on the panel. Yeah, whatever. You play one on TV. No, I don't play one on TV, but I know when I'm hearing some legal bullshit, I'm going to call it out. And so that's what I'm going to call out. Let's just be real clear on that nonsense. Why do I keep asking for this, Monique? Why?

Yeah, I know. Sometimes you just shut up. I mean, even because you're a Kappa, that's why. That's why. Because you're a damn Kappa. That's why. That's why. Here we go.

All right. Let me run through these two quick headlines before I got to go to a break. And then I'm going back to, I'm to, I'm coming back with our tech talk. The family of a Colorado black man killed while fleeing from police in 2019 will receive $2.9 million settlement. Devon Bailey was only 19 when he was killed. He ran from police when they

questioned him and his cousin about an armed robbery. His cousin was acquitted of the charges. In the lawsuit, the family stated police officers racially profiled Bailey and assumed at least partly because of his race that he presented an enhanced threat to their safety. Colorado Springs, the police department said the settlement is not an admission of any wrongdoing. Folks, the state of Minnesota has agreed to pay $825,000 to several journalists who say they were

mistreated while covering the 2020 protests after the George Floyd death. Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota and the State's Department of Public Safety announced the settlement. It prohibits the Minnesota State Patrol from attacking journalists, arresting or threatening to arrest them, ordering them to disperse,

seizing their equipment and more. It also calls for an independent review of all 2020 media mistreatment complaints and it requires body-worn cameras to be issued to all troopers by June. All those are good things. Folks, in Mississippi, law enforcement officials give two different accounts of what happened to a black man who died in police custody. Damian Cameron died after police entered his home without a warrant last July, tased him twice, and knelt

on his back for 15 minutes while he told officers he could not breathe. His mother witnessed the tragic incident. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said Cameron collapsed while running away from police. The Rankin County Sheriff's Office initial statement does not mention him collapsing, only that he resisted arrest and was found unresponsive. Cameron's family wants the officers responsible to be held accountable for his death. And in Kentucky, jury selection continues for the ex-Louisville cop Brett Hankinson, the only officer charged in the raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death.

Hankinson is charged with wanton endangerment for firing blindly into Taylor's apartment with the bullets hitting a neighbor's apartment. Breonna Taylor was killed on March 13, 2020, as the three Louisville cops entered her home with a no-knock warrant and fired 32 bullets, killing her. And folks, in Wisconsin, a 12-year-old black swimmer was disqualified from a race for wearing a Black Lives Matter swimsuit. Lady Lions wore the swimsuit in support of Amir Locke, who was gunned down by Minneapolis police executing a no-knock search warrant last week.

An independent volunteer told the preteen if she did not remove her swimsuit, she could not compete. Once her mother got word, she notified the local NAACP and the YMCA officials overruled the volunteer's decision. A lady competed for the duration of the meet, only missing one race. I mean, ain't that something?

Damn, Monique. How you gonna tell somebody they can't wear black? Like, ain't that something? Damn, Monique. How you gonna tell somebody can't wear black? Like, ain't no rules on swimsuits. Really? Now we tripping? Well, there might be rules on swimsuits. I don't know if there are or not, but it's good that that worked out

in her favor. But, you know, at the swim meets that I go to, yes, the team competitors all have to wear the same thing. I'm assuming she was wearing that in protest and that they honored that from

this young girl who was trying to make an important statement. So I think that that's a good thing. And that's why you tell volunteers sometimes, Rob, sit your ass down. Somehow, somehow I bet you this goes back to, we're never going to find out,

this probably goes back to some angry Karen who was sitting across from her little daughter, Sarah, or something, and saw the Black Lives Matter swimsuit and got offended and ran over and started making a fuss about it. But I'm glad that these young people are standing up and making it known that their generation will continue in the legacy of Tommy Smith, will continue in the legacy of John Carlos, will continue the legacy of Kaepernick and those who have used their platform to protest. And guess what? This story being reported nationally, as you are right now, will have a far bigger impact

on these young ladies' lives than them winning a swim meet when they were pre-teens. So I think they did the right thing, and I hope this inspires more people to use their platform, whatever it is, to fight for social change. Hell yeah, man. Just wear it. I don't care whatever. Wear it. Do whatever you want. Just

be all in these folks' face, Scott. I mean, first of all... Why do white people care so much about this three words, Black Lives Matter, being on a sidewalk, being on a swimsuit? It is not. They see it as a political

statement. That's their ignorance. It is an affirmation. That's all it is. You disagree with the statement that Black Lives Matter? You don't think we matter? That's the problem if you think it's some type of political statement. My goodness gracious, there's so much more that we could be locking arms on to reach some type of racial harmony in this country. And yet we're caught up on those political words that are nothing more than affirmations of the truth. Stop it. Man, look, those three words are a problem because of two words, white fear. It's that white fear. So, of course, y'all, literally we are editing the book. It's going to be that white fear. So, of course, y'all, literally, we are

editing the book. It's going to be dropped in September. I'll go right to the chase, cut right to it, in terms of the white fear that's happening in America. All right, real quick, before we go to break, don't forget, if you are a HBCU student, you're going to be a junior or a senior in the fall, you can apply for the

McDonald's Alpha Phi Alpha scholarship that I've been working with, McDonald's. $15,000 offering seven scholarships at $15,000 each. To apply, go to tmcf.org. The deadline is February 28th. All the details on how to qualify for the scholarship are on the website, tmcf.org.

And so please, folks, apply. If you're a junior or senior in the fall, again, it's all about getting y'all some money. That's what it's about. $15,000, seven of those scholarships. Be sure to check it out. Gotta go to a break. When we come back, folks, we're gonna talk with the creators of an app

that allows you to find a black restaurant near where you work or live in our Tech Talk segment. Please check that out. Of course, the segment is where we give opportunity for African Americans who are in tech to talk about their product. Don't forget to support us by downloading the Black Star Network app, Android, Apple, Android TV, Apple TV, Samsung, Roku, Xbox One, as well as Amazon Fire TV. And, of course, you can join our Bring the Funk fan club where your dollars go to support what we do. I leave on Saturday for Liberia.

We're gonna be there 10 days broadcasting from Liberia for the 200th bicentennial celebration of that country founded by freed slaves. And so, your dollars make all that possible. Again, Cash App, DollarSide, RM unfiltered. PayPal is rmartin unfiltered. Venmo is rm unfiltered. Zelle is roland at rolandsmartin.com. Roland at roide, RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RMartinUnfiltered. Venmo is RMUnfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com.

Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You can send a check or money order to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037. I will be right back. I'm going to go to the bathroom. ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА Norske Kulturskapital My name is Charlie Wilson. Hi, I'm Sally Richardson-Whitfield. And I'm Dodger Whitfield. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered.

Unfiltered. All right, folks. Eat Okra is here to solve an issue that you have. It is an app that connects consumers to black-owned restaurants in their area. Joining us now, co-founders of Eat Okra, Anthony and Janique Edwards from Brooklyn, New York. Hey, how y'all doing? Rolling. What's going on? All right. New York. Hey, how y'all doing? Roland, what's going on? Alright, so how does this work? Because first of all,

is it restaurants that y'all have found where people place it on there? Because this is important. I mean, I've gone places you want to support black-owned restaurants, but then you're like, well, dang, how do I find them? Yeah, that's the question, right?

Yeah, the community. The community really is supporting us in this app. For the first four years of development, Janique and I, you know, handpicked every restaurant. About 3,000 before the app really caught on and the community started submitting another 8,000. Wow, so you have on your app a total of 8,000 black-owned restaurants? No, 11. 11,000. 11,000? Yeah.

Well, covering how many states? We cover all metropolitan areas across the country. So we're pretty much in every state. The app is geolocation aware. So wherever you open the app, if there's a black-owned restaurant nearby, we'll show it to you. What led y'all to start this, Janique? Really, my move to Brooklyn. I moved here in 2016.

And around that time, Anthony was kind of trying to figure out ways to level up his skills as a developer. And we wanted to support Black you know, black owned businesses in the area, but we were having, you know, a difficult time locating them online. So I kind of made the suggestion to him that he build the app and here we are now. All right, cool, cool. Questions from my panel. First up, Monique. Well, first a comment. I hope everybody heard what you said when you said that you spent four years building on your own, doing 3,000 names on your own before it took off. I just think that that should be encouragement to anybody who's out there building anything, whether it's in tech or not, that you really need to stick to it. And then what I was wondering is, is there a rating system? Like when I go show up someplace in the middle of nowhere

and want to find out the best soul food, is it going to tell me that? Yeah, I think it's important. The first part you said that, you know, it's important that people see Janika and I in the world, especially the younger generation, and understand sometimes everybody's path is different. Our path was really just about building the app ourselves until we were able to turn it into a real profitable business for us. But yeah, the app has 100% organic ratings, so people will give honest reviews, honest feedback, and there's a star rating system as well. Robert. So two questions.

One, I love the name. I wanted you to talk a little bit about how you picked that name and how okra is crucial to African and African-American culinary history. And then follow up question, will there be anything on there that can let us know what these folks are out of?

Like if I'm going to a fish spot and they ain't got no fish, is there like a note on there that can tell me? We don't have a we're out of catfish button yet. But. That's a dumbass question. You know they need it. You know you need it. Break down inventory. You gotta have the button. I'm tired

of getting there. There ain't no red velvet cake when I get there. Just tell me. The whole damn point of the app is to show you the restaurant. You gotta do some damn work like pick the phone up and call. Yeah. I'm just saying,

I need a little flag to let me know. That's all. Scott, let me give my question. Let me give my question in. So I'm on the app. It's actually very easy to navigate, but it has more than just soul food. It has African cuisine

and Caribbean cuisine as well, and vegetarian. That's really awesome. Scott, Scott, hey, hey, hey, hey, Scott, Scott. Yeah. Did your ass miss something? Did you hear me open up this thing by saying they miss soul food restaurants?

No. What did I say? The damn app lists black owned restaurants. Scott, I ain't done. So yes, Scott, it's black owned. So if it's vegan, if it's a juice bar, if they

do smoothies, if it's soul food, Caribbean food, it's black owned. Which part of black owned your ass missed? You know what? I'm about tired of you correcting me. And I asked my question. I've had it up to here. And I mean up to here, okay?

Now, what I'm saying is... First of all, you being up to here is at my knee level. So it don't matter. No, it isn't. I've grown since you've seen me. It's COVID. Now, let me just say this. What I like about the app to your guests is it also has Black-owned products.

Can you talk about the diversity, that diversity in the app? And forgive Roland. He's having one of his days. Don't worry. Yeah, so I wanted to quickly just answer the question about okra and the name. So okra is a seed that was brought over from West Africa to the Americas during a transatlantic slave trade. And so my family is from South Carolina. Anthony's family is from Louisiana and Alabama. And so the name is really just a nod to our family and the role that food has played in our lives. So, yeah, that's the name. With regard to...

The marketplace. The marketplace. The products, yeah, the marketplace. Yeah. So that was just our way of supporting the community in a different way. There are a lot of amazing Black food product makers out there and we kind of wanted the ability to support them as well and so that's why we added the marketplace feature which we plan to expand at the end of the year as well roland they got african peanut sauce you can put that in your root next time you cook. Look, hey, Scott, fun fact, the West African word for okra

is actually key in gumbo, so the name gumbo actually comes from the West African word for okra. Fun fact, there's useless information you did not need. But I don't like okra. Do you like okra? I've never felt a taste for okra. It's traditional. Scott, did nobody ask your ass what you like okra. Do you like okra? I've never felt a taste for okra. It's traditional.

Stop! Did nobody ask your ass what you like okra or not? The app is called Eat Okra. We ain't having no conversation about whether you like okra or not. That's also one of the reasons why we named it that also, though, because it always gets a very strong reaction. It does, yes. Absolutely.

People have literally not downloaded the app because they hate okra that much. They completely hate okra. And it's a very visceral reaction, and they just won't have it, and they won't touch it. Ooh, okra. Congratulations. Tomato gravy. I am so hungry. That's right. Are y'all done? Yes. Well, favorites. Okay. Y'all done. Whatever. Okay. So, so Anthony and Janique. So again, if people want to submit, so you, so you can, you have user submissions.

Now, do you have user submissions now. Do you then go back and verify? How do y'all verify they're Black-owned? Yeah. We have a whole separate team that does that work. We call restaurants. We speak to the owners, speak to staff, and, you know, we do our due diligence to make sure they're Black-owned. Okay.

All right, then. Look, we appreciate it. The app is called Eat Okra. I don't mind okra. I like okra as well. And so, but we don't really care if Scott don't like it. Y'all, just

because your ass don't eat okra or like okra, still download the app. That way, I just did. Scott, Scott, we are done with the panel questions. Okay, we are done with that. So be quiet. Well, I got one more question. Can I ask one more question? We are done with that. So be quiet. Well, I got one more question. Can I ask one more question?

No, you can't. To everybody who's listening, right, it don't matter if you don't like okra or not. Y'all, this is allowing for you when you go to a place, when you go to a city, if you want to find and support black-owned restaurants. That's what's there. And so that's why we believe in that, because we've got to be able to support our own, where we are turning our dollars around. So, Anthony and Janique, certainly congratulations.

Thanks a lot. Thank you, Roland. All right. That is it for us, folks. I want to appreciate our panel, Robert and Monique. Thank you for joining us on the panel today. We tolerate, we tolerate, we tolerate this little cap on the show. But thanks a bunch. Don't forget, y'all, download the Black Star Network app. We already passed 30,000 downloads. Now we're

on our way to 40,000, 50,000. I want to end, I want to end 2022 with at least 75,000 downloads. That is our goal. And so let's spread the word, please. Apple phone, Android phone, Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Samsung TV, Xbox, and Amazon Fire. And, of course, if you want to support the work that we do here at Roland Martin Unfiltered, of course, stopping the misinformation that we hear all the time coming out of these places, giving you real information, quality interviews from people who are impacted.

We've had some great guests today talking about these drug programs. Also, of course, the sister out of Texas as well. So many great guests. You can support us if you want to write a check or money order. P.O. Box 57196, Washington D.C. 200020037. Again, P.O. Box 57196 Washington, D.C. 20037. Cash at Brazile side. R.M. Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is R.M. Unfiltered. And Zale is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Also, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. All right, folks. Thanks a bunch.

We appreciate it. And I see y'all comments. I appreciate y'all loving our set. Paying homage to James Baldwin, my man Harry Belafonte, of course, Adam E. Wells Barnett as well. And so, and again, I love these shoes. I got these at the YouTube Black Summit where they gave me these Air Force Ones

and they painted, they of course decorated them Roland Martin unfiltered. So pretty cool, huh? All right, y'all, that's it. I will see y'all tomorrow, right here from Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation's capital where the Black Star Network, our offices are located. Don't forget also to watch our shows.

Deborah Owen's show, Wealthy You. Of course, Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie Hood Martin. Of course, Faraji Muhammad, Every Day in the Culture with Faraji. That's 3 to 5 p.m. live every single day. Then, of course, we restream that. And, of course, Rolling with Roland, the episode over the last two weeks. Director Bill Duke. And, of course, with the Black, the episode over the last two weeks. Director Bill Duke. And, of course, with the Black Table, my man, my frat brother, Dr. Greg Carr.

Folks, that is it. Support all of our shows. We are building something here. We got other shows in development. And so we're just trying to make this thing happen, y'all, because this is all about. This is all about us being able to control our voices control our destiny and again like the nation's first black paper freedom journal said we wish to plead our own cause too long have others spoken for us that's it i'll see y'all tomorrow this is an iHeart podcast