#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Dismantling DOE, USDA land-grant scholarships pulled, Meta's digital redlining, Kash Patel confirmed

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

2.20.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Dismantling DOE, USDA land-grant scholarships pulled, Meta's digital redlining, Kash Patel confirmed The vetting committee has voted to advance Trump's nominee for the Education Department for confirmation votes on the Senate floor. I will speak with the president of the National Education Association, who will explain why Linda McMahon should not be appointed as Secretary of Education. The USDA's 1890 National Scholars Program, which partners with 19 HBCUs to provide full scholarships in agriculture, food sciences, and natural resources, gets cut.  Civil rights groups are suing the tech company META for digital redlining. One of the lawyers involved in the case will join us to explain the situation. We will discuss how Musk is pressuring advertisers. Kash Patel has been confirmed to lead the FBI. A California Congressman gets a letter from the Justice Department because of his comments about Elon Musk.  And the White Missouri man who shot an unarmed black teen who rang his doorbell dies just weeks before his sentencing. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Today's Thursday, February 20th, 2025, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The vetting committee has voted to advance Trump's nominee for the education department for confirmation. That is, of course, the leader of the WWF. We'll talk with the president of the National Education Association, explaining why Lyndon McMahon should not be appointed as secretary of education. Well, guess what?

Cash Patel lied to the Senate committee. But guess what? Republicans still voted for him for FBI director. The USDA's 1890 National Scholars Program, which partners with 19 HBCUs to provide full scholarships in agriculture, food sciences, and natural resources, has been cut. Civil rights groups are suing the tech company Meta for digital redlining. food sciences, and natural resources has been cut. Civil rights groups are suing the tech company Meta for digital redlining. One of the lawyers involved in the case will join us to discuss it. Plus, we'll talk about Elon Musk, how he is literally, literally trying to extort companies by forcing them to advertise on X.

And if they don't, oh, he'll run and tell Trump. Plus a California Congressman gets a letter from the Department of Justice saying that his comments regarding Elon Musk are wrong and he could be prosecuted. A member of Congress. Plus the white Missouri man who shot an unarmed black teen who rang his doorbell dies just weeks before his sentencing.

It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's rolling Martin. Yeah.

Rolling with rolling now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's rolling, Martin. Yeah. Martin. All right, folks. When it comes to the Secretary of Education, well, guess what's going on? Republicans are moving forward with a grossly unqualified nominee. The Senate voted along party lines to advance the nomination of Linda McMahon, you know,

who her husband runs at WWF, the Wrestling Federation. Yeah, she has zero, zero qualifications in education, zero education, zero experience in public education, plus is a track record of supporting policies that would divert funds from our schools to private institutions. She's openly stated her desire to shut down the Department of Education and believes that funding intended for public schools should be redirected to private and charter schools. Becky Pringle is president of the National Education Association. She joins us right now. Becky, glad to have you here. So, look, the Republicans

voted for RFK Jr. He got through. They voted for Kash Patel, who literally lied, taking money from a Chinese company. He got through. Tulsi Gabbard got through. They hired a Fox News host to be the secretary of defense. So, at this rate, Republicans are going to go along with Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of Education. That's pretty clear with the vote today.

And first of all, Roland, thank you for having me on your show. And thank you for being unfiltered, telling the truth all the time. So, you know, I attended the confirmation hearing of Linda McMahon. And I can tell you that she instilled no confidence in me or any of the educators who were there and others listening around the country that she was qualified. But that clearly was not a factor in the decision of the HELP Committee today, and I don't expect it will be a factor in the vote of the full Senate. And so what we are focusing on is making sure that people who have decisions to make as we go into more elections in these coming years, as we hold

members of Congress responsible and accountable for what they've done, that they are very clear that Lyndon McMahon has every intent of fulfilling the education agenda of Project 2025. And what is that? Destroying public education, where 90 percent of our students go to school, three out of four of them are students of color, where we know that public education is the foundation of this or any democracy. So as a democracy, we should be promoting, protecting, and strengthening public education. Yet she has no intention of doing that by not only gutting the Department of Education, but making these enormous cuts that impact our most vulnerable students, our students with disabilities,

our students who are living in poverty, our Black and brown and Indigenous students, our LGBTQ plus students. She made that perfectly clear, and yet the HELP committee advanced her nomination. So we have to make sure that people are informed and ready to take action. Well, and on that particular point there, when you look at getting these choices, this woman has no background. I mean, I think she's probably worse than Betsy DeVos, and I don't think you could get even worse than her. Hmm.

I'm not sure. We'll find out, won't we? The situation is certainly worse, Roland. There's no question about that. But Betsy DeVos, just like Linda McMahon, are beholding to or are part of the Billionaire Buddies Club. And let's just, you know, we need to make sure that we are very clear on what's happening here. We know that all of the cuts to the department that, by the way, Roland, that's already happened. And the real impact to students and public schools and educators has already happened.

That's already happened. And so we know what their agenda is. And it is to make sure that they find the money on the backs of our kids to give tax cuts, more tax cuts, to billionaires. That's what they are planning on doing, and they are full steam ahead. So this is what I get from people all around the country. People are disgusted. People are angry. They're frustrated. And they say, OK, what do I do? What do I do? So what do people do? Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. Midterm elections aren't until November 2026. It is abundantly

clear that Republicans have no desire to stand up to Donald Trump. They are afraid to challenge him. They're afraid to challenge Elon Musk. So what do people do? So, you know, Roland, you know, I taught eighth grade science for 31 years. And so where I'm going to always start is education. So that's part of the work that NEA is playing, to educate people. I would certainly ask folks to go to NEA.org slash protect, where you will find a wealth of information.

You'll get information about knowing your rights. If you're a parent or an educator, you'll get information on what these executive orders really mean and say. You'll find out what the Department of Education does. That's one of the things we learned, Roland. Those of us who are very close to it know, but there are a lot of people who don't know that there are literally education jobs that are connected to the funding that comes from the Department of Education, and most especially in our special education classes. So we're talking about taking resources from those vulnerable students, but also increasing class sizes for all students. So we have to talk about and break that down for people. And so we want to educate them, and we want to make sure that they know the impact of these cuts in their community, in their school district. But we can't stop there. We are in full—we are in the throes of litigating those things that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have done that are illegal.

So we need stories from folks. So please share your stories with us at ea.org slash share so that we have people who can tell the real impact that is happening on students and children. And then we have to, you know, fight and hold accountable our members of Congress as they work to pass legislation, where we're fighting to keep public dollars from going to private schools through voucher schemes. And we have to do that and do that part as well. And we have to organize. We have to organize and we have to mobilize. So I would ask folks to text ACTION to 48744 where you can get a host of information and you can take action right now

you can stay in the know and up to date on how you can get involved we need everyone rolling we need everyone to understand what's happening and what is at stake for our students for with our for our communities um for um but in particular um our indigenous and communities of indigenous people and people of color, and those historically marginalized communities that are in the crosshairs of this administration. So the thing that is interesting to me, I've had people say, oh, well, you know, we didn't think that they would actually do this. And I'm going, what the hell are you talking about? They told you. They laid it out in a nearly 1,000-page plan.

But folks didn't believe it. There are progressives, there are liberals, there are Democrats who chose to attack Vice President Kamala Harris, folks who called her a supporter of genocide. There are people who said, well, you know, the Biden economy, well, it wasn't as great as it was. And all of these people are fighting out. And that's why we got a shirt that said, hashtag, we tried to tell you, F-A-F-O 2025. I mean, bottom line is no one can act as if they didn't say

they were going to do all of the crazy, insane things that they are doing. Yeah, Roland, and I don't know about you, but, you know, I'm getting folks saying, you know, we didn't vote for this. Well... yes, they did. Yes, they did.

Right. They did vote for this. You know, we did have a Trump one and he was trying to dismantle public education in that time as well under Betsy DeVos, of course. He's gone so much further. And, you know, the things that are getting people's attention, honestly, no one elected Elon Musk. And honestly, I don't think anyone expected that Donald Trump would give him that much power and authority. But I can tell you what I'm hearing from parents and students, too, that they are afraid of the reality that Elon Musk has access to their personal data. So if they apply for a federal grant for student loans, Elon Musk has access to all of that. Not that they're going to give student loans, but still, he has access. So parents and students are very fearful. And now they're they're listening. So we have to continue to drive that home. We need to talk about the reality that, you know, I talked to a teacher from South Carolina. after January 20th, that her plans for Black History Month,

which she has done for a decade, had to be subjected to more scrutiny so that they could actually censor part of that, part of what she had planned to do. These things are happening right now, whether it's the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, executive order, or we're talking about the cuts that are happening without an executive order. They are happening to our students right now, right now. And we need to make sure

that everyone understands that and knows how they can fight back. You know, I was, I saw this video. It was a story. I forgot the network. They were talking to some educators in Kentucky. And yeah, there's one white woman. You know, I voted for Trump, but we didn't vote for this. I'm like, idiot, you did. You did.

And see, all of these people, they voted for not in my backyard. And guess what? It's a Venezuelans who are now found it finding out that, oh, you stood there and endorsed him. And they're sending you all back. It's the people in Kentucky. It's some folks who are on SNAP benefits. It's some individuals. It's some people who are teachers. I'm going to talk a little bit later. Well, while I'm, I got you. I got to do this here because I think this is just beyond insulting. Control Room, please play the video of Teamsters President Sean O'Brien

talking about these cuts on Fox News. All right, we don't have it. Guys, I see the two of you. I need y'all to find that. Because again, Becky, you may have seen the video. Here's a labor CEO, a labor president, who's literally, who's, well, you know, Trump is making these cuts and he's acting like it's no big deal. And that has to be insulting as a labor leader

to have someone be so dismissive of these cuts. They're affecting workers, people who have families. I mean, we had a woman on yesterday who was an immigration judge, got rid of her. People were moving their families here. I mean, there's a callous disregard for human dignity happening all across the federal government right now. And you would think that a Teamsters leader would understand. I mean, when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, union folks were not happy at all. And the Teamsters

president thinks that his members ain't going to be impacted. Just wait. The cuts are coming to your doorstep, too. You know, Roland, regardless of who is dismissive, everyone will know this reality. And that's part of our work, right? We have to bring those real stories. You know, I was talking to a parent from not too far from where I am now in Virginia, where they shared with me that over 100 parents had gotten notices

that services to their students with disabilities were going to be cut right away. And that's one of the things we have to lift up and talk about is the cuts that are happening right now, whether they're education jobs or they're services to our students with disabilities, whether it's that people don't believe that we should be feeding our kids when they're hungry, but we know they can't learn if they're hungry. Whether they are cuts to early learning, I mean, to cut, head start.

Knowing how important those early years are, we have to talk about those stories. And that's why we're collecting them and we're sharing them. And we're working with our parents. We're working with community leaders. We're working with the students themselves so that they are the ones telling these stories

so we can hold members of Congress accountable for what they're doing, not only right now, but guess what, Roland? We got an election coming up and we need to be preparing for that right now, but guess what, Roland? We got an election coming up, and we need to be preparing for that right now. Absolutely. Becky Pringle, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much for joining us on Roller Mountain Unfiltered.

Thanks, Roland. Folks, I was just talking about that video from the Teamsters' president, Sean O'Brien. Remember, he spoke at the Republican National Convention and was not happy that he couldn't speak at the Democratic Convention. They wouldn't let him. And then they did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. And then he went on Tucker Carlson and claimed that, oh, that she cut it short and how arrogant she was about it. Well, if you want to see arrogance, watch this. The president came in and he didn't come in subtle, that's for sure. And there's a lot of controversy on that.

Look, we don't want to see anybody get laid off. We don't want to see anybody losing their jobs. But he thinks he's within his right. There are court proceedings, and ultimately the courts are going to decide whether what he's doing is lawful or not. I know that there is a lot of fat in the government he's trimming, and I don't think people are opposed to that. And look, I tell people all the time, let's take a look at the 101st day and where we're at at that point in time. Right. Really? Really? My pound, Dr. Nola Haynes. really really my pound dr dola haynes uh she of course georgetown university school of foreign

service out of dc dr gray card department of african american studies how university out of dc reesey colbert host the reesey colbert show x series xm radio out of dc as well uh i'll i'll start with you reesey um if i'm a labor leader and I'm sitting here going, your name is Sean O'Brien? Nope. I'm going to say those SOB initials stand for son of a bitch. Well, you know, to your point that you made earlier, Roland, these people think that shit doesn't roll downhill.

They thought that they were going to vote for inflicting harm on other people and that they were going to somehow be exempt. But it's really stupid when Donald Trump has been one of the most hostile to labor and union workers, and the entire Republican Party is hostile to that. For anybody to think that these wins that they're racking up against labor, against unions, against workers is not going to impact them at some point. And so these people should figure out, check his bank account, honey, see who has been filling his coffers because he is

compromised. He is not a person who is going to be able to protect his workers. And unfortunately, anybody who thought he was is in for a rude awakening as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, Bob, Bob, Lon, Nola, all of these people. And I've said this, and I had somebody. I said this on Monday's show, I think, or Tuesday's show.

I can't remember. And I said, y'all, this thing got to hit rock bottom. There are people who are going, and I know this is going to impact our people, but there are people who, there are individuals who need to lose everything. They need, they're going to have to get their Medicaid cut. I just saw a tweet. Airlines are trying, airlines are looking to get rid of protections for people in wheelchairs. You've got, yeah, airlines look to remove

consumer protections for travelers who use wheelchairs. You got Senator Tom Tillis has a bill to increase banking fees. Now forget what Biden-Harris did with the Consumer Financial Protection Bill.

They're going to strip, they're going to say, hey, y'all run those banking fees up. Hey, oh yeah, all of the protections of the SEC against insider trading, go away. They're about to unleash hell across the country. And all of these people who thought they were going to be benefiting, they are about to learn, no, unless you're a millionaire or a billionaire, you get nothing. And this is going to be people. And all these people, South Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, all of these folks who truly depend on lots of government money. Oh, y'all broke asses are about to also get a rude awakening.

I just think the only way we get out of this, Nola, is if it all goes away. You hit rock bottom. And now they're left with no choice. And they now realize the Republican Party wasn't trying to do a damn thing for you. And it's going to actually wake the Democrats up as well. You know, that's a very interesting proposition. And I've been thinking a lot about that. And I've been thinking about it through the lens of when you elect a populist and what does that mean? in the way in which Donald Trump has been exalted to this king-like status within that core 35% that he has sway over. So if you look at it through the lens of the kind of cult-like behavior, when you are in a cult, when you are completely devoted to your leader, you will literally go to the ends of the earth, to depths of hell, and you will keep convincing yourself because they're telling you. First of all, they're telling you that it's going to happen. If you're listening to the messaging, and for those of us who listened to the messaging before the election, we knew this was going to happen because they told

us and they put in a document, right? So what they're doing now is saying, yes, these things are happening. We told you these things were going to be hard. And so what we can predict is that they are going to run in 26 and 28 on promises kept. And so even for the people that are hurting, that's going to be enough for them to still vote for the people that do not have their best interest in mind, because they are going to continue to convince themselves that somehow this is part of the plan, that at some point it's going to look like for this 35%, I have no idea. You know, I don't know what that's going to look like. But on the end of when we're talking about a populist, you know, populist doesn't need to assuage the rest of the country. You just got to keep your base happy. And that has been the playbook from day one. It has not changed. It has not altered. And I honestly don't know what's going to substantially move the 35% needle. You know, they're boohooing and crying now, but this is only, what, you know, 20 days

into it. We still have to get to the 100-day mark if we can. We still have to get to the two-year mark if we can. We still have to get to the four-year mark if we can. And by then, Trump will trigger another constitutional crisis to where he will exalt himself to stay in office longer, just like Xi did in China. You know, so it's an interesting set of circumstances. I don't know what the bottom is for these folks. No, Greg, there is no bottom. In fact, Steve Bannon, I'm seeing this clip right now, was at CPAC moments ago saying, we want Trump in 2028. That's what these people want. They're going to try to make that happen. I mean, folks need to understand. And you know what, Greg, the issue is not really how do you crack the nut of 35%?

And this is where I think Michael Moore and people like that are dead wrong. Where they're like, you know what? We need to try. No, no, no, no. I'm not trying to talk to their asses. I ain't trying to talk to them. Like this dude, Zachary Levi, he was in the movie Shazam. He told Megyn Kelly that I had know, that I had to support.

I just had to support Donald Trump. It was more important than my career. I was like, no sweat. I will make sure I never watch anything with his punk ass in it. I ain't supporting a damn thing. The issue is not how do you connect with that 35%. The real issue, Greg, is how do you connect with the 90 million people who did not vote? Yes, that's the long and short of it.

Remember Nazi Germany, to echo what Dr. Haynes just said, what Nola just said, Hitler didn't have to win 50% plus one of the voters. He only had to win 50% plus one of the third of the voters who were open to the Nazis. This is the playbook. We do know where the bottom is. The same bottom that ended the Roman Empire, that caused the breakup of the European configuration in World War I, that caused the expansion of the European configuration in World War I that caused the expansion of the Nazis into Western Europe and triggered World War II. We do know where the bottom is. And the bottom is a mix of nativism and oligarchy. That's how it works.

The United States has a bottom, and we're going to reach it. The only question is when. What we're seeing now will accelerate that. Just before, as you mentioned, CPAC and Steve Bannon, who, of course, is a very proud white nationalist, populist, internationalist, interfering in everybody's election he can get his dirty fingers into. Just preceding him was Elon Musk, who, you know, like the overgrown teenager he is, whatever the physiological brain chemistry conflagration that has resulted in a grown-ass man running around like a 13-year-old that is coursing through his veins with sunglasses on, his CPAC, waving around a chainsaw that had been given to him by the president of Argentina, Malay, who is in many ways the Trump of the tropics these days, even as Javier Bonsoro has been brought up on charges in a real country like Brazil that has said, you tried to overthrow

the election, so we're going to try your ass and put you in jail. By the way, where is Merrick Garland these days? But the whole point is two things. Privatization. We've seen that. We've seen Lyndon McMahon. So all of this is to offshore those resources, not only to give a tax cut, but to privatize

as many things as they can. And the second thing, of course, is to remain in power, they have to continue to press white nationalism. There is no bridge to be built to white nationalism because it is irrational. The job cuts are not going to move these folks, even as the leader

of the Teamsters, O'Brien, has been eviscerated by the Teamsters themselves, by the press. He was sitting there at the confirmation hearing yesterday of Lori Chavez de Remmer, who has been picked to run the Labor Department, who at one time, when she was in Congress out of Oregon, was a supporter of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, the PRO Act, which had some Republican backing and actually passed Congress, didn't get signed into law, but who now is backtracking and his own members are like, fool, right to work. What are you talking about?

You betrayed everything. You're a bootlicker. It's not enough, however, to say you're going to lose your job. These people would rather lose their jobs than drop their defense of their whiteness. Finally, even as we got news today that the IRS has laid off over 6,000 employees and the CIA is moving to dismiss a number of people and the Transportation Security Administration has fired 243 probationary employees, as Elon Musk tipped his hand a couple of days ago, they will bring some of those people back, but it won't be,

well, they won't bring any of them back. You read Project 2025, you know that the second prong of Project 2025 was to create a database of people who could fill those jobs. Those jobs, some of them will be restored, but they will be restored to private industry. They are stealing with both hands. And for union members to concede to privatization of federal jobs, this is a threshold that once crossed cannot be reversed. This is about theft.

And we've seen it before in world history, and we know how it ends. Indeed, indeed. And folks, people keep asking, well, you know, what do we do? How do you fight back? And I say, well, first and foremost, you can't fight back politically because they control all three. So the lawyers are critically important. Speaking of that, civil rights lawyers have filed a significant lawsuit against Meta, also known as Facebook, and also Instagram, accusing them of digital redlining. Exactly what does that mean?

According to the lawsuit, Meta's advertising system directs black users towards ads for for-profit colleges, while white users are shown more ads for public nonprofit universities. Chavis Jones, the senior counsel of the Lawless Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, he joins us right now. Glad to have you here. Explain to us exactly what's going on here. First of all, Roland, really grateful to be here. I watch the show every day and everyone who knows me knows that. So really excited to be here and talking about this, especially on Thursday night with this great panel. Our lawsuit focuses specifically on a practice that we've observed that is digital redlining. We've talked about this because we believe that Meta has used advertisements to steer advertisements disproportionately to black users from for-profit colleges and universities

while disproportionately steering advertisements for nonprofit institutions to white individuals. And so this matters for several reasons, the first of which is that Meta should not be deciding based on race who sees advertisements for what types of institutions. This represents a type of separate but unequal that we have fought against not only in 1965, but that we have to fight against in 2025 on this digital platform as it shows up. And we recognize that social media can be used to reinforce types of social inequality, especially as it relates to race. Secondly, this matters because separate and apart from this lawsuit, we have looked into

for-profit colleges and noticed that many of the individuals who attend many of these schools experience a lot of harm. And that results in a lot of them experiencing not only higher debt burdens and student loan debt, but a lot of them experience issues with job placement. In addition to that, within seven to 10 years, a lot of them are defaulting on their loans. And so it's creating a real parade of horribles for black folks who are attending. And while we're about 13 percent of the population, a lot of these institutions have in excess of 50 to 60 percent of black and brown students.

So while we're not only the most vulnerable in society, we're being the most abused by many of these for-profit schools. And lastly, this matters because the promise of education means so much for black folks. As we're trying to make our way through life and trying to make sense of life, education means a lot because it allows us to make more money and to do more for our families and to make sense of our existence. And these institutions are preying on that promise to line their own pockets for profit. And for folks who don't understand, the Obama administration was very aggressive in going after these for-profit institutions. Many of them, again, you know, getting lots of education, funding, things along those lines. And people graduated from there, not being able to get jobs.

They were just simply, you know, diploma meal factories. And people were just spending vast sums, amounts of money that was serving them no purpose. Absolutely. We call this predatory inclusion. And so it creates an issue where they know that individuals who are black, especially those who are first generation, want to attend college. And they prey on that desire by having folks sign up for these institutions, making it very easy for them to sign up. They call them repeatedly in many instances, and they ensure that they enroll. But when they enroll, they often are leaving worse than when they started. So senators like Dick Durbin and others have done everything

they could to curtail this industry. You mentioned the Obama administration, you mentioned the Biden administration. But we know that in the prior Trump administration, a lot of these guardrails were taken away. And so it creates real issues, not only that in this climate where there are affirmative action bans across the country. We know based on some research that comes out of Harvard, when there are affirmative action bans, Black and other underrepresented minorities attend for-profit colleges and universities at disproportionate rates. And so this creates a huge problem for Black people and other underrepresented folks who are striving to get education. Questions from the panel. Nola, you first.

Yeah, definitely. This is an issue. First of all, thank you so much for doing this work. And I genuinely love the digital angle in terms of how are marketed to. I can tell you for years, as I was the blue cool years, it took for me to get my PhD. I always worked in administration for a long time at UCLA. And I specifically worked with community college students. And one of the things that would take that population of students a very long time to finish is because they probably started out a for-profit. And not only are you now mired in these loans, but the accreditation system is different. So you sat there for two years or however long you've gone through these programs, and when you apply to a traditional four-year institution, those classes do not transfer.

And I cannot tell you how many times we saw that over and over and over and the stories of predatory, quote-unquote, counselors, how aggressive they were. So I'm curious, does the accreditation factor come into this lawsuit? And if so, what does that look like? So our lawsuit focuses explicitly on the type of steering that Meta does. So we're not focused as much on the accreditation issues with for-profit institutions in particular, but I think it's even more reason why we have to call META up in this particular moment to say, if you want to be steering advertisements, you need to be exacting equal opportunity for all people, especially when there's an awareness that for-profit colleges have engaged in so many egregious actions as it relates to Black and other minorities, but especially Black people in this particular instance. And we have to make sure that we're curtailing these types of behaviors.

In the same way that our forbearers fought against these types of things and public accommodations in the 60s, we're fighting, because so much of our lives are lived online today, we're fighting for these opportunities and equal access as it relates to higher education. RACI. Thank you for doing this work and being here tonight. I'm curious, in your lawsuit, are you seeking to find out if Meta is using things that are closely associated with race to steer advertisements to Black people specifically? Or is your claim that, or is the assertion that there is a way of checking just Black people and that's how these advertisements are getting

disproportionately to Black people about these for-profit universities? Thank you so much, Recy. I believe it's the former. I think we're really looking into, and hopefully in the process of discovery, able to find out what goes into these algorithms. What are they looking into? How are they filtering these advertisements? And so these theory behaviors are based on interests. And because for-profit colleges over the history of time targeted black students disproportionately and black people have attended these institutions at disproportionate rates, it appears on the

surface that that might be an interest of Black people. But we know that this is based on racialized recruiting practices and predatory inclusion that hyper-targets Black people. And so we want to really make sure that when we look at these things in discovery that we can find out if this is a part of the algorithmic process and how we can kind of make sure this doesn't happen in the future. Greg? Thank you, Roland, and thank you, Counsel, for doing this work and for being consistent. Certainly, you all have been on the water a long time. Looking over the complaint, and just a quick look,

you all have filed this lawsuit saying that META has violated the D.C. Human Rights Act and the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act, even as we're seeing federal judges allowing these mass firings to continue, not by ruling, not on the merits, but on procedural issues, you know, lack of standing, or in the case today, of course, as we saw the idea that the complainants hadn't hadn't hadn't exhausted their remedies by going through the federal administrative judge process in this complaint. that may be not evoking underlying constitutional issues? And was the selection of D.C. a strategic decision to be made? And to kind of echo what Risi just said, perhaps, as long as it doesn't get dismissed to get beyond that, to get a peek at the algorithms and everything like that, what's the strategy behind using D.C. as the venue and using the Human Rights Act and the Consumer Protection Procedures Act as your strategy? Well, without going into too much legal nuance, we were representing an organization called the Equal Rights Center.

D.C. has a unique form of standing where you can represent an entity institution representing a class of individuals. And so our hope is that through representing the Equal Rights Center and their great work that they do, that we can look into the back wall and behind the wall of what's going on with these algorithms. Because so many users use platforms like Facebook, like Instagram and others, and they're unaware of these algorithms. But they play a major role in the way we exist in life from day to day. So much of our lives are lived online. So we want to appear behind that wall and see exactly what's happening. The research that we looked at, that was kind of in the foreground of us creating this lawsuit, showcased through a study that these particular ads were being doled out in disproportionate rates to black users and white

users. And so we want to see what exactly went into that. Thank you. All right, then. Well, listen, keep up the good work. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much, Roland. All right. Take care.

All right, folks. Remember all of those FBA people and others, people who are saying, oh, no, never Kamala. Forget that. We could actually do better under Trump. Hmm. Guess what? The USDA's 1890 land grant program, a partner with 19 historically black college universities, and they offer full agriculture and food sciences scholarships.

Well, guess what? That's gone. That's right. After a series of executive orders by Trump sought to eliminate race-based decisions in education, including suspending the 1890 program, these historically black institutions, which have been central to diversifying the agricultural workforce, are uncertain about their future. In 2024, the USDA awarded 94 scholarships to students at these universities, continuing the mission of advancing education and research in agriculture. And now the program is gone. See, Greg, hashtag we tried to tell you. And you had a group of these DEI Republicans

who were at the White House today. They took a little group picture. And I replied to one of them. I said, the help. And then another one, because one of the women is a FAMU graduate. I said, hmm. I said, while you Negroes were being assembled at the Black History Month reception at the White House, I bet y'all won't say a word about USDA ending this program, especially you, the FAMU graduate. Did he graduate from FAMU?

I know he left FAMU. No, no, no. That was a woman. Not Byron Donalds. It was a woman who she's always running her mouth on social media who's a FAMU graduate. running her mouth on social media, who's a family graduate. And I'm like, oh, all of y'all, they were all smiling like they were at the minstrel show.

And about how great it was being there. And I'm sitting there going, yeah, and your school is getting jacked as a result. No question. And forgive me, brother. I've been in class all day. I haven't had a chance to see the Kiki photograph. I can't wait when we get off. Forgive me, brother. I have been in class all day. I haven't had a chance to see the Kiki photograph. I can't wait when we get off.

It's all right. But I tell you, you know, and it does sting because, you know, my alma mater, Tennessee State was on that list. Tuskegee, Arkansas Pine Bluff, Maryland Eastern Shore up the road. You know, first of all,

there wasn't a lot of scholarships, but it means the world for every one of the students who got those scholarships, there wasn't a lot of scholarships, but it means the world for every one of the students who got those scholarships and who, as a result of those scholarships and working in that field, were eligible for internships that would be turned into non-competitive positions with USDA. It transforms, you know, people's lives. You know, I say that as a public HBCU graduate who understands the value of education. That having been said, and we saw the dear

colleague letter that was released on Valentine's Day by the clown who was running the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Education, soon to be led by the Rassler, as you say. This strategy is really going to cut off their funky noses despite their funky faces.

Because when you start thinking about, and of course, we remember you covered this and talked about it extensively when it happened. When Shirley Sherrod caught the L in the Obama administration. And when the truth came out that Shirley Sherrod was helping white farmers in Georgia. When the white farmer she helped said, oh, no, no, no, no. Y'all are accusing her of this. That's a lie. Y'all been Breitbarted on this. You know, it's funny how, and many times you talk to John Boyd, of course, who brings this up as well. When you start talking about growing crops and working the dirt, yeah, there's a lot of racists who are farmers in agriculture and agribusiness. However, when it comes time to profit in that area, you find that prejudice notwithstanding,

there's often a lot of cross-racial and transracial and multiracial solidarity. They are attacking things that will ultimately undermine everything from U.S. national security to the ability of the country to not only be productive and maybe eat away at that trade imbalance that has been around for many years, but may also have issues in terms of food security or insecurity with people regardless of race. This is one that you might be able to engender some interracial solidarity around, particularly when you look finally at the fact that many of these HBCUs, whether it be Alcorn or Alabama A&M,

whether it be West Virginia State University or Fort Valley, this program has helped a whole lot of white people who these graduates have helped. And so it might be that one of the unintended consequences of messing with this one is you put on this thread, you might find out it's going to be more than just black people who will be

mad at the suspension of this program. I mean, look, bottom line is they want to whack everything. And I don't think anyone is going to be, I mean, NOLA, and people just need to understand

what's going on. And like I keep saying, they want to defund black America. It is abundantly clear. That's what their goal is. And if you are a Negro who's smiling and profiling and sitting here saying, I stand with Trump, I saw this minstrel show photo of Leo Terrell and that so-called comedian, I forgot that little boy's name. You know, the one that looked like a leprechaun. I forgot his name.

Bob Lott is, I'm sitting there going... Or is it somebody else? No. One of them leprechauns. I don't know. I don't know. It's several of them. It's several of them. Leprechaun, lawn jockey, I don't know what they are. But the bottom line is

that these people flat out are attacking African Americans. Everything I lay in my book, White Fear, it's all coming to pass. It's all right in front of us. It's happening. It sure is. I wonder if Nelly

has enough proof yet. You have enough proof yet, boo? You know, since you asked that question, I'm just curious. You have enough proof? Is your president a racist or not? Because he's seen it coming at us real hard. So, you know, I'm just wondering if he has gathered enough proof and did his own research. But anyway, I digress. Listen, it is a blanket, blanket attack on us 24-7. But to Greg's point, and what people have never understood or care to understand in this country, any rights gained for Black people has benefited all people. And when we talk about these groups that are affected, we tend to talk about Black and brown folks. We talk about LGBTQIA folks. We talk about women.

We do not talk about poor whites. And I want to go ahead and bring in, you know, Dr. King, you know, I want to go ahead and bring in the reverends over time that still work on this issue, trying to get poor people to understand and to organize that if something happens to this group of poor people, you best believe this is going to be a very painful reality that a lot of people in rural America and agriculture are already waking up to. I mean, in a lot of the videos and a lot of the FAFL videos, it has been from ag. It has been from the ag community. It has been from farmers saying, wait a minute. You know, not only were we not supposed to be impacted, but do you understand how vital we are to the U.S. economy? And also, USAID, that was completely gutted. A lot of those farmers, a lot of rural America, get some sort of federal funding for them to continue to be able to do the job for the country. And, you know, in terms of, I'm smiling, but I'm just like, I'm smiling in lieu of wanting to scream, because the reality is Ben Rhodes had wrote an

article in New York Times on the 9th, I think, of this month. And one of the arguments that he made in this article was, there is no going back. There is no repairing of the agencies. There's no redoing things in the next administration. The damage has been done in 30 days. And there will be more damage and more damage. So for me, the frustration that I have, that I'm hiding behind my red lipstick and

my smile is what is going to be left, right? What's going to be left over for folks who do not maybe have the skill sets to transition into the private sector? Because my understanding of the private sector, I don't know what their vision of the private sector is. Most of the people that go into the private sector are people that were highly placed in the government and they have these networks and these connections to make that private company stronger and more connected. Right. So I'm trying to figure out where are all these unemployed people going to go? Right. So what is the what is this going to look like after everything is destroyed and burned down? That's I can't get past this role. And like this is the what is this going to look like after everything is destroyed and burned down?

That's I can't get past this role. I'm like, this is the thing that keeps me up at night. What is this going to look like in another 30 days? Yeah, that's right. Recy, it's real simple. It's real simple what it's going to look like. It's going to be really rich people. Run and rush out of the country. And if you're not, you're absolutely screwed. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is Darwinism, survival of the fittest. They have, these white nationalists have particular animus against black people. This is

particularly a war on black people, but make no mistake about it. This is a war on poor white people as well. It is a war on disabled white people, OK? It is a war on LGBTQ white people. This is a war on anybody that does not fit into their eugenics model of the people that are redeemable and have value. Oh, and by the way, it's war on women of all races. So this is not something that is exclusive to the Black community. We are finding ways to get around it like we always do. But everybody needs to understand that nobody is going to be spared unless you're a millionaire or billionaire like Elon Musk. And so people need to wake the fuck up and realize that they're next. Maybe it hasn't gotten around to you, but they're definitely next. And they need to realize, especially when we're talking about grants, grants are not charity. Grants are a mechanism with which the government uses, the federal government uses, to exert policy and preferences over areas they don't have

jurisdiction in. So they use grants to serve multiple purposes. It's not charity. So many people in the conversations that we're having around all of these investments, is what I call it, that the federal government is making, makes it seem as though this is all just handouts and charity. All of these things prop up our economy. Federal contractors employ people that go to the grocery store that have health care, that they go to the grocery store, that have health care, that they go to the hospital, that drive on our roads, whose kids are in schools, and I can go on and go on and go on, buy homes, all kinds of things.

And so all of this is, we're all dependent on each other. But it seems as though people don't really realize that our fates are intertwined. They all think they're going to hit the lick, be the next Elon Musk, be the next Jeff Bezos, or who wants to be a millionaire. And boom, you can barely afford egg prices right now. So you got bigger fish to fry than trying to hit the lick like Elon Musk. You need to be worried about what's happening in your own community. So I think that when people realize that the cavalry isn't coming for them, and yes, you're deporting all kinds of immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, El Salvador, wherever the hell, back to India. When they realize that, hey, in 100 days, they're still in the same shitty boat, probably worse off, then I think people will start to be like, OK, well, that didn't work. Now what? And if you have enough people or if you have any number of people

with different ideas about how to settle this outside of what we've encouraged people to do time and time again for all these years, which is at the ballot box, then I think that this can really come to a head. Well, Risha, you make the point about who they're attacking.

So the grossly unqualified Peter Hexeth, he has put together a list of generals and who he wants to either fire or reassign. CNN reports on the list. General C. Q. Brown, who is the chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is on that list. That's him. Greg, that's our alpha brother. Also, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Navy's top admiral. And so, oh, and clearly, it's real clear here, Nola, last thing Donald Trump wants is a woman and a black man in two critical positions leading the military. Oh, hell no, because it's a white man's military as

far as Trump and Peter Hexeth are concerned. Absolutely, 100 percent. And it's in broad daylight. And it burns my soul. It burns my spirit that there is no obvious legal way to counter this because it is blatant racism. It is blatant sexism. It has nothing to do with qualifications or performance, absolutely nothing. And that's what I feel kind of, I tend to go from feisty to hopeless, feisty to hopeless. And so in my little hopeless moments, I'm like, so just being black out here, we could just be attacked and vulnerable.

And there is nothing, there is no safeguard. There's no guardrail. We just have to continue to just take it. You know, it doesn't even matter who you are in society. Well, which we've all, we've always known that. So your status and your alphabet's behind your name, none of that protects you, right? Even if you have some coins in a bank account, that's only going to protect you up until you can continue to pay your lawyers. But it's kind of the reality of just how vulnerable we are in a country filled with people who hate us just for existing. We have done nothing to these people, mind you. OK, nothing to these people.

But mine, our black business, drink our water and moisturize our skin. And for whatever reason, that seems to really bother them. And it's just, it's, it's, when I think about how vulnerable so many of us are, it really makes me question a lot of the work that's been done, but there was this lag, there was this huge lag after civil rights, right? And we know there's a lot of systemic reasons for that, but we just kind of stopped in terms of rights, in terms of advancing the Black agenda, whatever that may be. But we really have zero protection.

We're just out here. That's wild. You gonna tell me that that Black general is not qualified for his job? Yeah, but here's the deal, Greg. You know, Brown was appointed in 2023, terms up in 2027. Peter Hegg said, wishes he had a resume

like General Brown, but he's been critical of Brown. And he gave an interview back in November. He said, anybody involved in DEI, the military, they got to go and singling Brown out as well. And so the writing is clear, but this is a brother who has been in the military 41 years, a distinguished service. Peter Hegseth literally could not carry this man's bag. But when you are a grossly unqualified white man who was a Fox News anchor and you now have the top position in the Pentagon, what it says is that, oh, if you're grossly unqualified, guess what? You go to the top of the list for Donald Trump.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It is the only permanent form of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the United States of America. That would be whiteness in its full diversity, in the equity by which it allows the stupid to serve alongside the intelligence, and its inclusion, which would include everyone, although apparently white women have fallen out of it, which makes sense in a patriarchy.

The Christian warrior, the secretary of Braille cream, Pete Hegseth, is gambling on something that history shows us is a losing bet. After all, every time the United States of America has been able to shore itself up from its creation to now, it has been by including those who whiteness would prefer to exclude, beginning with the so-called Revolutionary War, when at least 5,000 people of African descent fought with the armies of George Washington because the British offered them freedom if they fought, and over 5,000 fought for the British. And in Virginia, at least 30,000 ran away. So the Americans had no choice but to include black folk if they wanted to win that war.

Let's get forward to the Civil War. When the North was losing, and when Abraham Lincoln, meeting with Martin Delaney and Fred Douglas and others, said, well, OK, we've got to include these people to help us win, and to the tune of 179,000 men of African descent, 10,000 in the Navy, making it 189,000, and at least one general who was not a member of the Army, but in South Carolina, the first woman to direct troops and how they should attack. And that would, of course, be Araminta Ross, or as we know as Harriet Tubman. Skip forward to World War I, when the United States had to include black

folk, including the Harlem Rattlers or the Hellfighters, the 369th, and then they came back to the United States only to be lynched and have to engage in race war, so that when World War II started and they needed black folk to come and save the asses of Europe and the rest of the world, when they came back, that sparked that civil rights movement, veterans like Medgar Evers and others who said, we're not coming back here and take another L. We remember World War I. Skip forward to today. The Christian soldier has miscounted demographically.

As he says, I'm putting together a budget to cut 5% from the Pentagon, I mean, over the next 8% for the next five years, and we're going to bring back the warrior spirit. Actually, actually, actually, actually, Greg, actually, Greg, a reporter actually blasted that they're not cutting. They're actually shifting the money elsewhere in the Pentagon. The cut doesn't exist. Thank you. Thank you, Ro. Thank you. The underlying rhetoric of it, however, what's animating that is you have a white nationalist who believes that white men are warriors. They have to be included. But guess what? In a world, what does history tell us? When countries, when empires recede, other ones come in to take their place. The United States undermining its international interests, and I'm not saying whether you agree or disagree with what those interests are, but what is clear is, when you pull back

on soft power, taking money from USAID, you know, undermining the foreign policy of the United States, guess who's going to fill that vacuum? Other countries that say, we will now assume leadership in the world. Europe is already talking about, okay, we need to get together. We got to get our military weight gain back up. F these people. China is like, yeah, well, we was telling y'all, we just biding our time. And so as you see this emerge, the United States military is going to become more and

more important because when soft power recedes, you to put your hands on somebody. But guess what? You're going to put your hands on somebody with only white nationalists as the demographics begins to shrink and continues to shrink? Finally, when you look at this—I was having this conversation last night with my law students. We were reading Brown v. Board of Education again, and Derrick Bell talking about the decision that could have been made. There's a new book by Cherise Shedsney called Blacks Against Brown. And what she argues, she's a native Kansan, what she argues is the black rank and file people in Kansas did not want to send their children to white schools. What they wanted was resources for the black schools.

Here's a bulletin for anybody not paying attention. The American Negro ain't never been that patriotic. What we wanted was to be left alone, to get sharing the resources and the protections of the laws. Pete Hexeth, you can't win a war without non-white people. But when you get ready to go to war, it's time, baby. Watch how quickly you're going to find out that white warriors ain't going to be enough and your ass might lose. At that point, all bets are off. And I'm not sure what happens to the declining empire called United States of America.

These folks, again, if you are black and white women, your whiteness can't protect you. The bottom line is what these people want, Recy, they want heterosexual, white men, white male Christians running everything. It is real clear what their agenda, and they want manly men. Like Mark Zuckerberg? Like that kind of manly man? Thank you, Mama.

Oh, okay. Listen, it's so delusional, the inflated confidence that white men have in their ability to run everything. Now, there are some things that white men, oh, okay, fine, but they think they can run everything? That's why we need, Dion, that's why we need somebody's black mama,

somebody's black auntie, somebody's black grandma to be like, uh-uh, baby. You need to step aside because you don't know what the hell you're doing. You don't know what you're talking about. But the reality is, to Nola's earlier point about the hatred that people have for black people in this country, let's also be clear. White people don't like other white people, okay? They don't be—they ain't got each other's back. Look at places where it's predominantly white. Are they the most wealthy?

I'm not talking about specific counties. I'm talking about the states. Do they have the best health care? Do they have the best education? Are they loving thy neighbor as thyself? There's all kind of white-on-white crime. So white people got beef with each other, OK? So they're creating all of these ways to dissect people and to disregard communities and to knock

off, especially the poor ones. So, we just live in a country where, when a certain segment of the white population, particularly these white Cristo nationalists, are in charge, it is borne out of cruelty and harming others, regardless of race. We just so happen to be the primary target, but they don't have any more love for anybody else. And so I'm not going to walk around feeling like, oh, everybody hates us. We love us. We got us. And we're going to figure this shit out. Now it's time for white people to realize once and for all, maybe this will do it, maybe it won't,

maybe they'll lose everything and figure it out, maybe they won't, to realize that these billionaires, these white nationalists don't love them any more than they love us. Maybe when they start to realize that their whiteness will not protect them, that their whiteness will not be what allows them to progress, to have humanity, to have a decent life, maybe, and this is probably delusional on my part, then maybe they will figure out we got to choose something a little bit different. I'm not going to hold my breath on that. In the meantime, we're going to do our Black business and we're going to figure out how to operate in what has always been a racist country for us. Well, it's not like black people could always trust the FBI, especially under the thug

J. Edgar Hoover. But guess what? There's a new thug in town. In a 51 to 49 vote, the United States Senate confirmed Kash Patel as a new FBI director. It is a 10-year term. Trust me, Democrats win in 2028. His ass is getting fired. The vote was mostly along party lines, but two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Patel's confirmation. Senate minority leader, former, actually, former Senate minority leader,

just he no longer has that job, Mitch McConnell, who's the longest serving Senate party leader, actually former Senate minority leader, he no longer has that job, Mitch McConnell, who's the longest serving Senate party leader. He voted for, now keep in mind, he also voted against RFK and Tulsi Gabbard. What's interesting here is that this is the individual who actually lied in his hearing.

He pled the fifth, y'all. If you're going to plead the fifth and you up for the FBI director job, that's an automatic no. And keep in mind, remember when Neera Tanden didn't get confirmed because her mean tweets?

This dude has tons of tweets, videos, audio. He has an enemies list. All of that sort of stuff. And guess what? Already, already, here is the Attorney General, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi at CPAC,

this idiot just said this. Don't, Senator, you don't even, my hardest thing now is I forget to eat. You forget what time it is. And it's 6 o'clock at night. Why do I have a headache? Because I haven't eaten today. But you're going nonstop.

And it's not me. It's an entire team. I've got Chad Mizell. I've got Emil. I've got Todd Blanche, thank goodness, coming in. And we've got Kash Patel now. So they better look out. So basically what she's saying, Nola, and it's going to happen.

Kash Patel, if you think Donald Trump is about retribution, oh, this is retribution king. We already see they're pulling back when it comes to white domestic terrorism. In fact, pull up the story. They've already gotten rid of the database that tracked the actions of cops. So remember, that was a part of the deal. Justice Department

deletes database tracking federal police misconduct. These people, I mean, folk need to understand white supremacists in Americanola are celebrating right now because they're going to have free reign. The FBI won't be tracking them, won't be stopping them. They will do whatever they want to. Trump is trying to make permanent the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., the former

attorney for Old Keepers and the Proud Boys. For all these people who go, I don't see the white supremacy. It's sitting in your face. And just because Cash Patel is an Indian, that don't mean a damn thing. He will do Donald Trump's bidding. This is going to

be an evil FBI and it will not be about law enforcement. It will be about punishing the enemies of Donald Trump, perceived or real. Absolutely. The coup was successful. The entire national security apparatus is secure and loyal to the president. There aren't any independent actors. I want to put that in context. When you are appointed to these roles, you serve at the pleasure of the president. That's very different from when you act in the behest of, you know, when you act, when you get your orders and then you enact those orders without any pushback, without any kind

of independent thought. That is not the environment that we are talking about now. The entire national security apparatus is 100 percent loyal to the president of the United States, who published the official White House account, published a photo of him calling himself a king. This should worry more than the people here, as we're having this conversation. I know for a fact that it worries our partners, our allies, well, our once traditional partners and allies, you know, because like you said, Roland, it's a, you know, cruelty is part of it.

And one of the things that once we are able to legally wrest the country back from these folks, one of the things that we need to have a serious conversation about are norms versus laws. In many ways, a lot of these hearings, a lot of these—when they go to testify and all these things, a lot of this is performative for them. As a Democrat, I can tell you, when you're appointed to these roles, this is something that you take very seriously. Anything, any minor slip, any small thing, you know, like you

mentioned Neera Tanden, you know, you, you're worried about, oh my God, what did I tweet 20 years ago? Are they going to find this? Are you going to find that? That doesn't exist for them. And they lean into it and we need to figure out a way how what happens in these hearings means a little bit more than upholding norms because they don't care anything about norms. They are lawless. They believe they are above the law. And with securing the entire national security apparatus, they just might be. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hey, Bob, Lon, Reesey, these people, they're not... When people say you serve the pleasure of the present, what they really mean is also

I'm serving the American people. These people are not serving the American people. They're serving one person. Mm-hmm. Well, and that person is compromised by how many people? That's what we need to understand, okay? But aside from the whole national security threat of having all of these people who have infiltrated our government, who clearly are not working in the interest of the American people,

let's just talk about the fact that the FBI and the DOJ will no longer focus on what Janet Reno said decades ago, the number one threat to the national security, the domestic threat, is white domestic terrorism. On January 1 of this year, there was a domestic attack. Did that have anything to do with Black Lives Matter? Did it have anything to do with Antifa? No, this was a veteran who did this. Now, he was radicalized by Al-Qaeda, supposedly. Everybody stopped talking about it, so I don't know what the hell they ended up coming out with that. But the moral of the story is these people are not coming in here to tackle the things that are actually a threat to our safety. Tackle white domestic terrorism, which, by the way, we had multiple mass shootings and hate crimes driven by that.

For all you FBA people who were talking about, where's our Black hate crimes bill? You can forget that shit. They don't even want to investigate hate crimes anymore under Donald Trump. So this person, even aside from him being unfit, has really, really, really, really bad priorities, really bad ideology. And all of us will be less safe. And the last point I will make about white domestic terrorism is, often, the victims of white domestic terrorism are white people. Remember, it was Heather Heyer who was a white woman. She was

the only person who was killed in Charlottesville. Remember, when you have some of these other attacks, I remember, I believe it was Oregon or some Portland, Oregon, and different places, it was white people that were the victims. So I'm not trying to center white people. I'm just trying to let people understand that, although this animus is towards us, they tend to be in closer proximity to white people to enact their rage and their terror on. And so people should be, of all races, should be concerned about the shift away from the

real threats to this country, domestic and foreign, and the shift to these fake narratives, this disinformation, this propaganda that they want to propagate around how Black people and Black Lives Matter are the boogeymen. Yeah.

And the bottom line here, Gregreg is real simple uh and that is um if there is a police shooting you can forget the department of justice civil rights division being involved that's right and i dare say i i don't I don't know who could even trust. And this is hard. There are there are some there are some FBI agents who are public servants about serving the good of the people. Under this man, under this man, under this man. And there are some African-American African-Americans who joined the FBI because they said there needs to be people of conscience who are in the FBI. But I'm telling you right now, if you are an FBI agent and you a person of conscience and you say I am about protecting the Constitution with this man now as your boss. It's game over. It's done. This man has no—we have handed the keys to the top law enforcement officer in the country, a liar, a charlatan, and an individual who wants to exact revenge on anyone who speaks ill will of MAGA.

His own record proves it. It's true. It's true. You know, not to put too much of an emphasis on this, but there really is something, I think, to be said for the aesthetic of this moment. As we know, Donald Trump is not staffing up. He's casting. And Patel meets the criteria of a toady. He looks like a toady. He sounds like a toady. And in terms of racist stereotypes, I think he reinforces the racist stereotypes of what a subservient non-white man should look like.

When you you know, Noli, you raise a very serious concern when you start talking about everybody from, you know from foreign intelligence community to domestic law enforcement community backing the white nationalists. Patel will never be respected by any white nationalist in a uniform. He is a toady. And even as they are executing the enemy's purge and all the things they're going to try to do, they will take orders not from him, but from his lord and master, the one somewhere deep in his soul whatever's left of his self-respect. And there may be unforeseen crises, unforeseen meaning those of us who are looking at this like he'll do anything. There may be a moment when he finds his conscience, but to the larger point,

which is the point, I think. Not only will it be too late, it will be incredibly consistent with the history of this country when they realize that they have overplayed their hand. What do I mean by that? No sane black person in the United States of America has ever trusted law enforcement of any kind, especially federal law enforcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has never been heroic. It's never been heroic to black people. The suspicion we have of federal law enforcement, of law enforcement of any kind, but particularly places like the FBI, is well warranted by our history. When you purge the Federal Bureau of Investigation of non-white people who joined for the right reasons and for

white people who also joined for the right reasons, leaving only the toadies and the kind of militaristic white nationalists, what you have done is drop all pretenses that you've ever been about anything other than declaring war on black people. And guess what? At that point, we're not talking about a Shahla Shakur or the Black Panthers. At that point, we're not talking about the counterintelligence program. At this point, now you're recruiting over into anti-law enforcement attitudes black people who have tried their best to show some fealty to the country.

And guess what? Once you have shredded that truce, and I hear you know loud and clear, black people in this country have a truce with white supremacy. If you leave us alone, we will mouth the words that you want to hear in order to create the illusion that you have a nation. We'll pledge allegiance. We'll wave that flag around. But make no mistake about it,

we're not doing it because we love that flag. We got some Negroes. In fact, brother, when you sent me the post of who was at that place, I mean, Tiger Woods, Alveda King, oh my God. I mean, you got some Negroes who actually believe that, like the Negroes at the Black History Program today at the White House. But once you have shredded that truth and dropped all pretense and revealed what many people know if you've studied anything, Charles Mills wrote a book years ago called The Racial Contract, the only national concept, the norms part that you talked about, Nola, versus the law part, which is a white man's country during Reconstruction, or as Pete Hex has a saying, the warrior spirit, meaning white male warriors. Then what you have done is broken the truce and you don't have enough FBI agents. You don't have enough military to for what comes after that. At its mildest form, it looks like not cooperating with law enforcement. At its more, let's say,

advanced form, it looks like something that you're not built for, friends. And this ain't the 1960s. Woe unto the day that you shred the truce and reveal that you have never been anything other than a white nationalist country because you're not prepared for the fact that we've been mouthing those things as part of a truce. You break the truce, let's see what happens. Oh, well, I should say this. I should say this. One of the solutions we have is the solution we've always used in moments like this. We turn inward. What you say, Reesey, that means not only supporting the Black Star Network, supporting independent Black institutions, that means getting the money up for scholarships to these black children to go to historically black schools.

That means for black athletes and entertainers to finally stop shrinking from the battle and run toward it, not appearing at the Super Bowl, but taking some of that profit that you have and pouring it into K-12 education. Everything they try to take away, we have more than enough capacity to not only replace, but to exceed. And once you've broken it, you won't be able to come back to us and say, well, come on back. We'll say, yeah, we'll come on back, but we're not going to drop our black institutions this time. Because we're very clear that at any moment, any moment, you can break the truce again,

and we will never be caught with our pants down again. Not like before. I told you how these thugs work. Check this out. A new report from the Wall Street Journal says, advertisers are slowly creeping back on X, formerly known as Twitter, not necessarily because they want to, but because they have to. The major advertising agency Interpublic, they're looking to merge with rival Omnicom. They announced a $13 billion deal. Well, in December, one of their folks, lawyers, got a call from someone over at X saying, if you don't increase your advertising spending, your deal may be in trouble.

So essentially what they are doing is X is threatening people. They're extorting people by saying, you don't spend my money on us. I'm going to go to Daddy Trump and you're going to have a problem. We're seeing the same thing happen with media. CBS is considering settling that bogus lawsuit Trump filed against 60 Minutes because of their Vice President Kamala Harris interview because they want the sale of CBS parent company, Viacom, Paramount, to go through to the son of Larry Ellison. We saw what all these other companies as well. So here's what we have here, Recy.

What we have here is an individual who occupies the White House, who has no problem selling America. Mm-hmm. In the White House, in the White House, he was brokering a deal to break the impasse between Live Golf and the PGA Tour, and he has a financial interest in it. Mm-hmm.

He doesn't care. And so, again, for all these people who are like, oh, my God, we need to vote for this, this man is all about enriching himself. We already saw when Amazon gave $40 million for that joke of a documentary on Melania Trump. As I keep saying, a documentary on Melania Trump is really a YouTube short. Or it could be the old Vine, seven seconds. And so what you have here, this is Musk.

Now, remember, 2021, Musk told advertisers they can go F off. They can go F off. He didn't need them. But now all of a sudden, he's now trying to force them to come back. He's actually filing lawsuits against companies by saying, you should be advertising with me. And they're like, why should we do that? But because of his closeness with Trump, these companies are going to fold because they don't want to have the federal government unleashed against them. Well, this is my boss activity. In some cases, it's bribery.

In some cases, it's extortion. I mean, these are the same administration that is trying to undo the foreign bribery laws that we have. So it tracks that America has a for sale sign. This is all about self-dealing, will-in-and-dealing, corruption, all the things that they try to accuse Democrats of doing, all the things they try try to accuse Democrats of doing, all the things they try to accuse federal workers of doing, they're actually guilty of themselves. We should pay very close attention to the accusations that they lob, because usually

it's projecting and it's deflecting from their own malfeasance. So this is not surprising. If you look at advertisement on Twitter or X, which I'm rarely on because it is such a white nationalist cesspool, all you see is pro-Trump ads. Every ad is pro-Trump. I haven't seen Target. Well, I don't shop at Target. They canceled for me.

But I don't see any reputable companies doing that. So I think that there's going to come a point where this could potentially hit a head. There could potentially be a revolt against some of this activity. There's only so much these people are going to be able to get away with for so long. We don't know if that's going to be one year, two years, three years, four years, eight years. I don't know when we're going to hit that breaking point. But what we do know is that they're going fast and furious, trying to get as much bullying and much stuff rammed

down the throat to the American people before people wake up and see what's happening. And so I think what companies should be recognizing are the things of, like, what's happening with Target and how those stores, a lot of those stores are empty. Their stock price is down because they folded so quickly to the Trump-Musk administration. These companies need to realize that there will be consequences from their consumers if they just bend the knee and kiss the ring to Trump and all his cronies. I hope that they will stand strong because nothing would make me happier than to see X completely fall by the wayside.

I mean, I don't know. No, go ahead can I just add one more thing I hope that whoever's running in 2028 part of what I want to see from whoever runs in 2028 is I want to see a pledge

that they will investigate every single one of these corrupt activities I do not want to see somebody I know we're years away but I do not want to see somebody. I know we're years away, but I do not want to see somebody who's talking about, turn the page and let's just let bygones be bygones. That is what every Democratic administration has done, except for when they were absolutely forced through Jack Smith, who took his sweet-ass time and basically ended up with nothing, even though Donald Trump had multiple crimes that he was indicted for.

I don't want to see people let this shit go. And I want them to start talking about this, at least maybe not presidential candidates, but I want Democrats now to start talking about, give us back the majority so that we can get subpoena power, so that we can start building a case so that when we take over all three branches of government, or at least two of them, we can hold these people accountable for this kind of self-dealing and corrupt practices. NOLA? So, to Risi's point, I think since day three of this dizzying second installation of the Trump administration, it's been very clear to me that, you know, this isn't sustainable. You know, the pace isn't sustainable. The policies, my eyelash is falling off.

The policies of these kind of quick slash and burn policies without doing the deep work that you need to do to actually trim the fat off some of these agencies, you're not sitting there doing the line item work. You're not sitting there going through the difficult process of figuring out what programs do and don't work, what offices are more bloated than the other. Because I can tell you, you talk to a lot of federal government workers, the first thing they will tell you is that they're understaffed. And so it's just this interesting messaging of the federal government is too bloated. But then when you talk to folks one-on-one, they will absolutely tell you that they are overworked and understaffed. So in terms of this slash and burn process, States is moving on the international stage, you know, by completely just abandoning our traditional partners and allies, and I guess now our new

besties are Russia and Saudi Arabia and Hungary, you know, that is a hell of a pivot. None of this is sustainable. And part of it not that boundary, have zero respect for you, and will use every ounce of everything you have. We've seen it in a Trump orbit. We've seen it. How many people are literally, the Rudy Giuliani's, the pillow guy, how many people are left dead in the dust? I mean, poor Steve Bannon is fighting for his little life. He's trying everything he can to throw more shade at Elon Musk than anybody else, because he's fighting for his life. He still wants to be very important within the Trump orbit. It's not sustainable. The third reason why it's not sustainable is because for whatever reason, when you are in Trump's orbit, it's like a black hole. You get sucked in and you get destroyed. Right. And there is enough evidence to support that. People around him do not win the way that they think they are going to win. They think that they are the special case.

And I can, I'll say this, and then, you know, Greg, I know you have some brilliant to say. I bet you, dollars to donuts, Elon Musk thought he was finally going to be the cool kid, to Representative Jasmine Crockett's point. He finally thought he was going to be the cool kid. And now people burning up his little trucks and vandalizing them. And I'm, you know, people do not like him across all spectrums. I bet you he was not expecting that. That is part of the Trump effect, right? So what's happening, the system cannot absorb these shocks the way that they are coming. It is not sustainable. What that means and what that's going to look like, I don't know. But what I will say for Dems, be ready.

Whatever the strategies are, whatever y'all are planning and cooking up, be ready. I think that we are, Greg, I think we're putting the cart before the horse. What I mean by that is, and I totally understand Reese's point and Nola's point. The reason I'm saying we're putting the cart before the horse is because I can't get you

to change unless you see how what is happening is negatively affecting you. So what I mean by that is, Trump claimed he loves the military. But they're laying off all of these vets. You have to use America's patriotism against MAGA.

I agree. You look at what's happening in Europe. One group completely sold their Tesla stock until others don't buy it. That's right. You even see right now,

you even see some conservatives who do not trust Putin actually disagreeing with Trump over the tax against Zelensky. This effort right now, the White House is literally saying to President Zelensky of Ukraine, stop criticizing Trump and sign that mineral deal, turning over $500 billion in minerals, he's like, absolutely not. So I think what's really important, I believe, has to be inside, outside. I believe that Canada, Europe,

must, hell no, absolutely not. Remember J.D. Vance threatened the European Union when it came to them coming down against Elon over something. To me, European Union, that's when you say, we run this. We run this. Y'all can't run this. And so while our partners, Mexico, Canada, Europe, are pushing back against MAGA and Trump, then I think what then happens is, and this is what Ken Martin needs to be doing with the

DNC, what Congressman Jeffries, Schumer, and others, is every time one of these stories comes up, somebody being fired. The story from ProPublica out of Texas, how they how they targeted abortion and now sepsis cases and women are dying or going up. these things against people because if you talk about policy in a wonky way, folks are kind of like, yeah, okay. Okay, that sounds great. But all of a sudden, you begin to say, no, no, no, no, no. Real-life consequences.

Real-life consequences. I think it totally changed the game. This is going to be Becky Pringle open the show. I asked Becky, what do we do? She says, well, we'll be educating people. That's actually what this is. This is a moment. And look, we see with our numbers, the people who are watching us,

I'm stopped everywhere. You have to be educating people on what is going on every single day, every single hour, every single minute. You can't assume they know these things. And then when these people are enacting these things, you see they're going like, see, boom, this, this, this, this, this woman, this child, this man, this veteran. See this deal? Because you have to build a crescendo. You need people by, and I know this sounds crazy because this is still February,

but you really need them by November to really be pissed because then you're moving towards the primaries for 2026. That has to be the process in order to actually build this crescendo of backlash against what we're seeing. That's a beautiful vision, brother. And I don't disagree with it. And I'll be honest with you. I need to sit and really think very deliberately.

And I think this is, again, the deep value of Black Star Network, because none of us have the answer. But we need to now be very focused and deliberate in thinking through the implications of anything we say, what you just laid out, for example, in terms of unintended consequences and the pain forcing people to some form of action. Certainly in the limited context of how you started this story with X, we're already seeing shareholders and companies pushing back against some of these actions and policies. And I'm thinking now, particularly even as we do see advertisers flocking back to X, we also see shareholders very nervous now because stock is based on value,

and value is based on perception. And perception, when you start talking about racism, has real deleterious possible effects. And when you start seeing shareholders say things like, you're eating into our profit margins, you're eating into the value of our stock because you are now signaling that you're a racist company. Then that's a form of unintended consequences, too. But, you know, you know what is funny? I think about, you know, we all seen that movie or at least maybe some people haven't seen it. Talladega Nights. Right. With the with the super white nationalist hillbilly culture, the kind of thing that Will Ferrell has kind of mastered and projected himself through. I'm a happy white nationalist, you know. Well, I thought about that when we were watching the damn car with Donald Trump going around the track at the NASCAR event.

That's a form of white nationalism that is nativist. And I'm raising that for a very important reason. Steve Bannon is a globalist, but he also understands the value of nativism, meaning white nationalism that is localized to the country that you're in. His problem with Elon Musk, one of his problems, maybe the primary problem, is that Elon Musk is also a globalist, a white nationalist. But his globalism is backed up by a convergence of white nationalism and capitalism. So he doesn't recognize any national boundaries. And Steve Bannon is mad, because in his nativism, his white nativism, even as he, too, is a

globalist, he's looking at Elon Musk like, you're an immigrant. Now, understand what the implications of that are when it comes to the unintended consequences. Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, the leader of that thing, Dr. Kevin Roberts, who wrote his dissertation on the Haitian revolution and the rebellions of Africans in Louisiana and how they eventually assimilated into America, and who also said during the election season that the left, this will be a bloodless revolution if the left allows it to be. Kevin Roberts is a nativist white nationalist. He is not a globalist. The Project 2025 people are nativists. They want to, they believe they can create an American concept that can project so much power internationally that they can bend everybody else to their will. So when you lay out the vision that you laid, Ronald, that our partners, Mexico, our partners,

Canada, our partners, the European Union, should, you know, form some type of solidarity politics and somehow create the type of external pressure that would allow us internally to organize and push back, that's a beautiful vision. And at the same time, it may run to the face of the reality that none of those countries have any incentive to help the United States except through pain that would be inflicted on them if they don't. But the European Union has already signaled that they are not only open to coming together more closely and to building their military strength, they are not necessarily averse to overtures to the Soviet—to Russia, who has all this natural gas.

Now, they don't like the Zelensky business, and they're going to say the right things. But don't forget that the E.U. lives in the world like the rest of the world. And whether it be Africa, whether it be the Saudis and the Arabs who are pissed off about this Gaza stuff and might use that as a proxy to get closer to other countries, the United States has no friends in the world. It never has. The rhetoric that it did have friends was all based on the fear that the United States might pull out something and fight people.

And that would create a situation where people would be punished if they don't pretend like they like the United States. The United States has no allies, and neither do we. So when we as black people say, you know, our allies, there is no our allies. There are white nativists. There are white globalists and nationalists. There are capitalists. They're all fighting for power. And when we make the choice to strengthen our institutions—and I don't just mean domestically. I mean connections internationally. The Black Star Network is an international network. It doesn't stop at the four corners

of the United States of America. You already, I mean, every time you go to Liberia or you broadcast from the Caribbean or you go back, you're reinforcing the fact that we have natural allies that we should strengthen those relationships with. We are reaching a moment when the beautiful vision of a society, a multicultural society, a United States of America that has everybody, is now going to be tested and shown to have always been a fantasy by the real politic

of white nationalists and white nativists. They're going to tear each other apart. The question is, what will we do as they tear each other apart? And the answer is quite simple. Build black strength through black institutions, build coalitions beyond your neighborhood, your state, or even your country, and find out that that is the way that you will not only survive the coming moment, but in fact create the strength that will allow you to fight back and ultimately win out over these white masters.

I think that's the strategy we have to pursue. It is, and we're going to go about seven more minutes because I'm headed to the we didn't get nominated this year, but they have the nominees reception for the NWCP Image Awards.

And it's always quite interesting when here in, and I'm going to say this here. NWSCP, where you at? Derek Johnson, where y'all at? You've got 2,000 branches. I'm confused. I don't understand why we have not, and I saw the other day they put out this advisory list of companies in DEI. No, no, no, I ain't talking about that. not Thurgood Marshall and Legal Defense Fund. That was the courts. That was the law.

The NAACP's power has always been about putting boots on the ground. It has always been about unleashing protest, unleashing pickets. And it wasn't performative. It was practical. It wasn't performative. It was political. And so this is a moment, Recy, that I dare say that if we're talking about how do you organize and mobilize, how do you teach, We're talking about institutions and structures. We're talking about black church. Go back to what King said, the four institutions that a prime position liberate black America. Negro church, Negro press, Negro fraternities and sororities, Negro professional business organizations.

Black churches across America should be launching freedom schools with reckless abandon. Again, NAACP should be unleashing its chapters across the country when it comes to fighting what's going on. This is not a moment for folks to be quiet. This is not a moment for folks to be quiet. This is not a moment for the black press, for the black, for black owned media to be so engrossed in entertainment and who did what

on merit to medicine and who X was on and who this person and whatever and all that bullshit. That's right. This is literally, this is literally a crisis moment. And thank God that when there was a crisis

moment, Ida B. Wells Barnett facing a bounty on her head when white supremacists, when the KKK wanted that woman dead, she did not stop writing about lynchings.

That's right. This is why, Recy, I can't tolerate these people with, oh my God, I'm resting, I've given up. Absolutely not. There's not a single black person alive who can talk about, I'm going to rest. Now, resting to prepare for the fight is one thing, but completely walking on the battlefield is another

because you've got brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. You've got the children of children to be engaged in. And this is why what I was just laying out there in terms of what has to happen, this is literally

about preparing ourselves for a battle but you cannot do it by walking off the battlefield. I agree. I agree. I also think that it's frustrating that we have been on this battlefield for so long and we have half of our community, let's just speak truth, 50 percent of the people who, no matter how much we warn them about, no matter how much carnage is inflicted on our communities, no matter what policies are passed, no matter what happens in the elections is not just telling people who have been in the fight to stay in the fight. Part of what has to happen is people who chose the couch, who sat on their ass, who refused to open up their damn eyes, and some of them, to be fair, have a lot of shit going on. So I'm not trying to say that everybody is just an asshole if you didn't vote.

But we have a large group of our, a large part of our community that won't even do the basic bare minimum. And they just keep riding the coattails and riding the wave of those who have tirelessly done this work. And so we have to confront that part of our community. We have to confront it in a way that's not about shaming them. You might sound like I just shamed them, but about understanding what is it going to take to get you to get engaged, to stop you from being so disillusioned that you just don't even want to activate your capacity to even do something as simple as vote. So I'm with you on that, Roland, but too often the 50% or sometimes it's 40%, okay? Usually not. Usually it's 50% or more of our people who can just vote, who don't do it.

It's time for some of them to step the hell up too, because damn, the same people got to keep marching. The same people got to keep fighting, the same people can't ever rest. No, no, no. The answer is no, but at some point, we got to reach, or those people have to step the hell up too instead of quit always just expecting that somebody else is going to do it.

So here's what I'm saying here, Noah, because when I listed the institutions, and again, I can't get somebody to vote if they're not registered. I can't get somebody registered if they don't fully understand why they should be registered and why they should be voting. What I am arguing is that I believe too many of our black institutions, and I'm talking about organizations, and I'm talking about NAACP, National Urban League. I'm talking about Divine Nine.

I'm talking Alpha, Omega, Kappa, Iota, AKA, Delta, Zeta Phi Beta, Sigma Gamma Rho. Hope I didn't leave anybody off. I'm talking Jack and Jill. I'm talking Prince or Mason. I'm talking Jack and Jill. I'm talking Prince Hall Mason. I'm talking Eastern Star. I'm talking churches. We have all of this institution. But, Nola, the problem with our institutions is they are largely insular.

They are looking inward. They're not looking outward and I think a lot of the people Reese is talking about who are there because we ain't going to talk to them we're not leaving our organizational meetings we're not actually showing up in black communities where when they see folk coming in black and gold and red and white and pink and green not once not twice but multiple times showing up which you cannot just say if somebody said if i got this huge number of people who know nothing about financial literacy. So what am I going to do?

Am I going to offer them financial literacy? Well, if I am, what's it going to look like? What's going to involve? What are the classes? When are they taking place? How many are coming in? And if I got five coming in, I'm going to teach the five, but I'm going to target, tell the five, bring five more.

I just think that too many of our organizations are involved in busy work internally and they're not, as King said, they have not fully given themselves to the liberation of our people. Right. So I think, you know, you raise an important point and it's one of the problems of having this kind of talent intent mentality in a lot of our institutions, right? In terms of them being insular, in terms of them being top down in that there is a level of elitism. And you're proud of that elitism because you've earned that elitism, right? You've earned that uppity negroness, right? So there definitely is this talented 10th-esque energy that exists, especially with our legacy institutions.

But I want to talk about the actual organizations. I want to talk about those types of institutions for a second. And earlier I had made a comment about Dems. Actually, no. Actually, no. Actually, no. Hold on one second. Hold on one second. Because Greg has a heart out, so I want to do this here.

I want him to – I want – you can do what you can do in 90 seconds, and I'm going to go to him. I'm going to go to him now and come back to you. Go to Greg. Can you do it in 90 seconds? No, I want to go through this thing about organizations yeah yeah i'll do it i'll get out i'll get out great go ahead she can she can very quickly first of all uh enjoy yourself out there brother i was coming out of class the other day and uh

a brother who was making a delivery at howard said hey man tell roland to keep that up you got to keep that up i said okay brother he did up. I said, OK, brother, he is not enrolled in school. He's just a man out there earning a check every day doing his work. When you go out there today with the NAACP Image Awards, which have never made sense to me now less than ever, and the people stopping you to say keep doing the work aren't the people that Nola is talking about, those so-called talented 10th, but the people who are doing the booms and making sure the sound check works and all that, that is all the proof we need, that we have everything we need, and that leadership is not going to be those who have the most screen time, those who get invited to be booked on the news entertainment

shows, those who go to the award shows and who have spent the most money to place the product in the right ads in order to get a statue and a trophy that black people leave away scratching their heads. No, the leadership is going to come from the people who do the work. And that is you. And so when you go out there today and get that back slapped by not by the people with the key crowd, but the people who actually keep the lights on and change the toilet paper and are driving the valet and dropping off the cars for the valets, that's the confirmation that those people are going to be the ones that we join to help free us.

And that is the barometer of leadership. So I'm going to stop with that. And be safe out there, man. And we look forward to having a conversation with you tomorrow. I agree. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Nola closes out.

Okay. So I want to say something about the institutions very quickly and this idea of being ready. It is very clear to me. I have no proof of this, but, you know, I've been in leadership for I've been in leadership with nonprofits for quite some time. So I have a very deep understanding of how these things work. What I'm seeing from a lot of these Black organizations is that somewhere along the line, they switch priorities, you know, and a lot of the times for you to get that grant money, you're writing specific grants about what these larger kind of philanthropic places, the research and the things that they're interested in, what they want to see.

So what I feel like has happened and what I've seen in a lot of nonprofits that have strong memberships, their memberships just want to do the kind of sexy things. You know, the last thing on people's minds are taken to the streets and have to fight this fight again. And for me, as I'm watching NAACP, as I'm watching Urban League trying to ramp up their engines, my nonprofit brain goes to, OK, wait a minute. Why weren't they prepared for this? Oh, because they had moved their priority switched. Right. And this, Roland, this, Recy, is, you know, talk about, you know, if you stay ready, you ain't got to get ready. This is proof in the pudding that we, yes, we deserve, you know, to take the vacations and we deserve, you know, to have the comfortable lives and the nice homes. But this moment that we are living through, this living

moment in history has proven to us that we cannot let our foot off the gas pedal when it comes to being able to tap into the resources of the community in terms of organizing. And a lot of these organizations, it's very clear to me that they have switched those priorities. And now they're trying to switch back on that part of their organizations, right? And so for me, that's what I'm seeing. And that's why it's taken them a little long to try to figure this out.

And personally, as long as I'm left on this planet, I never, ever want to be in a position to where we got to get caught up and we're kind of caught off guard like this. This ain't it. This is not it. Can I say one thing? So let me be clear.

Can I say one more thing? So let me be clear. Can I say one more thing? I completely understand and recognize the value of organizations, but there's also capacity that we have within ourselves where we don't have to answer to gatekeepers. And some of these organizations are gatekeepers. They gatekeep people in and out, especially people that don't present a certain way, people that don't have the finesse of other people. And so one of the good things that we have is that we can be our own advocate. We can be our own organizer. It's obviously better if you have a group behind you, okay? There are people who come to me, I tell them, I'm not the NAACP. I ain't got a whole organization. It's just me. But I think that your platform is a prime example of not waiting for somebody to give you the green light, of not waiting for the gatekeepers to say that

you deserve this show on this network, but you create your own thing. And so I know that your point is more so directed towards organizations and how they need to step up. But I also want to remind people of the power that we have to fill in some of these gaps in whatever small way that we do. Even though we won't have the biggest impact, if a lot of people have a small impact, then we can start to move the needle. And a lot of us have moved the needle in ways that people never saw coming. And it did actually make a difference for a number of people. Maybe it didn't swing an election or anything,

but it did help at least introduce new ideas. It did help introduce new ways of approaching things with or without an organization. So here's how I will close this out. When I say organization, we have formal organizations and then we have informal organizations. The reason I'm specific about the formal organizations is because many of them have international, national, regional, state, local, you have infrastructure. They're vertically integrated and they're horizontally integrated. And so that's first. But for the individual, for the individual. I need the individual to understand they actually have to

get connected with some organizing entity. So, as LaCarminca always said, you cannot show me an African-American who has played an impact on Black America who was not part of an organization. So, that means also that people out there and that people, and I hear this all the time, people say, well, man, it's just me. No, just not it's not just you because you actually know people you actually have friends actually have family you have church members you have neighbors what you're talking about when it comes to voting there's a person sitting out there watching or listening right now they need to understand they can literally say, I'm going to commit myself to making sure that 25 unregistered people get registered.

And I'm going to make sure that those 25 vote. Now, imagine if 100 people in a neighborhood does that. It's 2,500 votes. It's 2,500 new votes. It really is that simple. And so I think what we have to do is we have to constantly remind the individual you possess an enormous amount of power if you're willing to use it you're sitting here watching you say well i don't know you got to seek out so much of so much of what i talk about yall, comes from my parents founding a civic club. My parents didn't go to college. High school graduates. Dad worked at Amtrak.

Mom worked insurance claims. And when they were in a civic club and when they would be in meetings and people would ask about something, somebody would say, I don't know. They would then go, let's find out who does that. So who is that? Is that city? Is that county? Is that school district? How do we get these overgrown lots cut? Who cuts grass? How do we get these abandoned buildings that turn into crack houses torn down?'s the process there who does that they literally went about doing those things i need everybody who's watching and listening to understand these are regular ordinary people i think that was it was a brother he lived on the other end i think

he was a graduate of rice university he may have been the only person who's a college graduate i forgot his name i got his i got his face in my head right now. His only person was a college graduate. This has nothing to do about who's a college graduate. It has nothing to do about who has a six-figure job. It has nothing. What it has to do with is there's something you actually give a damn about. They cared about Clinton Park.

Not just their house, not just their street, not just their block, they cared about the entire neighborhood. And so I need our people to understand we can absolutely fight back against MAGA, but you can't just think, well, I'm going to fight back national. No, no, not state. No, not city. No, not county.

Not city. I've got to drill this thing down to I've got to start just where I am. I told you all about Nehemiah, where they rebuilt a portion of the wall in front of their house, where they lived. It's the same thing. Everybody who's watching and listening, I need you to understand. I need you to start just where you are and the people in your house and then step out of your house and then your neighbors left, right across the street and then begin to build from there. That is the only way this thing changes. It's all doable, but it requires one person in a house saying, you know, I'm kind of fed up.

That's all I ask of you. I need you to get in the game. Because your children are watching. Your nieces and nephews are watching. Your cousins are watching. Your neighbors are watching. And you have no idea how maybe if you get inspired to do it, then they'll wake up. Greg had to go. Nola, Reesey, I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much.

Folks, that is it for us. I will be live tomorrow from Los Angeles, and so look forward to seeing y'all tomorrow. Don't forget, if you want to support the work that we do, join our Brain the Funk fan club. Your resources are critical to us you want to support the work that we do, join our Brain the Funk fan club. Your resources are critical to us being able to do the work that we do. And so you can get via Cash App by using this QR code from Stripe. And if you're watching, excuse me, listening, just go to BlackstarNetwork.com to get the QR code. Send your check and money. Order the PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196.

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use audio rooms, use the audio rooms on Fan House, the hell with Clubhouse. Folks, that's it. I'll see y'all tomorrow right here on Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Coming up next, our new show from Jameer Burley and Bria Baker. That's it. I'll see y'all tomorrow.

Holla! Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punches! A real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network

and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? This is an iHeart Podcast.