#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Feds investigate Marilyn Mosby; NAACP questions NFL/Fox deal; Battle over 2019 George Floyd arrest

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

3.19.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Feds target Marilyn Mosby in criminal investigation; NAACP prez questions NFL/Fox deal and demands meeting; Battle over George Floyd's 2019 arrest; HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge goes viral; Roland sits down with St. Louis Activist, Tef Poe.Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Federal authorities have launched a criminal investigation into Baltimore. State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby and her husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby. Their attorney is blasting this investigation. We will talk with Scott Bolden right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. In the Derek Joven case in Minneapolis, the judge will allow somebody camera footage

from the police officers to be admitted into the trial. Also on today's show, my interview with St. Louis activist and rapper Tev Poe, we talk about his issue that with some people who are in the movement, are folks truly

standing up for black people, and what did he have to say about individuals who came to Ferguson, then left, and never returned, but built their careers on Activism and has never given back trust me y'all do not want to miss our discussion plus

The CEO of the NAACP is demanding a meeting with Fox, excuse me with the NFL Over their new TV contract with Fox all of that next rolling button unfiltered. It's time to bring the funk. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics.

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he's fresh, he's real, the best you know, he's rolling Martel. Martel. Federal authorities have launched an investigation into the finances of Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby and her husband, Nick Mosby, president of the Baltimore City Council. The Baltimore Sun reported that subpoenas were issued for churches when it came to the actual ties and offerings that they made to churches. The Fayettes are seeking tax returns, bank and credit card statements, and business records and other financial documents. The Mosbys say they did nothing wrong. The attorney is Scott Bolden, frequent panelist here on Bullet Mountain

Unfiltered. He joins us right now. Scott, welcome to the show. On the other side, this is interesting. Have you ever heard of a federal investigation to ask churches about the donations of individuals to churches? It's laughable. And in 35 years of practice in law, as a former prosecutor from New York City, who I've defended as well as prosecuted individuals in criminal tax cases, at least at the state level. It's unheard of, if you will. And what it ultimately gets at is that these are two high profile African-American politicians. They are progressive change makers. They have called for redistribution of wealth, at least their husband has.

And Marilyn Mosby is a leader in progressive prosecutors and was there before many of the others were elected, if you will. She doesn't prosecute low-level drug possession cases. She has a conviction integrity unit. She certainly looks at over-sentencing. And this is the new progressive prosecution team in Baltimore, but more importantly, spreading all around the country. And so she's been sued by the police before. She certainly stood up and prosecuted cops for Freddie Gray. And now she has to face these race-based challenges, but really more importantly, these inappropriate use of federal resources, like in paneling a criminal grand jury for two public officials who, quite frankly,

don't make enough money to have a criminal investigation about them, let alone a panel of grand jury, where if you have some issues about their deductions, it goes to city audit, it goes to a civil audit, or the IRS can ask you questions about it. And if they find that they can't match up the donations, whether it's from their campaign finance committees, whether it's from their donations to churches, or whether it's in their personal lifestyles, the IRS will ask, they will audit, and then they either make you pay money or sometimes you wind up paying them that they owed money. None of this went through any civil review process.

And now they have a criminal federal investigation, criminal tax investigation, if you will, for people who make roughly $200,000 a year who are public servants and get paid on tax dollars. And it is essentially their only income. They have started some other companies, but these companies are startups. They have not created such funds. The companies aren't generating any revenue. So now they appear to be, if you believe the president, appear to be going through donations, which were 501c3 write-offs or deductions, and mashing them up to see whether a $20 donation or $100 donation was actually made. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

And by the way, this investigation, we we believe was started under the Trump administration. We hope to end it under the Biden administration. Again, the federal agents, according to the Baltimore Sun, they did meet with Nick Mosby last week. And according to this story where you have, again, churches saying that they have reached out to them in terms of. But so I've just never I've just never heard again of feds having churches turn on information about donations being made to them? Well, if you believe that that information is reliable, you know, if you do electronic tithing, there's certainly a record of that. But, Roland, you and I both know if we go to church and they're passing the hat and they pass it again for some special purpose or a number of special purposes, right?

If I write a check, you've got a record of that. Otherwise, if I give $20 or $100, I'm not sure I have a record of that. I'm not sure the church has a record of that. But it shows the minutia and the debt that the government investigators and the police unions and all those who are motivated to cause them embarrassment or try to cause them embarrassment will go. They leaked this to the press. We found out about it through the press.

They publicly tried to serve Nick Mosby while he was doing his job as chair of the council or chair of the board of estimates. It was embarrassing. And the amount of money at issue, if you made them pay back all of their donations, right, gave them zero credit, the amount of money at issue civilly would be minuscule compared to the federal resources used to investigate this wonderful, young, powerful black and political couple.

Unbelievable. All right, Scott Bolden was really appreciated. Thank you so very much. And we'll be following this story to see what happens next. Yeah, we'll be fighting. We're going to fight to the end on this one. Thanks, Roland. All right. Thanks a lot. I want to bring in my panel here. Certainly want to get their thoughts and perspective. Candace Kelly, she joins us. Candace, of course, is a legal analyst. And of course, we've had her on before. Glad to have her here also on today's show. Michael Imhotep, he also joins us, of course, with Michael as well. He, of course, the African History Network show. Rob Richardson, the host Disruption Now podcast. Glad to have all three of you. Candace, I want to start with you. Again, this is a federal criminal investigation.

They are asking for all the financial documents of Nick Mosby, of Marilyn Mosby. To be honest, Marilyn Mosby has been under constant attack. It's interesting that, of course, I sat down last week with Kim Gardner, of course, the prosecutor in St. Louis who's been under constant attack by folks there. So has Marilyn Mosby. When she prosecuted the cops for Freddie Gray's death, you had people trying to get her law license taken. You've had police targeting her as well.

You've had the governor telling the Democrat attorney general to take over cases because he felt she was not prosecuting them fast enough. Now you have this investigation here. Clearly, the Muslims have pissed some folks off. They have. But you know why they've pissed some folks off? They've pissed some folks off. They have. But you know why they've pissed some folks off? They've pissed some folks off because they've got power. They are a power couple. And when you get on somebody's radar and you have power, they want you to not have that power. And they do anything that they can in order to just get you to relinquish that power, to think that they would impanel a grand jury to determine whether or not hundreds of dollars

or up to thousands of dollars, because there were some questions in terms of getting early monies from this pension fund, that anybody else who would have borrowed from this type of fund would not have gone under the same scrutiny. It's not something that's out of the ordinary when people come into some type of an issue or a hump that they didn't expect, this is nothing more than fishing for a reason to get these people in trouble and make their whole lives crumble beneath their feet. Nothing more.

And what they are actually trying to bring up against this couple is something that we've seen for hundreds of years. We can go back all the way to Marcus Garvey, to any other civil rights leader that we have come in contact with. This is the same old, same old, same old, same old. Rob, you have the former mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, sitting in federal prison right now for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars for books that were never, that were supposed to be published, were never received. Doing her business with, of course, an agency with the state that she actually sat on the review board as well.

Baltimore has had issues in the past. Same thing. The mayor who was forced out of office, Mayor Dixon, for using for using debit cards or using actually gift cards meant for other usages for personal reasons. But what's sort of weird here, again, you're requesting the financial documents in a criminal investigation, but it doesn't appear as if they're alleging that it was based upon corruption or money was stolen from the state, misuse of funds. How do you see this? Well, I happen to know Marilyn, and I don't know Nick, I know Marilyn pretty well. I would just say that you described it well. She has been fighting and he has been fighting for a long time. That makes you a target.

And I know this about feds because I've defended people just like Scott has before. And I know when they get a narrative in their mind and this is what likely has happened. Somebody did something, not necessarily them, but at some connection. And then somehow they got they were connected to them and they got their mind and like, okay, these people must be doing something. Even if they didn't have any proof, somebody called them. They often just look at, people don't know this, but they often look at the news and they say, oh, let's investigate that. And here's the thing. When the FBI investigates you, it can bankrupt you. Even if you don't, even if you didn't do anything, it's happened to people that I know, like they weren't guilty of

anything. They were just involved in a campaign where somebody did something uh but because they work for this person they get involved in this and they have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars when they don't make millions of dollars like hundreds of thousand dollars a lot of money and and and the fbi has endless resources so they can they can really just just just take this out and just take this thing all the way out and make and make the most we spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars even if they find nothing there and and even if there's nothing there they will look to find something there because they have a narrative i believe they have a narrative in their mind that they did something and they're going to find something and this is clearly what they're doing i think it's a i think it's a waste of resources and money when

you think about all the things that are going on in this country that we have our fbi going after church donations let me just think about that for a minute uh but what do you make of this uh michael you know uh this is the first time i've heard looking at church donations usually they'll look at lavish spending, spending beyond your means, different things like this. But this is the first time I've heard about going after church donations. And under the Trump administration, because I heard Attorney Bolden say this investigation started under the Trump administration. I remember Attorney General William Barr being at odds with progressive prosecutors. And if I remember correctly, Marilyn Mosby was one of those

progressive prosecutors. Is that correct, Roland? And in fact, she also made it clear that if the federal agents who were sick on Portland made it clear if they brought that to Baltimore, she was going to use her power to prosecute those federal officers. That also ticked the Trump people off. Right. And then also, I think I remember it was Marilyn Mosby who wiped out a lot of convictions on marijuana, marijuana convictions, things like this. So there have been a number of different progressive things that she and other African-American prosecutors have done that were, and not just African-American prosecutors, but specific

African-American prosecutors have done that were at odds with the Trump Department of Justice. So something like this could be payback. So hopefully, this turns out well for them. This is just crazy. Go after church donations. This is just crazy. Hopefully, it ends here with the Biden administration. This doesn't make sense. Yesterday, folks, look out next door. Yesterday Yesterday, the I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no. OK. All right. We'll go to our second story, folks. Yesterday, the NFL announced a massive TV contracts they signed with networks such as CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, including Amazon Prime Video. But it is the contract they signed with Fox that is stir at the ire of the NAACP.

Derek Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, is blasting the NFL, saying they should not be funding the kind of contracts that will result in the kind of news that Fox News covers. Here's a statement that Derek released. I want to read from this statement. conspiracy theories that ultimately ultimately led to an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol. It is safe to say the views and opinions of Fox News are often squarely positioned against the progression of our democracy and not in the general public's best interest. But here's something that many do not know. Fox actively exploits its Fox Sports licensing deal with the NFL by extracting increasingly high cable subscriber fees to subsidize Fox News programming. This is the same network that has used its hosts and personalities to regularly attack the NFL and its players for promoting racial justice. However, this is just

one aspect of its inaccurate incendiary coverage of racial injustice. Network personalities routinely attack Black Lives Matter and downplay the existence of systemic racism and police brutality. A league where nearly 70% of the players are black and prides itself as America's favorite sports pastime should not be complicit in helping to increase the profits of Fox News. The NFL should immediately rethink its relationship with Fox. Given all that Fox has done to harm its players and the franchise, it's disturbing that this renewal is even on the table. Fox's further fermented racism

undermined the public health response to the pandemic and attacked the election's legitimacy at a volatile time. The NAACP is requesting a formal meeting with NFL leadership to discuss the unscrupulous tactics employed by Fox to underwrite hate speech and the un-American attacks on those that stand for racial equity and justice. The NAACP is ready to work in tandem with the NFL and hold Fox accountable. Rob, I'll start with you. You have a division of Fox, which is Fox Broadcasting. You've got Fox Sports. You've got Fox News. Then, of course, Rupert Murdoch also owns the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and other outlets as well. Do you think that the NAACP is conflating things? Do you think that that they really don't have a case?

Do you think that the argument that they're making is a just one in criticizing the NFL for signing a mult-billion dollar rights deal with Fox Corporation. Yeah, they certainly have a just cause. Now, whether they can do anything about it legally, I mean, that's another question, but they definitely have a just cause. And this should be a signal for progressives, those who believe in democracy, we have to start attacking this propaganda. It is not news. They have basically a television show with just made-up characters. You don't know why people are evil. They're just evil.

Well, you know why they're evil a lot of times, because of their race or because of their politics. But they make it out to be these people to be evil, and then they dehumanize these people. And this is what leads to the type of hate and type of attacks we see with what happened to our Asian brothers and sisters in Atlanta. It's what happened when you see the racial violence kick up all over last year. It's because the words you say matter. They create a climate and they know what they're doing. You know, racism sells, fear sells, and they learn that if we can just trigger people's emotion, we can trigger we can trigger their fear. We can make money this way. So it's not about news. It's not about news for the right wing, specifically for Fox.

It's about how do we demonize anybody that that that makes us feel insecure? That might make some white people feel like they need to react because that'll make people tune into the news because news is boring. Look, news is when it comes down to it, when it comes down to straight up news and people are reporting like these are the facts, these are what happened. You know, Rupert Murdoch discovered, look, that's not the way we want to make money. We can make money if we make everybody feel like they're being grieved all the time, like their country's being taken from them simply because a black man gets elected. There must something's being taken away from, you know, it's not. It's America. It's being more inclusive. Nothing's being taken away. It's being more inclusive. But that's seen to some, and Fox News has been perpetuating this, that things are being taken away from me. And that has caused division. I

think the NAACP is absolutely right. Not only are they right, we need more people to join them. And this needs to be taken more seriously because this propaganda is really affecting our democracy. It's really destroying it because that's how America goes down. It goes down by Americans. Americans implode. We fight each other. And we just believe the other side is evil simply because they're black or they have different politics. This is what the right wing is doing.

And they don't have any journalistic standards. They don't care. It's all about how do we just provoke emotion? How do we make controversy? And that's it. That's not news. Mike? Michael?

You know, I posted about this on my Facebook fan page, the African History Network, a couple of days ago rolling. And I totally agree with Derek Johnson. And I think they should go further than this. I think they should rally the corporations that donate to the NAACP on an annual basis and leverage that power to also put pressure on Fox and on the Fox entity. Because some of those same corporations advertise on the various Fox networks, the Fox cable network, Fox broadcasting, etc. But I read through the letter that President Johnson sent, and he hit on a number of very, very important things.

Number one, Fox News, the lies that they were pushing about the stolen election, this was an attempt to overturn the election results and overturn African-American people's votes, nullify our votes. But then the NFL signs, re-signs a deal with Fox Sports and 70% of the league is African American. So it's like our bodies are generating money that's being used against us. Our bodies are working for an entity that's being used against African Americans as a whole. We look at Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson in the segment you just did a couple of days ago where Tucker Carlson is going after Kristen Clark. OK, who who's whose nomination to the Department of Justice is being she's running into problems. OK, with white male Republicans or Republicans that want to act like they're white, like Rafael Ted Cruz, okay?

We're dealing with these types of culture wars that Fox is fueling. And at the same time, you look at the people like Sean Hannity and others on Fox News that were fueling lies about coronavirus and giving a platform to the traitor-in-chief, Benedict Donald, to go on Fox News and lie about coronavirus, which also puts lives of African-Americans in jeopardy. So I'm totally for this. And we have to leverage our economics to enforce our politics, man. As far as I'm concerned, we need to do everything we can to take Fox News out, as far as I'm concerned. We need to look at what color change did and how they got Bill O'Reilly off the air. They put pressure on 80 advertisers, color change and other organizations, put pressure on 80 advertisers.

From Bill O'Reilly's show where it wasn't profitable anymore, and Fox News canceled their show, we need to do the same thing with that entire Fox cable network. Candace. On the one hand, you've got Fox denigrating African-American players for taking away their First Amendment rights. And on the other hand, you have basically they're being exploited because they're giving money back to Fox, the same people who are just

burning the moral fabric of America. And like Michael said, it's also a health concern in terms of what they are spreading in terms of the coronavirus and what should and should not be done. The FCC should get involved here because you know what? When you have a station, you have a license and that license has to follow FCC guidelines. And those FCC guidelines, if they are broken in any way, shape or form, you don't get renewed. In addition, we need to look at the contract that they've made. What's the basis for this contract? And are there some racist implications in it? So there are a lot of different ways to attack it, but I'm loving what Michael said in terms of put some pressure on them otherwise. You know, there is power in the people when people take the streets and say,

we don't want to see this happen. So this is just the beginning. We're going to see more. But I would expect that the FCC would also have some place in this. And if Derek Johnson has his wits about him, which I know he does, I'm sure that he'll be going that route. All right, folks, we come back. We'll talk about the Derek Sherwin case, the cop, former cop who killed George Floyd last year and what a judge's decision

today means. That is next on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Back in a moment. If people begin to believe that their democracy is fragile, if they conclude that voting is a charade, the system is rigged, then God knows what could happen. They rigged an election. They rigged it like they've never rigged an election before. Actually, we do know what could happen. It's happening right now. The U.S. Capitol overrun, under siege. Pro-Trump extremists storming inside, flooding the halls, breaching the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it.

We will not go quietly into the night. When thousands of your countrymen storm the Capitol building, if you don't bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, then you're a fool. I know you're pained. I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault. It is their fault. Hi, this is Essence Atkins. Hey, I'm Deon Cole from Blackest. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, unfiltered.

In the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop who is on trial for killing George Floyd, the judge of the case said he is going to allow some body camera footage into evidence in the trial. Of course, Judge Peter Cahill said the body camera footage took place in 2019. It was a year before Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. This particular body cam, Judge Cahill said this, quote, is some relevance to Floyd's arrest on May 6th, 2019 because it shows an example of Floyd's physical symptoms and bodily reaction to being confronted by police in a similar situation as his deadly arrest on May 25th, 2020.

Thirteen jurors have been seated, five men and eight women, and they're almost near conclusion of jury selection. Candace, you're the law, you're on this panel. What does that mean, this judge's decision? Listen, defense attorney Eric Nelson has been trying to get this evidence in since last year. The judge finally acquiesced, but only to a point. This means that Eric Nelson, defense attorney, this evidence in since last year. The judge finally acquiesced, but only to a point. This means that Eric Nelson, defense attorney, will be able to use this recording to show that there

was some M.O. on George Floyd's part in order to conceal drugs. And that's exactly what the defense wants. They want there to be this evidence that there were drugs concealed so that they can use those drugs as a basis to say that that was a contributing factor to his death. So at the end of the day, after months and months of wrangling, the defense got what it wants. It is going to be able to show the parts of the video that goes from the police approaching the car just until he's put in handcuffs, nothing when he goes to the police precinct or the hospital, all of that, that comes after nothing.

But within those first couple of minutes, not even a couple of minutes, you do see that there are pills on the seat, that's allowed. You see that he was trying to conceal drugs, that's allowed. And so here we have basically what's a win for Eric Nelson. And you know, that's what happens when you have a good attorney. For those of you who have been watching, I'm sure that you can agree that Eric Nelson is a good attorney. So the prosecution has to do all they can to fight otherwise and say, hey, look, on

one hand, we have this tape that says these are the same, this is an M.O. But on the other hand, all right, so we have the same M.O., but why is George Floyd dead? And that's going to be the prosecution's test to prove that that's going to be the major difference. And that's where those two recordings part ways. Rob, obviously, supporters of Chauvin, they have been trying to cast aspersion against George Floyd. You've had Tucker Carlson. You've had Candace Owens. You had all the people, conservative media. Oh, George Floyd died of a drug overdose. It wasn't Chauvin, as if we didn't actually see. It's been in C, but his knee on his neck for nine minutes.

Jesus Christ, yes. I mean, the goal of this is to make people reject what they saw and figure out an exit ramp to say, oh, well, it's because he used drugs or, oh, he was violent or whatever. I mean, so it's allowing people to have that. It's not reasonable doubt. I don't think what happened a year ago was relevant. But as was stated earlier, it matters. Your attorney matters a lot.

And unfortunately, who tells the better story? Not often how the facts are presented is how these things end up playing out. And so all the defense is going to do is just figure out a way to say look you just need to focus on this the fact is he was doing drugs that probably contributed to it and i guess we should just ignore the fact that he sat on his knee for nine minutes as he begged for his life to me i don't understand how a year prior what that has to do with anything that doesn't give you any justification to put your knee on somebody's neck for nine minutes and suck the life out of them. That has to be told over and over and over again from the prosecution's point of view, because what the defense is going to do is try

to get you down a rabbit hole to distract on one thing. You've talked about it on this show, you know, when a guest tries to get you off on a rabbit hole when you're on a point, that is what the defense is going to try to do with this case. They're going to try to say, see, look at that. He's a drug addict. See, look at that. Look at that. He was doing that. Look at that.

We thought this was going to happen. Look at that. This had to happen in order to restrain this guy. They're going to come up with any reason they can to justify or at least just put a little bit of doubt on only one juror's mind. Because all you need is a hung juror. You've got to have all your jurors agree, all 12 agree to a charge. And the goal of the defense too is at least to get one juror, but I mean, frankly, just to create, they would love to get a non-conviction. But if you just get one juror

to say no, that's enough. And then it's hard to come back. You might be able to do it one other time, but you won't do it three. And and the and the defense knows that. Bottom line is here, Michael, folks, it is simply get prepared for it. Look, the job of defense attorneys to get their clients Friday, because I am cautiously optimistic about this case. I've studied a number of these cases. I'm cautiously optimistic with the emphasis on cautious. And we remember Philando Castile. That was in Minnesota as well. And when you read about that case and you read the testimony from Officer Yanez, Officer Yanez said that he smelled marijuana in the car. And he said he thought to himself, what type of people would use marijuana in the car with a little child in the backseat? And he used that to try, this was his testimony in court.

And he used that. And it worked. Well, also, they had a lot of pro-police people on the jury as well. But, see, these, so, I've been studying white supremacy for a long time. And this is why, you know,

I'm just, like, really cautious about this case. I hope justice prevails. But the main thing, and Rob is correct on this, that the main thing that we have to focus on, and the jury should focus on, and the prosecution, I'm sure they will keep the jury's attention on this. There was about three, maybe four minutes where George Floyd is unconscious. He's not moving at all. And Chauvin still kept his knee on his neck.

Well, what threat did he pose? He's not moving. He was begging, talking to his mother. I'm talking about after that. There's a period of time after that he stops moving. He's not talking. He's unconscious. And he still kept his He's not talking. He's unconscious.

And he still kept his knee on his neck. Why? You so afraid of a black man's body that's not moving, that you just got to make sure that he's dead? Why? So that's what they have to really keep the focus on. Yeah, Roman, I would say this. One other point with Minnesota.

The one case that did get convicted was it happened to be a person of color. And the prosecution over and over again said, what is so what scared him so much about a pink shirt? It was a woman in a pink shirt. He said he feared for his life. He did the same. He reiterated the same ridiculous defense that we always hear that always works. But this time it was a white woman.

It's a picture. And what's so threatening about that? I would argue what is threatening about a man who you have handcuffed, who is begging for his life and your knees on top of him? What is threatening about him? Why are you why do you need to hold to do that? And he's begging for his life. What makes him threatening? I just wanted to piggyback off of Michael's point, too.

Sure, go ahead. When he said that, you know, there were several minutes where you couldn't hear, a former officer Chauvin says, I can hear you, so that means you're breathing. So that if he didn't hear him, then we can imply, it can be, you know, implied that he's not breathing. So I think that the prosecutors also have a good run at that theory because that tape supports what Michael was just saying. There was a time where he was just completely unconscious. He wasn't saying anything. Things had changed. His hands were in his pocket. Could not have been that much of a threat. Folks, let's talk about this story out of the White House. Several staffers have been that much of a threat. Folks, let's talk about this story out of the White House.

Several staffers have been fired because of past marijuana use. Today, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that was the case. I'm just trying to understand here, Candace, really? I mean, for past use? What do you make of this? How can you be pursuing policy? How can you be telling DAs not to prosecute low-level drug offenses, but you're firing people who used marijuana in the past? Right.

That doesn't make any sense. There's some hidden agenda here. Why would you, as you said, as the laws are increasingly changing, I'm in New Jersey where the law just changed, where marijuana is legal. So why would you even follow up on this when it's something that most of the country will probably soon be following in its footsteps within the next few years? Why is this of any concern? And if you use this as a precedent, how many people are going to disappear from federal agencies?

There's going to be a lot. There's going to be a lot of empty seats. This is terrible precedent that doesn't make sense. And we think about all the laws that are on the books now that just go otherwise. Laws that, you know, that even on a federal level, they're thinking about changing. It doesn't make any sense. Rob? I mean, it's one thing to hold yourself to a higher, higher standard. It's another thing to hold yourself to a stupid standard. Like, this is something like where everybody has to be perfect. This is a democratic obsession, right? Where we

have to worry about what the opponent's going to say. So we can't let them attack us there. We can't let them attack us there. So we need to do this. We need to do this. And what they still don't seem to grasp is that they're going to make up a reason to attack you anyway. This is what Fox News does. They're going to find a reason to get people motivated. They're going to find a reason to get people angry. No matter what you do, they see you as the enemy. I don't agree. That's not how we should view each other. But right now, from the right point of view, from right-wing media and from right-wing politicians, they view anybody that is not with them as fundamentally their enemy, and they will do anything to make sure that your power is limited to oppose you.

So stop trying to please these people. It's not going to work. Do what's right, hire good staff, but don't have these unreasonable standards where you're going to where you're going to just eliminate good people for just what for smoking weed. This is what we're doing now. I mean, I don't understand it. I just don't. Michael, your thoughts on this. Well, I heard this reporting early today and I'm looking at an article here from NBC News reporting about this well now. They said Jen Psaki said that they had relaxed some of the previous restrictions or what have you when it came to staffers and previous marijuana uses because they wanted them to be able to tell the truth but not be penalized maybe if they smoked one time when they were in college or what have you but also in in hearing a pretty sure was Jen Psaki earlier today White House press secretary they didn't get into details about there were five staffers that were let go and it said it was marijuana usage.

Now, what I heard is that it could have been more than just marijuana as far as drugs that were used. It wasn't a situation, from my understanding of this, it wasn't a situation where they smoked marijuana once five years ago, and that's why they were let go of. So it could be other drugs beyond just marijuana. But marijuana may have been one of the drugs that they used. But we'll see how this we'll see how this turns out. But it was it's five staffers out of maybe 100 or 200 or so, something like that. Staffers. Speaking of the White House yesterday at the White House news conference, newly sworn in HUD Secretary Marsha Fudge, Congresswoman of Ohio. Let's just say in 12 seconds, she completely destroyed the internet. Watch.

Thank you very much, good afternoon good afternoon I was wondering if I was in this room by myself okay run that again. Run it again. Thank you very much, Jen. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I was wondering if I was in this room by myself. I have seen some of the most hilarious tweets.

Folks said she went full black auntie. Others said that's how Miss Bernadette is when she's giving the church announcements. Candace, that was, when I say I hollered when I saw that, that was sort of like when you walk into your grandmama's house and she's like, I know his ass is going to speak to everybody. I know you're going to speak. That was hilarious. Yeah, yeah. And it was classic.

But, you know, it also spoke to this bigger notion of, listen, I'm a black woman in this room. I am not invisible. Do you see me? Which is often the, I guess, the argument that you hear from Black women that sometimes we are just not seen. And to see her actually be standing there and everybody seeing her and not being acknowledged is just real indicative of what it is like to be a Black woman in America. But she got their attention and they won't do that again. Yeah, Rob.

That was like, you there from Ohio. And look, I've talked to Consul and Fudge a whole lot over the years. That sister don't play. And she was like, I know y'all ass see me and y'all ain't gonna say it back. Yo, that was crazy.

That was amazing. Love it. I loved it. And I know her. Look, she's going to set HUD right, and everyone's going to know who's in charge, and there will be no mistake about that. And I'm glad that people got a chance to see it. So she's going to be fully in charge of HUD. And she made those reporters acknowledge her. And she shouldn't have had to do it, but it didn't take much. You see,

she just looked up and just said, hello. It didn't take much. She just gave them that look. Everybody on this panel knows that look from a black woman and they all got it. And I'm glad they got it. Yeah, absolutely, Michael. She threw that look that all black people know. In fact, y'all go ahead and play it again. Thank you very much, Jen. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon.

Oh, thank you. I was wondering if I was in this room by myself. Yeah. Like, I know y'all punk asses heard me say good afternoon. I know you see me standing here. When you listen to that, Roland, no one responded to her the first time. No one responded to her the first time. So you have to. No one responded to her the first time. No one responded to her the first time.

So you have to, I know she was just sworn in, but you have to wonder, okay, now, did you all not know who Representative Marsha Fudge was? Did you not know she was coming to the meeting today? They just stood there. I mean, they just sat there and didn't say anything. So, you know, this is a black girl magic moment. And she's making it known, no, you're going to respond when I speak. And, you know, this is important. But this also hits on, you know, oftentimes African-American women being looked at as being invisible. And it's, you know, we just saw it right in front of us, you know, either being looked at as invisible or being looked at as the help or something like that, you know, or African-Americans.

Well, I think I'll be honest, Michael, I've seen a lot of press briefings, and they come out there, and media folk don't say anything. But that don't matter. Again, that was a straight-up black, I know y'all asses heard me say this. Call response. Call response. Call response. Right, right, right. You know, I also...

Take him to church. That reminds me of my mother. My mother used to be a school teacher for decades. You know, I've seen that before. You know, she came in there with such a force, you know? She probably caught

a lot of people off guard. I mean, literally, the way she just came in and her beautiful color and, you know, the way she was lot of people off guard. I mean, literally, the way she just came in, her beautiful color, and y'all, you know, the way she was dressed, I'm sure they were like, who is this? And they probably caught up in the moment, but she got them right out of that moment.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, she quite did. So I'm just saying, to the White House press corps, y'all might want to rethink just sort of how y'all respond to black folk who walk into the room. I'm just saying the next time she walk in, hell, they probably going to speak first. Hey, Secretary Fudge.

Right, right. They will not repeat the mistake. They will not repeat the mistake. They're going to do that once. They're going to do that once. They're going to be very nice. Absolutely. Was trust me. That was one of the funniest clips that have come out of a White House press briefing in a very long time. And that was truly a black woman's response talking to them. And you know I had to send her a text saying, good afternoon. Had to do it.

Y'all, will y'all support Roland Martin Unfiltered? Please do so by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give is to go to support this show. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans to give us a minimum of 50 bucks each over the course of a year to help fund what we do. And we certainly appreciate all of you who have done so. You can do so by going to Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered, paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered. And of course, Zale is rolling at rollinsmartin.com or Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com.

The mailing address is New Vision Media, Inc., 1625 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 2006. Michael, Candace, Rob, I certainly appreciate the three of you being with us today for the first hour, folks, in the second hour of our show. We're going to hear from Tefpo, a rapper, activist from St. Louis. Y'all want to buckle up. If y'all thought Marsha Fudge was giving us all of that black auntie in that clip, Tefpo is bringing all of that black uncle in my interview with him. He got some things to say about people who built their protest careers off of Ferguson. He got some stuff to say about how black folks need to help one another. And he got some stuff to say about white leadership there in St. Louis.

Y'all don't want to miss this interview. That is next on Roland Martin Unfiltered. We'll be back in a moment. and staffing to stay safe. But how do we make sure we have what we need to stay safe on the job? We join a union. Union members negotiate for the resources we need to keep us safe at work and protections if we're injured on the job. Union members are better trained and better protected.

Job safety, that's the union difference. Hi, everybody. This is Jonathan Nelson. Hi, this is Cheryl Lee Ralph, and you are watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Jeff. What's up, man? How's it going?

I'm doing good. Good to see you. Likewise, likewise. Here in your city. Yeah, man. We finally get a chance to chat in person, the whole way before on Skype and all that sort of good stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. It's been six years since Michael Brown's

death, since Ferguson uprising, since protests. A whole lot has happened. What is your assessment of where this city is but also where this social justice movement is?

Man, I'll start with the local aspect of things. I do think that the city is more resilient than what it was before. I think that a lot of the things that black folks talked about, that people treated as things that if you were non-black, you could say it was a myth or wasn't happening. I think that now we've moved into a space where we know these things are happening. But I do believe that just like anything else, when you study history, you study the riots of 1992, you study the Detroit riots and the Chicago riots, all these different moments where we had these intense uprisings in the inner city. What happens after that is even more critical than the actual uprising. different moments where we had these intense uprisings in the inner city, what happens

after that is even more critical than the actual uprising. So the corporate sector and the private deals that go down between city council folks and folks in the county that are on certain boards and certain politicians and certain flanking, I think that the corruption is still there, and it may be even stronger than what it was before because now they have to move a bit more covert. And within that, it's created a culture of ongoing resistance out here in St. Louis where I think now this is definitely a protest city.

I think that the people have a certain level of political education, and the people are trying to spread that to the other people in the Commonwealth of the city. But we get a lot of pushback from certain political folks, certain politicians, certain legacy folks. And I think the way that that reflects nationally is that a lot of people don't know, for all intents and purposes you could argue that black lives matter started in st louis um now i'm not going to say that it was the origin of blm as a concept right but i'm saying as a uh as a as something tangible for people in american society to to engross upon and interact with. There are levels. I mean, the reality is, if you go back to the 20th century,

people look at the lynching of Emmett Till August 28th, 1955. But then you can't ignore Brown versus Board of Education in 54. And you can't ignore what happened before that. You can't ignore a Phil Randolph threatening a march on Washington with President Roosevelt. But it was the lynching of Emmett Till that took it just to a whole new level, which leads to Montgomery on December 1st, 1955. The 381 days, which then launches a whole different deal. So what you're really saying is that, yes, all these things happen because people forget, John Crawford III happened right before Michael Brown.

Eric Garner before that, all these other different cases, but that took it to a completely whole different level. It had to. I mean, you had black folks in the streets actually fighting the police. You had black folks meeting with the DOJ, meeting with the lawmakers that were coming into town.

They couldn't walk around the people. And we even had, the first actual convening was here at St. John's. So I think these are factoids that sometimes history overlooks. And I think now that we're in a position as a city where there's a lot of, there is some bitterness because we're a flyover town now.

Everybody don't pull up like you just pulled up. You know what I'm saying? I don't get that text from a lot of people saying, hey bro, I'm coming to town, what's good with you? I don't get that text. So I think now that kind of reflects too how movement interacts with different cities nationwide, where I can look at a situation like George Floyd and pretty much give you a play-by-play, step-by-step breakdown about how this is about to go.

From how the police are about to act, to how the activists are about to act, to how the nonprofit sector is about to act, to how the folks in the street who don't understand any of these moving pieces, how they about to act. I just see that module being duplicated every time something pops up. It's interesting you say that because I use a phrase constantly on my show, connecting the dots.

And one of the things that happens in one of these situations, we know the folk who will take advantage of the spotlight, who will pop in. And again, I go back historically. Ella Baker's deal always was, we're not coming into a place to then tell you what to do. We're coming in to assist you in what it is you're trying to accomplish.

And that, to me, was one of the things that we always kept talking about coming out of Ferguson. Okay, what are y'all trying to do who are there as opposed to using this moment to build something else? Has that happened? Do you believe that a lot of the folks who made their names off of Ferguson who all of a sudden are now on television and books and podcasts and traveling around the world are not coming back?

I know you don't watch battle rap, but my brother is a pretty famous battle rapper. He has this... We can curse on him, right? He got this... Yeah, my show, I own it. He got this. I own this shit. What do you do? To that, I would say smack, who are these niggas?

We don't, who are they? You know what I'm saying? I know some of them, you know, but I think now it's, we believe that we were trying to spearhead a genuine revolution for black folks. And when I say that, I'm not saying like we have these delusional dreams of taking over the government and nothing like that. But I'm saying reshaping the political circumstances of the people, reshaping the actual things that are actually oppressing us in this city.

When smoke really hit the fan, we had to do that ourselves. We were left here to rely on our own self-determination. We were left here to weed out a lot of the dissent between each other. We were left here to just pick up the pieces and move on. I remember driving down West Florissant for months after, you know, the dust had kind of settled after the nun indictment and, you know, remnants of folks trying to go back to regular life was starting to pop up. And I just used to drive down there and shake my head because I was like, yo, this street

look like this could be anywhere in the world. This could be Baghdad. We talking about months after the world. This could be Baghdad. We're talking about months after the fact. And I think that, you know, I know that, you know, in St. Louis, this type of corruption goes all the way back to the Veil Prophet Society, to the riots of East St. Louis, when they deputized 300 random white folks to go across the water in East St. Louis and barricade black folks in their house, set their houses on fire, and if anybody came out the house, they shot them in the head. That lineage of people is the same people who run the city. I drive around and see their names on the building still. You know what I mean? A lot of black people don't do the knowledge. They don't do the history, so they don't even know that we're living in a stronghold of white supremacy.

That's what makes St. Louis different than a lot of places. They booed Martin Luther King when he came here. Malcolm X didn't really get his feet wet here. Medgar Evers was right down the street in Memphis. They blew his head off. So, and Tupac came here in the hip hop era and they booed him, they jumped him actually. So like this city has always just been a rough place

for outsiders to engage with. But I think within that, it just makes our fight that much more vicious. So like if you get involved with something from somebody from here, they're not playing. You know what I mean? Like if you interact with me on a level where I'm going to go outside and represent something with you and I'm going to be on the line with you, I ain't playing. Because I could be doing something else that's not going to be risking my life what is interesting to me um is when when events happen and when we're covering these events and you're right you're seeing what's going on.

What I always go back to is, okay. And again, the point I just made. All right. Michael Brown's death six years ago. In the six years, all the folks who came through here are they completely gone? Anyone coming back? the folks checking to say okay um you know what is being built how can we help because the issue that i have is when there's the immediate move on to okay you know what's what's the next hot thing what's the next hashtag as opposed to no you still got to actually build something you don't just say hey let's do this and then don't check back in a year what was built what was created

what was left okay you know who gets elected what's going on uh to me those are the things that people should be thinking about as opposed to let's just go for the next hot thing if you will well the thing here is we do have some folks who who did who came in who did move honorable but for the most part if we being real and I'm one of the few people who gonna be real about because I'm not bought and owned by nobody so I can actually speak. Nothing I got going on is going to be slowed up by my opinion. So the truth is we had to do what we had to do for us. The whole situation is a situation where you got to do what you got to do for you. Yes, there are some connectors and some people who move with some honor and some dignity and they

did what they were supposed to do and they don't got no smut on their name and they know who they are. They know what their relationships are. They know where they land when the confetti falls. But there's a lot of people who know what's up on the other side, too. So I look at it like I was thinking about this the other day. You know, this is a town where our grandparents came up from Mississippi. Great grandparents came up from Mississippi. Some-grandparents came up from Mississippi. Some folks, they migrated.

They said, we got to get up off these plantations. We got to go. Sharecropping down here ain't working. You know what I mean? My mama even was a part of, my mom and her, my aunts even, were working fields well into their childhood. And my mother's light-skinned,

so she sat back and watched her sisters work the fields sometimes. So I understand this dilemma that where people say slavery had a cutoff point. Man, we ain't even a few. We're not even a generation removed from folks who was out there laboring for white folks. So when you dealing with this place, you dealing with folks who when you come here dealing with black people, it's important to understand we haven't gotten over slavery y'all can get over slavery you live in cities that got skyscrapers and uh you know pretty people and folks there can go to the dentist and they can they got jobs possibly that's better than what we got here we ain't got nothing here east st louis got a one percent employment rate so uh

these are folks who migrated off them plantations, like I was saying, man. And St. Louis represented a place for black folks to go. Somewhere where we could go, and you just knew there was gonna be some other black people there. It wasn't perfect, but you just knew, hey, if we could get there, we gonna find some folks and be okay. So what we have now in this new era is the fact that we live in a globalist society. And if I'm a young so-called millennial activist, why would I live in a place that actually has a harsh winter for the sake of proving some type of mythological political line that's still theoretical?

You know what I'm saying? Why would I do that? Why would I live at a place where, you know, I can't live the life that is being matriculated through Instagram right now, living here. You know what I'm saying? To live here and do this work, you're making the decision, a principled decision to align with a certain set of

values you're making a principled decision to involve yourself in a straight up generational back and forth discourse and um that's not a this and i see that in all over the country in different smaller cities you know i'm saying where the the height flies over these these towns and it doesn't land there and it takes people who are willing to to sacrifice to stay there Wesley Bell sat right there as well and what he said was he said when he was teaching and see he still sees it he said this whole generation people like yo I'm'm trying to graduate and leave. And he said, we have to create a situation where the next generation isn't leaving. He said, because if they leave, he said, you got to brain drain.

He said, your best and brightest are leaving. They're going to other places, building up those places. And they're just unwilling to stay. And that was, and as he was talking about that, you know, as somebody who is from, I mean, again, Harrisville right across the street, as somebody who grew up in Houston, where you have an HBCU, Texas Southern University,

Prairie View is 50 miles down the road. Reality is folks matriculate into those places, would come back home. What he was saying is, they're like, no. I got to leave. Which makes what you're describing even harder because, in essence, your potential troops

are going somewhere else. And then you stack the reality of it. You know what I'm saying? The reality of the situation for me is, yeah, I went off to Harvard for four years, but every time I came home, my lady had to pick me up with the pistol in the car. Period. Don't come get me if my strap ain't in the car.

I don't give a damn about all that Ivy League stuff because these niggas out here don't give a damn about it. And the political class hasn't set up the situation enough to make them give a damn about it. It's just, and that's what I see going on right now, even in this mayoral race. And I see it in every major political race in St. Louis. The people are doing their best

like fake ass Barack Obama change without landing it. When I listen to a lot of stuff that people are saying, I want to know the method in which you seek to accomplish your goals. I don't give a damn about the rhetoric. And it puts a person like me, who's always pushing back against the symbolic rhetoric, I'm always pushing back against the political theater. It puts me in a very awkward position sometimes. And it puts the people that mob with me in an awkward position sometimes because we can't wait for you to

tell us what's going on. If you running for mayor, I need to know who's going to be in office with you pulling strings. Who's coming along for the ride? Give me the actual agenda. I don't need the stylistic talking points. is interesting that uh you say that so i was sitting here um and i sent this to uh some friends of mine uh to get their uh perspective um and they were like yo is teff okay and i said i said well i'll be talking to him tomorrow so i i i already know what y'all talking about i'll let y'all know and i was cracking and i was and i wanted to see that i wanted to gauge their reaction yeah yeah i purposely wanted to gauge their reaction to see uh and is when you you were tweeting about um mike and your whole your whole deal was, look,

this is the deal. I saw it. This is your open line. I hate Joe Biden. Top of the year. Ain't been shit besides being in the mud for me, grinding through the bullshit. I hate him and Kamala. I don't even care about the unfollows, the disgarners. You can bi-follow us. That shit doesn't matter.

My life matters. Motherfuckers want you to be happy while you're taking the stick up the ass from these people simply because they made history the history they made together as a white supremacist account of history anyways so fuck them both you go on and on and on then you go complete reformation of the old establishment clinton obama biden carry i'm tired of it if i didn't have much to live for i legit commit suicide to get out of this nightmare is fucking bullshit man what was your phone like yeah after you posted that i take it you got a few text messages a lot of them a lot of phone calls a lot of texts the thing about me man i'm making a commitment in 2021 uh to speak my. Because I see people say things that I disagree with

all the time. And I have to position myself to be a person that explains their lunacy to people who don't agree. And I think that this year should be a year where we got to do away with the Obama Shakur stuff, where everybody want to quote a side of Shakur, we want to screen defund the police. But during the inauguration, we talking about how good Barack and Michelle look. Like what is the, where's the sophistication behind y'all politics? That's what I'm asking. Who really represents what they're actually verbalizing?

And I just want to see that. Everybody don't got to be a black radical. There's levels to everybody's political spectrum, obviously. I'm not that crazy. But what I'm saying is this. How am I supposed to move the needle sitting next to a person who for all intents and purposes seeks to reaffirm the establishment when I plain and simply do not.

And then you're gonna tell me that there is not a cadre of people within the black society that feel the same way. We keep perpetuating the myth that black folks ain't ready for real change, black folks ain't ready for revolution, black folks ain't ready for self-governance, black folks ain't ready for this, black folks ain't ready for revolution. Black folks ain't ready for self-governance. Black folks ain't ready for this. Black folks ain't ready that. We ain't ready for that because a lot of you niggas is trying to get jobs. A lot of you niggas wanna be a part

of these administrations. You know what I'm saying? They're not your enemy. You don't live in a city where you gotta walk the ground and you don't got dead cousins in the ground that you walk on every day. So I don't expect for you to feel me. You'll never feel me as you can talk to me I I thought about um the first

it's probably the first 60. I gotta see when I wrote it probably first 60 days of the Obama presidency and I get a phone call from Valerie Jarrett and she says, I just left the Oval Office and the president's upset with you. I said, alright, what are you mad for? She says, well, you wrote this piece on CNN.com criticizing the lack of black folks in the press office.

Robert Gibbs came in and he was upset. Had it. Obama felt like an attack on his press office is an attack on him. I said, what did I tell you before y'all won? I said, didn't I tell you that the White House press office is as white as the campaign is? We were going to have a problem. She said, yeah.

I said, didn't I tell you I was going to say something? She said, yeah. I said, so I'm just trying to understand why y'all upset. I told you what I was going to do. And then, and she's like, well, what should we do? I said, go hire some more damn black people my point and what's interesting is a lot of people who who say oh man you know you gave up on my free ride i was like y'all might want to rotate because i never got invited yeah yeah to any of his or michelle's birthday parties I never got invited to the Prince one.

I didn't get invited to the last one. I wasn't on those lists. And it was because my whole deal was I was pushing just as hard during the campaign because I said I wasn't elated just because we had a first black president. I say he's also was the 44th. And a lot of people really got caught up in, you know, we can't say anything. And I said, no, I said this return on investment.

I said, I didn't put all that work in just to say, oh, and I use this phrase all the time. I think African-Americans, we stay at the inauguration parade when everybody else left. We were so just hyped to see a first black family. And then when I saw all the pieces even later, and I disagree with the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece, 8,000 words, one or two paragraphs on policy. It was all about how he made us feel. I'm like, damn, Phil, I feel great. I feel great to be a black man. And I think that to me is how we have to keep pushing folks and say, no, no, no, no, no.

You have to deliver something. Facts. If you're going to have the power. Facts. Otherwise, why have the power? And it's just like, you know what I'm saying? What's the difference in the behaviors? Like, OK, one person is outwardly racist and the other one is signing a trillion dollar bill before his ass even touched the chair.

Your family going to get what? Sixteen hundred, fourteen hundred maybe. And y'all cheering y'all in the streets hosting a parade for what? We still burying people. Come on, a vaccine. You ain't got no access to the vaccine. If we don't even now, we don't even know if it works because we let Trump put it on the market. So it's just like, for real, people looking at me like I'm the crazy one. No, America is the insane project. I'm not the one that's insane. The insanity, the container of the insanity is this thing that you want to pretend is a democracy. That's where we let American Airlines and Delta and United Airlines pre-select the president

and then we act like we actually selected it. I'm not the crazy one. Do you think for African Americans, where we are right now, that there is an unwillingness to use the playbook that was used before, which was the classic inside, outside, internal, external. What I mean by that is everybody can't be at the inside table. Somebody has to be outside threatening

so the people on the inside say, you really ought to make this move. Because they ain't playing. I think, and I say this publicly, this ain't nothing new, that the problem is everybody

wanted to be inside in eight years of Obama. The same thing. People talk about, man, you're trying to get a job with the Biden hair. I'm like, I've never wanted to work for any politician because I'm outside. I can use my voice the way I want to push. That to me, I think whether we talk in St. Louis, whether we talk in the state capital, whether we're talking about the country, is that we have to fully embrace the inside-outside game and understand that if those two forces are not working together,

you're not going to maximize whatever it is you're trying to get. The problem is that the inside-outside game is only supremely effective in Black American politics during presidential elections. That's when the outside niggas and the inside niggas is all talking. We all in the same chat groups. effective in black American politics during presidential elections. That's when the outside niggas and the inside niggas is all talking. We all in the same chat groups. We all exchange in the same strategies, the same wherewithal. Even me and you, we might come from a slight difference of politics, but we talk outside of elections. Right.

You feel what I'm saying? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not correct. You we don't talk outside of elections. We talk outside of presidential elections because I'm constantly going, okay, which is why I came to St. Louis. I was in Georgia and I was like, all right, Ossoff won, Wardnock won. I went, all right, what's happened in 2021? All right. Oh, St. Louis may all race. All right. I need to get there. There's a gubernatorial race in Virginia. Two black folks are running for governor. You got a brother who's running for lieutenant governor. Boom, we're going to be there. Okay, what other races are going on? I'm constantly trying to get our people to understand that power is not all about D.C. It's state capitals. It's county. It's city. And if we're

not putting that lens on it to get our folks to understand that you can make Maynard Jackson type moves here in St. Louis that has nothing to do with Biden. But if you don't pay, if you don't focus on it, then we get screwed up. And that's that's where I said, that's where a lot of my tensions come from. Right. It ain't the fact that I understand that we don't have a certain we got a democracy. It exists. People got to vote. Somebody going to be in the seat regardless. I get all that.

What I'm saying is the electoral folks on the national POTUS level walk away from the table, from the streets when they get what they want. You use us to change the narrative. You use us to get you in the barbershops when your candidate need the votes. You use us to change the narrative. You use us to get you into barbershops when your candidate needs the votes. You use us to get in the church. You use us to throw these corny vote or die parties. You use us. You use us. You use us. You use us. The day after the election, you get what you want. The deals are brokered and we're not included. This has been happening since the 1960s. And when you look back at history, like when Martin Luther King got killed,

them white folks in the Oval Office had to get on the phone with some black people because this country was going to turn, and it was going to turn up over on its stomach. And they had to get on the phone with some folks. And, you know, it made something as simple as the president having to call James Brown. He had to get on the phone. James, where you at? I know you're just singing and dancing, but your people clowning, man. Get to the White House.

I need – James Brown ain't – man, I don't want to go to no damn White House. But he went. You know what I'm saying? And so this is the – I think that, you know, I just want to put us back in the position where we are clearly serious, no matter where we engage at. If we're going to engage over here for reparations, let's do it serious. If we're going to engage over here to put this candidate in office and we're going to all lot ourselves and say this is the last dance, then let's do it seriously then. So it actually is the last dance. And we actually do get some things up out of the deal.

I had a, it was interesting with this conversation, the battle that I have with a whole bunch of people is, and I keep saying this,

and what I keep arguing is, and i spent six years at cnn i've worked in mainstream newspaper and that's fine i mean i i don't and i say i don't begrudge anybody who's at espn steven they make it eight million solid robin robbins making $8 million, solid. Robin Roberts making $15, $18 million at ABC, solid. Strahan, Al Roker, whatever. I said, but if you look at our history, if we do not have our own communications mechanisms and we're having to go through somebody else's media to tell our story, I said, we DOA.

And I believe that that's really for me, I believe that's one of the reasons why we're in a situation that we're in, is that of the Black targeted, or Black, even all mediums that we have, we're actually getting so

much entertainment, gossip, and sports, they're not even talking about issues. And then we wonder why people walk around confused. Like, I don't invite no housewives on my show. I'm not trying to talk about that. And they want to watch it somewhere else. That's great.

But I think what you're describing, if you do not have a black-centered, black-owned, black-controlled apparatus, none of this is going to happen. You need multiple black-owned apparatuses across the board. But what you're speaking on is sophistication. What you're speaking on is taking risk. What you're speaking on is sacrifice. What you're speaking on is actually putting yourself in the mud to be in whatever positionality you play in this society, you got to make a choice to say, I'm going to roll over and let these white folks come in here and do what they do, or I'm going to at least choose to be a resistor in this component where I do my thing, I'm going to resist. I reside with the resistors.

If you find me, I'm going to be with the people who, if I'm washing dishes, we dropping dishes. If I'm delivering pizzas, we taking some back to Pookie and Ray Ray because we know they ain't got no food at the house. Whatever I'm doing, I'm never in the position to reaffirm a goddamn thing that they got going on. And I don't care how I play it. I don't care what I put on. I don't care what suit, what tie I put on. I don't care how clean I look for the day. I don't care how prestigious I talk for the day. If I'm in the building, black folks getting something out the deal. That is, I was at a

I was at a, I was at a, it was a charter school conference. And so they had this meeting. It was like all of the money folks. And there's like 30 people in the meeting. And it's two black people. And they were very excited that I was supportive school choice and I told them point-blank I said my initiatives got it's called school choice is the black choice and so I'm sitting here I said let me explain something I said

this is why I support school choice I want black people controlling the charter schools on black people controlling the charter schools, I want black people controlling the curriculum, I want black people controlling the contracts. That's what I want. I want us controlling the education of our children. So we're sitting in a meeting and I'm talking and so there was one Latino guy in the meeting in California sitting on the end. He goes, you know, I keep hearing all this black stuff but I'm not diverse about Latinos. I said, say, man.

I said, you are more than welcome to launch School Choice is the Latino Choice. Roland's here for black people. I said, I'm going to tell everybody in this room, y'all can't do anything in this movement without black people. Y'all can't get a meeting with the black caucus. I said, I can call a frat meeting. I i said i got seven alphas who members of congress y'all came and get that meeting i said so i'm telling y'all right now this movement ain't going nowhere without black people

so mary landrieu former u.s senator from louisiana she raised her hand she's like let me go ahead and say uh everything he said correct and i didn't let him know and they were all so like shell shocked and my whole deal is i don't owe nobody here jack right i wanted them to understand that and there are black people who don't who disagree with me over school choice i'm like i don't care if there is a mechanism where we can control the whole school, the curriculum, the money, who we hire. I'm going to take advantage of it. But my point to them was I'm here for black people and I wasn't apologizing. And I think part I think it's a whole bunch of us who are actually scared to go there. They think white folks are invincible they think america is a

unshakable concept they think white people are unbeatable they think white people can't be rolled on smashed on to defeated and left where they at but you got to realize these people human they immortalize white folks you know what i'm saying they immortalize uh the mass incarceration dilemma they immortalize uh the the prison industrial complex. You feel me? Like, they think that it gotta be this way. Because if it shifts even a little bit, in their mind, they just as American as goddamn apple pie.

I had a brother who literally told me, this is where I had my TV one show, he literally said, hey, when you gonna get your own show? I said, I'm on five days a week, two hours a day, every morning. He said, no, no, bro. He said, I mean a real show.

I said, a real show? He said, I mean a real show. He said, I mean like, you know, MSNBC, you know, CNN. He said, I mean like a real show. He said, you know, I mean like, you know, MSNBC, you know, CNN. He said, I mean like a real show. And I said, and Brian Williams was, this was before the whole plagiarism and all that sort of stuff happened. He was at NBC, not anything. I said, brother, I said, do you know that when Brian Williams comes to D.C., he sits in the same chair I sit in. I said, there's a table, a clear table to the left.

On the bottom is a bristle brush and a mirror. I said, Brian, we don't use no bristle brush. He said, that's the brush I use. I said, the walls, the camera, the fiber optic line. I said, here's what you don't realize. TV One, we contract the studio with nbc news chat i said so you just said i didn't have a real show without realizing that the studio i use is a nbc studio yeah i remember I came out there too at NBC studio.

Yes. And he would, man, my bad. I said, no, no, no, no. I said, you have got it in your mind that because it's on a black network, it's not real. I think when you talk about demoralizing whiteness,

the power of white supremacy has been so devastating that part of this issue we're dealing with is this extreme desire for white validation. In many ways, it's the black artists

who wanted to cross over. It's the people who shun Tyler Perry and they overhear yelling, howling, and they over here yelling, hollering, and screaming but Tyler like I just built my own 250 acre whole studio it is this entire

what I keep saying is there should be a massive reprogramming of black America I just think that until that's really what the strategy has to be a reprogramming to say we cannot continue to operate with this notion until that's really what the strategy has to be a reprogramming to say we

cannot continue to operate with this notion of white validation and drives everything in our community I think you know a lot of that comes from the fact that it's just plain and simply systematic and a lot of brothers are still dumb deaf and blind you know I'm saying like the five precedents will call them dumb deaf and blind still dumb deaf and blind and you know i'm saying like the five precedents will call them dumb deaf and blind they dumb deaf and blind when i hear niggas talking this crazy stuff you dumb deaf and blind you don't you don't know what you need to know to have a fully informed view of what's going on so you ignorant to the facts for real you ignorant to the real facts so uh and that and we all have moments like that so i try not to

judge brothers or ancestors and whoever uh when they have some ignorance pertaining to things, because that ignorance sets up an opportunity for education. Right. If you want to embrace that. Right. Don't shut them down. Just simply say, you know what you're saying right now. That shit ain't true. And then hear the facts. Right. Right. So hopefully after we have some real dialogue about it, you move forward and know what's really going on. But, man, that's a part of the thing, too. A lot of black folks have an issue with with the language that we use in black politics. They don't want to be identified as poor. They don't want to be identified as being oppressed. They don't want to be identified as like being a person that's navigating the society as a victim or victimized by what's going on. And I think what people like ourselves are saying is we're not saying any of that. We're not saying that you're a victim.

We're not saying that you're downtrodden. We're actually saying the opposite. We're saying due to the fact that you have went through this, we have went through it worse than any group of people that has ever went heads up with the United States. And you got to really acknowledge the fact that any major social changes that have happened in this society, in the United States society, the container of the USA, so-called black Americans sparked that change. Period. We've been involved in every aspect of social justice,

every aspect of... Oh, it's not even... It's not even... Do folks here feel that there is something else going on here? Man, we deal with a lot of... Here's the reality, too. that there is something else going on here? Man, we deal with a lot of the, here's the reality too.

I'm not gonna absorb the black movement as an industry of this responsibility to that. And I'm not talking about the movement, the organic movement where the people walk outside and say, we believe that we can turn this thing over. I'm talking about the movement that has people filling out W-9s and W-2s every year. I'm not going to absorb that movement of its responsibility to that situation. I refuse to. Because it's no different than what the music industry does, where they come find some people that's in the hood, we pump them up, we pump them up,

we pump them up, we pump them up. we pump them up, we pump them up. So long as they choose to have a certain functionality to what we need. And the second they get empowered enough to say, you know, I got the mojo, I got the swag, I can go out here and do what I need to do without y'all. They left on their own. So a lot of those people that are not here, we're living in situations that regular people have to endure with millions of people knowing who they are now and no no infrastructure around them to protect them

uh you know folks having to work regular jobs after they built such a massive moment still trying to figure out how to feed their mama right still trying to figure out where is that next dollar coming from that next piece of bread So a lot of these situations are situations that yeah, these people are very popular people because of the movement, but they regular folks still. And they live in regular situations that regular black folks are living in. So a lot of these niggas in the movement ain't living in regular black folks situations. So when some real shit happen,'re mine oh how could this happen what what's going on we live like black people live i don't know if y'all forgot we have a radical dilemma we have a murder rate that's that's cracking the ceiling we have an std

rate that's cracking the ceiling people it ain't it ain't mayberry around here shorty two blocks away giving head 35 a pop to pay her amaran bill you niggas forgot we didn't forget we still here dealing with it i still gotta look these people in the eye and some of what i'm making up for is yo yo up it ain't mine so some of what i'm making up for ain't even the blood that i put on the concrete. So a lot of us with a certain positionality to real situations have been far too kind to a lot of these motherfuckers. When you talked about not absolving them of responsibility,

we've seen that in other cities where black activists have committed suicide. Brothers in Columbus, there was another sister I had a mom on, and she was in North Carolina, came up missing. They discovered she actually took her own life. Also think of folks don't realize the level and the intensity, the pressure that comes with being an activist. That, you know, it's just like we people, we quote King and people talk about you know this speech that speech not realizing he suffered massive depression that that march true that march in memphis man where the cat's in the back that memphis march took king out they grabbed him

took him to hotel put him in it he is in the bed under the covers, fully closed and sucked into an immediate depression over what happened. I was reading Nick Cox's book on LBJ and King. LBJ suffered massive depression. So I'm reading this book and I'm going, wait a minute, you got two titans. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., these two major figures who both were suffering massive depression. That also is something that I think that we have to be cognizant of. demanding activists put it on the line and then when it and then when stuff gets done quote move on not realizing that they still are paying a price for what uh they had to endure yeah you spent two summers yelling at the police spitting at the police and you know this motherfucker from new york put the battery in your back to do it you know i mean they gone now

you driving down wash out watch that cop remember you from talking all that crazy stuff you're gonna have a real conversation you're a real encounter you're in a real situation now ain't no damn uh jail bell outlying the car ain't no damn lawyers on speed dial ain't no damn cnn and nbc putting the camera in your face to expose it you in a real situation now straight up and you're gonna end up down there at that justice center with them brothers is busting out the windows real quick so it's just like you know what all i'm saying is this dog um black people in mass are looking for a political exoneration from the fake stuff we want to see something real and i'm not calling nothing that existed before now fake or nothing

like that but what i'm saying is the we we're supposed to advance in our politics as we grow we're supposed to advance in our worldview as we grow. We're supposed to advance in our worldview as men, as women, as people with alternative identities. However you rock it, mentally, you're supposed to advance. And I'm seeing that now we have a clear understanding of the square dance and the rodeo that we've been playing with these folks. We voted for Barack twice this generation. Trump got in there and got up out of there. that we've been playing with these folks. We voted for Barack twice this generation. Trump got in there and got up out of there. You got your new moderate, almost Republican Democratic president.

You got your first black woman sorta vice president. Now, okay, so cool, you did that. But there's still politics being delegated in these communities there are still political issues in these communities what valentine's day a whole entire car came crashing into my living room i'm chilling in my living room a car come crashing into my living room within the blink of an eye i got 20 30 brothers from my organization in my lawn. We got to protect each other.

We have that understanding. I don't even got to blink. They're going to come when I need them. I can't say that for the rest of these spaces. You feel what I'm saying? I can't say that. And I'm hurt by the fact that I can't say it if I'm being real with you. Because I take you serious when you tell me you're showing up for us.

I believe you when you say me you showing up for us I believe you when you say you coming through for us I take it I take your word as straight up what it is and I never gave my word to none of these people and broke it if I said I was coming I came if I said I was on that line with you I was on that line with you if you disagree with something I did you could confront me about it and I said in that shit you know what i'm saying and and so now we're in a position now where i i can't i can't coddle motherfuckers just because uh they don't they don't know what the real life is like that's not my problem my problem is 12 year old kids walking around my neighborhood that's gonna break into somebody's house and get their head

blown off because there's guns all over this place. And he need an opportunity. He needs some mentor, some mentorship. They need something, resources. And I just don't have time. The war machine, the death machine is moving at such a rapid pace. I don't have no more time to play with people. As you were saying that, I mainly thought back

to when Ferguson and Ferguson jumped off and there were people I'll have the Jeffrey Osborne golf classic and there were people who were there they were like why the hell you down on the ground what they didn't realize and I said it the ground what they didn't realize and i said it and they thought what they didn't realize is we had no infrastructure to broadcast remotely at tv1 they didn't have it and i was saying that i'm trying to explain to people i'm like y'all we literally they don't have it and I can't believe that other people are. I'm like, other people might have it.

I'm trying to tell y'all, we don't have it. And we went through that, and I pressed them. I pushed them. I'm like, yo, we've got to be able to have this sort of stuff. So when I launched this platform, we have it. We can go live. We can go here. We have the technology technology we're using it

that to me as you were talking about will you show up i'm actually expanding that even more so i think what what you are saying what other people are saying leaders to black media to black athletes to black the whole like infrastructure is are you going to show up or are you going to show up and only show out and then leave and I think where we are and I've been on this kick about organizational infrastructure is that we have massive infrastructure we've got organization we've got all this stuff we ready we. We got resources. On paper we ready dog. But they are not fully understanding the power. The power.

When I say the power, one of my brothers just, the lodge in DC, they said we're gonna make you an ambassador for the Masons. I said, okay. I said, now, all right, what are we going to do now? They said, what do you mean? I said, you're Prince Hall of Masons. I said, how are we leveraging our national, international power? How are we moving on people? I'm telling the alphas I said if you live in the city and black and gold brothers and black and gold show up and nobody knows why y'all dressed alike I said that's on us I said we should be moving on school board meetings moving on city council meetings

moving on county commissioner meetings moving on state capitals, moving on Congress. I see it pink and green, red and white. I see it. We should have I see it. I said we should have armies saying, OK, Alphas, y'all got the school board meeting in January. Y'all got the county commissioner meeting in January. A.K.A. y'all got this. Then gonna rotate the next month i said we got all this infrastructure that's not as far as i'm concerned not being properly man moved you can say that about every every aspect of black organization um but the real is uh we need to be in organizations you know what i'm saying it's people people. It's people that are...

Stokely Carmichael said that. It's hard for me to take you serious if you're not a member of no form of an organization. Stokely said, you cannot find a single African American who's done things for black people that was not part of the organization.

So this, this like, you this single entity who is a leader, that don't,'t that I never seen how that works. No, you got to be an organization, bro. And if you and if you're not in one because you don't trust organizations, cool. Take the four or five people that you spitball this stuff with all the time and brain dump with this stuff and formulate an organization. I'm a part of this thing called Black Man Build, we call it BMB for short. Prior to that I was a part of Hands Up United.

Prior to that I was a part of some other organizations. My rap crew, we function like an organization. We treat each other like we're in an organized formation. I just believe in the power of organization and in the united states you see the power of organization every day a corporation that's an organization right a record label that's an organization uh that restaurant that won't hire you they're organized you're the one that's not organized that's why you can't get nothing up out of them so like uh i don't trust people that that flee from organization um and i don't trust people who uh uh in my new space where i exist i don't trust

folks who say uh that we're in a leaderless movement uh as they as they talking point because we ain't in no damn leaderless movement. That, and see, I understand where people are coming from with that because... My thing is you got to be careful, man, because at some point your theory becomes an all out lie. See, I... If you're not careful, your theory becomes a lie.

And we don't have, we're not in a leaderless movement currently. That's just a lie. But the other thing is this here. Okay, that sounds cute But the rally is somebody gotta make the call though I'm sitting here. So is it's uh, it's it's seven of us in here if we say, all right, let's go get some eat Somebody gotta say this is where we going and we And we can see we ain't go back. What do you think? What do you think?

What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? This whole deal of, well, no, we're going to achieve it by consensus. No. Leadership means somebody has to make the call. Somebody got to fall on the sword.

And here's what happens. Due to this myth of the leaderless thing going on, the wrong people end up falling on the sport because the government don't believe that this is a leaderless movement. The NBA don't believe that this is a leaderless movement. Nike don't believe that this is a leaderless movement. Essence magazine don't believe that this is a leaderless movement. I could go on and on. The only people that believe this is a leaderless movement are the leaders of the movement so so it's it's just bizarre you know what i'm saying and i want to have faith in people's humanity enough to to believe that uh these are just uh malfunctioning pieces of what they built, of what we built collectively, that kind of just didn't tighten on tight enough as we were building it.

You know what I'm saying? I believe that this new era of the movement has been built while it was flying. And a lot of times one of the wings might have came off and somebody might have to go outside on that deck and pull that wing and hold it closer to the body of the plane uh so uh i have a lot of mercy in that space so when i speak my opinions i ain't talking down on people as human beings i'm talking down on the politics and i got a right to talk down on the politics because i'm a black man who lives in america and everything that influences my life whether i like like it or not, is politics. I don't have a choice in the matter. Right.

As I say it, I say, y'all, y'all can holler all that stuff. Government has no role in my life. I say, guess what? Your birth certificate is a government document. You get married, government document. When you get your immunization shots, that's a government document. Straight up. Divorce divorce certificate government document

i said death death certificate government document i said so if if if government got you from the moment you born to the moment you die i said you better be understanding how you're going to change public policy so the notion of i can just check out and it's not gonna have any bearing on my life i'm like you are out outside in the words my man and remember the titan you outside your mind yeah man that's like uh i had interviewed i teach a class uh at this university called i live university um with this uh my co-instructor, Dr. Jennifer Leaf out of Denver, Colorado. And one of the brothers, he's a horn player by the name of Donald Malloy. He go by the name of Wave Magnetic.

We talked to him this week and he said, you know, he didn't believe that, you know, politics was, he's not a very political guy, but everything coming out of his mouth was deeply political. Right. So, you know, in the course of that conversation, I was trying to throw him some lobs for him to understand, like, bro, I feel you. You just want to make your music. You just live in your life. That's reflective of how a lot of black people live.

Right. Right. Even in my organization, I got black. We not know crazy maniacal organization. Right. Going to see storm in the capital tomorrow. But all we're saying is we just trying to obtain power for our people. We're trying to have a sophisticated agenda. We're trying to move ourselves closer

to a general consensus with black folk all over the world. So I understand that, man, me making a decision to come here is a political decision. Me waking up this morning, turning on the water and being able to take a shower that's the political implication that's a political decision that's something that's attached to a politic that water running through that pipe me being charged for that water that's Flint the privatization of that water that's right the access to that water or not like what they going through down there right now in Texas with Ted Cruz it's these we gotta wake up and understand why we study saying it ain't political.

They study saying it's hella political. Right, right, right. And that's the thing, man, where even I've been in, I got folks who we've been going at it because they're like, man,

I don't get why you ain't going hard for reparation. I said said let me be clear i said you need 218 in the house you need 60 in the senate i said show me the pathway just show it to me i said you got joe manchin saying under no circumstances i'm gonna read the filibuster i said there's a 50 50 time i said if him and Siena don't pull on the filibuster, there's no George Floyd Justice Act. There's no John Lewis Voting Act. So all these voter suppression laws

being passed by Republicans don't get passed. I said, so. I told this cat, I said, now, I said, can I make the argument of reparations? Yes. Can I walk through the history? Yes. I said, I'm speaking of the cold, hard political facts. Do you have 218 and 60 in the president who's going to? Yes. I said, I'm speaking of the cold, hard political facts. Do you have 218 and 60 in the president who's going to sign it?

I said, now, where am I about to spend my time? I said, I'm 52. I got more years behind me than in front of me. I said, I'm going for the money that sits there right now. I said, there's a billion dollars being spent every year on media advertising. The federal government, black people were getting one percent. said i want 15 at least 15. i said that's taking us from 10 million a year to 110 million a year to 150 million a year i want the pentagon contracts i want the commerce contracts i said i want hhs i want usda i said now i'm not telling you how to spend your time. What I am telling you is I'm going to go after the money that's right there today while you're trying to get to 218. What I'm not going to do is pass up the billions today, I said, trying to get to 218. And I said, we can do both at the same time

I said but just understand I'm saying we can go for this money right now because the problem is not enough trying to go for the money right now yeah or even know what the hell I'm even talking about that's why I keep having these cats on the show I'm like yo I'm trying to show you here is the money right now that we ain't getting. Right. I feel you on that. And the reality of it, too, man, is that capitalism is a complicated beast. And it's been whooping our ass since we showed up. So it's like. Even first of all, we created capitalism. is they didn't truly understand I mean my man Gerald Horne argues that that the American Revolution was really because the 13 colleagues were afraid that England was going to get rid of slavery

so my line is we created the system and they have been they have been playing off of and my man John Hope Bryant always says, he said he said, if you want to he said, the only way to give money away like a socialist is to make it like a capitalist. I was like, okay, John I mean, we all know all of these systems, man, for real, come from us anyway.

Even the origins of capitalism not even going too deep, just historically that's ancient comedic stuff you know i'm saying like the real way that it's supposed to function versus the way that they came and hijacked it like they do everything else and make it work how they want it to work but the real way that it functions was you know we got we go back eons if we're gonna do it the real way but um what you still the position uh presenting is a is a conversation

about the another reality that that we're battling. You know what I'm saying? And people at this interview, a lot of people want to take offense to a lot of stuff I said. I'm used to it. The thing is, they all, they revolutionaries who ain't got black leftist, bourgeoisie class of folks that if we were in the middle of South African apartheid, we'd be running these folks up out of town. And I'm not saying that as a person that's against making money. I'm not against feeding my family at all i'm a businessman on a whole nother level than the average person who knows what i do but uh i understand that uh

if i'm not empowering the people around me if i can't take the brothers that's with me and say hey bro when i shop you shop there you go when i cop you cop when I rock you rock when I when I leave you leave If I'm getting on the plane you get on the plane That don't exist a lot of times. So This is that's that one is that's that one said I had a sister who told me She's in corporate America. She said she took this cat was like, you know, it's lonely at the top. She said that's your fault She person like what you mean? She said, if you ever say it's lonely at the top, you didn't bring nobody with you. She said, that's your fault.

And this cat was like, I can't believe you're going there. But that's the whole point. The whole point is, if you're going to create something, build something, it shouldn't be where you're the one who's getting paid. That's because these niggas believe in exceptional Negro syndrome still, bro. You you know i saw it a lot when i was out there at harvard uh a brother would get hired for a uh you know they would make the announcement that they bring it in a brother three weeks later brother got a whole sex scandal you know what i'm saying why because he thought he was invincible enough to do what them white boys do he thought that he could reaffirm the patriarchy the misogyny and all that that them white reaffirmed he thought he was invincible enough to do what them white boys do. He thought that he could reaffirm the patriarchy, the misogyny and all that shit that them white niggas reaffirm. He thought he could go in there and do the same damn thing.

And the white folks showed you, no, you can't do what we do. You can't do what we do. You're not even a part of our class of folks. What are you talking about? You out of your mind. We brought you here for this. You come in here and do this. Well, you can't do none of that.

That's off the menu for you. so then they find themselves looking stupid gotta go home and explain to your wife why you done lost your kids college fund gotta hope and pray that somebody else gonna hire you because now everybody in the whole damn country know you got a scandal on you this is just reality meanwhile they looking at me as the brother with the tattoos and gold teeth coming in how i want my record clean why because i need that bag i die before i fuck it up you understand what i'm saying that bad go back to mama that bad go back to my my homies that might go back to the rent that bag over here i'm not why would i come in here and do this right why but i understand they don't come from poverty so you you right your mind frame different when

you actually know what it's like to not eat for a day. Right. I know what it's like to look in that account and it ain't nothing in there. I'm not in competition with none of these lame academics. Y'all go do what y'all do. Y'all riding these white boys like we build and I got my own stuff going on. I'm for us by us the real way. It is so funny you say that because. Because. In in launching this, it has been it has been it's been very interesting. It's been very interesting. When I talk to the black ad agencies that haven't sent a dime our way. away all folks who known me and all of these conversations my black folks love having I said this public I don't care it's interesting to me when I listen to all these black folks in these owners in black media talk about how we need to partner how we need to work together I didn't launch this

saying let bootstrapping I literally went to every major black media company saying this is what I'm thinking about doing let's partner and none one department not one I didn't meet with lower level I communicated with the leaders of all of them not one I mean to be independent not one so a lot of black people out there watching your show don't understand that I understand it because I'm an independent artist to To be independent, man, you are putting yourself up against all of the forces. The forces in your life that are saying, hey, what are we doing? Our stability is different now.

The forces in your life that say, as a man, when you look yourself in the mirror, you say, man, every black man come to this point, boy, where I have to make a serious decision. Am I going to be one of these niggas that's on that plantation asking massive for a dollar, asking massive for a piece of paper with one of his damn ancestors on the front of it? Or am I going to look in this mirror and summon my greatness, raise my middle finger to these jokers and say, I got to do what I got to do. I'm going to do it for me. I'm going to do it for my family. I'm going to do it for my people. And I'm going to do it for my generations even after me that ain't even going to be able to see that they don't even understand

what I'm doing. They're going to look back and say, Dad, I had somebody in my family bloodline that wasn't playing with him, man. He took some real chances. You know, he, for all intents and purposes, we got to be our family's Prescott Bushes. We got to be the person. There you go. Going against the grain. There you go. That's outcasted at that time so that the generations after us can look back and say he took the sacrifice for us to be right here on this on this field. Yes. Position at this current moment. And that and that is there is there is jealousy. There are folks. How dare you? I can't believe you're turning our money down. What do you think you're doing? And man, I can't.

And when I have these conversations on the air, and that's the other thing, I purposely say stuff. I purposely, I do with my audience like I do with my nieces and nephews. This laptop costs $2,000. Yeah, I see you do that all the time. And I'm doing it because I'm trying to let our folks know this shit didn't just show up. Like we're not sitting here shooting this on some damn iPhones. No, we're shooting this on three C300s that the body alone is 9000 each. The lenses that came with it and then the viewfinder, everything.

These three cameras here. This is a seventy five thousand dollar 000 package which means that what i'm telling my audience i'm asking you to give so i'm not completely dependent on an advertising agency that is putting up all the barriers and then what happens is my people then go well your stuff don't look the same as over there so therefore i'm not going to support it i said no the real is too man what i see when i see your show is you give an opportunity so for people to speak real black people for example those tweets i sent out last night no other media mechanism has been to bring me on to contextualize and explain those tweets. They may put them up on the screen without context and say, man, Tep said some crazy

stuff again. Throw them on the screen without context and say, you know, they're going to put me in a position where the tweets would have me in danger, honestly. Right. But the thing I've always liked about your platform, and I watch it all the time is that it is black folks from all of the political diasporas and spectrums are speaking on Roland Martin. A lot of people are overlooking it because they want they can't wait to get on CNN. They can't wait to be in front of Rachel Maddow.

They can't wait to be in front of Joy Reid on MSNBC. They can't wait. They can't wait. They can't wait. They'll pick up the phone for the Washington Post before they will for you. And this is just reality. Oh, no, you ain't lying. Oh, no, no, no. You ain't lying. No, it happened this week. It happened this week when I called some folks and they were unavailable. But then I see them on CNN, MSNBC. I've been calling my speaker, Nancy Pelosi and her people. I'm like, yo, how you got time CNN, MSNBC. I've been calling out Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her people.

I'm like, yo, how you got time to do MSNBC and CNN several times a week and you can't do black media? But you ain't the Speaker of the House without black people. I speak for myself. I speak for Black Man Build. We are very gracious that you even gave me the opportunity to come on here and talk to this many black folks. Because I know how many black folks you're talking to every day. So I'm gracious with the opportunity to even be able to introduce myself to some of these people,

to be able to reintroduce myself to some of these people, to say some things that some people may not agree with, say some things that a lot may not agree with, say some things that a lot of people may agree with and go, Dag, man, you know, I never seen somebody willing to speak so boldly about this stuff. You know what I'm saying? When I look back at Malcolm and King, a lot of times they may not have been like the most amazing organizers, if we're being honest about it.

But they were specifically Malcolm. He was great at just talking directly to people about what he felt, what he saw, and where he was accurately at in today's discourse of what was happening.

And that's what Roland Martin gives folks the opportunity to do. So why would I not come over here and try to do it? We are in a situation, and people ask me this

all the time, hey, what is your thoughts on the present state of black media? What's your thoughts on where we are with black movements? And this is what I say, and I want to hear what you think about this. I said, I'm afraid. I said, I'm afraid because if we allow everyone else to fund our movements, if we have to go to everyone else to explain our movements and if we Have to go to everyone else

to define our movements We're gonna get to a place where we are in control of none of it and We will be asking somebody else for permission. That's my greatest fear if we continue on the present path. But are we not already there? Me and my brothers, y'all can't see on camera. We walk outside right now and get locked up by the police.

I know some of the biggest self-proclaimed Marxists and socialists in the world. Everybody is a socialist, but they got millions of dollars in the bank. I don't know how the hell you a socialist and a millionaire. I don't understand. I will never understand how you a socialist and a millionaire. I just don't get it. But, you know, I could call some of the biggest socialists and Marxist self-proclaimed folks in the world to try to get us out of jail. They're going to hang up that phone and not send me a damn dime.

We're going to be in jail. Our lawyer fees are going to be unpaid. They're going to, you know, it's going to be internal emails. St. Louis cash is asking for money again. You know what I'm saying? Like, we ain't actually in a dilemma with the police. Like, we put ourselves in this situation. You know what I'm saying?

So, like, man, all that stuff don't really mean nothing to me, man. People want to come hit you with the brother Kuma Lakisaki stuff all the time. And I ain't knocking none of that because some of that we need for accurate atonement with our history. But at the same time, don't tell me nothing about none of that when you can drive right past the black person on the corner who sleeping in that snow today. And then it didn't even cross your mind to get outside of that forward focus and humanize that person when you said calls when you said uh call someone a lot of people a lot of people i know a lot of them i deal with a lot of people who oh i can't stand reverend jackson i mean they go on and on i remember i had my radio show on wv on. I said, I threw the question out. I said, let me ask y'all a question.

I said, if you were anywhere in the world, you got in trouble. I said, who would you call? Cats called in. They said, oh, I called Johnny Cochran. I said, you ain't going to be able to get to him. They said, I'll call Farrakhan. I said, you ain't getting to him. And I told them, I said, I'm not dismissing anybody.

I said, but let me tell you something. I said, here's what I know for a fact. I said, if you call the Rainbow Push office and they transfer you to either John Mitchell or the sister sitting across from John, I said, you are one person removed from reverend jackson i said now i said he ain't a saint he ain't perfect i said but here's the most important thing i said he's available and i said one of the greatest problems that we have and i know some folk if i start naming them where it took me months you're talking about these people in in the activist world wants to get them on my show i couldn't even reach them i said that's

the piece if we are not accessible to our people the biblical example if the woman with the blood problem was not able to touch the hem of his garment she could not have been healed the biggest mistake i got issues with black preachers who preach when the service is over they go into their bat cave and they never touch the people black leadership has to be accessible to the people or we will perish it does i don't know jesse jackson like that i'll try my best not to put no black folk name that i don't know like that but uh if you say he accessible i'm gonna call you to get to him all right because he ain't gonna pay the fall for the kids that's not a problem i can do that i'll just play it but like uh you right though man and black leadership also got to be something else it got to be reluctant like that's how I spot people that really are

leaders, reluctant leadership. Cause we're like that reluctance person that's analyzing. You didn't just jump off the roof and start this. You analyzed, you thought about it. There was some reluctancy at first. Do I do this? I think I'm gonna do it step by step, inch by inch. That's leadership. Leadership ain't going to hop you into camaro and go from zero to five thousand when they know we're not ready for that type of velocity and um what i see that happening a lot i mean so so in many spaces when people say it's a leaderless movement i might as well believe them because the actions don't reflect that there's any goddamn leadership whatsoever on the national scale so maybe they're right but but responsible reluctant leadership will not sit you in a

Lamborghini and say you know what we don't want 70 we going 30. What's the speed my 5570 man let's go 120 for no damn reason. Right, right. The radiator breaks and you crash them would now as a big come to Jesus to try to fix the Lamborghini. First of all, we shouldn't even have been driving no damn Lamborghini. Second of all, we shouldn't even have been going that fucking fast on this type of road. Right, right. I mean, I'm just being real. And like, what I see a lot

of times happening, and I don't want to take complete blame off of the systematic vices that got us in these situations because we shouldn't even be having to try to figure this stuff out. We should be should be absolutely able to just live regular sand with my phone just being able not worried about looking to review mirror and I work right yes we really should right but since we don't we got to approach it like that we got to approach it as if we got to look at it for what

is work our leaders got their brains blown out period they got killed murdered and captured yep some of them still in jail and we ain't even like created a real mass movement to address the fact that they're in jail but if we gonna do what we doing then let's do it from let's really look at what's going on for real for real not just from the pop culture lens not just because we got this artist on it today not just because we got creflo dollar coming through tomorrow not just because you got access to a person you never had access before now you want to stand in front of this person and kiki and haha meanwhile people grandmama down there at barnes dying from covet 19 people going to the hospital for other stuff and coming out with

coronavirus a lot of people went on the internet and see old I saw this from black leadership and it's pissed me off man they was going on the internet saying that the virus wasn't real that it was this that it was come on come on brother they was compared to the corona virus I said this is the people these are the people it's all empowered to talk to black people during an international global health crisis. These are the individuals who are opening their mouths and talking to the masses. In retrospect, when hundreds and thousands of millions of people die, these are all the same people who distant themselves from their original opinion that it wasn't real because

they didn't want to be considered a damn grandmama killer. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. It ain't. Yeah, it ain't me. Yep. And like I said, I got nothing to worry about, but I live in a city where I know they damn so ain't going to come. Last question. Is somebody watching? And they're like, Tef, you want it?

Man, I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do. I want to do a lot. I don't know where to start. They want, it could be their family, it could be their neighborhood, it could be their church, it could be their community, it could be their fraternity, it could be their sorority,

it can be their community group, it can be the church, it can be the community, it can be their fraternity, it can be their sorority, it can be their community group, it can be just as an individual. What would you tell them what they should do right now? First of all, we got to organize. And if you don't know how to organize, you got to click up with some people who willing to show you how I'm gonna say go to WW black man bill fill out the value pledge put your information in and somebody will contact you within a matter of days if not hours if I'm being honest that's a start we got open doors we black man for black people. We don't exclude nobody. But we are black men for black people. We are for black people. I got to be very clear on not me being derogatory. That's me saying that we have been so under attack that we have to create a new man, a

new ideology of what a man even is. So that's step one. Step two, if that don't make sense to you, like I'm good on it. Sit with yourself. Begin to think about your own life analyze the forces that have you in the situation that you're in it's not by happenstance we didn't just end up in the ghetto magically your cousin and your baby daddy didn't just end up in the prison accidentally uh that black trans person that was walking down the street that got raped and murdered for absolutely nothing. That didn't just happen because it just happened to happen. We got to analyze what's really going on. So do some deep self-reflection.

And I believe when you start to do that, you start to develop your own analysis about your place, not only your place in society but your place in the universe and i think we live in a world where we got all of this stuff we got the instagram we got the twitter we got the facebook we got the woo woo woo you want to be the baby you want to be meek mill you want to be megan the stallion you want to be all these these uh tributes that this this society has created this society handpicked these people and made these people into tributes and you want to be these people. You want to be a tribute. It's the Hunger Games.

You want to be a part of it. Because where you at, it ain't nothing going on. You could die walking outside where you at. And you looking at them shining. You looking at them shining. You say, man, they did it. I could do it. See, so now we repackaged the American dream and filled it up with a whole bunch of blood diamonds.

A whole bunch of blood diamonds, a whole bunch of LLCs and IRS ventures, and folks just in complicated situations because they want what the black folks that got shit have. So I say first you got to analyze yourself, your situation. Start to critically think about why you're in that situation, how you get in that situation. Some of it may be your personal responsibility, but I guarantee when you really start to take a bird's eye view of what's going on in your own life, I don't care if you the black man that's the CEO of Ford, I don't care if you LeBron James, I don't care if you

the brother that's the janitor down there at the regional hospital hospital when we all start to take a bird's eye view of our lives we will start to see that there is a one thing that is universal throughout all of that and that's the the absence of black power the absence of power the absence of autonomy over your own life the absence of being able to make a clear concise decision the absence saying, I want to actually be a black person that analyzes love differently. I want to love this woman differently. I don't want to reflect. She ain't got the fake ass and the fake titties, so I can't even humanize her like that. She ain't doing this. I can't even do that.

He ain't doing this. I can't even do that. We got to take a bird's eye view of our own lives. Start to take an account for the shit that we did to ourselves. Accurate. Place that where is it but also realize that you got an enemy realize that this come this didn't start yesterday this started hundreds of years ago when when some ships showed up at the coastal coast of Africa somewhere snatch some brothers snatch some sisters put them in the

belly of them boats brought their ass over here and turn their ass into product stopped up in Puerto Rico got them some bootleg niggas and brought them down and put them on the auction block and told some stupid Hunkies from the Appalachia that they came from the for Africa as well When he got some indigenous folks that was already here that was dark enough to put on the auction and block and use them as Africans From Africa as well. We had we are in a situation where we have just been manipulated The history is a lie. The origin of the discourse is a lie. So when you really open your mind up, really look at your life for what it's worth as a person, as a human being that's inflicted by these things, then you

start to see the necessity for you to move forward and get some of this off of you. Now, I may not be able to tell you how to get that off of you. I would suggest organization. But different people do different things. I'm going to tell you to join an organization, get in some alignment with some people that understand what you're going through, and let's get this up off of us. Yeah, Paul. I appreciate it. We'll be right back. 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 Lott. 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 starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

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