#RolandMartinUnfiltered - FAA, nuclear workers, wildlife refuge firings, Texas measles outbreak & RFK, Tamika Mallory new book

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

2.17.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: FAA, nuclear workers, wildlife refuge firings, Texas measles outbreak & RFK, Tamika Mallory new book, "I Lived To Tell The Story" #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. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early.

Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Today is Monday, February 17, 2025.

Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Streaming live on the Black Star Network. Nearly 100 people have died in a series of recent plane crashes since the twice impeached criminally convicted felon in chief that on the con. Trump took office now hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration have been fired just

weeks after a deadly crash in DC. And tonight's FAFO, a federal wildlife worker in Louisiana, is expressing concerns about layoffs while an executive order is causing utility bills in Alabama to increase by hundreds of dollars. Those MAGA supporters are not pleased

and we had their orange tears. The once eliminated measles is now spreading across the United States because of these dumbass anti-vaxxers. Major outbreak in East Texas is rapidly growing in cases confirmed in nearby states. I'll talk to the doctor about this sudden outbreak. Also, folks, social justice leader Tamika Mallory, co-founder of Untell Freedom, will be joining us to discuss her new memoir. I live to tell the story.

A memoir of love, legacy and resilience. Also, Reverend William Barber will be here to talk about policies of this idiot Trump and how they are impacting the working poor. It is time to bring the funk on rolling Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Let's go. With entertainment just for kicks, 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. Rolling with rolling now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's rolling, Martin Martin You truly have idiots who are in control of the federal government.

That's right. Elon Musk and his dumb doge workers are creating all sorts of havoc, firing people left and right, even though they don't even bother to research what they actually do. They're just, what the hell? We're just going to fire people. Now, more than 400 support staff employees at the Federal Aviation Administration, they've been fired.

That's right, fired. You know the people who handle critical behind-the-scenes work, you know, like maintenance, environmental safety, as well as aeronautical information. Yep, the kind of jobs you don't always see, but who are absolutely essential to keeping planes moving safely in the U.S. airspace. Now, here is where it gets even more concerning. These terminations come just weeks after a tragic mid-air collision in Washington, D.C.

that killed 67 people. Yep, and guess what happened today? air collision in Washington, D.C. that killed 67 people. Yep. And guess what happened today? A flight from Minneapolis to Canada. Guess what? Sirius wins. It then flips over and 80 people's work came out. Now, you've had some also private aircraft that have been involved in air crashes as well.

Now, it is at Doge. Their mission is to so-called streamline federal agencies and reduce workforce costs. And this round of firings is part of those cost-cutting measures. Let's be clear. Air traffic controllers themselves weren't affected. They're protected under a different union. But trust me, they're coming after them. These union leaders say these support staff losses could still seriously impact aviation safety.

David Spiro, who leads the union representing these workers, said that those emails started rolling in late Friday night and kept coming. And here's the part that hits home. They weren't just numbers on a spreadsheet. These were people, real people, people like us who work hard to build careers and provide for their families. And many of them had just been hired or promoted within the last year. The National Air Traffic Control Association, they're still assessing the potential risk, but with air travel at an all-time high, there's a lot of concern that these cuts could put even more pressure on the system.

But it's not just the FAA. Do y'all realize that these dumbasses actually fired personnel that oversaw the nation's nuclear arsenal? Who thought that was a good idea? More than 300 workers this weekend were fired. Then the dumbasses in the Trump White House were like, uh, yeah, we might need them. So then they started trying to call them, couldn't reach some of them, to rehire them. Y'all, this is the people with some of the most sensitive jobs in the federal government who oversee the nuclear arsenal.

But the so-called rocket scientists working with Elon Musk, they were just like, yeah, whatever. We'll just sit on a spreadsheet. We're just going to slash people. Y'all see what's happening? Agency after agency. And then they're claiming Oh, we're saving

Six billion dollars a year They can't quantify it Then they keep saying Tax savings Actually, it's not tax savings Because it's money that's already Being allocated Being budgeted

Then they're saying that Yeah, this is going to make us more efficient But you don't know what they actually did. And you don't know the down the line impact and who they're actually hurting. The idiots, they're just doing whatever they want to. And guess what? Look at the polling data. America's like, oh, yeah, we like what they're doing.

Until it impacts you. 67 died in that plane crash at DCA. What happens when you have the next plane crash? The next one? Then train derailment. Then what happens when they're getting rid of the safety folks when it comes to cars? Then what happens when it comes to our water, our food?

They're whacking the people in the CDC who track things like bird flu. Okay, so then what happens next? This is what these fools voted for. And later, we're going to show you how some of these people who voted are now crying. In fact, the Wall Street Journal did a big story, and these were...

But I thought they were only going to do that stuff. What they weren't going to do over here, they told you they were going to do all of it. You see, this is the other thing that really gets me. I'm really interested in the people who go, well, I know they said these things in Project 2025, but I didn't really think they were going to do

them. I had that conversation yesterday. I was walking back to my hotel in San Francisco leaving the NBA All-Star Game event, and a brother stopped me and he actually said that. He was like, yeah, I think a lot of people they voted because they didn't think they were actually going to do it. I was like, they told you.

Axios first reported in 2021, product 2025. New York Times followed up with that. We told you about their reporting. We told you about product 2025 in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris told you repeatedly, it was all at the Democratic National Convention. Taraji P. Henson told you at the BET Awards. All these people. But, see, here's what I think happened. This happens all the time. It's not my backyard.

I want them to cut that, that, that. Oh, but not this here. Don't cut this here. In fact, that was a tweet I saw. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. She actually,

in reference to Russell Vaught being confirmed, she talked about how it was important to bring trauma to the federal workers. She was defending her vote for Russell Vaught. Yet when they started slashing cuts, including 100 Native Americans in Alaska,

all of a sudden Lisa Murkowski is shot. These are critical jobs. You got Katie Britt, Senator in Alabama. Oh, when they start slashing those dollars for research hospitals, they forgot those universities are in their states. I could go on and on and on all around the country. All of these red state senators. In fact, oh my God, I saw a tweet on the plane

flying back home today. I saw a tweet from Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. The same fool who voted for RFK. The same fool who, like, is going to vote for Kash Patel decrying the firing of probationary FBI agents and talking about

how this is important to Louisiana. But y'all voted for the people who are doing the cuts and y'all actually have oversight and y'all won't actually even call a committee hearing and demand Elon and his team come there to address it. It's all because you are deathly afraid of the dictator Donald Trump. See, here's what I think what's going to have to happen. And it's hard because a lot of black people are going to get hurt.

One in five federal workers are African-Americans. And I told you MAGA's effort to defund black America. I think the only way we confront this is we're going to have to have total destruction. I know somebody watching me right now is like, damn, bro, do we have to go that far? Yeah. I think the only way we deal with this is if these MAGA red wing, red right wing nutcases lose everything. That means farmers, you're going to have to file for bankruptcy. Because the billions you lost from USAID in Kansas and Texas, that means Georgia farmers, you're going to have to go belly up.

Oh, yeah. That means that all y'all white folks in West Virginia and Arkansas and South Carolina, Mississippi, who depend on those SNAP benefits, you're going to have to go hungry. Oh, yeah. All of these places. Oh, NASA in Houston, NASA in Alabama, SpaceX going to replace all of y'all. Then all of a sudden, Republicans in Texas and Alabama are going to be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't, what are you doing? I mean, don't, those cuts, yeah, because those are jobs.

And guess what happens? Those people have homes. Look what's happening in Washington, D.C. In the last 60 days, more than 5,000 homes have been put on the market. Those are federal workers. But those are not just federal workers. Those are people who actually get federal contracts. See, when I laid out to y'all

the defunding of black America, I wasn't joking. It was the people who received federal contracts. And then it's going to trickle down state contracts, county contracts, city contracts, school district contracts. We're talking billions of dollars. People who have kids in school, who are in college, people who are in their late 40s and 50s who still have another 20 to 25 years of work in them, they've got no place to go. So what then happens?

I'm telling y'all right now, the only way these MAGA people and these independent voters, and let me also say it, the 90 million people who sat their asses at home and did not participate in the election, the only way we're going to get their attention is going to have to be total destruction. They're going to have to lose everything. They're going to have to lose their farms, their businesses, the money they get. When the Republicans start trying to pass a bill

for the $4.5 trillion tax cut, you know what they're targeting? Food programs. Health programs. So you're going to start seeing individuals who have surgeries planned for six months late from now, trying to get them done the next month. That stuff's going to get cut. I know. And see, right now, it's just like really, really, really small stuff.

But I'm telling you, it's going to get worse. And if you think these FAFO videos we're going to show a little bit later, for example, you're going to see a lot more. And again, I know we didn't wanna have this conversation, I know we didn't wanna go there, but we are going to have to see maximum pain inflicted on these fools for them to go, what the hell was I doing voting for this idiot?

Y'all have heard me say numerous times, Donald Trump. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things Two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek.

I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself

to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

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

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

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

or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else.

But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's that occasion. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Would not let any of these broke-ass MAGA white voters even walk through his hotel lobbies. They couldn't even walk on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago. He is a rich SOB who only cares about rich people. He played y'all. And I saw a woman this weekend who said that two of her brothers voted for Trump and two voted for Kamala Harris, a sister. I said, you better than me, because they ass couldn't come around me.

And some of y'all brothers who actually thought Trump was going to be putting money in y'? Y'all are in for a rude-ass awakening. So when they, Republicans, talk about woke, let me just go ahead and say this. Whole lot of y'all about to be woken up.

Whole lot of y'all about to be real awake. Because see, your stomach's going to be growling and your ass won't are about to be real awake. Because, see, your stomach's going to be growling and your ass won't be able to go to sleep. You're going to be awake. A lot of y'all, that health care gets snatched. Oh, yeah. You're going to be sitting at home in pain.

And you're going to be wide awake. And then y'all are going to be sitting there going, well, somebody, please, somebody stand up for me. And the Republicans who y'all voted for in the House and the Senate, they so scared of Trump, they ain't going to say nothing. Mass destruction has to hit this country in order for it to wake up from the BS that they have been fed. Caleb Bethea, Communication Strategist, joining us out of Washington, D.C. Also Dr. Ama Congo, the being a senior, professorial lecturer, School of International Service, American University, author of Lies About Black People,

How to Combat Racist Stereotypes and Why It Matters. Renita Shannon, former Georgia State Representative, joining us from Atlanta. Glad to have all three of you here. Again, people hate when I say this. I mean, all weekend people were stopping me in San Francisco, Renita, and they were like, hey, what do we do? What are we going on? Oh, my God, I can't believe this.

And I'm like, why can't you believe it? They literally told you over and over and over again, they told you what they were going to do and they're doing it. And the people who voted for it are now realizing they're not just deporting people who are criminals. That's the thing that just really cracks me up. I mean, you're there in Georgia. Donald Trump, out of all that ass-kissing that Brian Kemp, the governor, did, out of all that he did, giving his political machine

to turn out and vote for Donald Trump, and what did the con man do? Yeah, we're not going to extend hurricane relief to Georgia. Thank you very much for your votes. Now y'all can kiss my ass. Right, and that's been a big deal here in Georgia. I mean, I had a tree, a 200-foot tree fall on my house, and I live in Decatur during Hurricane Helene last year. So it has been a big deal here in Georgia. I mean, I had a tree, a 200-foot tree fall on my house. And I live in Decatur during Hurricane Helene last year. So it has been a big deal.

But, to your point, I mean, Project 2025 was the last advertisement of what Republicans wanted to do as far as slashing the federal government. And the reason why I say it was just the last advertisement was because, for decades, Republicans have been leading with this sort of philosophy that the government is completely overbloated, and there are just so many people who exist and work in government as federal workers that don't need to be there, and we are just spending so much money, wasting money on a government that is far too large. And the reality is, just like how they would always talk about fraud in voting, but they

never could prove it, this is something similar, in that they are finding out, and the public is getting a lesson in how government works, is that these people were essential. Just because you don't see, you don't quite understand exactly what every single person is doing within government, it's a system. And so when you move, when you take away one part of the system, it affects the other parts of the systems. And that has real-life ramifications for everyday folks. And so, unfortunately, we don't teach civics in this country. A lot of people don't understand what the point of having certain government agencies is. They don't understand

what the point of having certain functions of government are really for. But a lot of it goes to health and safety of the general public. And so at the same time that the general public is learning what government does when you see services being taken away, it seems like the president is also learning it because many things that he's done, as you mentioned, non-specific criticism of government. Government just too big. It's too unwieldy. Okay. But then you start, what actually happens? What are those critical jobs? I love the people in red states who complain about federal spending. Government's too large. Hurricane hits. Tornado hits. Flash floods hit. Natural disasters, wildfires, mudslides. And it's amazing how the most libertarian,

we spend too much, government's too big people. Where's the government? Where's the president? Where was Biden? Where is Harris? Why are they helping us? Well, hold up. I thought y'all were all about y'all own. I thought government was too big. Now, all of a sudden, now you're begging for government. I will say it again. Folk are going to hate things until

they need it. Yeah, that's sad, man. That's the truth. And I feel like I'm a little bit concerned, though, because I feel what you're saying, but I'm hoping that there can be a break before people lose

everything, because once they lose everything, that's just going to lead towards some type of violent outburst towards our own communities. And so I'm hoping that in some way, shape, or form, there can be like a pre-lose-everything moment where people say, yo, I gotta vote for the Democrat. I gotta do something. Because you see all

of these town halls. No, I'm a Congo. I'm a Congo. No. I hear your point. And I know it's what you want. But it can't be a little pain. Can't be.

I mean, I'm serious. People, how do I, again, I use this example about a drug addict. You can sit here and warn your cousin, warn your uncle, warn your brother, warn your sister, and they're going to keep doing it like, yo, you're going to go to jail. Boom, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. And you save them and you going to go to jail. Boom, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. And you save them. You try to help them out. And then you have to reach a point where you say, you're going to go to prison.

I've tried everything I could to prevent that from happening. I don't want harm coming to you. But you are so hard-headed that you're going to have to hit absolute rock bottom for this to happen. And again, we're all impacted, but this is where you got to say, tariffs, going right ahead. It says, all you dumb asses, believe this fool who said, no, we can make money from tariffs. Okay. Knock yourself out. Okay. Since y'all think we can just whack a million federal workers and it won't mean a thing. Okay. Go right ahead. America has to hit rock bottom to realize they have been played, they've been in a cult, they fell for the okey-doke and the banana in the tailpipe,

and then this is where they say, now do you want to listen to us? Because we told you that fool was a con man, a con artist, and his party backed a con artist. Are you now listening to us? I hear you. And I hope that is indeed the case, right, that people will start listening. I was watching your broadcast from last week of NOLA, and she was talking about being in a meeting all day and how it just kept pressing in her mind that some of these guys do just want to watch the world burn burn but these are the guys who are at the top you know who are more well to do the folks at the bottom got to realize that they're going to burn with us if they don't get it together

and really at the end of the day i hope that when they hit that rock bottom that they do understand that there is a group of people that has party you know who they've been called you know woke and leftists and marxists and all of that socialist stuff. All the policies they're fighting for are the policies you're losing right now. I remember you played that farmer last week who was fighting. He was like, I voted for Trump, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the policy with the Infrastructure Act that he was getting benefits from, you know, Obama. I mean, Biden and Kamala Harris ushered in. People have to start making that connection. And the last thing I'll say, Roland, is that we need to continue to build this media platform

and others, because these guys who are on the conservative and MAGA, someone did a survey on NBC I was listening, and they said there's about 600,000 of them who are subscribed to these different social media posts, but like 70,000 in the liberal spaces. But even with that, we still had a close election. And so we have to keep targeting them with real information to challenge their misinformation and disinformation. And I'm sure we're going to be able to be prevailing in the midterms if we can break their ecosystem as they continue to fall towards rock bottom. Because if we don't break the ecosystem, Trump's just going to come in with some type of check or like he did with the farmers before,

and they're going to say, he's our savior. I'm still riding with Trump. And we got to make sure that doesn't happen. And I don't want this to happen, Kelly, but it actually has to happen. These people, they, oh, I'm sick of what's going on. They are in search of trying to blame somebody. And these largely white voters, they want to blame.

They want to blame immigrants. They want to blame DEI. They want to blame CRT. They want to blame woke. They want to blame Black Lives Matter. Then you got these simple Simon Negroes. They want to say, oh, it's all Democrats' fault. And we ain't got this.

We ain't got that. All these people who are just in a constant state of complaining, they're going to have to lose some shit, Kelly. And they don't even realize how they're going to get hit. I keep saying to people who say, I want the government out my life. You're so stupid because you don't even understand that government, whether you like it or not, it's involved in every facet of your life. Your birth certificate, from birth to death,

government plays a role in everything. What we eat, what we drink, what we breathe, so many different things. People. No one even wants to even think that when I get in a car, the reason I have many of the safety devices in my car is because they were forced there by government. And even understand they were forced there, fuel efficiency, that wasn't because of the automakers. It was because of government. And I'm not saying government is perfect. What I am saying is government is essential to our lives. And if you want big business and the tech bros to have complete run of this bad boy with no oversight anything oh you're about to get it watch what

happens my concern with all of this i i understand and sadly agree with with your theory of everybody of it having to hit rock bottom of americans having to hit rock bottom. My concern is everybody's rock bottom is different, right? So exactly what level of rock bottom do we have to hit for people to just wake up and be like, oh shit, I got to do something, or oh shit, I was wrong. I don't know if we're ever going to get to a point where we're going to have a MAGA Republican say, I'm sorry. I don't know if that's ever going to have a MAGA Republican say, I'm sorry. I don't know if that's ever going to happen. I think they are going to hit rock bottom, get the benefits that Democrats will inevitably provide, which will essentially be a Band-Aid on a gaping wound by the time all this is finished.

And then they will still say, well, you weren't there for me, so I'm still going to vote for the Mango Mussolini, or equivalent, depending on how long this goes on for, right? My frustration is the fact that we got here at all. My frustration is that we had an entirely different party, being Democrats, being socialists, being whatever, whose messaging wasn't clear enough, wasn't culty enough, what have you, to get through to the people who truly needed it, such that we ended up with 90 million people sitting on the sidelines of one of the most crucial elections in American modern history. That is my frustration here. And further, everything that is going to happen to get

us to rock bottom is going to happen to me first. It's going to happen to get us to rock bottom is going to happen to me first. It's going to happen to black people first. It's going to happen to people who look like me first. That is what's frustrating. The fact that once again, we have to be subjected to white nonsense because white people stay white peopling at varying levels. Now, look, listen, I don't want us to hit rock bottom, but I think in order for those folk to wake up, they're going to have to lose some stuff because they think, and this is my, they think,

oh, yeah, it's those black people getting stuff. Oh, we're just giving things to these illegal immigrants. They're going to lose some stuff. And look, it's just like, and we're about to talk about this right now, we talk about vaccines, okay? All of these anti-vaccine zealots, I'm just going to go, their

kids are going to die. Their kids are going to have to die for them to go, oh shit, this thing is real. See, they're playing games. They're playing games. When I was on Piers Morgan's show, Clay Travis tried to get cute with me by rolling, did you get the shot? Yes, I got two shots. Why didn't you get all 10? The government told you to get 10. I got two shots. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.

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

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute season one, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

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

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

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

But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's that occasion. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. But I got by 20 shots, got to go to Africa. No, no, no. See, he tried to play again. I was like, I said, Clay, you can't get cute with me. The game won't work.

So what's happening now is these people, in fact, Trump has signed an executive order saying no federal funding for any school district that mandates COVID vaccines. So their whole deal, now mind you, the COVID vaccine that was developed when that fool was there last time. So all of these people, this is how they're operating. This is how they're thinking. This is what their mentality is. And so they don't understand what we're now seeing

even when it comes to vaccines. And so what is happening? We now have a vaccine breakout. We warn people this is gonna happen. You now have an idiot, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who played a role in a breakout in another country because he was there advocating. He was advocating for no vaccines. MAGA Governor Greg Abbott and MAGA Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and the Republicans that control the Texas House and Texas Senate

now have to deal with this, Texas Department of State Health Services. They reported an outbreak of measles in the eastern part of the state. Okay, that makes no sense. The epicenter of the outbreak is the city of Seminole, which serves as the seat in Gaines County. There are 48 confirmed measles cases, making this the worst outbreak of measles in Texas in nearly 30 years. And guess what?

Most of the people affected are school-age children. 13 have been hospitalized, all of them who were unvaccinated against measles. As of the 2023-24 school year, Gaines County has one of the state's highest vaccine exemption rates, nearly 18 percent. My guest, Dr. Nisi Hudson, founder and chief scientist of the Hood Medicine Initiative, joins us right now. Doc, this is real simple. We can draw a direct line, a direct line from the unvaccinated fools to the vaccinated people and measles outbreak. Pretty much. And it's a shame, because measles, mumps, rubella, this is

a common vaccination that every child has to get before they even enroll in kindergarten. You can't even be in our school systems in this country unless you've been vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. And these exemptions have been popping up ever since, really, before the pandemic. I mean, there's been a lot of anti-vaxxer sentiment, as we've heard from Dr. Peter Hotez and others. And we've just installed anti-vaxxer in chief as the head of health and human services. So this is where we're going to be. Yeah. And I just want every parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew watching to understand that you better be prepared for what is about to happen

because these anti-vaccine people, these anti-vaxxers are now emboldened. Again, their cult leader, Robert F. Kennedy, who lied in his hearing, oh, I've never been against vaccines, an absolute liar, was busted on CNN with the lie. Their cult leader,

he's now the Secretary of Health and Human Services, their other cult leader is the one who appointed him. And so, let me just say it. Remember, I just talked about hitting rock bottom. America needs to be prepared that we are about to see one of the largest outbreaks of multiple diseases because of these nut cases.

We're already seeing that. Like, thus far, we've got this outbreak in Texas, but we also have tuberculosis brewing in Kansas, and we had a measles outbreak in Chicago last year. So this is just going to continue, unfortunately. And since we're talking about RFK, remember that he also ties vaccines to a widely already debunked for decades myth that autism is caused by vaccines. And just this week, you see that he's also planning to go after students who rely on psychotropic drugs, neurodivergent students, students that are being treated with antidepressants for mental illness. Not just students, everyone. They're going after

antidepressants now. So it's not lost on me that there's that connection as well to him trying to link vaccines to autism. Yeah, and so, I mean, and again, this is just where we are. And for the longest, you know, it was initially

about, initially it was, you know, autism, but now it's now extending to a host of things. And again, we just need to be prepared for it. So if you're a parent, if you're out, what do you do? If you're getting your child vaccinated, what do you do?

Because you don't necessarily know they are sitting in a classroom with a kid who's not vaccinated. Well, let me say something about, this is the wonder of vaccines. They protect the herd. They protect the vulnerable. That's supposed to be their function.

And we talked about herd immunity a lot when the pandemic first started. And the whole point of it is to keep a certain percentage of the population vaccinated so that they protect everyone who's maybe not or maybe can't be, right? But like you said, with these rates of exemptions getting up to 18% in some counties, that skews that balance. And so outbreaks are able to happen whenever people come around. Now, let me say for measles, mumps, and rubella, but particularly for measles, anyone who's been vaccinated against that and has had their full course, first dose is typically given to babies around 12 to 15 months, and the second is usually four to six years old. So if you've had those, you're good for the most part. Now, if you're not vaccinated with measles in

particular, highly contagious. This is why it's doubled in a matter of days. And really they're estimating it could be up to two to 300 people in West Texas infected that just haven't been tested. Right. And so when we talk about, you know, that contagious factor, it's super high with measles. If you're not vaccinated, there's a 90% chance that you're going to get it if you are in a room with someone who has it. And if someone sneezes with measles in their room, and you enter that room two hours later, you can still get it if you're unvaccinated. It's highly contagious, highly, highly, highly, especially in children. All they do, they're germ buckets. All they do is sneeze and cough and spit on each other. So that's the danger.

But for those who have been vaccinated, you know, that's the point of doing it. So your child is protected. But I will note that in this particular case, this is in Texas in particular, it's a very—I wouldn't say contained. I mean, obviously, it's still growing, but this started in a small Mennonite community that's in a rural area, and it's spread to some other rural areas. It's in New Mexico now. But I guess, thankfully, at this point, a lot of those children are not in the general urban population. So there's a chance for containment, let's say, and hopefully a lot of those other children have been vaccinated. But just want to make that note so that people

don't think it's like running too rampant. Look, it's just something that we have to have to understand and be prepared for. And unfortunately, the guardrails are off. I mean, we literally are about to be in when it comes to health, when it comes to our food, when it comes to the environment, when it comes to water. We are about to be in for a free-for-all because their philosophy is just, yo, just take all regulation, take everything away, and this is like going back to hell caveman days. You know, anything goes. And I will tell you, our pediatric advisor, Dr. Yancey, he has been telling everyone we've had him on, he's been telling everyone, especially in our communities, make sure your kids are vaccinated. Because this man, he's already talking about, you heard him in the confirmations, he's talking about how black people have more robust immune systems.

They don't need the same vaccine schedule as everyone else. You already know what that is. Vaccine apartheid, and it leads to other eugenics, basically, is what he's saying. And it's a lie. We all need to be vaccinated. And so I don't know what's going to happen in terms of access, because the CDC has been gagged. We've withdrawn from WHO. They've put us at a severe disadvantage and actually handed the evolutionary advantage back to the microbes, which had previously been essentially eradicated. There's only one way this goes, and it leads to more disease burden among society, particularly

among the most vulnerable among us, and ultimately to increase mortality among the entire population. There are no other outcomes. This is a move to cull the population. A move to cull the population. What else do Nazis do? Mm. I mean, he's repeated Hitler's rise to power bar for bar. What comes next? You tell me.

Mm. People need to understand that what has been unleashed, I said this on ABC in 2017, I said the Republican Party has allowed evil to enter their party. It is now going to consume them, that evil is now going to consume this country. The thing that they don't understand about evil is that it's indiscriminate. Everything that the light touches is a kingdom.

You let it out, that's a wrap. White people seem to think, and they're learning. Sounds like they're learning if you look at TikTok. But they seem to think that they could just throw piranhas in the pool and they're only going to eat us. That's crazy. They don't learn. There was this story here. I'm going to pull it up.

Give me a second. I saw this in Politico, and it was really quite fascinating. And the headline says, He spent years watching Silicon Valley take companies apart. Here's a warning for D.C. A tech insider speaks about Elon Musk Musk Playbook for Doge. And then when you go into the story, it was Derek Robertson is the reporter. And he talked to Rohit Krishnan, a Bay Area-based engineer, economist, and venture capitalist. And this is what I found to be interesting, what he said.

He said, the reporter writes, America's global dominant digital platforms were built by aggressive engineering-driven culture that prizes disruption over stability. The investors and engineers behind it have long believed that given the chance, they could build a better government as well. What we have to understand, because the point that you made about the microbes, you said that we had it under control. We talk about government. Government offers stability.

It's the stuff that people don't even understand. I say this all the time. We have the ability to drive down highways and go down roads and walk into stores and visit parks and do things, and we think nothing about how it was constructed, who did it, how it was built, what were the checks and balances. I mean, when we go to a park for the longest,

we thought that, you know what, guess what? Our kids are playing on playground equipment. Then we find out lead paint and things along those lines. That became a huge issue. And so we go through this world not thinking about any of these things because that was actually somebody in government's job to do. That was actually stability. And so these folks come in and their deal is we're about to come in and clear this destructive path because we think it could be done better. And people have no idea what the destruction is going to end up doing.

And in your space, literally decades of hard grinding work to beat these diseases and beat these things with science. And these folks are like, you know what? The hell with that. We're going to come up with something new. And my 19-year-old engineer has an app that can do it better. The thing is, when they say better, they mean better. They just meant better for their bottom line. Boom.

Not better for us. We just didn't hear it right. They didn't hear it right. It is going to be better for them. Trust me. And particularly because a lot of these actions, as we've talked about, are going to lead to a lot of the undesirables, as they have classed us, perishing. These moves are death moves. We've cut off funding for

farmers. We're going to deport the majority of the workforce that helps with food production. We're going to get rid of the regulators. We've got recalls upon recalls upon recalls already. Like I said, the CDC is gagged. Do we know about bird flu? I don't know. You know, and all of these—all of these disruptions are purposeful. They're not haphazard. They're not random.

But a lot of people have been talking about how Republicans are trying to sow chaos and fear, and they are. But their moves are tactical. They're not chaotic. They're not random. They're not even stupid. They're very clever. As we can see, they've taken over everything and we let them. Indeed, indeed. Doc, I appreciate it. Dr. Hudson, thank you so very much. And again, folks just got to prepare themselves for the worst outcomes because that's the only way we can be thinking right now. Yeah.

Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. You know, on that point there, again, I'm reading this article here on Macongo, and it's really interesting because they say in this piece that, the question was asked,

many people have wished for decades that someone would run the government more like a business. Is this what they meant, or are Elon Musk and his group of 25-year-old coders doing something different? And what he writes is, the fundamental concept is just that you throw them at the problem, they gather as much data as possible about where the money is going or who's doing what, very simple, straightforward questions, arguably difficult answers, but straightforward questions, and then you use that information to create some sort of ranking saying this is good, this is bad, then you try to solve the bads, or the playbook in some sense is extremely

simple. The difference here is that they're applying it to areas like the government, where maybe it has never been applied or it's really hard to apply because the downstream implications are extremely complex. It could cut off cancer research or genomics departments are getting acts or AIDS assistance elsewhere in the world. And that's the whole point there. When Republicans, Trump, MAGA goes, yeah, you know what? We're not going to fund PEPFAR.

PEPFAR actually played a huge role in slowing down and impacting HIV AIDS across the entire continent of Africa. It is arguably the greatest legacy of President George W. Bush. And this is something that where I, this is, if there's anything, if there's any moment where you want somebody to say something, this is where you would want former President George W. Bush to come out publicly and like, what the fuck are y'all doing? You have no clue what you're doing. But too many people are remaining silent.

And these folks, and as we talked about last week, the head of the UNAIDS agency says that the decision to cut off this funding could add 6.7 million new AIDS cases, no, deaths in the next 10 years. This is life and death. 71-year-old woman in a refugee camp in Thailand from Myanmar died because when the money was frozen, the USAID money, that paid for the oxygen at the hospital she was going to so a person sitting here so again some 22 year old coder knows nothing about the downstream impacts and when people don't understand all these people like i i all these people who keep yelling uh oh deport people back stop spending money abroad don't even realize that a lot of the money that we're spending abroad

actually keeps people in their countries. It plays a role in stabilizing other governments. It's just nonsensical how some of these people are thinking. And I would add to that that a very large portion of money that's spent on organizations like USAID, it comes back to the United States, just like with defense contracts and all of this other types of money. It pays salaries for U.S. individuals. Look what's happening with the farmers whose feed is ingrained, is rotting in a Houston airport somewhere because they can't ship it overseas right now.

That disconnect that Americans have with the role that they play in other parts of the world is one of the reasons why we're here today. We can talk the same thing as relates to Ukraine and the like. And so when you talk about the woman in Thailand, and you could probably multiply that by a few thousand right now, and these coders may not know this, but I'm pretty sure. And it kind of ties into your interview with the doctor. Elon Musk knows this. This is part of his design. Because USAID helped topple apartheid in South Africa and the hatred that he has towards Africans and Black people, it's part of his design to see people die and to see people suffer who come from these spaces. And it's unfortunate that people can't connect the common humanity for that to be a problem

like the woman you mentioned in Thailand. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

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

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back.

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

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

It makes it real. It really them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.

We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov.

Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. And we're going to see, and USAID doesn't only, and the example you gave is also great because it's a real sad, but great because it's a reminder that USAID doesn't only feed or help children in African countries. It helps people in European countries and Asian countries. But people attach a black face to it. But people don't have that kind of sympathy, Roland. And so I feel like at the end of the day, what needs to be happening right now is people need to be reminded of how connected we are as a society. We all live in this MeTV era where we all got our social media platforms, looking at ourselves all day, sharing our own food on Instagram and so on and so forth. We get disconnected, not us here, but society has become disconnected from each other. But what Trump is showing us right now

is that we are connected in so many ways and that they should not be turning over the government to a bunch of business guys, to a bunch of guys calling themselves all these crazy names on LinkedIn, 20-something-year-olds. And we had a businessman run the country in 2016, and look what he did. And I'll be very honest, Roland, the amount of depression and sadness I'm seeing right now, it's kind of feeling like we're in a COVID pandemic all over again, right in the beginnings of it. And that was also in part caused by Trump, who got rid of the pandemic response team and lied about what COVID did. And now look what he's doing, getting rid of this agency. I just read they got cuts at the FDA now and the medical devices and tobacco companies, agencies, more cuts today. So he's doing the same thing all over again. This is what happens when we turn the government over to a businessman, particularly a failed one.

Go back to my article. Go back to the article. Because this is what jumps out at me, and we actually are seeing this, Kelly. He said most of Washington was expecting them to not really be able to accomplish anything. In a sense, they're both right because I don't think they've accomplished

a whole lot in a practical sense. They've cut funds that aren't going to make a dent in the federal budget, but on the other hand, they have also entirely disrupted the way most people think government should work. It's not a technical victory, but a cultural victory, which is a very weird thing to get out of a bunch of technocrats who are sitting in Washington, and it's only been three weeks. And I think he's right. Kelly, when they claim these savings, they can't back it up.

And what they do is they take four or five programs that were funded. Oh, they're funding this for transgender or LGBTQ. They're funding this. And so they take these things that are pulled out and you think it's hotbed. Oh, my God, I can't believe our money is being wasted. And that was $2.8 million or $1.6 million or whatever. And people go, see, see, there you go.

They quantify nothing. They back it up with nothing. They have nothing to, so it comes across as just, yo, cut just to cut, disrupt just to disrupt, and then let's just keep people just on their heels and we're just gonna overwhelm them with how we move, but they're actually not making any real gains. They're disrupting hiring processes and things along those lines without any care of what

will happen in three, six months, nine months, or a year. Again, I go back to my frustration about the fact that this is happening because people voted for it. Yep. This is happening because people voted for it. This is happening because we screamed. I mean, we being people on this, on this, on this show and people like us on other shows and other networks and other platforms have been screaming at the top of our lungs for

damn near eight years. This man ain't shit. Like, I can't get that part out of my head. The fact that we have been the canaries in the mine for almost a decade and people still didn't listen. And we are now in a situation where everybody's about to find out because a couple people fucked around. That is what is bothering me about this entire thing. The fact that this is going to impact so much more, so many more people than the people who voted for it, right? I mean, I believe you said on your show a couple of days ago regarding COBOL and how these babies

don't even know the COBOL system regarding social security numbers and thinking people are getting social security from 150 years ago. Social a social security from 150 years ago. Social security didn't exist 150 years ago. What are you talking about? This is how the codes are run for people who don't have any social security in the system yet. You would know that if you were a government worker. You would know that if you were actually doing a job. Like, no, you just have a sledgehammer to every goddamn thing, and you're slicing everything except the things that matter. We're not talking about the defensive budget. We're not talking about sending weapons of mass destruction to people who don't need any more weapons of mass destruction.

We're not talking about these buyouts and bailouts of major companies and corporations that didn't need it during the recession. They don't need it now. They certainly didn't need it during COVID. But that's where all this money is about to go to because we're about to fund an oligarchy instead of a democracy. Like I, I, I am frustrated. I am very, very frustrated. So this, and this isn't going to be the last time we're going to be talking about this. We're going to be talking about this for the next four years. If there's a four years of the United States of America left. But this is why, Renita, what I have said to union leaders, to Democratic leaders, that you can't, the lead argument can't be that these are attacks on federal workers.

Because whether we're talking about federal workers, Georgia state workers, Fulton County workers, city of Atlanta workers, people just automatically, oh, the hell with them. We can get rid of half of those people. They mean nothing. So I've said that the focus has to be on the people who are impacted by the work of those federal workers. Right. That you have to connect. So again, if, and again, how I see this, if I'm Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Donald Trump makes the decision,

no hurricane relief extension for Georgia. I am notifying my Georgia State Party chair, and we're notifying every county chair, nail this, hammer this, have protests, have every county to media to drive that point home. I'm not arguing over FEMA workers.

I'm arguing over Georgia voted for this man, he won the state, and now he's saying to hell with the state. You have to, the light has to be on the people impacted by the cuts, and not the workers first.

The people first, and then the workers are the ones who are delivering these things to them. They are second. That's how I think you have to capture the hearts and minds of people, and the narrative and the storytelling, and frankly, I think Democrats have to capture the hearts and minds of people in the narrative and the storytelling. And frankly, I think Democrats are failing miserably at doing that. Absolutely. Without a doubt. I agree with you 100 percent. And your comments lead perfectly into what I want to say about this issue, which is that the fallacy that you can run government in the way that you would run a business is something that leads to a lot of death and destruction for the general public. And the reason that is, is because government exists to pool together resources so that we can provide greater safety for the general public and support to support overall well-being of the

general public. Corporations don't have that aim. Their aim is just to make as much money as possible. And so when you think about government, what you should be thinking about, and this kind of leads into your point showing folks the impact of what happens when you disrupt government, is that, for example, people, you may think it's a great idea to slash all these employees at the FDA. Well, the reason why the FDA exists is because the FDA understands that you as an individual do not have the money, nor the resources to test every single piece of food that you buy from the supermarket to make sure that it's not going to poison you. You don't have those

resources. You don't have the labs and you don't have the money to test all that. If we all pay taxes, collectively, the government can disperse those resources and have an agency that will test the food for you. If you take a look at the way that we get around for transportation, nobody has the money to pay for all the roads needed to get from here to work. I can't afford a road. Can you afford a road? No. But together, we pay taxes, and the government puts that money together, and then we have roads for people to go places. You look at the CDC, and this is the last example I'll give. Individually, you don't have the money to track if COVID, measles, disease, communicable diseases are getting out of control. You don't have that money individually. But when you pay taxes as an individual, the government puts those resources together, creates the CDC. So the CDC is keeping track of that stuff for you. And so that is the function of government, is to pull together resources so that you can have better support and increase the well-being of the general public. And that is not what corporations do. And so I disagree with the

article saying that this is a cultural win. It's not a cultural win, because people are going to very clearly see what happens when you just go and slash these agencies that Republicans have been saying for decades are bloated and just need to be run like a business and they should just be cut in half? They've been saying this for decades. see less child graves today than when you compare before the 60s was literally because the vaccine for measles came out around in 1963 is when it was distributed throughout the U.S. So before that time, it was common to walk in graveyards and see child graves. You don't really see that anymore. Why? Because after the measles vaccine came out in 1963, within two years, 97 percent of cases reported of measles dropped. That is the power. That's the power behind having an agency that is tasked with tracking communicable diseases.

That is the power behind going with programs and things that have been set up for your well-being. And so I really think that, unfortunately, like I said before, people don't read a lot, and people don't take time to understand all this. And that's not, you know, a knock on the general public. But there are a lot of people who are having to learn right now through experience that what the Republicans have sold the country is just not something that is actually workable. It's not something that's sustainable and it's not something that actually goes to your well-being. All right. Hold tight one second. We're going to break.

Lots to talk about when we come back. Tamika Mallory has her new book that we are going to talk about regarding her memoir. Also, the Trump Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, they're going after anything that deals with race and scholarships,

grants, affinity programs, you name it, I told y'all this. Why do y'all think I wrote my book, White Fear? How the Browning of America is making white folks lose their minds? Did not warn y'all of this. Everything that's happening, I wrote right here. Folks didn't want to listen. Y'all want to support what we do?

Please join our Bring the Funk fan club. The goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average $50 each a year. That comes out to $4.19 a month, $0.13 a day. And I'm just telling y'all right now, and it's real simple. The work that we do here, it ain't being done by other black media. It's not. It's not happening at Ebony or Essence. It ain't happening at the Griot.

It's not happening at Blavity. It's not happening at Ebony or Essence. It ain't happening at the Griot. It's not happening at Blavity. It's not happening at Black Enterprise. And so, yo, I'm just letting y'all know. It's just us doing what we do every single day with this show and the Blackstar Network. Your support is critical. You want to give via Cash App. Here's a Stripe QR code. Use this QR code to give via Cash App.

Or you can also, if you're listening, go to Blackstarnetwork.com checking money orders p.o box 57196 washington dc two zero zero three seven dash zero one nine six paypal i'm martin unfiltered vimor m unfiltered zell rolling at rolling s martin.com rolling at rolling martin unfiltered.com get our swag uh that's right I was wearing my shirt all around all-star game. Don't blame me. I voted for the

black woman. A lot of people said they wanted the shirts. I was showing them the QR code to Roland Martin dot creator

dash spring dot com to get your merchandise. I'll be right back. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the other side of change only on the Black Star Network and hosted by myself, Rhea Baker, and my good sis, Jameera Burley. We are just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender, and pop culture. And we don't just

settle for commentary. This is about solution-driven dialogue to get us to the world as it could be, and not just as it is. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the other side of change. What's up, y'all? Look, Fanbase is more than a platform. It's a movement to empower creators, offering a unique opportunity for everyday people to invest in Black-owned tech, infrastructure, and help shape the future of social media. Investing in technology is essential for creating long-term wealth and influence in the digital age. The Black community must not only

consume tech, we must own it. Discover how equity crowdfunding can serve as a powerful tool for funding Black businesses, allowing entrepreneurs to raise capital directly through their community, through the Jobs Act. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, have you ever had that million-dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality? On the next Get Wealth Coach, have you ever had that million dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality? On the next Get Wealthy, you're going to meet Liska Askalise, the inventress, someone who made her own idea a reality and now is showing others how they can do it too. Positive, focusing in on the thing that you want to do, writing it down and not speaking to naysayers

or anybody about your product until you've taken some steps to at least execute. Lease gut, ask a lease. On the next Get Wealthy, right here, only on Blackstar Network. Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherri Shepherd Talk Show. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching to Roland Martin Unfiltered.

You know what? We always have a variety of book offers on this show talking about their work, things that matter, and how critically important their stories are. New book from Until Freedom's co-founder, Tamika Mallory. It is out. The book is called I Live to Tell the Story, a memoir of love, legacy, and resilience. She joins us right now. Tamika, glad to have you here. First, before we talk about the book, give us an update on the Target boycott that Until Freedom was involved in. Oh, thank you. Hey, Roland, I appreciate you for having me on. I just wanted to say I saw the commercial of

the new show with Jameera Burley and Brea Baker on your network, and I'm just so proud that they will be on, two powerful sisters, and you always do such a good job of giving us all opportunities. The Target boycott is actually going well. It's a real grassroots movement that is growing from the community, from the people. I see so many folks across the country that whether or not we help to organize doesn't really matter because people are moving. We now have about 60,000 people who are signed up on TargetFast.org, which is for the fast that begins with just the clergy community, the faith community, if you will, during the time of Lent, which is beginning on March 5th. But even right now, during Black History Month, we are somebody through former Senator Nina Turner, as well as

Nakima Armstrong, who's on the ground there in Minnesota where the headquarters for Target is. They're already organizing. We are organizing. And people are really, really engaged. I think that folks are looking for something that they can do in a way that they can really show their frustration and disappointment with these companies that have cowered, if you will, to this very racist and sexist and every other-ist opportunity to take our rights away and to return us to a time that we fought so hard to move away from. And so it's gone well. 60,000 people and the fast hasn't even started. We still have weeks to get that of people signing up towards the 100,000 goal is a good thing. And there are some people who are not

even signed up at all, but they're already boycotting. And I'm always reminding people that when it comes to publicly traded companies, there's always a very easy way to show the impact of that. Go to my iPad. So you'll see here, folks, so you'll see the graph here. Target announced on January 24th they were ending their DI initiatives. You see that on Monday, January 27th, Target's stock was at $142.50. It closed today at $127.88. And so as they can see with that graphic there, Target stock has been dropping every single day. There was a couple of slight upticks, but basically it's been on a downward spiral for the past three weeks. Yeah, absolutely. It's on a decline. We've been watching that. And some people say, well, how do we know that we have anything to do with it? Perhaps it has nothing to do

with this movement. And that's a way for folks to sort of whataboutism us out of being focused on one company and one goal together. Actually, I have an answer for them. It's very simple. There are five major big box retailers in America. Walmart, Target, Lowe's, Home Depot, Costco. Those five. Amazon, actually, number six.

I take them out because they're digital. Of those five big box retailers, four of them, their stock has gone up. Only one of the stock has gone down. That's right. And that's Target. And people are using the $1.8 trillion in spending to say that we're not happy about what's happened here. And some folks said to me, well, why don't we focus on this company and that company? And, you know, what about this and what about that?

And there are all of those things absolutely need to be addressed. And by the way, again, from a grassroots perspective, people are boycotting more than one company at one time. But we want to be able to really focus and show the impact that we have. I have Black women who are reaching out to me, as I said, outside of the 50,000 to 60,000 people who are signed up to be a part of the Lent fast. There are people who are contacting me every day saying, I feel sick. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

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

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

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

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

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch.

What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals.

Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. To my stomach when I walked inside a target, I tried to go back. I don't want to do it.

And actually, I was reading an article just the other day where yesterday, actually, the daughters of the one of the original founder of founders of Target said that they are upset that this has happened as well. They think that Target moved too quick to change their policies. They believe that their father would have wanted the company to stick by their morals and values. And so this movement is growing. They have even said that Target, when I say they, I'm talking about Target, they have even discontinued the program that would have helped Black employees to increase and to grow in their careers. I mean, this is something that, you know, we can't look away from. Folks have decided or had decided that Target was their happy place. This is where

people felt safe and they don't anymore. And so we're just responding to a need that's coming from the people. Indeed, indeed. Let's get to your book. You said, I live to tell the story. I live to tell the story means that you face some issues. Well, you know about them because you've been here either helping to counsel me through many of the issues that I faced. You have been there helping to strategize, helping me to speak up for myself and fight back against the attacks that I've had to go through that have been unfair at times. They've also, at times, also been made up, just blatant lies that have been told on not just me, but the other women that I've organized with. Specifically during the Women's March, you were correcting even Black media that was spreading lies and incorrect information. And so you know that part of the story. But this book goes back before that. It takes you to my childhood growing up in Harlem in a housing project. I didn't think that I was

going to be the Tameka Mallory that people see today in front of cameras and leading groups and organizations. There was no storyline that said a girl growing up in Harlem in the projects would be that. But I have actually made something of myself. And, you know, you and others have been along the journey with me. And there have been some things in between. You know, my teenage years are outlined in this book. I talk about the bad decisions that I made, places and spaces that I shouldn't have been in, and being disobedient to my parents and how that created some trauma that I carried with me for a long time. Because in those places, there was sexual assault, there was heartbreak, there was betrayal, a lot of things that I exposed

myself to just because I was moving too fast. So I'm hoping that some young woman will look at my story and say, you know what, perhaps I need to change course and do something different with my life. I start to talk about my career, how I got started. Too many people believe that some of us just came out of nowhere because they met us in the midst of either the Women's March or the George Floyd protests or the summer of 2020 Breonna Taylor. And I thought it was time for me to let people know that my roots come from a time when I was sitting in rooms with leaders and I wasn't even speaking. I was just there listening, learning, and waiting for

my opportunity to step into my role. And, you know, again, I talk about the Women's March, but I also talk about how dark it got, you know, again, I talk about the Women's March, but I also talk about how dark it got, you know, how I ended up addicted to prescription pills because I couldn't rest. I couldn't sleep, you know, all about the struggles. And many people watched it happen. They watched online, sometimes articles, 10, 20 articles written about me and my associations, people calling me a hater of every group, any group you could think of. They said I hated those people, especially being anti-Semitic, which I vehemently deny, disagree with, and have done a lot of work to figure out how to work closer with communities that may not understand me. And so I outline all of that. But the best part is that when you get towards the end of the book, you start to see that

no matter what the challenges have been, I have been resilient. I have continued to persevere. And here I am sitting here today thinking that I was finished at one point. And in fact, the story is just beginning. I'm at a whole new chapter in my life. I spend a lot of time trying to explain to folk that we get a lot of people who love to say we need this, we need that. What's black leadership doing? Where are they going? Oh, here are the folks who are leading protests, who are organizing things, organizing boycotts. But those very same people get to move on with their lives.

They don't think about the toll on individuals. Reverend Jackson often said there's no 401K plan when it comes to black leadership, civil rights leadership. And the thing that gets me are a lot of our people, and the reason I laugh about this is because all the people who were running their mouths, all these loudmouth fools who I really don't give a damn about at all, who were complaining about advertising money that we got from the Kamala

Harris campaign. My response was, so you want us to cover the news, but not run ads, but you don't say nothing about the white media that actually gets critical advertising. And that's the thing. And so that's one thing that just drives me crazy, that people don't understand that there is a real toll, financial, mental, health on families of people who are activists who are fighting on behalf of Black people and others. Absolutely. You know the stories. I mean, I got down to the point that I had to call friends in 2019 and ask them to help me financially, which is something that I've never done. I've never reached out to a group of my friends to say I'm in trouble. I had $400 in my bank account. And meanwhile, I just led three of the most

successful marches in the nation's history, especially the one in 2017 of the Women's March. We had six million people to march around the world, which is the single most attended march in the history of the United States with the participation of other countries and other places. And I and, you know, here I am at this point doing all of this, going to white women's homes, just telling them the truth. I didn't change my messaging. I didn't change who I was. I went into their homes and I told them, hey, you know, here's the problems. Here's the bias. Here's your blind spots. Why didn't you fall out with your family before the election of Donald Trump that time in 2016. You should have been getting thrown out of the family occasions because you should have been speaking to the issues around racism and sexism

and fascism at the kitchen table. And now here you come and you want to join a movement and really come into the movement. And in many ways, it is a danger to the safety of women of color because anything we say, it hurts your feelings. And I literally was having those conversations being paid to talk about that with white women who were on a trajectory to finding themselves and finding solutions together. And out of nowhere, I had no speaking engagement. Black student union college groups were saying that they couldn't have me at the school because whomever had endowments or donated to the school had called to say they didn't want me there.

Everything was canceled. And it all happened because I decided to stand on principles, even while learning, understanding the challenges, but still standing on principles within our community and for our people. And so, yeah, that toll is great. But beyond that, even the work that we do, at one point in my life, especially at National Action Network, we were working literally around the clock. I would sleep sometimes on the couch in my office because things were just happening. You know the family, Sean Bell and Trent Benefield and Joe Guzman, Amadou Diallo, and the names go on and on. Of course, Eric Garner, all of these families, Trayvon Martin, that we supported, we worked around the clock. And there were times when tired is not a good word. That's not a sufficient word to describe how the toll that it took on my body, on my relationships, on my relationship with my son, which I also talk a lot about in this book, where he and I had many challenges because I wasn't home as much as I needed to be to give him the type of love and support that he needed. And so all of that is there. And just like you, it is not just frustrating, but it pisses me off when I hear people who do primarily nothing except find ways to bring awareness to themselves and with a little side of community. So they do self mainly with a

side of community and then they have the audacity to challenge us. You do it. What's your plan? Let us follow you and tell us exactly what we're going to do. And the reason why they don't do it is because it's hard. It's difficult to deal with judgment. It's difficult to deal with a tax. It's difficult to raise money. And when you start trying to do that, to have a phone number so somebody can call to get some help, that's when the challenges come in and it makes you just become an armchair person to talk and you're really not engaged in anything

other than benefiting yourself. Back to the point that you made about, um, having $400 in your bank account. And I remember when there were people mad about a Cadillac commercial or PSA. Then you'll have these people, you're writing books, you're profiting off of the movement.

And so they love saying that, but they ain't around when you're broke. They're not around. I remember being on the FaceTime with y'all. They're not around when the whole house, all y'all got COVID. Y'all were in Louisville. Y'all were in Louisville fighting for Breonna Taylor. You know I don't forget nothing. Y'all were in Louisville fighting for Breonna Taylor.

And again, these folk, they're at home. They're at home with their families. They're enjoying whatever they want to do, playing their video games, playing golf, going bowling, going to parties, going to brunch. While y'all moved there. And then

the security threats. People who knew y'all identity and knew the addresses you were staying at. Now all of a sudden y'all are screaming because literally your lives are in danger. Absolutely. And so all these folks are chirping,

not understanding when all of this stuff is happening. And that's the thing that just pisses me off. And a lot of this y'all can't talk about because you're so busy trying to bolster the spirits of a Breonna Taylor family, a Sean Bells family, a Michael... I mean, it goes on, you know, Eric Garner's family, a Michael Brown's family.

And so that's the thing that just, again, just drives me crazy. And a lot of people say, man, I ain't trying to put it all on the line because I'm not trying to take all that on. Absolutely. A lot of people say that. And guess what? We're okay with it. You know, I have people tell me all the time, I love you, sis. I appreciate what you do.

But I'm going to send you this $50 because I'm not going to be out there with you. And we accept it. We get that. We don't want people in our way either while we're trying to do our work. You know, even when I think back to the Cadillac commercial that, you know, certainly there was a lot of controversy over it. People called up the Cadillac telling them that, you know, I was the wrong person for the ad. I didn't do that because Cadillac called me. I did that particular ad, which was a Women's History Month ad, because a Black advertising agency called me and asked me to do it and said, you know what? We've been given the opportunity to work on this. We think

you are the best person. We want to put someone like you in a position of that level so that people have to read about the story and what you do, your story and the story of the families that you support and the issues that you're involved in. So I didn't call up Cadillac or Cadillac called me up and say, hey, why don't you come down here and sign a deal? But of course, people have a lot of assumptions. And when you talk about the COVID situation, you know, as you, I always hear you say, we have to frame things properly. It's not just that we got COVID because other people will say, well, I got COVID too. We had people who almost died. There were people who were so sick from being with us. They had health issues. And when we all caught COVID, our driver, Kevin Beatty, God rest his soul, he passed away recently. But at that time, Kevin was, you know, completely healthy.

He was doing fine. He got COVID and got so sick that he was in the hospital. Another sister by the name of Toyera, the same thing happened to her. They had to airlift her. She was so sick. I mean, this is the toll. This is the sacrifice that we made. And I have pictures that I'm going to have to send you one day. So the next time I'm on,

you can show them. I have pictures of Linda, Angelo, my son and myself sitting on the side of a curve outside of a house that we rented in Kentucky, waiting to see whether the police or the white supremacists or who was going to show up, because we had all these police cars, we had helicopters, we had all types of surveillance items, drones over our home, and couldn't figure out where they were coming from. And we were worried. In the middle of the night, the whole security team said, everybody's got to get up, because we don't know what's going on. These are the things that we went through. And imagine having my parents, who are elderly people, they're in their 70s, sitting at home not knowing what is going to happen to their daughter, who's saying, Mom and Dad, I'm committed.

And the last thing I'll say is my mom had just had a stroke. And I left my mother in the condition that she was in, which changed her life forever, to be out there because my parents said, go and do it, but please, please, please be safe. Most of the people that I know that spend a lot of time criticizing us have never dealt with any of the things that I just mentioned, not even a portion of it. So I try my best not to really pay attention to it. I do talk about the criticism in the book and how it impacts uh you know us all of us and how it leads to trauma but at this point in my life you know i'm with you i don't really give a damn anymore because i know that most people could not meet me

in this struggle and outwork me i think that's where we are either you outwork me or you shut up and get in line the when you think about all me all of their all the different cases y'all have been involved in all the different um unfortunately killings and things along those lines what would you say was just the absolute hardest mentally, spiritually, physically to have to deal with and to carry because it actually is a burden to carry. Yeah, it's been many. It's been many. It's hard to really say one of them because every single case, and as you said, we get so close to the family.

We try to really be locked in. And so it's been hard. The Breonna Taylor story is one that breaks me down. And I would have to say somewhere between Trayvon and Breonna, those are two really hard stories for me that I can never get over because neither one of them have received the justice that they deserve. And, you know, watching their mothers and fathers attempt to be so strong and to stand up to what the world wants from them while also judging, while also, you know, crucifying, especially Breonna Taylor's family, people believing that they shouldn't have taken a settlement. You know, they sold out.

I mean, it's just so much. It's been hard and, you know, trying to work with them. But I will say that it's not just police violence cases that keep me up at night. I think about someone like Shankwella Robinson, a young woman who was beat to death by a group of individuals, at least one person. But it appears that more happened to her in that house in Mexico where she was on vacation with people who were supposed to be her friends. Mexico has said that they want to have at least one of those individuals to be extradited back to that country so that they can

try her properly. And guess what? The American government, the U.S. government, the federal government, and we know it's not going to happen now, has done absolutely nothing to advance that, to make sure that that family gets the justice they deserve. And then I think back to early on in my career, where I helped to bury a four-year-old boy. His name was Lloyd Christopher, Christopher, Christopher Lloyd Jr. Morgan, sorry, Christopher Lloyd Morgan Jr. There you go. And he was four years old, shot in on a playground at a memorial for someone else that had been killed. And his mother just happened to take her eyes off for one second. The next thing you know, they were shooting and I had to help her find a special casket to bury her son. I will never forget that. And the reason why I bring those cases up is because that's not outside people. That's not the police. It's not the system. It's not the man.

These are things that happen because folks that look like us took the lives of people who should have been protected. And, you know, and I think that those are... A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, whyall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th, ad free at lava for good. Plus on Apple podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the war on drugs. But sir, we are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives.

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

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

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

We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

Some of the situations that really keep me tossing and turning because until we get to the point that those things don't happen at all, there is still so much work to be done you made that point there about which is always stunning to me how you on the outside not your loved one no one you buried you don't have to deal with any of that trauma telling somebody else what they should and should not have taken in a settlement. When you, that is just one of the most insulting things I've ever heard. Absolutely. And it happens all the time. I mean, Tamika Palmer specifically has dealt with a lot of judgment. And I think that a part of it is that there is different smoke for a woman, especially a woman who's been killed by police or by anybody else. Just there is a different

reaction and different treatment even for the family. I've not experienced a family that has had to deal with as much scrutiny as Breonna Taylor's family. Everything they do is a problem. And even people in our own community will say, well, why isn't she taking the money and pouring it into the pockets of people who are just, you know, hanger honors? You know, she does do a lot of things in the community. And Tamika Palmer stayed out there with us Roland you know she continued to march she's marched for other people she shows up places and spaces even though it might be traumatizing to her to stand with other families she's continued to do

that but there is a real level of scrutiny and judgment that has been placed on her and I've had to stand with her through a lot of instances where people were really trying to get in her face and tell her that the reason why she was unable to get all of the officers convicted, there has been one, but no one, not one officer has been convicted for actually killing Breonna Taylor. Only things that happened around Breonna that evening. And, you know, as she's gone through this, as she's had to stand up to it, there are folks lot going on, but how dare you not know and then speak on other folks' situation as if you do know and have some level of a high moral ground. Folks, we're talking with Tamika Mallory about her book, I Live to Tell the Story, a memoir of love, legacy,ilience. I've got some panelists here. I'm sure they have questions. I'll first start with you, Renita.

Renita, thanks, Tamika, for all the work that you do. I want to ask you, you share a lot of personal stories in your book. What was the single hardest personal story to share? You know, I think it was hard for me to talk about my son's father being murdered. That was a difficult area of the book to get into. One, because it opens wounds for even his family. I'm close to them, love them very much. It opens wounds for my son. And you know, when you decide to write a book and talk about other people's lives, it's like you're trying to consider whether this is going to be healthy for them mentally or how they will feel about whatever

is in there. And not to mention, I didn't just talk about the end of his life. I also talked about some of the toxicity of our relationship. And so, you know, I know that that's not an easy thing to read. And then I would say that overall throughout the book, there are moments that I described that I know my parents didn't know anything about. And just to give you an example of the difference in the two parents that I have, my father took a while to say something to me. I gave them the book two weeks before it came out. I had already told them months before that it's not going to be easy to read. You're going to hear some things that you didn't know. And there's some stuff that you might've known, but it's going to be confirmed and it's going to, you know,

it's going to be difficult. And my dad didn't say anything until finally last night, he said to me, you know, this was really hard for me. He said, you know, I I'm telling you, and he kept saying, really, really hard. And it hurt me to see some of the things. I told a story about my fifth grade teacher asking me to sit on his lap. You know, my dad's like, want to knuckle up with the man even right now as an adult. I knew that would be hard. But to tell you about my mom, she's like, I need to get a switch to your tail right now for some of this stuff that you're talking about

in this book. She's like, because I told you behind not to go where you went and I need to tear your ass up. So there's a difference in how the two of them responded. I'm a Congo. Thank you so much, Tameka, for your continued dedication to our community. When I think about you, I think about Dr. King when he was assassinated at the age of

39. They said he had the heart on the autopsy of a 60-year-old. People talked about the stress of the movement. And I think about all of the stresses that you've described. What is your advice for activists who are out there daily putting their lives and their safety on the line as it relates to what they can do to take care of themselves so they continue the work that they're doing? Thank you for the question. You know, one of my favorite quotes in my book that I sat with for days before I continued to write, I read it and stopped after I got it out. And it says that I was born fighting for freedom and I will die fighting for freedom.

But this time, freedom includes me. And that particular quote resonates so much with me. You know, I didn't even know that I was coming up with this powerful quote when I wrote it. It just came out. And then I went back and I read it and I was like, wow, what does that actually mean? I have to be able to put this in practice every single day. And so I've been through so much now

that I can speak to that easily because, you know, I've learned the ins and outs and I know that trouble doesn't last always. That's something that is a big message for younger activists that when they're in the midst of these fights, it feels like the end. It feels like the end all be all and, you know, the world is going to end. But actually it passes and there's a new struggle. There's a new fight. You have to renew yourself in the midst of all of that and never lose sight of taking care of you,

making sure that you're laughing a lot. You know, I'm the twerking work lady. I love to, when I get to a city, I don't care what city it is, I could be working on any type of case. I'm like, where's the hole in the wall? Where do I get the best food? Where's big mama's house? And can we get our joke on? Because that's what I'm going to do for myself. But there was a time when I thought that doing that made me look bad, you know, or that, you know, you're not supposed to be smiling and having

a good time. I'm not, I didn't die and I don't want to die. I don't want to die on the inside or the outside, and I have tried to maintain that no matter what people may think about it. And so, you know, trouble don't last always, and make sure that the freedom you're fighting for is a freedom that includes you as well.

Kelly? Kelly? Kelly? All right, Kelly froze there. I always ask book authors this, and that is, what was the wow moment for you when writing or researching this book? Was it a memory?

Was it something that jumped out that even made you go, wow, I either forgot about that or or man, that blew me away. Two things quick. One is I wrote an outline first because I did not believe that I had a memoir. You know, at the time when I started this process, I was 41 years old. I'm like, I don't have a memoir in me, you know. And, you know, I was I was instructed and guided through a, a, a, an outline that would help me to get the story together. And when I finished, I was like, oh my God, like I actually lived, I lived the life. I have a lot to offer, a lot to talk about. And I said, wow,

I can actually do this. I began to believe in what others saw. The publishers knew every, the editors knew, everybody knew it was there, but I didn't necessarily believe it until that outline was done. So I would say that's definitely a wow moment. But also there's this moment in the book that I talk about Cora Masters-Berry, Mignon Moore, Bishop Leah Daughtry, and Melanie Campbell. If you don't know those folks, anybody listening, you should make sure you find out who they are. But they came to a hotel in Washington, D.C.

Ha, ha! You know I know the story. You know it. To get me out of trouble because the folks had decided they were going to push me out the Women's March. They were going to force me to go up there and resign. I mean, it was so crazy. They were trying to end my career and they were really trying to end my life. They may not have known it, but that's what they were doing because they were pushing me to a really, really dark place. And so I called Cora Berry and said to her, they told me that I need to resign and I don't know what I'm going to do. And she said, what's the address?

Where are you? I gave her the address. And within an hour, she comes through the door with her quote flying. Melanie, everybody all came in there. They said, we want to know, first of all, and this is a lesson for the same young people that we're talking about today. They want to know, who is they? Because you keep saying, they're going to do this. They said this. They said, who is they? We want a list of they. And is they in the building? Are they here? Mignon asked me that specifically. I got folks together.

We had a meeting. I can't tell you because I want you to read the book, what was said. But I will tell you this. When Cora Berry, when the group got up and was ready to walk out, Cora Berry turned around and told the women, if you don't know us, Google us. She walked out. And that, for me, was a moment in the book when I was like, wow, you've been through some shit, and some black women have had to come and save your butt. Okay, so I just want i just want people who are watching or listening to understand you you actually need to envision

the scene from malcolm x when they went to the police station to check on brother johnson and then the police then police, remember when the police captain said, who are you? Yeah. And Malcolm X said, it don't matter who I am, but you might want to look outside that window. That's right.

And so what I remember, because when I got called about the story, one of the white women was talking a lot and and uh one of the sisters said who are you yes that happened who are you she was like but who are you as in what have you done in fact in fact as we were in the room, remember, I just told you, I kept saying they said and they going to do this and they and they. Nope. Never identifying who they was. I figured it out later. But this one woman who was very problematic, she was in the room. She's actually still in the Women's March and she was in the room.

And eventually Bishop Daughtry, Leah Daughtry, turns and looks at me and goes, is this day? Right? And so they were, these women don't play. They've been come to, you know, poot poot around.

They came very serious and very aggressive, not disrespectful, but they were real serious about why are we here? Why is this happening to black women? And they wanted it to be clear that you're not going to get away with it

without there being a response. Before I go to Kelly with her question, but this is what that also means. And I really, I really, really, really need young black people to listen to what I'm saying. You cannot be so arrogant in discounting elders. Not just when you need them to come save you,

but you may need elders to bail you out. Absolutely. And I don't mean bail you out of jail. You may need, there are elders I'm just going there was a group of us, this was after Trayvon Martin's, after the jury decision.

And we were meeting and it was a whole bunch of folk and what we gonna do? And so we on these calls and whatever. And I always say one of my biggest criticisms of folk today is that we move so fast, we actually don't stop to think, what are we doing? Who are we representing?

Things along those lines. And so that was this one young sister who was talking to another brother. I can't stand, why is Roland Mark on these calls? I can't stand when he's bringing stuff up. And the brother said, she's like, he arrogant.

And the brother said, and your point? He said, let me ask you this question. Is there anybody else on that call who could book us on a national radio show? I had my second on time, Joyner. She said, no. She said, is there anybody else on that call who has their own TV show? She said, no. He said, I can guarantee you that if we needed $10,000 right now for something, he can write the check and won't blink.

He said, can you do that? She said, no. He said, so why in the hell would you not want that person on the call? Yeah. And that's one of the mistakes a lot of folk, they ignore that elders have done stuff and know people and they can, when they roll in,

they ain't scared to roll in deep. That's right. You said they came within the hour. Other folk, well, hey, can you give me two, three days? They were like,

they had us up. No, they dropped what they were doing. It was like, yo, we'll be there. That's the thing I'm always trying to explain to younger people. Stop discounting what elders bring to the table, who you know and who are willing to have your back,

but you also got to show them proper respect. Absolutely. I went to see Hazel Dukes, who was on the board, national board of the NAACP, and also the head of the state conference of NAACP in New York. You know, this is a woman who's over 90 years old. And while she's not out there as much as she used to, you know, and she's allowing other leadership to rise within the organization. But I went to see her today, sat down. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small

ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was

convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute

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

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star

studded a little bit man we got uh ricky williams nfl player hasman trophy winner it's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne from brothers osborne we have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. I don't ask a bunch of questions, having conversations, and it wasn't just me. There were other young leaders that met to talk and, you know, just make sure that we're keeping up with her wisdom because she knows a lot. And what she's been able to offer to us, it's something that we, it's really invaluable because sometimes I find myself in places where I need somebody who's been through some stuff to help me figure out what do we do next? How should I move? Where are the landmines? What are some of the

decisions that I might be making that don't make sense? And you, Roland, are moving into an elder statesman role, you know. Y'all have no idea. Tamika and Linda were driving the Flint.

And they didn't know what the hell they were gonna do when they got to Flint. Didn't know. Didn't know. So, my phone rings, and I'm like, yeah, what's up?

They're like, hey, we in the car. We're going to Flint. We really don't know what we know how to do. We're gonna get to Flint, and we're in the car trying to figure out what to do. And I was like, okay, where y'all going to figure out what to do and I was like okay where y'all going and in about five minutes I was like boom boom boom Tamika's like okay that's a plan

you like got it I was like we straight clear yeah but I've called you many times that way over the years and it's not that I don't have an idea at all, but sometimes you need to fine tune it. Sometimes you need some historical context also so you can understand who fought these fights before. What should you be reading? How should you be educating yourself? And how should you be thinking about it in a broader fashion? And you are in the midst of sort of the pulse pulse of the culture every day listening to everybody we don't all we don't hear everything the algorithm doesn't allow us to hear from everybody so to be able to tap in with somebody like you is important and i'm grateful for your show i'm grateful for

your tenacity and the fact that you just keep this going because without you nobody there were times when I this last few weeks for while my uh you know book tour has been going on I've been on a lot of stuff I've been on national tv or whatever not anywhere near as much as they should be paying attention to me but nonetheless I've done everything radio national radio everything you could think of and I will say that there was a time when that was not happening. The same time when they decided to cut off my resources because I didn't do what I was told to do. And then other times when I just wasn't hot and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't the story of the day. Or when other people who were not doing the work, but they had bigger profiles were

actually stealing our media attention and going out there representing themselves as if they were leading the movement or our movement. You know, we didn't have anywhere to go. But you, Roland Martin Unfiltered, and everywhere, when you were on TV One, Radio One, everywhere, we've always been able to call you to help us get our message out. So I'll call you and say, Roland, you're being too mean. And you got to talk different to people. Folk feelings is hurt. They don't like it. I would like to have them suck it up. Well, sometimes you listen a little bit.

But I do call you up and say, hey, Roland, this is how I feel or whatever. We disagree. But at the end of the day, your importance in our work and in our movement, it can't be underscored enough. Kelly. Hi. Apologies for the technical difficulties, but I've seen you speak. I've been in rooms with you, and I just admire you greatly. So the honor is—it's an honor to speak with you.

But regarding your work now, right, everybody's been talking about the 92% and how, you know, we did our job. We did our job. We consistently go above and beyond every single time, and it didn't work out this time yet again. So in your opinion, this movement of rest, so to speak, I'm sure you've heard, you know, 92% we did what we do, let them deal with it. Obviously, that is not the path you are going, right? So how do you reconcile the need to rest with the call to keep going? And when you do keep going, do you still go above and beyond? Like, is the plan to go above and beyond consistently or is it to keep doing what you're doing and just hoping that something sticks? Well, I'm glad you asked that because

I don't think enough conversation is being had about this idea of resting and how long we're going to rest and what will be at stake as a result of folks just kind of withdrawing. First of all, nothing that's happening in this moment is normal. And that's something that we have to keep at the forefront of the conversation because when people start to move away and turn away and turn the TV on and focus on other things, what happens is the moment becomes normalized. And then more people begin to sort of slip into a complacency and even a feeling of defeat because they don't see people around fighting. I don't think we can stay in that posture for long. I also respect and honor your work and know exactly what you do and how hard you're out there trying to

spread a powerful message and keep people aware it's not easy to do that and I get that people do need rest and certainly I turned off some of the things because I was in everything as you know I'm arguing everywhere and it's just some of it I just felt like it's I need a moment I need a moment I've done it I've been in it I'm gonna continue to be in it but I need a moment. I need a moment. I've done it. I've been in it. I'm going to continue to be in it, but I need a moment. However, where we're sitting in this time, my granddaughter is two years old. Whatever happens in this moment will impact her life for the rest of her life. I'll be dead and gone, and she will still be here dealing with the results of people

who were tired or angry, you frustrated with this community and that community. And a lot of the things that we're upset about, we need to be careful because we're saying people voted this way and that way. And the media may be showing you a little bit of it, but if you really look into the numbers, it's not all as if it is being made to appear in some of our spaces. And so while we're pointing fingers everywhere, what we're finding out is that we're all going to F around and find out at the same time. And I am not going to be one of those folks that sits back and watch things happen to me. That's not going to happen.

So I am actively engaged in the boycott movement because as I said, I think people are looking for what can they do right now? How can they show that this particular moment is harmful, is disrespectful, and our money speaks for us? And so I'm involved in that. But the midterm elections are coming and that's going to be our first chance to really respond to all of this. If we sit and wait for fire drill organizing again until seven months or six months beforehand, even three months beforehand, then we didn't get it. We didn't get the lessons and we can't do that. People need to be gearing up to run for office. We need to be raising money for folks in the basement of our houses,

having kitchen meetings where we are putting a pool together to help folks to get out there and get their message out there so that we can create some balance. You can't do that in six months or five months before an election. That stuff starts right now

and certainly until freedom is going to be at the forefront of it because our lives, my granddaughter's life, literally depends on it. And Kelly, what I also understand this here, what you actually expressed, I mean, to make it one of our calls, express the exact same thing. And I was like, mm-mm.

Mm-mm. And we had a conversation, and I'm always, I might be sending, I might send stuff, I might send somebody speech, I might send a book or whatever. But this is also why it's important to have other folk who you can call, who, frankly, when you hit, Dr. King, when he hit those moments, he used to pick up the phone and call me, Helya Jackson. Yeah, yeah. moments he used to pick up the phone and call me hell you Jackson yeah yeah when that when he was when he was like low he would just hell you're saying whatever

so we got it we have to have people who will actually pour into us when we've been emptied by other people. And that's critically important. And it's also important how we use our resources. I'm going to tell you this last story because it's happened at this was at the conclusion of the 20th anniversary of Million Man March.

And so I forgot the title to me. Your title was you were the co-organizer. I was a co-organizer. Co-chair, I think. So you spoke there. So I interviewed Tamika, Linda, and Carmen. And

the interview was done. I was like, listen. Enough of this other stuff. It's y'all time. I said, let me be real clear. Every platform I got, I'm putting y'all time. I said, let me be real clear. Every platform I got, I'm putting y'all on. But when I call... Know what you're talking about.

I said, but also, the answer better be yes. I said, I might call you five minutes before I go live on Tom Joyner. Pick that phone up and be ready. Yeah.

And the point there is, when you recognize what people are doing, you have to use platforms. I mean, John H. Johnson elevated Dr. King and Ebony and Jet.

That's right. But the thing, but what I was saying to them was be ready. Ready. Always be ready because you don't know

when the moment might come again. Yeah. And so that's always important. I appreciate that, Roland, that story, but I don't know when the moment might come again. And so that's always important. I appreciate that, Roland, that story, but I don't want people to miss what you're saying. I called you and said, you got to give me something because I don't think I can make it.

Yeah, you were like... I'm ready to back out of this thing. I can't take it. I don't feel good. I feel defeated. I don't feel like I worked hard enough. And you really, you helped me. You sent me a bunch of stuff. I read. I started getting stuff together. I didn't feel good. I feel defeated. I don't feel like I worked hard enough. And you really, you helped me. You sent me a bunch of stuff. I read.

I started getting stuff together. I didn't say it to you. I ain't saying like, but hell yeah. But then you had the audacity about an hour later to send me something and say, oh, and you need to work out. I'm like, oh, so am I fat? Is that what you're saying? Oh, so am I fat? Is that what you're saying? Oh, so...

But I explained... What I explained is when I'm on that treadmill, I'm not taking phone calls. I'm not responding to texts. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. So what I said, my deal is you need to

have that space where you cut everybody out and you're thinking and you're just, and that's just so critically important because we do have to be in mental shape, physical shape for the battle that we are approaching. So, yeah, so for everybody who's watching and listening, that's the kind of relationship that we have. I ain't got no problem saying it. I ain't got no problem saying it.

She ain't got no problem saying it. That's the high it's supposed to be. So, Tameka, I appreciate you dearly. Love you. Thank you. The book is called I Live to Tell the Story, a memoir of love, legacy, and resilience.

And all y'all people, look, y'all, it ain't hard, okay? It's 281 pages. Well, I'm throwing the epilogue, so hold on. It's 290. 290. 290. Ain't that hard?

Okay. All right. So you can read the book. You're on a book tour. Where you going next? And where can people go look up dates? Y'all, that graphic too damn small. Can't nobody see that.

Yeah, it's okay. It is TamikaDMallory.com. TamikaDMallory.com backslash tour, which will take you straight there. Or you can go look at my cute website at TamikaDMallory.com and find a link to purchase the book. I'm asking you all, please don't wait.

Don't say I'm going gonna get it next week. I'm gonna get to it. Get the book now. It's helpful to me. The success of my book kicking off the right way in the first two weeks. And I'm asking that everybody, please purchase a copy, purchase the Audible version

where it's actually my voice speaking about my own stories. I tell you, I stopped many times and broke down in that booth. And so I poured my heart out and I hope you, I stopped many times and broke down in that booth. And so I poured my heart out and I hope that you all will receive it. Uh, so, you know, they have CDs out there, everything that you could think of about this book. It has been done well, and I would appreciate your support. So TamikaDMallory.com, uh, to learn about the tour. I'm all over. I'm in Washington, DC tomorrow night. Uh. April Ryan and Cora Mastersbury

will be talking to me about all those little moments that they know about from the Women's March. And so I'll be at Politics and Prose. And then the next night I'm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And next night I'm in New Orleans. And then on Saturday, I'm in Jacksonville, Mississippi, and then back in Atlanta on Sunday. So every day there's something happening. TamikaDMallory.com. You can check in, get with me, see me on the road. I love to meet new people. So I'm excited, and thank you all so much for supporting the book.

All right. Tamika, I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thanks. Bye, everybody. Folks, that is it for us. We have some other stories we're going to talk about. Reverend Barbara is going to be joining us later in this week to see the scheduling issues so

we're going to definitely chat with him tomorrow y'all don't want to miss but I'm going to break down y'all don't I'm telling y'all y'all I'm about trust me y'all want to hear this conversation that Reverend Barber and I are going to have tomorrow about what Trump and Elon Musk is doing.

And it's no different. It is the Redeemer's Movement 2.0. So if you're listening or watching, just Google the Redeemer's Movement. And we're going to walk you all through this thing so you can understand what's going on right now in this country. Kelly, Renita and Omokongo, I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much. Thank you very much. Folks, your support is critical for the work that we do. I got stopped by a ton of people in San Francisco.

People who, I mean, I'm talking about ballplayers, retired ballplayers, families, others. Andre Iguodala's parents, dad watches, mom watches. He wanted a photo. He told his wife, no, send him, send his $50 right now. He said, no, we're going to

send $100. He's like, they made me, I had to wait and take the picture, open my Cash App, show them the Cash App, my personal one, because they were like, look, it's Cash App. They were like, yo, we supporting what you're doing. And I want people who are watching, and y'all are on YouTube, y'all should be, y'all, we got 1,700 likes. We should easily be over 2,000.

So y'all hurry the hell up, hit that damn button, okay? And I'm telling, I cannot tell y'all, I hell up. Hit that damn button. OK. And I'm telling I cannot tell y'all I got stopped on the streets. The people who were attending All-Star, the people, brothers who were playing drums on the street. They were like, man, I saw this clip. I saw this. Man, what you're doing is important. But let me say it again. It's not just me. It's our staff. It's the people who work on the show. It's the other shows that we have. We're trying to build something here because y'all have heard me say it again. It's not just me. It's our staff. It's the people who work on the show. It's the other shows that we have. We're trying to build something here because y'all have heard me say this a thousand times. It's a ton of entertainment out here.

It's a ton of sports out here. It's a ton of stuff. And I told somebody also Saturday night, there's a reason why y'all don't see me doing entertainment stuff. I said, because somebody has to be focused on news. And then we start looking at what's happening out here. I'm telling y'all, you ain't got black media who's doing the kind of work that we do. I don't mean just a show. I'm talking about the interviews that we do, the experts that we're bringing on.

Some days, y'all, we're going to have two, three, four, five guests. You're not seeing that much black content. I have a plan that goes way beyond that, a plan to truly build this up for us to completely change blackstarnetwork.com. I'm meeting with some folks in Los Angeles on Thursday regarding that. We're talking about staff writers. We're talking about literally building this up because we are in an information drought. People are walking around every day saying, man, I don't know what's going on. That cannot happen. We need to have folk 18 to 50 watching and learning. We need to have shows that appeal to a variety of demographics. Because y'all have heard me say for years that black people will rule the day when we do not have a strong black-owned media. And the concern that I have, what I'm seeing, is that I'm seeing black-owned media.

We are writing about hair. We're writing about beauty. But when it comes to news and issues, we are aggregating. You just heard Tamika talk about it. It actually happened. Two black-owned media outlets rewrote a story from the Washington Post that was wrong, slapped their byline on it, and people thought it was factual. I personally called the CEO and said, take this down because the story is wrong.

And that is happening too much in black America. Essence should be doing stories every day talking about the impact of Donald Trump's policies on Black women. Black Enterprise should have tons of stories talking about the economic impact of these policies on Black America. We should be saying the same thing from Ebony. Hey, I'm all down with the fashion, the cover shoot of Megan Good. That's fine. But also do what John A. Johnson did

where there was substance in the magazine in addition to what was on that cover. That needs to be the case in all of black-owned media, but unfortunately it's not. So here's the whole deal. We're not waiting for other folk to finally figure it out.

We're focused on moving ahead and doing the work. So your support is absolutely critical. The goal is to get 20,000 of our supporters contributing on average 50 bucks each a year. That's a million dollars. That is critically important with the money that we make on YouTube, the money from third-party advertisers for us to be able to do the things that we need to do. I've already told you, I want to launch two other shows. I want another daily show. I want a weekly business show. We want to be able to

create that new content, but it's not going to happen if we don't support. It's critically important that you stand with us. And so if you want to give to Cash App, use the Stripe QR code. Cash App changed their rules, so we don't have our Cash App accounts. But if you want to give, you can do so via Stripe, via Cash App. Click the Cash App button to contribute. You can send your check and money order. P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. PayPal is rmartinunfiltered.

Venmo is rmunfiltered. Zelle, roland at rolandsmartin.com. Roland at rolandmartinunfiltered.com. Then at Roland Martin unfiltered dot com. Then, of course, let's see here. Somebody just sent me, what'd they say? Somebody said, I sent you $100 and I also need a hoodie

size 4X. Here's my money for the hoodie, $50. Now, we don't actually send them from here, but we'll work it out, Michael Hayward. So I appreciate that. Michael Hayward from Maryland, thanks a bunch. And then also, y'all, let me show y'all this here. One of our fans sent two packets of this to me in the mail.

I got this. So, y''all our fan base is awesome. So they sent me this here. So this is these are look these are Some up. I'm gonna put these in my bag when I travel. I'm Handies out especially so look y'all right here. So these are, zoom in. So these are Black Star Network lapel pins. That's right. Black Star Network lapel pins.

And they were made by NOLA lapel pins out of New Orleans, Louisiana. And so they didn't have a note in the name. There was no note. There was no note in the there was no note in the box. So I don't have a name. But these are the lapel pins. So appreciate no lapel pins for sending me these Black Star Network lapel pins. I certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. They sent me two bags of these. Pretty cool. Thanks a bunch. Don't forget to download the Black Star Network app, Apple

Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. You can also, of course, get our gear, get our swag. Get your shirts. Hashtag, we try to tell you, FAFO 2025.

Also, don't blame me for voting for a black woman. You ain't let me yell that shirt was a hit at the All-Star Game. Man, folk was stopping me. I was showing them the QR code where to get it. So y'all be sure to get y'all's as well. And, of course, get my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, available at bookstores nationwide,

also online, and you can get the audio version that I read as well. Folks, and don't forget, download the app Fanbase, and if you want to be one of the investors already, we've raised $9 million of the $17 million Series A raise.

And so it's been going gangbusters in the last month and a half. And so if you want to invest, go to startengine.com forward slash fan base. Startengine.com forward slash fan base. Folks, that's it. I will see y'all tomorrow right here on Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Thank you to all the fans who I ran into, took pictures with, made videos for their mamas who love watching me, who I saw in San Francisco at the NBA All-Star Game.

And shout out to my man, Mark Tater. Mark a capper, but it's all good. Mark is the Deputy Commissioner of the NBA. So I appreciate Mark for the invite. Thank you as well to Commissioner Adam Silver. Folks, that's it. I will see y'all on tomorrow. Holla! Black Star Network

is here. 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? A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. Arapahoe, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.