#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Ga. GOP ramps up voter suppression; Grandmother of Juneteenth speaks; Elijah McClain case findings

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

2.25.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Ga. GOP ramps up voter suppression; Grandmother of Juneteenth speaks; Elijah McClain case findings; Berkeley, Calif. implements sweeping police reforms; Texas winter storm aftermathSupport #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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

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We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Today's Thursday, February 25th, 2021. Roland Martin Unfiltered broadcasting live from Jacksonville, Florida.

Coming up on today's show, Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, talks about the massive voter suppression that Republicans are trying to enact in Georgia. Also, what will be done to force Democrats to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass the John Lewis Voting Act. We'll discuss all of that with him. Also, on today's show, we'll talk about the results regarding Elijah McClain. Today would have been his 25th birthday.

And of course, he suffered a heart attack after being arrested in Aurora, Colorado. Those cops, frankly, were wrong. Nothing's happening to them. That, folks, is a problem. Also, we'll talk with Opal Lee, who's trying to get Juneteenth to become a national holiday in the United States.

Also on today's show, coronavirus still impacting so many of us. The sister of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has passed away. We'll also talk black content and streaming services. It's good for black content for those providers. But what are those companies also doing when it comes to advertising with black media? We'll talk about that. And in Berkeley, California, they are defunding the police in a huge way. We'll explain to you what they're doing, something no one has ever tried before. Also, update on what's happening in Texas, where four of the board members of the state board

over the comfort of the state's energy have resigned because they don't even live in Texas. Folks, it is time to bring the funk on Rolling Mark Unfiltered. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the biz, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time.

And it's rolling. Best belief he's right on time. It's Roland Martin. Rolling with Roland now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Roland Martin. Yeah. Martin. The broadcast live from Jacksonville, Florida, where we've been here working on some in-conversation discussions. Today, we shot Janetta B. Cole, Tiffany Lofton, Charlie Cobb of SNCC, and Philip Agnew. I cannot wait to show you those interviews, folks.

It's going to be really great for you to see those interviews. And so we've been on the road all week. On Tuesday, we were in Atlanta talking with Cliff Albright and Ambassador Andrew Young yesterday. Had a great chance to sit down with the legendary attorney Fred Gray, 90 years old, one of the most important legal minds in our civil rights movement. And, of course, the conversation today. And so we certainly look forward to that. All right, folks, let's get into it. Let's talk politics. First and foremost, what is happening here in Georgia? We've spent lots of time in Georgia talking about there, and we've been emphasizing to you about Republicans and what they're trying to do.

All across the country, Republicans have been putting in place, proposing significant bills that will greatly undercut voting, especially black voters. In Georgia, what they're trying to do, folks, is beyond despicable. Because of what happened with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris winning that state and John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both winning U.S. Senate seats, what they're doing, they're actually trying to get rid of voting on Sundays. They want to curtail early voting five days. And they're trying to change a law

where if you did not vote in the general election, you can't register and vote for the runoff election. It is a number of things that they're doing and trying, folks, that makes no sense whatsoever. And so we're going to be talking about that with Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Let me introduce my panel as well. Let me know, folks, when Cliff is there. Of course, our Thursday panel every Thursday, Dr. Greg Carr, Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard University, Erica Savage-Wilson hosts Savage Politics Podcast, as well as recently covered Black Women Views. And so, as I said, let's now bring in Cliff Albright into our conversation. Cliff, always glad to see you. It is crazy, Cliff, what they're doing there.

And I keep telling people how dastardly it is, what's going on. I mean, they are, to say they want to get rid of, because they'll scare souls to the polls, trying to cut early voting down to five days. The Republicans in Georgia want to cheat, cheat, cheat in all future elections. Yeah. And what's, you know, there's a couple of things that's amazing about that, Roland, good to see you. You know, one is that, you know, basically what they're trying to change is the system that they set up. You know, back in 2005, you know, they went for, they pushed the absentee voting, and

mainly because they thought, not thought, but the reality was that it was mainly their folks that they were expecting to use it. And to a certain extent, that's been true for some of these years. But as we all know, in 2018 and definitely last year and then just last month in this runoff elections, black voters, people of color all across the board, but especially black voters used it to a great extent, literally shocked the world by using the vote by mail process. So now a process that they set up, they all of a sudden wanna scream it's fraudulent and it's a fixed situation.

And again, keeping in mind that this state went through not one, not two, but three different recounts and accounting whatever to double check the election. The Secretary of State repeatedly has said that there was no fraud, that this was one of the safest elections that they've ever had. He told the entire country that there was no fraud, and yet you have all of these bills that are coming out under the guise of trying to prevent voter fraud. So we know exactly what it is. It's just straight-up voter suppression. It's just straight-up Jim Crow. It's just straight-up poll taxes and counting of jelly beans. They are stainless in the ways that they're trying to steal our

votes. And again, talking about how significant this is, they are scared to death next year of Stacey Abrams running against Brian Kemp for the race to be governor of Georgia. Also, Senator Raphael Warnock is going to be running for re-election as well. And so they are trying to rig. Donald Trump loved running his mouth. Republicans kept talking about how the election was rigged. This is actually election rigging

what they are trying to do in Georgia. Yes, election rigging, and it's being led by folks that have been rigging elections for a long time. One of the main sponsors of the largest of these bills, the omnibus bill that includes a whole bunch of these procedure of voter suppression tactics in it, is a representative called Fleming, who years ago in a very rural county. Right. And we say this all the time that when we don't deal with voter suppression in rural areas that happens in the darkness, it's only a matter of time before it expands like bacteria, right, or like a virus. And so this Fleming person literally was trying to steal votes in rural Hancock County, right, trying to get people kicked off the voter rolls, right, trying to investigate voters.

And now this is the person that's leading the attack on the statewide voter suppression that's taking place. So again, these are folks that, they've been at this for a long time. But now with the emphasis of the big lie, right, the national big lie. And again, in spite of the fact that we know that there's no fraud taking place in these elections, these are the folks that are attacking our right to vote right here in this state. And again, it just really emphasizes why we critically, urgently, we need H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 at the federal level, the restoration of strengthening the Voting Rights Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We need these acts passed, not tomorrow, not next week.

We need them passed yesterday, because that is one of the main ways that we're going to have to have a tool in order to fight against what's taking place, not just in Georgia, but all across the country. As you know, there are 200 estimated, I think the Brennan Center estimated there's 253 bills that have been introduced in 43 states across the country.

Not only that, one of the things they want to do, they want to only allow absentee balloting for folks 75 or older. That's right. I mean, limiting the absentee to 75 and older, getting rid of no excuse, requiring multiple hard copies of your photo ID.

There's even versions talking about, you know, just like they have in Alabama where you might have to have an affidavit or a witness signature or something to that effect. All of these things, I mean, the range of tactics that they are using, again, is really just shameless. They're not even trying to really hide that it's voter suppression. They're not even really trying to hide it. And they've been caught on video in the past.

I think it was the speaker, the Republican speaker of the House, I believe, who was caught saying that if we continue to do this, you know, vote by mail and expanding this voting, that Republicans will never be able to win another election. So they've been very honest about what it is that they're trying to do. The question is, you know, what are we going to do to stop them, both in terms of stopping them in the legislature, stopping them in the courts? As you know, Roland, we're not afraid of suing the state of Georgia. So stopping them in the courts. But again, at the federal level, we have got to have action on these federal bills that are pending in Congress right now. That's why our folks risked their lives in this election cycle

to take control of the Senate and to be able to take control of Congress so that we can we can pass bold action in order to protect our voting rights and all the other major issues that we care deeply about. Speaking of that, when you talk about taking that bold action, that also means forcing these Democrats, they're going to have to actually get rid of the filibuster. And so what are you, LaTosha Brown and others doing? Because look, this is what I keep saying. This action has to be taken this year. After this COVID bill, the John Lewis Act should be the next bill. And if that means bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Washington, D.C., dropping them on the Capitol, going door to door, putting pressure on Joe Manchin, on Christine Sienema, D, Diane Feinstein and others. It has to happen because if the federal bill is not passed, they can kiss the majority.

They can kiss the control away. And you tweeted this the other day. Look, we can't make no argument. Somebody who didn't vote as to why they should vote if they didn't use the power when they had it. That's right. And not only to you can't make that argument to somebody who didn't vote, but even folks who did vote, right? Some first-time voters, some folks that went skeptically to vote, right? I've seen responses to a tweet thread that I did yesterday where people are giving their personal testimonies of how they helped mobilize younger voters, first-time voters, new voters, skeptical voters, right? Who weren't really feeling the process,

but they got them to come out. But now those folks are looking at the process and saying, wait a minute, what's going on? We did all this, we got them power in Congress, and now we gotta rely on a parliamentarian? That's something that we never had to say when we was going out there mobilizing voters during this past election cycle. And if you go out here, if you risk your life in the midst of COVID, right, if you put everything on the line, what you are going to win is you're going to win the right to have the parliamentarians decide our future. Or you're going to win the right to have Manchin and Sinema to decide our futures. That's not what we were telling folks. And that can't be what the reality is.

And so to your question, we've got to mobilize our folks in all of our states to reach out to their representatives, to put pressure on their congressional leadership, that includes Sumer, in order to deal with these folks that are causing us to not be able to squash the filibuster, right? But to also put pressure on the Biden administration. It's not acceptable that they're looking at the antics of a mansion and a cinema, and I call them man cinema, right, because they're linked like that. But it's not acceptable that the Biden administration

is going to just look at these two folks and allow them to dictate the agenda and not use the tools that they have at their disposal to get these people to act right. At the end of the day, Joe Biden's been in the Senate or in the White House for 47 years. If he ain't learned enough tactics by this point, right, if he didn't learn enough of LBJ tactics at this point to figure out how to count some votes and twist some arms and get some stuff done, then we may have just put the wrong dude in there.

I'm not saying he's worse than the person that was there, clearly, but at the end of the day, we have got to pressure him to use every tool he's got at his disposal in order to get these folks to act right, squash the filibuster, and move on this agenda. And just for anybody to understand, we were very clear.

We were going to have to put pressure on whoever was in power, and so I kept saying, voting is one thing after folks are elected is another thing. And I'm telling you, the threat needs to be laid down right now. Cliff needs to be laid down to Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and every Democrat. We will drop 10,000 people a week on that Capitol. And if those folks on January 6th, I'm talking about saying, look, they would have protesting. I'm saying we're going to bring people.

We sitting here trying to overthrow stuff. We're going to bring people to hit every single United States senator, go to every single one of their offices, fill the chamber up, fill the hallways up because racial justice has to be there. And I don't give a damn about these Senate rules. I don't care about how we all get along and all that sort of stuff. No, damn all of that. The pressure has to say it should be real simple. COVID bill first. John Lewis voting bill second. George Floyd Justice Act third. Now, after that, y'all can sit here and do what you want to do on immigration or infrastructure,

but those should be the next first three bills that the Senate and the House confronts. Those should be, exactly, those should be the three bills. That's got to be the demand, and the other part of the demand is that to whatever extent he has executive authority to move on some of these things, that he needs to be moving on. For example, even before the H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 are passed, the Voting Rights Act are passed, they can be doing something at the executive level, right? They can be joining in on some of the existing lawsuits that are already floating through the system. They can be given support to fight against some of these voter suppression tactics. There's executive action that they can use even while we're trying to get those things

passed. But your point is absolutely correct that they have got to prioritize these issues. And not just because it's important to us, but at the end of the day, even if it was just out of their own self-interest, right? Even if it's just out of their own desire to maintain power, what they've got to understand if they don't act immediately on these voting rights bills, then 2022 can be a wrap, not because of anything that Black Voters Matter does

or Fair Fight does or doesn't does or anything like that, just because if they allow this whole slate of bills that is going through these key states, if they allow this to happen, it is going to be incredibly difficult to continue to do what we did last year, what we've been doing. So even if it's just out of a sense of preservation, they need to take action on these issues that we are demanding,

that they take action on, and that we motivated and mobilized people on throughout the election campaign. And let's be real clear. Okay, let's just be real clear here. Republicans, we're seeing what they're doing. 42 states in America, 42 states, they are proposing voter suppression bills. They wield power when they have the majority in the House and the Senate and the governor's match on the state level. They say, we're going to sit here and run a train on y'all. And I'm using that language for a reason. That's what they're sitting here doing, Cliff. And Democrats, oh, no, we're going to sit here and maintain our congenial rules because you know what's gonna happen if we're if we're not in power They're in power. Guess what? They gonna do it like they did with Amy Coney Barrett So either you use the power when you have it or you're gonna lose the power

And then you can't come to us to save your ass to get it back too because we gonna say we gave it to you We went to the polls. We did the best that we could. And let me be real clear, white America, y'all didn't do your job in Maine, where the woman lost. In Kentucky, where McGrath lost, where the woman lost.

In Iowa, all them white states, y'all didn't do your job. But guess what? We did what we were supposed to do in Georgia in order to get the doggone Senate. Latinos did what they were supposed to do in Arizona to elect Mark Kelly to get what they were supposed to do. And so now you get wants to bail you out. No, but to use this damn power or you're going to lose it in 2022. You exactly right. And that's the deal. And when we say that, people need to be clear. It's not a matter of us as organizers or you as a journalist wishing this on the country

or wishing this on Democrats, right? It's a matter of, look, we can read the tea leaves, right? Like I said earlier today, you don't blame the doctor for giving the diagnosis. So if I'm telling you that if you fail to move on these policies, that there's going to be consequences and repercussions, it's not because I'm going to be the one out there that's saying that people don't vote. Right. But I am telling you just off of my experience, just as you, Roland, are telling folks off of your experience, we can see what's coming. And we can already see that if there's not movement on these issues, like you said, the Voting Rights Act, COVID, George Floyd, you know, throwing in the increase in the minimum wage, which right now there's that whole fight

over whether that's going to be included in this COVID package, but that if there's not student loan, if there's not enough movement on these issues, and there might be one or two that they lose on, right, or they can't get done, right, but there's not enough movement on this. We are telling folks there's going to be consequences because it is human nature that if you convince folks to vote because their vote has power, because their vote will change policies and change their lives, and then that doesn't happen.

It's not rocket science to know that you are going to see a decrease in turnout. And it may not, it could be 1%, 4%, 5%, whatever. It doesn't have to be a 50% decrease, but with the razor-thin margins that we see, that kind of a decrease could be disastrous. That's what we're

trying to tell folks, and they have got to take bold action right now. It's not even bold action, because we're talking about policies that are remarkably popular. The COVID bill is remarkably popular. The minimum wage is remarkably popular. The COVID bill is remarkably popular. The minimum wage, remarkably popular. The voting rights is remarkably popular. So it's not even a big lift.

There's just got to be the political will for them to get it done. Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. We really appreciate it, man. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Rose. Rishi Coburn, I'm going to go to you first. It's called getting off your lazy asses and using your power. And I know people out there shouldn't have gone, well, yeah, but that's what we told you. I

keep telling y'all, two people are going to win, Trump or Biden. Who is going to win in Georgia? It was going to be Loeffler and Perdue or Ossoff and Warnock, bottom line. But what can't nobody out there say? I didn't warn you that after we vote, then we have to make them do what they said they were going to do. That's what we're talking about here, Recy. Absolutely. And I think that a person, I think that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is getting off way too easy in all this because it's popular to try to hound, you know, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. But do you see people having to hound Nancy Speaker Pelosi? She always gets the job done, even though her margins in

Congress are slim, much slimmer than what she had in the last session of Congress. But it seems like Chuck Schumer is asleep at the wheel. He's the one who has the out-of-control caucus. He's the one who has the caucus members who are trying to derail Biden's cabinet nominees. He's the one who has his caucus members who are undermining the fight for $15 minimum wage, which is the Biden-Harris promise, as well as a Democratic promise. Almost all the Democrats ran on that. So I think there needs to be considerably more pressure on Chuck Schumer, who is up for reelection in 2022. Now, granted, he's very popular in his home state of New York. Primaring him probably would not result in a successful primary. But I just think that it's his first time being majority leader, and he was minority leader

throughout the entire Trump presidency. So it's time for him to step up. It's time for him to make stuff happen because that's his job as majority leader. And if he's not capable to do it, then somebody else needs to step up and do that job because I'm not seeing it from him. And it seems like they're just not as united as they need to be. And that's going to be the biggest hindrance when it comes to passing any kind of agenda, particularly anything that's going to take more than 50 votes without Chuck Schumer being willing to scrap the filibuster. Erica, they got to fight. They got to be willing to fight. They got to be willing to scrap. They got to learn how to, again, wield power. And I'm sick of all this nice shit. I'm sick of it. OK, we dealt with four years of Republicans. No,

not four years. The last two years of Obama. So for the last six years, Republicans are like, hell no. We ain't passing Jack. We ain't confirming judges. We ain't. Y'all can pass all the bills in the House you want to. They're going to die in the Senate. Now you have the power. It's 50-50.

And yes, you have to sit here and kiss the butt of Manchin and Siena, but somebody got to go to them and say, hey, fool, guess what? If you idiots don't end the filibuster bill and we don't pass a John Lewis act, y'all going to be in the minority in 2023?

Absolutely, because it was Georgians that delivered Warnock and Ossoff. 1.3 million Georgians brave to vote by mail. And when we look at the actions of Speaker Ralston, which I'm glad that Cliff Albright brought his name forward, January the 7th, the day after the insurrection, the day after the senatorial victory in Georgia. Speaker Ralston, who has been speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives since 2010, stood up the Georgia Special Committee on Election Integrity. And that committee, which does comprise Barry Fleming, who Cliff Albright also mentioned, I counted so far 47 anti-democratic, anti-voting bills that they have introduced since January. And four of those bills are already engrossed, meaning that they've already passed over to the Senate and that they've been certified by the Senate secretary. have been actively working since the day after the United States Capitol was taken over by insurrectionists and treasonists. They have been working to effectively ensure that Georgians do

not see victory again. So based on those merits of victory that Georgia delivered to the Senate, it is only becoming that they take action. And so even we're looking at these big two bills, House Bill 531 in Georgia, SB 241, which are egregious in nature, that you have the Senate Ethics Committee that was meeting at 730 in the morning to get a hearing on it. Those two bills, which would effectively ban mobile voting, which would also ensure that folks who wanted to vote by mail again, that they would have to be able to provide a copy of their driver's license or a copy of their state-issued Georgia ID. Those are the acceptable forms of ID just to request their ballot. There are a whole other

bunch of hoops that folks have to jump through in order to request their ballot. There are a whole other bunch of hoops that folks have to jump through in order to submit their ballot. And this is detrimental for communities, particularly rural communities. They don't have printing facilities or access to copiers or scanners in their community to be able to do those things. For folks who don't have a Georgia state ID or a Georgia's driver's license, they may have only their tribal identification. The bills that are coming out are fast and swift. We have crossover day because I'm back in Georgia. We have crossover day that should be taking place on March the 5th.

And if those bills get over to crossover day, then we're really talking about an uphill battle. So Georgians are getting ready to protest today. There's another big protest that will be happening on Monday when these bills will either be going through committee or have another hearing or actually go through HB 531, be going to the floor for a vote. There is trouble in the water. And so the response needs to be absolutely for H.R. 1 and 4 to pass because we can see that Georgia has definitely cranked up the heat around that preclearance that was struck down with the Voting Rights Act. They are actively ensuring that folks who are disabled, people who are elderly, people who are immunocompromised, people who want to vote, that it is more difficult for them to do. We are in a crisis state and we need for our Congress to respond accordingly to all 43 states.

Bottom line here, Dr. Greg Carr, for those people who don't understand history, who don't understand the reality, black leaders, civil rights leaders, for years, they have threatened, they have made it perfectly clear that we are going to use the power of the people to bring them to the nation's capital to force you to do what you do. It was a Philip Randolph who threatened a mass march on Washington to force the hand of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Simple as that. It's been other leaders who have done that. So what we're talking about ain't new. OK, it's not new. Black folks have always done that. And this is also an issue that can garner support from other people to stand with us. OK, young people, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans. The issue of voter suppression cuts across uh so many different areas and i think the polling numbers will be there we've got to have people who are going to push hard enough to if somebody don't have the heart to get rid of the filibuster to pass this

bill because you're not going to get 10 republican votes then guess what Greg? We got to give them some heart and that might mean a swift kick in the butt. There's no question, Roland. I'm actually very encouraged. I'm energized. And I congratulate the white nationalists who are now in the Republican Party. I encourage them in their fight because I have no stake in this country. if it's going to remain a settler project, it can go to hell. And what history of this country showed us is that at moments like this, the future of the country in terms of what happens in the immediate wake of these type of actions is pretty predictable. The Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement. And these white nationalists, congratulations, white boys and girls, because you're going

to destroy your country. And that's not necessarily a bad thing for the people who live in it. What do I mean by that? The Senate wasn't flipped in January with the runoff election. We know who Manchin was. We knew who Sinema was. What happened was the thing was put close enough to engage in an all-out war. Joe Manchin, to the special interests in his formerly coal mining West Virginia, should

be destroyed. And he should be destroyed by those who call themselves allies. I'm not talking about black and brown people. I'm talking about the white people who said they're allies of democracy and they're for people. He should move down to West Virginia. And if polling data can be trusted, and I think some of it can, there are a number of white nationalists who actually support much of the legislation in the Biden-Harris agenda, and they can be turned against Joe Manchin. This is full spectrum, last death cry rattle for the white nationalists.

And so we have to understand, you know, now is not the time to react out of emotion. Americans generally are politically immature, and Black America in this regard is no different. We didn't win in January. What we did was won the right to fight another round. And now we're engaged in a 20. Right. You know, we're in a way. And we said this, Roland, you've been saying this all along. We're in a 20 month, 22 month war right now. If if they pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, it is going to be appealed to the Supreme Court, and they've got a 6-3 majority between Justice McConnell Gorsuch and Justice McConnell Barrett, along with Justice Beer Kavanaugh.

They will, because remember, any Voting Rights Act is only pursuant to the power Congress has under Section 2 of the 15th Amendment. They will simply interpret it as being unconstitutional. There are two cases on the docket of the Supreme Court this session, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Arizona GOP v. Democratic National Committee. Those are testing whether or not Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as it currently exists, is constitutional. Look for Justice Clarence Thomas, who has a whole head made of bone, to stand with his racist friends in the deep Uncle Tom style and do what he did in the case that we saw him write a dissent in this week, GOP versus DeGraffenry, where he said an election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence.

One of the most exquisitely absurd sentences in the history of SCOTUS jurisprudence. Why am I saying all this? I'm saying that voting is one tool in our battle, but this is not American Idol. This isn't a popularity contest. And if and when they pass these laws, this isn't the time to take racists on the GOP side who nobody ever even thinks to narrate in the calculus of who will and won't vote, your states are not lily white. I'll end with this. The striking thing now, when you read this DeGraff and Reed decision that came down this week, is that Alito, is that Gorsuch, is that Thomas, particularly Thomas, are willing to try to

blunt the force of state supreme courts. Why? Because these white nationalists and their Tom servant understand this in the coming waves of what will happen in this little settler colony as it disintegrates. State court, Supreme Court justices, many of them are elected by statewide ballots, meaning you can't gerrymander them. You can't basically exclude them. So these legislatures that are passing these laws, if they're involving state constitutions,

they can be blocked by state supreme courts. It's time for us not to get emotional. As John R. Clarke used to say, don't get mad, get smart. It's time to up the tactical advantage and bust this little country out. It's going to fall either way. Be smarter than to think if you lose a battle, somehow you've lost the war. It's time to increase the engagement, not diminish it. Absolutely. Folks, I told you this was going to happen, which means if you say a war is coming, prepare yourself, undergird yourself.

And we're going to keep sounding this alarm. Mainstream media can keep doing what the hell they're doing we're prepared and if that means that we're gonna take this show back to Georgia to stay with folks there we're gonna do that we're gonna focus on what's happening in Pennsylvania the same thing is happening there we're gonna use our power which is why y'all have got to support what we do because what we're talking about here folks is our future and that of our children our children's children if the Republicans are able

To use the power of political gerrymandering and lock these laws into place You're talking about not only control for the next 10 years until the next United States census They're gonna have a gerrymandered so bad that they're even talking about in Pennsylvania and other states going to district judges because they're angry at the state Supreme Court ruled against Republicans. That's how serious this is. They, I told y'all, they want to use the power of the judicial branch on the federal and the state level to keep in place white supremacy so when America's in the nation, majority of people of color by 2043, we are still going to be, frankly, slavery without shackles.

That is their goal. And we're going to keep fighting that. Coming up next, we're going to talk about should Juneteenth become a national holiday. The woman who is speaking out, trying to make that happen. We'll talk with Oprah Lee next on Roland Martin Unfiltered, broadcasting live from Jacksonville, Florida,

back in a moment. Martin! I grew up wanting a lot of activities in my neighborhood that was in close proximity. You know, my mom wasn't always there, so I didn't always have a ride to places. And you know, you want to be able to walk down the street and get to something that's some food for your soul

in your community. You know, I relished the days of being in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and when I had to go out there and live with my people. They had actually black-owned corner stores. My uncle owned one. My Uncle Donald owned a cleaner's and a corner store. And he a city councilman down there now.

It's like, that was big for him. He was like, yo, man, you got to own something. Got to own something. His wife was named Louise. It always killed me. I used to call him own something. His wife was named Louise. It always killed me. I used to call him George Jefferson. His name was Donald. Because his wife was named Louise.

And that was big to see my family own and stuff. And it just cultivated what my dad told me. My dad, he didn't say a lot of good stuff, but the three things that he did give me. My dad, he didn't say a lot of good stuff, but the three things that he did give me,

play chess, so you'll be a thinker, you don't have to work for nobody. He told me that, he said, you don't have to work for nobody. The same energy that you put into for somebody else, you can put that same energy into for yourself. And then he'd go into his field. See, they talking about black people don't wanna work.

Black people just don't want no job. You know what I'm saying? We don't work for nobody else. We want our own stuff. That's it. Give me my own stuff. I come to work every day. You know what I'm saying?

He'd go into his own field. And like, I don't work for anybody. I'm Deon Cole, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay woke. All right, folks, welcome back. Jacksonville, Florida, Roland Martin Unfiltered broadcasting from here. Juneteenth. I'm a native of Texas, who the first state to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. It is the only state is the only actually holiday that actually recognizes or speaks to slavery. Now, keep in mind, we're celebrating a holiday

where black people in Texas found out two months late, two years late, okay, 1865. And so after Texas made its state holiday, thanks to the late Representative Al Edwards, my frat brother, other states began to celebrate Juneteenth in different ways. Now, there's an effort. Folks want to make it a national holiday.

Now, y'all might remember when that fool Donald Trump said that part of his little black platinum plan would make Juneteenth a national holiday. It actually could already be a national holiday if Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin would not have blocked it in the United States Senate. Well, Oprah Lee, many call her the grandmother of Juneteenth. She, of course, has been traveling around the country trying to make this an issue. She was in Washington, D.C. today at a news conference, the National Press Club. She joins us right now on Rolling Mark Unfiltered. Opal, how are you doing? I'm alive and kicking. What about you?

I am doing great. And so, again, look, I'm 52 years old. I've been celebrating Juneteenth my whole life. I've been a native of Texas. And so for a lot of people who didn't know about Juneteenth, it was a way of life for us black Texans. And so your effort trying to make this a national holiday, how's it going thus far? Today was a red letter day because the House and the Senate have put the bill up again. And so we are rolling. We figure we're going to have Juneteenth, a national holiday, by Juneteenth 2021. So, look, it's not like it can't get passed.

And so who is leading the legislation? Who do you think is going to make it happen? Well, in the House, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee is heading that. And in the Senate, we've got Barbara Smith, Barbara, Tina Smith, Tina Smith, I'm sorry, and Martin and Cornyn. Those are the ones in the Senate who are backing it. So, again, it is something that is important, but beyond just— Don't let me forget Cory Booker. Go ahead. Go ahead.

You said Senator Cory Booker. Go ahead. He's the one backing it, too. So all these good people, it means that soon and very soon we're going to have a national holiday. And the fact that some 49 states have some type of celebration of Juneteenth and all overseas. So it's long overdue. I certainly agree with you. It is long overdue. I'd certainly agree with you. It is long overdue.

We appreciate all the work that you're putting into traveling in this country, trying to make Juneteenth become a national holiday. I thank you for letting your viewers know. And we need everybody and his daddy to go and sign our petition, you know, to Juneteenth.us and find the link where they can sign the petition. And that will make us have another 1.5 million signatures to take take the Congress and they won't think it's just one little old lady and her group Trying to make a Jews of holiday All right, then hopefully I appreciate it thanks a lot Thank you love you. Thank you

Love you as well you take care Greg Lee I want to start with a great car. I'm sorry. I want to. Thank you. Love you as well, you take care. Greg Lee, I wanna start with, Greg Carr, I'm sorry, I wanna start with you. From a historical standpoint, again, when you think about how this country has frankly ignored the reality, the impact of slavery in this country, people of African descent,

when you look at what this, like in many ways what this country has people of African descent. When you look at what this, like in many ways, what this country has done to acknowledge the Holocaust, which didn't happen here, it happened in Germany. And I know some look at Juneteenth from a festive standpoint, but because, you know, when blacks found out they were free,

what value do you see, Dr. Carr, in Juneteenth becoming a national holiday in the United States? I think the value is to white people. And that's not a bad thing. If you want to have a country, you have to create a national identity. This country doesn't have one. It's not a nation. It's a state with many different nations in it.

Juneteenth is a ritual that many of us, and you've been doing it your whole life as a Texan, many of us have always celebrated with Kwanzaa, Emancipation Day used to be, now Watch Night into January 1st, so forth and so on. If making it a federal holiday, and can't nobody be mad at Ms. Lee, Oprah Lee, come on y'all, Oprah Lee for president, Come on now. But by embracing traditions from the various nations that make this country up, the country begins to establish itself

as a nation. So, you know, Ron Johnson, a human joke who will soon be washed away with the Senate election in 2022 in Wisconsin. Ron Johnson is standing for the country in his mind. This is a white man's country in Ron Johnson's rotting mind. And as he dies and turns to dust, along with that mentality, he will be replaced by those who will continue to celebrate the things that they hold dear to themselves, meaning that the only thing in question will be whether or not this country will expand itself in a way to share in these rituals

so that then that can be used as symbolic momentum, to generate symbolic momentum for the type of deep structural change that has to happen in order for this to remain a country. So really passing Juneteenth as a national holiday would benefit white folk as much as it would black folk, because we're going to remain a country. So really passing Juneteenth as a national holiday would benefit white folk as much as it will black folk because we're going to celebrate it anyway. Erica. Well, I have to say, just looking at Mother Opalee

and I did watch the event at the press club, one of the things that stood out to me was that this is a woman that is in her 90s that is still civically engaged. And if the message of civic engagement had to look like the person, it would be Mother Opal Lee, who has not only traveled the country, but has walked and that knows the legislators who are key in order to making bills pass. I think that Ms. Lee should really convict people who are not engaged in the semblance of democracy that remains of not doing anything.

If you have someone who was in her 90s that has seen this country through a lens that none of us have seen, but that is still moving, she's still pressing, she's still moving forward with that kind of bout of energy, everybody ought to be engaged. As much as you've talked about, Roland, throughout the years, the importance of the vote, the importance of being engaged, the importance of understanding how political power and the one of the things that she said that really touched me um she when she tore off her mask um and and got into the mic i just want to repeat back she said never before have millions been aware of the atrocities that happen to the enslaved or the blatant disregard for human life that is now occurring a residual effect of slavery and a carryover of a slave mentality that has a vice grip on all of America get engaged. One of the things that jumps out at me, Recy, when we talk about this conversation,

the country has never wanted to confront its past. And making a national holiday, you force America to have to say slavery once a year. You force America to have to require learning modules. You force America to have to confront it. And you force corporate America, who think they probably will salivate on this to think they're going to come pimp us with juneteenth oh no let's be clear i've been noticing all these corporations uh all of a sudden trying to embrace juneteenth but yeah but who are you spending your money with are you spending it on mainstream are you spending in black communities are you only giving black organizations ten thousand000 for a table or making

monetary donations? But are you truly funding black organizations and black businesses and opportunities along those lines? See, that's the whole deal. You know, later in this later in the show, we can have a conversation about a show on Netflix and black content creators, but I sent Netflix a text message and an email, and I sent to Bazoma, the chief marketing officer, saying, what's y'all black spend on black media? It's like you want

folks to watch your content, but what are you spending your money on? See, again, I keep coming back to the money because if you don't deal with the money, then you're ignoring that they were dealing with the money with us when it came to people of African descent being slaves. We made capitalism real. We made we built the economic engine of this push for Juneteenth been a national holiday is not saying, well, hey, let's have a day off. But it's to force America to say you're going to have to reckon with your past. Yeah, absolutely. And I do remember last year around the time where we have the racial what we thought or what was kind of somewhat of a racial reckoning,

where Juneteenth all of a sudden was something that was recognized more. And it certainly was more corporate and monetized and things of that nature. And so one thing I do appreciate, at least about this push, is that it's not precipitated by Black trauma or death. We've already had enough of that with slavery. That wasn't enough. We have to wait till another Black person gets killed before we bring up these symbolic holidays and things like that. And I really couldn't have said it better than Dr. Carl R. Erica about, you know, Mother Opal Lee. She has been leading this charge for so long. And so I think that it's really important that we, you know, talk about these things outside of the context of, you know, just, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement or just something that recently happened, but that this is an ongoing fight to have this country recognize the way that

Black people have been treated in this country. And the last thing I'll say is I want to shout out VP Kamala Harris because she was one of the co-sponsors of this legislation in the last session of Congress last year. And so I'm interested to see what Majority Leader Schumer does, because, you know, what Republicans have been able to do, at least while Mitch McConnell was the majority leader, was fang this whole filibuster. And then that was it. It was dead in the water. So I'm interested to see if Chuck Schumer refuses to get rid of the filibuster, how he's going to work around not having necessarily 60 votes. Juneteenth might have 60 votes because, as Mother Opaleen pointed out, there are multiple

Republican co-sponsors, particularly from Texas, with Texas, John Cornyn. So there is something that maybe they can do. But, you know, it's only taking one person to block the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, to block the anti-lynching legislation that Senator Kamala Harris and Cory Booker put together, and to block the Juneteenth legislation. And so I'm interested to see what is Majority Leader Chuck Schumer going to do so that you force people to take these votes, you force these debates, and you force an actual vote on the legislation and not letting one whole thing up. And then we move on and change the subject. Yes. Folks, let's go to Denver where investigators

have released findings in the fatal arrest of Elijah McClain. The findings criticize how police how they faulted police for the entire incident, including their quick, aggressive treatment of McClain, who would have returned 25 years old today. The investigation that was commissioned by the city of Aurora found two contrasting stories about what happened to McClain in August of 2019 after someone reported him as suspicious. One, based on officer statements in two investigators where police described a violent, relentless struggle. Another, based on body camera footage in which McClain can be heard crying out in pain,

apologizing, explaining himself and pleading with the officers as they restrain him, applied pain compliance techniques and said or kneeled on him. City management is reviewing the findings to determine what the next step should be. As of right now, there are several other investigations into his death. The Colorado Attorney General's Office is pursuing a criminal investigation. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is investigating the use of ketamine. And the U.S. Attorney's Office, Department of Justice, and the FBI are all conducting a federal civil rights investigation. But the bottom line here, with all of that, Erica, he dead.

Mama's in pain. Family's in pain. Family's in pain. Cops have not the cops have not been prosecuted. And so what we are probably going to likely find is, again, police killing another black man for no reason whatsoever other than being black. Same thing with the cops, with a grand jury declined to indict the cops in Rochester, New York. That particular case that came down a couple of days ago as well. Again, this this becomes just repeatedly repeated over and over and over again. The same reactions. Yeah, it's recent. Just talk about that precipitation of black trauma.

This is something that has you know, we're used to, unfortunately, this hostility of law enforcement against the black body because of how they were birthed. Right. They were birthed out of slave patrols. We've talked about that on this particular platform. as they are supposed to operate, are actually held accountable, that they are no longer a death squad to the Black body, killing Black men, Black women, accosting Black children in our schools, putting a level of fear in Black children that should be going to school to get their education and have a social aspect of school until that is scrapped. We will unfortunately continue to see this. You're thinking about Elijah McClain, and then we just had Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed not by police officers but by somebody who did have some type of engagement with law enforcement here just a year ago.

And we're still awaiting justice for that particular case. So there has to be some level of responsibility that can be felt by those people who enter into agreements to protect and serve all people until that happens, until these police officers that dare take the life of a person, until they are held accountable. Unfortunately, I just read another story today of a black man that was gunned down, unarmed by a police officer. This will continue to be a part of the book of black life and it has to and it has to cease um it is it is certainly sad that um that that we're having to talk about today uh this particular story uh greg carr uh mclean should have been celebrating his 25th birthday absolutely uh yesterday uh the secretary of state designee anthony blinken uh said that the United States

is going to apply for readmission to the U.N. Human Rights Council. There are three-year terms, and the United States is going to apply to be in one of the three-year terms. I think the United States of America should be brought up on human rights abuses. When we see Brown v. Board of Education and the concessions, the legal concessions of the 1950s and 60s, a great deal of those concessions came because the United States was facing a changing world, the African independence movement, the Caribbean independence movement, Latin America.

And they did not want to lose in the court of public opinion to Russia and China and other places. I think we make a mistake when we restrict our criticisms of these white nationalists who kill us with impunity. We make a mistake when we appeal solely to the domestic tribunals at the local, state, and federal level. United States of America, as Malcolm X said in the 1960s, as Paul and S.E. Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois and William Patterson and Louise Thompson Patterson and many others sit in the 1950s and 40s should be brought up on charges in Geneva and in New York before the United Nations.

So Secretary Blinken, yes, rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council and save all the smoke you have for Cuba and Venezuela and protecting Israel. You save that smoke for the fact that the rest of us will now need to drag your naked country into the dock on the international level, whether you sign a signatory of a human rights treaty or not, because you don't move in the United States until the world pays attention. That's an important thing I think we need to learn now, because there will be no justice. You can't bring him back to life at this point. Reed, see, this is also why the pressure has to stay on

and also push the Department of Justice to be far more aggressive, which also means changing the laws to go after people for violating the civil rights of folks. And that's what we saw here. Absolutely. I mean, the Department of Justice was a complete joke. Well, actually,

it was doing what it was intended to do under the Trump white nationalist regime, which is to actually propagate white nationalism and abuse against black and brown bodies. But under the Biden-Harris administration, they do have some really solid people lined up, Vanita Gupta, as well as Kristen Clark. But we see that they're the ones that are actually under attack by the Republicans in the Senate, even when it's a Merrick Garland hearing for Attorney General. And so I think this is one of the ways that the Republicans are kind of trying to obstruct and slow walk the progress that the Biden-Harris administration has in terms of the agenda for these consent decrees, for these investigations. But let's be honest, investigations

do not bring back dead people, murdered people, lynched Black people. And so there has to be some sort of change. The George Floyd Justice and Policing Act is a part of that. And that's something that President Biden tweeted about today. He's looking forward to signing. It's coming up and potentially in the Senate next week. I think it's coming up in the House next week as well. And so we'll have to see what happens with that. But at the reality of it is that we have a cultural we have a structural issue in our society that does not value black lives. We have people who appoint themselves slave patrols. So it's not even just a police officer, a law enforcement issue. It's people who feel like black people are not full citizens and that they have a right to control our whereabouts, to oversee us. And when they feel threatened or when they perceive a threat, whether it's real or not, they have a right to take action against that. That's something that's not going to be solved by legislation or even the Department of Justice.

All right, folks, going to a quick break. We come back. We're going to talk about city of Berkeley defunding the police. A very aggressive plan they're doing. That is next on Roland Martin Unfiltered, broadcasting live here in Jacksonville, Florida. When you think about the fact that 2043, we are going to be a nation that's majority people of color. I really focus on this a lot on television, on radio, in my speeches. that my focus is trying to prepare us to have demographic power while also having educational economic power at the same time. Because there's nothing worse than having demographic numbers. But then you still don't have that economic power, that political power, and education power?

Well, you know, you and I, and I think most people know and understand that education is what we've got to impress on all of our people. We've got to help people to understand that if you want a decent quality of life, if you want the kind of quality of life where you're not having to worry about your food and your nutrition and being able to pay your bills or buy a house, then you've got to become educated.

The more education you have, the larger the paycheck is. And of course, we've got to be involved in entrepreneurship, taking the talent that we have to create businesses. And there's a lot of opportunity for that. Hi, I'm Vivian Green. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond,

and you're watching Roland Martin, my man Martin Unfiltered here in Jacksonville, Florida. The city of Berkeley, the city council there voted to end all traffic stops for low-level offenses such as not wearing a seatbelt or an expired license. Police will also need written consent for vehicle searches except under circumstances where consent is not legally required, and cops can also no longer conduct warrantless searches of people on parole or probation. The city council also voted to fire police officers that have published racist content online. These reforms follow protests against racist police violence across California and the country last summer. Common damn sense, Greg Carr. I mean, part of the problem we have when we talk about these incidents is that they take place on basic

stuff. The brother in Dallas who was just, Plano, Texas, who was just walking in the snow, who gets arrested, thank God he wasn't killed. You take of course what happened with Elijah McClain. We could go on and on and on. It's these basic traffic stops

that have, Walter Scott, that have led the folks being killed because these cops lose a damn mind. Absolutely, Roland. I mean, and you teased the story by talking about what Berkeley may be doing and what defunding the police may look like. One of the things that they're adopting is they're investing in a specialized care unit to respond to mental health calls. In other words, they're going to move some of that budget from policing to that and also transferring traffic enforcement duties to trained civilians. This is critical. And, you know, it is common sense. But when you allow the power of enforcement for things that shouldn't require the use of deadly force or anything like that, you turn that over to somebody with a gun on their hip. You've you've set yourself up for this kind of thing. And so Berkeley is indeed giving us a window into the types of repurposing of resources. That's what is meant by defund the police. Finally, in Alabama, we see in their state legislature, they're trying to pass some even

more stringent laws. Mike Harriot was just reporting on this, attacking journalists and other people. They want to increase the type of violence. Ultimately, public policy is really about enforcing a cultural view, a worldview. And in Berkeley, they seem to have the worldview of human beings, and they're taking a step in the right direction. Recy, it's called law enforcement. And what this does is say, focus your damn resources on real crimes and not petty crap absolutely i mean if you look at it

a vast majority of crimes in this country go unsolved so while people are out there harassing the hell out of somebody with a broken taillight or you know not having a seat belt on there's somebody out somewhere knocking somebody on top of their head and getting away with it and so the priorities are all messed up so yeah absolutely i think it's a great it's great steps. And I think that these are tangible, you know, wins that people who like the sloganeering of defund the police can cry to and say this is exactly what we mean, because that's what should be happening. We have so many of these horror stories where people are having a mental episode, families are dealing with somebody having that, they call the police and their family member ends up dead. And now nobody, it just escalates the situation. Philando Castile is another person who was involved in a traffic stop and he was murdered from that. We have so many of these examples. Sandra Bland pulled over for what failure to change failure to signal change or something stupid like that next thing you know she's dead in her jail cell and so if you

to dr carr's point if you have somebody who isn't gut trigger happy or who isn't on a power trip who thinks they can pull somebody over particularly a black person and harass the shit out of them and get their rocks off of you know wounding authority. If you have a trained person who's really just there to handle the traffic stop and that's it, then we might see some different outcomes. So this is a great step forward, but we need a bigger emphasis on mental health and the mental health responses.

And we need a bigger emphasis on enforcing safety. And that does not require an armed response in a vast majority of these cases. And this point here, there are some other cities that are taking action. This is for all the people out there whining and complaining,

defund the police. Well, fine. Call it whatever the hell you want to call it, but change the damn laws so you don't have these cops running amok using the power of the gun and the badge killing people. That's the real issue here, Erica. Sure. And that person could be them or their family members. When you think about the state of California, there's only six percent of a black population there. But they account for black folks account for 16% of the traffic stop. That

is crazy. And then also, you know, I'm thinking about all of the red light cameras, all of the cameras that we just have actively throughout our municipalities. Damn, send somebody a ticket. And if the ticket, not a ticket that has a financial burden on it, but perhaps a ticket where somebody could go and complete some type of community service to help uplift another community. There's so many other different ways to approach this. But as Recy has said and Dr. Carr has said, that when we continue to know how this whole enforcement entrapment, what it was birthed out of, it was birthed out of slave patrols, the absolute authority to be deputized and control Black bodies, when that is admitted and then there is a breaking from that, then I believe that we can actually conceptualize and

actually do and actually have laws like this in several other municipalities, because it's definitely something that's necessary. Locking people up. We are a country that has the most folks incarcerated throughout the entire globe. These are common sense solutions that need to be adopted across municipalities. Absolutely. And also, folks, our condolences go to D.C. Mayor Mira Bowser, whose sister died of COVID, pushing D.C. past the 1,000 death mark. That is just so unfortunate. She actually spoke out about that, torn up by it, of course. She died on the same day they actually passed the 1,000 death.

She was the mayor's only sister and died just short of her 65th birthday. This is what she said in a statement. Mercy was loved immensely and will be missed greatly as she joins the legions of angels who have gone home too soon due to the pandemic. Of course, the mayor also declared Wednesday a day of remembrance for more than the 500,000 Americans and 1,000 DC residents who had died from COVID-19. Still, folks, significant impact.

And so what we want you to do is while you're out there, please wear your mask, put on double mask, practice social distancing, take that COVID-19 vaccine. Am I gonna take it? You damn right I'm gonna take that. Cause look, ain't nothing, it's like living or death is really two options.

In fact, and this is just something that's really important here. I got a text message today from one of my lawyers, Erica, who a year later has still massive problems after having COVID-19. It impacts people differently. And so when I hear some people say, hey, you know what, it wasn't a big deal. I got over it. Other people have had the same. I'm not trying to go either way. And so this is something we don't have time to be playing with when we talk about COVID-19. Absolutely, Roland. And just even thinking about that, you know, in 2.7 years,

you just had a guest on last week, a doctor that talked about nearly three years of the life expectancy of Black folks has been chipped off because of COVID. And this is just based on the first six months of last year, 2020, that could actually go up. So when you think about that life or death piece, it's actually life or death for all of us. There's also responsibility that we have to not only ourselves, but to everybody else, because last year, well, in 2020, I believe it was about 80% of COVID deaths were folks that were 65 years and older. And so you're talking about generations of parents, generations of grandparents, elders that are dying and not just them, you know,

young people, middle-aged people as well. And so the long-term COVID effects, you know, that is something that we're starting to see. I know that there was a story on this week that I was watching a woman who was a marathon runner, a frequent runner, extraordinarily healthy, a year later has a really hard time taking six feet up a hill. She can't do it. And it is her desire to be able to run or just to take steps without having to beg for air, so to speak, that she's isolated herself. Her mental health has declined as well. We still have people that don't have sense of taste or smell. We have folks that their lung capacity is greatly diminished. There is a lot still to yet be discovered because this is still a novel virus. And so it behooves all of us to make sure, as you said, to double mask,

to make sure that we're washing our hands and that access to the vaccine, if it's in your community, to please make sure that you get all of the research that you can to make sure that you're up to speed on vaccine awareness and get the vaccine. Bottomline is, this is nothing to play with, Recy. It's as simple as that. And too

many of us are dying prematurely, and it's important for us to keep this front and center and not lose focus. Absolutely. And here's the thing. A lot of attention is brought on these anecdotal cases of, oh, this person had these side effects from the vaccine or this person died shortly after in the ballpark of having the vaccine. country is over 2,000 still. There are 70,000 cases on average every single day. And we still haven't seen the full impact of these various mutations that are starting to spread in smaller

locations, or I shouldn't say small locations, but in smaller cases. But we haven't seen them yet. And these cases, these mutations we know, these variants are more infectious and more contagious. And so we have to keep our foot on the gas and we have to bring that much more attention to the fact that people are still dying. And here's another thing. The vaccines haven't been tested or they're not available for children. What we do know is that Black children, Black and Brown children actually account for a majority, a vast majority of the juvenile and child deaths. And so that means that parents, if you can stop your child from getting it, or if you can stop yourself from being more susceptible to getting it, it doesn't necessarily prove that you can't transmit it, but it's more proof than not that it's more effective. There's

more evidence coming out that it is effective in stopping transmission. So there are things that you can do for your children who can't take the vaccine. And so we have to really be vigilant here. If you don't want to take it, that's on you. But at a bare minimum, please do not spread disinformation and misinformation about the vaccine. Do not spread disinformation and misinformation about treatment, about prevention for the COVID-19 vaccine. A lot of the stuff that people are saying, and I just tweeted about this other day about zinc and vitamin C and all these things. All you have to do is simply Google it and it'll come up showing that these are not

proven effective measures at preventing or solely treating okay now you might your doctor might say do that in addition to steroids and other medication that they're giving you but like i said and i'm not trying to be funny juices and berries is not going to save you from getting vaccine drinking hot ass.I. said is not going to save you from getting COVID. So we have to just be science based. We have to be logic based and we have to do what we can

to protect ourselves. Greg Carr? No, I agree. I mean, I do not shoot stuff in my arm. You take out the mandatory school shots and I don't get the flu shot. I don't get anything, you know, like that. However, we are in a moment when you say, as you said, we're talking about life and death.

So, yeah, I'm going to take the shot when my opportunity comes. We're also in a capitalist society. So, yes, we see AstraZeneca. We see that, you know, but we also see Johnson & Johnson on the verge of a one-shot COVID vaccine that seems to be highly effective, particularly against more severe forms of COVID-19. 86% efficacy against severe forms of COVID-19 in the U.S. and 82% against the severe disease in South Africa, where the new strain has caused the South African government to say, okay, the AstraZeneca is not working to the two dose. Why am I saying that? I'm saying the market will continue to push. These companies are going to continue to push to perfect these vaccines. I'll end with this.

We don't know how long the vaccines will be good for. In other words, is it a one-year shot? Is it going to do it every four months and so forth? We know now that as we're sitting on about a million and a half, between a million and a half and a million point seven shots administered a day in this country, kind of slowed because of the weather crisis over the last couple of weeks. We know that it looks like folks are going to be able to get this vaccine, get the vaccine. And that's from somebody that nobody shoot nothing in their arm. So trust me, everybody talk about conspiracy. Oh, it's not a conspiracy. I'm black in America. I know damn well they experiment on us.

I know damn well. But if you're shooting in your arm, then I'm going to America I know damn well they experiment on us I know damn well but if you're shooting in your arm then I'm gonna shoot it in my yeah yeah because I don't I'm not sure you know I'm not sure that they don't have a vaccine yet we don't know whether these are good for a year or not we don't know how long that we're gonna have to do this but I know that I want to stick around and so I'm with you brother I'm with y'all, sis. I mean, look, you got to take the vaccine. In fact, tomorrow on Roller Martin Unfiltered, we'll show you some of what Andrew Young had to say about why he took the vaccine. You saw a little bit of that on Tuesday. We'll have more of that tomorrow.

Got to go to break when we come back. We'll talk a new Netflix show, reality show, and a black funeral home that is next. Also, folks, don't forget, we want you to support what we do here, Roland Martin Unfiltered, bringing you the kind of content and the panel and discussion you're not going to get anywhere else. So please be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club by supporting us. Go to Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered,

paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, venmo.com and forward slash rmunfiltered. Of course, you can use Zelle by seeing the email is roland at rolandsmartin.com and forward slash RM unfiltered. Of course, you can use Zelle by seeing the email is Roland at Roland S. Martin dot com. Plus, you can send a money order to New Vision Media Inc. 1625 K Street, Northwest Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 2006. All right, folks, I'll be value, so my parents worked elections. They volunteered for campaigns. They ran phone banks.

I remember being seven, eight, nine years old. It was like you had no choice. It's not like you had to vote. It was like, yo, go over there for the next eight hours, stand there, and hand out these pamphlets to anybody who's walking in, and then we'll bring you lunch, and then you've got some water for yourself. It was kind of like, okay. Again, it wasn't like my brother could say, no, we're all right.

We're going to stay at the house. It didn't work that way. And so for me, that was a huge part of my upbringing. And look at you now. And it's very interesting because for me, service was a huge part of my upbringing. And that's just something that's just, you know, it's a natural thing. I don't think twice about going out and doing community service. I don't think twice about giving up my Saturday mornings, even if I stayed out late on Friday nights. I don't think twice about going to church in the mornings. I think that might be even

bigger than the civics piece in schools. I mean, I think that at this point, having that in schools at least gives the children the opportunity to go home and ask their parents, so mom, dad, what is this? What do you think we should do about this? This is what I learned in school today. Let's talk about it. At least gives the children something to bring home and start a conversation with. However, if the parents start that for the children, then, you know, then the children can go to school and say, hey, why am I not learning this here? Why don't I have a civics class? You know what I mean? And they'll have, we'll have more Roland Martins running around here. Hi, I'm Eldie Barge.

Hey, yo, peace world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. all right folks uh have you seen a lot of different streaming services in the whole lot these days. You got Netflix. You got Hulu. You got Prime Video. You got Paramount+. You got BET+. Let's see. You got HBO Max. You got Apple+.

We're about to have more streaming services than we actually have cable channels. And lots and lots of black content. Black people watch TV more than anybody else. And so all these people are targeting African-Americans. There's a show called Buried by the Banaras on Netflix. Check this out. I can put you on the transportation team. You can pick the families up.

No. You can drive them to the cemetery. You can drive them to the church. Last time you had me in the cemetery, my heels got all muddy because it was raining. My name is Ryan Bernard. I'm the owner at R. Bernard Federal Services. This is my office, the VIP suite.

My dad started this business so we could carry on his legacy and pass it down. I want to introduce you all to my Uncle Kevin. Hey there, how you doing, man? I'm here to pick up a body. I want the head to be straight, okay? If his head crooked, like this here, when they get rid of the bombing, it be hard to turn the neck.

So you keep your neck straight. You got it? And in this office, we have my mother. Zip it, zip it. Kim Jong-un, Mussolini, Stalin, and David Bernard. I'm your mama. I'm the boss. After I die, I'm still the boss. Pick up a body.

Yeah, I'm gonna put it back. There's something in the back of here? Yeah, we gonna put it back. Where is he going? Kevin, my Gucci purse is back there. I thought you quit. I quit every day. Compared to me, I think they're extremely lazy.

All I want from this woman is a little respect. Wait for a second. Good, good, good. Of course, the show is about a family that abandons a budget-friendly funeral home. Warren Robinson is the producer of the show, and he's joining us right now. Warren, how you doing? Hey, I'm good, Roland. How are you?

Great. We've seen similar shows. I forgot the network. There was a funeral home out of Dallas that I'm familiar with. They were on that particular show. You say it took quite a while to get this on air. Now, of course, you have all these services out here. Everybody's looking for black content. And so just talk about that process. Oh, man. So we actually I actually met the Benoit family back in 2018.

It took a while in the process just kind of convincing them to even go along with it, man, because they are not television people. Right. They're just down there running their business. And here comes somebody saying, hey, I want to sell you to a network. I want to put you on television. And so we had to convince them to go along with that process and convince them it was okay. And so had a little hiccup there, but we got them. We got them on board, sent it out, and got a lot of rejections. But then Netflix came in and said, you know what, hey, we want to put this on. So it took from 2018 to 2021 before you're actually seeing it. So all of these streaming services and networks and folks, again, targeting black content. But I got to ask you,

what are black content providers also saying to these companies about their practices beyond the content? Are you asking them, are they advertising with black media? What are they doing to get the word out? Or are they only spending their dollars on mainstream media? So, you know, are they also being challenged on how they're circulating dollars where it's not just on the content side, but on the business side too? Well, you know, actually I heard that, Roland, and I heard you bring that up and that's a very valid point that I think, uh, you and everybody should be pressing on and saying,

Hey, if you are creating black shows, starring black people for black eyes, are you also making sure that those dollars are being spread to the black community? and that especially includes Black media. So I hope that the networks and the streaming services are actually doing that. And it's up to all of us to kind of hold their feet to the fire on that. We as content producers ourselves, we have, you know, very little say. I don't work with the departments that handle any of the media. Now that we have our execs who work in our specific departments, that's kind of who we report to. And, you know, we definitely throw in words and say, hey, you know, we want to make sure that we're targeting here. We want to make sure that we're

marketing here. But outside of that, it's completely up to the executives at each of the companies to make those decisions. And so what we have to make sure that we're doing is that we are getting executives of color who are in those positions who are going to reach out and say, you know what, we are going to spend that money with black media. Well, and that's the piece there, because again, I think what also we have to make sure on the production end of these shows that we're seeing black folks behind the camera, not just as producers, not just black executives, but my whole deal is who are the audio people,

who are the lighting people, who are the folks who are shooting, all of that, the caterers, the limousine company, because there's an entire industry that's behind, behind, behind the camera that we also are not being targeted. Absolutely. And it's a lot of money behind, behind the camera, we also are not being targeted. Absolutely. And it's a lot of money behind the camera, as you say.

And so one of the great things about being a Black content creator is that you are able to kind of have that sway and that influence. And so you are able to say, listen, we need to make sure that we're hiring some Black people for these roles here. And that's one of the things that I insisted upon. And so you're able to open those doors and give opportunities to a lot of other up and coming black people who are trying to work behind the scenes as camera operators or as story producers or whatever the case may be. Because if no one opens the doors, then they don't get chances. I remember some of the producers talking about the fact that there is a rumor.

I don't know if it's true that the streaming services won't even hire you if you've never worked on a streaming service before. Well, somebody has to give you that first opportunity. Somebody has to open that door so that you can work on these kind of shows so you can keep getting those jobs. And so that's one of the things that, you know, I was glad that we pushed for in saying, you know what, no, we're going to have black people behind the camera in as many roles as we can fill them in. All right, then. And so how many episodes of Buried by the Banarats are there? There are eight episodes on Netflix right now. All right.

Warren Robinson, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you, Roland. I appreciate it. All right, then. I we certainly appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you, Roland. I appreciate it. All right, then. Look at my panel here. Greg Carr, the thing I'm the reason I keep really focusing on this is because, again, it's how is one making a deliberate effort to use whatever influence they have to ask the necessary questions to begin to say that you know sure i want to see more black executives with netflix but i also want to see how you're spending the money i i want to know okay and again and let me real clear reed hastings the ceo of netflix, last year announced that Netflix was depositing one hundred million dollars in black banks. They announced the initiative that they were engaged in. That's the kind of stuff that we have to talk about.

That's literally what Dr. King was talking about on April 3rd, 1968, in terms of depositing money in black banks. That's literally what Operation Breadbasket was doing. But Operation Breadbasket was saying, we want jobs, we want you working with black businesses, putting money in black banks, making investment. We are driving these streaming services, these networks, with our eyeballs. I'm saying the same thing about stars and Showtime and HBO and Netflix and Hulu and Prime

and all the new ones coming along. And what I'm saying to black people, if you're giving somebody your eyeballs, but they're not spending money on folk who look like you, what we are doing, Greg, is making other folks rich and again monetizing

black culture and black people holistically not a portion of it holistically benefiting. Oh, no question, brother. We know that black folk have been the entertainment in this white nationalist country since the beginning. So whether it be Norman Lear and

everything from Good Times to Jefferson's and all the family of CBS, whether it be Fox within Living Color, Living Single, whether it be NBC with 227 and The Cosby Show, A Different World, these networks have always harvested Black talent for profit. And what you see in the cable area, certainly Comedy Central, certainly Bravo with the Real Housewives franchise, they have now perfected shrinking the necessary investments to pay talent. Reality shows are a form of entertainment sharecropping. They take, what, maybe $100,000 to half a million dollars an episode to produce, and they get product placement, you've got ad revenue coming in, and people are just glad to be there. So the question then becomes,

how, as you say, do we leverage, if we can leverage at all, the type of influence that we might have for a split second to transfer some of this insane amount of revenue that is streaming into the pockets of these folks into our communities? I don't know that we have a good answer for that, but I think part of it requires those who are the folks who are the producers and others to say, if you don't do this, we'll move to another platform. Because capitalism, ultimately, you're jailbreaking it now with Roland Martin unfiltered. You can put a reality show on YouTube. Look at the career of Issa Rae that begins with Awkward Black Girl. I think we have to really take a step back, if we can as a group, and think about the

entertainment sharecropping model of reality TV, which is nothing but a pure profit endeavor by these broadcast networks and all platforms to get the maximum amount of profit from the minimum form of investment. Recy. I remember when Michael B. Jordan announced what he was going to require working for this diversity, this equity, I forgot what it was called, race rider, whatever they called it. I remember Regina King talked about that as well. And folks were talking about they want to see a

certain percentage of folks on the cruise who are women and who are also black and Latino and using their power. What I am saying to these folks as well is that if you are Michael B. Jordan, let me actually back that up because I'm going to use Michael Jordan the same way. And for everybody listening,

I need y'all to understand there's a difference between influence, leverage, and power. Right. I need everybody who's watching so let me unpack this for y'all.

There is influence, there is leverage, and there is power. Some people kept saying Michael Jordan is the most powerful basketball player in the NBA. They're wrong. He's the most powerful basketball player in the NBA. They're wrong. Michael Jordan had influence. Michael Jordan had leverage. Michael Jordan did power, Michael could have said, team ain't breaking up.

If Michael had power, Michael would have said, y'all gonna give Scotty the contract that he deserves. He didn't. In fact, Michael did not have power when he was an executive with the Washington Wizards. He came out of retirement, played ball, sold the arenas out. Then when he finished playing basketball the second time, Jordan then said that he was going to

play basketball the third time he then goes into a meeting with Ted Leonis come on brother who was a minority owner of the team and they went in and met with Abe Pollard Abe Pollard

was the owner of the Washington Wizards. Michael tells Abe, I'm ready to resume my job as head of basketball operations. Abe says, Michael, we thank you for what you've done. We're moving in another direction. Here's a check for 10 million dollars and thank you for your services michael looked at ted leonis like what the hell is going on here ted leonis looked at michael like i don't know what the hell is going on here and michael got

pissed off stonk got up and walked out the meeting gotten his jag his Jaguar and drove off, left a $10 million check on the table. Abe Pollard taught Michael Jordan a lesson. Your ass don't have power. I do because power just fired you. Now, let me bring this thing back to what I was talking about with Michael B. Jordan. There is no movie without Michael B. Jordan. Oh, you can go hire some other folk. But actors should be looking at themselves as he says, look at himself as Michael B. Jordan.

That's right. And a Michael B. Jordan Inc. should do this here. Y'all want Michael B. Jordan to be in your movie right okay here is my diversity index my race equity index so I want Erica these number of people I need to see these folks on the set um do y'all have a list of diverse caterers we gonna need some diverse caterers um i the your transportation company do you have a list of diverse transportation providers i'm gonna need you to do that uh uh your travel agents do you have a list of diverse travel agents okay i need to see that oh hold up now while we also on this i need to know who we marketing this movie to and and then what black media outlets are being invited to the press junkets uh how much money of the advertising budget is going to be spent on black media outlets see some of y'all

not paying attention who are watching because y'all didn't hear what I just said. Roland wasn't selfish saying what y'all going to do for Roland when it comes to Black media. No, I said Black media, catering, limousine contracts, travel contracts.

I'm talking about, do y'all see me? This is how it needs to be. It needs to be 360. It needs to be 360. Let me go the other way for some do y'all see me? This is how it needs to be. It needs to be 360. It needs to be 360. Let me go the other way for some of y'all. It needs to be 360. It needs to be 360. That's how black creators should be coming to the table

and saying, okay, if you're Jordan Peele, I've got a Amazon Prime video deal. If you are Donald Glover, okay, if you're Jordan Peele, I've got an Amazon Prime Video deal. If you are Donald Glover, Erica, I just signed a new deal with Prime Video. If I'm Shonda Rhimes before the Netflix, oh, y'all trying to recruit me for this deal, I need to know 360 of all of these things happening because if y'all want my talent I got to make sure my people are getting paid

Risa go ahead absolutely I think that you know it's all about like you said it's leveraging your power and you know unfortunately not all black actors even ones that we look at as powerhouses, have that power or that leverage. Today

I just saw an article about how Taraji P. Henson got paid $40,000 for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and that movie went on to make $350 million. I saw yesterday about how a comedian, and I forget her name at the moment,

I think Brenda Jones from Mad TV found out that a peer of hers that came on after hers made more money than her. And when she asked to renegotiate her salary, they told her, no, absolutely not. And so I agree with everything you said. I can't restate it better than you, and I can't even add on to it better than you.

So what I will say is, going back to the point I've been making many times on this show is about validating black outlet come on on stage who created his own app from scratch he does exactly what you're talking about Roland he he he hires black crews he's owning content. He's putting on other comedians in the middle of a pandemic, paying them well. And he's really creating this whole pool of talent around him. And everybody wins in every aspect, 360 degrees. But you don't see a Kev on stage nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Or you don't see him getting the kind of mainstream, you know, a mainstream attention

that he deserves. And so the same goes for Roland Martin and Filter and other Black outlets, Black owned outlets. And so what I would encourage the audience to do, what I would encourage these celebrities who have influence to do is to put some of their efforts behind validating these black outlets that are actually about paying, uplifting, and bringing black dollars to black people. Because one last point I'll make, I saw a thread from this white woman who was a comedian on Netflix, and she had a special that was on Netflix. And one of the things she said, and it could have just been her deal, might not have been everybody's deal, is that she doesn't get any residuals from her her special she sold her show to netflix and so after that she don't get paid from it and so even when it

looks like somebody has made it oh they have a netflix show oh they have a this show or they have a that show if you're not continuing to get residuals like dave chapelle brought attention to as well with the chapelle show then you're still not profiting. And so that's where owning your own stuff, having your own platform is really the key to financial independence. And it's really the key to cooperative economics and putting other black people on so that everybody gets a piece of that pie. Erica. Yeah. Amen and hallelujah to what Recy laid out and the power dynamics that you laid out for us, Roland. And this goes back to what we were just talking about on last week when you talked about the black collective. There has to be an interest in doing that. What Kev on stage did was very deliberate.

And if there is an interest in being deliberate and building power and making sure, as it's been said on this show, that if you're saying that you're the lonely at the top, then dummy, you didn't bring anybody with you. That that should really be an offense. Right. So when you look at the ways with which this white gaze and Dr. Carr mentioned it on last Sunday, excuse me, last Saturday in class with Dr. Carr, talked about the whole white famous piece. There's nothing wrong with fame across all spectrum, but to actually sit in and say that, okay, I made it now that these people, as Risi has talked about, validated me, there's something demonstratively wrong with that and that's problematic. So as we continue to really engage and really make sure that models like the one that you have example for everyone, Kev on stage, as Recy brought forward, Issa Rae, as Dr. Carr

talked about, when we see those models, if people are really interested, because I don't know that everybody is interested, but if people are really interested in actually building the collective, that what you just laid out and the examples that are before us that's the way to do it see greg see greg what what is for those of us, those of us who have amassed that level of influence and leverage to wield it. What I'm talking about is to literally say, ain't nothing moving unless this happens see what i'm talking

about is a shift i'm talking i i ain't trying let me see i'm not not trying to do this here. Switch to this camera up here, please. Switch to me up here. I ain't trying to do this. I'm just going to give y'all. This is what I think, Greg, folk trying to do. They trying to do. They trying to They trying to slightly move. I'm talking about

taking this tray and throwing this son of a bitch way across the room I'm talking about I'm talking about literally taking apart and just slinging it I'm talking about completely wrecking this whole joint. See, Greg, they ain't got no problem if we want to come in here inching. Inching. No. This ain't the moment for inching. Greg,

this is the moment to literally walk in the room like this here. We ain't signing no deal until all of these things are done. Yes, sir. And then, if you black, and if you black,

and if you got a content deal at Paramount Plus, at HBO Max, at Hulu, at Prime Video, use the Netflix deal. Say, let me ask y'all a question. Are y'all going to deposit $100 million in black banks

like Reed Hastings and Netflix did? I need everybody to listen to what I'm saying. I'm going to name them. Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple Plus, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Paramount Plus. I just named seven. Discovery is coming on what they own. That's eight. I need everybody to listen to me.

That's eight. I know there are listen to me. That's eight. I know there are others. I'm just going to name those eight. Netflix announced we're going to put $100 million in black banks. They now established the floor. So if you're a black content provider,

you should say, y'all are going to at least match that. That means that the black content provider you should say y'all gonna at least match that that mean that the black content people in hollywood if they challenge i'll throw an apple i think that apple plus i mentioned you throw them in you can now go from a hundred million placed in black banks to 800 million placed in black banks. You can now cause them to have to go out and hire a plethora. Now, when you tell the companies,

you've got to have a race index for all of your productions. Now, all of a sudden, you've got the dramatically increased black limousine company business and black catering business and all that sort of stuff. That's all I'm saying. Stop moving this son of a bitch an inch or two. Say we bought the city and just shift the whole damn game. Roland, first of all, brother, I thought you was going to throw that stand into the pool. That's why I was waiting. I got no, you understand. into the pool. That's why I was waiting. That's number one. I was going to get that out of the way.

Hold on. I got, no, you understand. I got two iPads, two phones on here, and so, no, that wasn't about to happen. But trust me, I was thinking it. The reason is, that's no couch. No, no, but, no, but I'm laughing, but I'm,

you know, it really builds to a point. Bob Marley once saying, oh, pirates, yet a rabbi show sold out to the merchant ship. You understand that was a song called Redemption Song. Now, if you watch Dave Chappelle a couple of weeks ago in his mini monologue of the same name, Redemption Song. Now that's how you will influence. This guy was basically tethered to a contract he had signed with Comedy Central and HBO. Using the momentum of his platform and his popularity, he forced them to pay him because he told all of his fans to stop watching. Now that's one way of doing it. But I laughed because I thought about the pool because I thought to myself, everybody watching this, everybody watching us right now, everybody who watches Roland Martin Unfiltered all every day and then 24 hours in terms of the replays,

the broadcast and everything, everybody watching and getting the soothing sound of that waterfall there in Jacksonville. Understand this. It is nice. Y'all paid for that. Meaning what? When Roland Martin comes in a room, he can take it or leave it. See, the importance of being able to do that means that, you know, Netflix, $100 million? Okay, Netflix made $25 billion.

Billion wouldn't be last year. So, you gotta at least match that, but make no mistake about it. When you don't use your influence, you end up being what Bill Roden and him might call, or Curt Flood might call originally, a well-paid slave. Now, Roland Martin is owned by all of us who invest in him. So when you sit at the table, you can wield an influence that allows you to take it or leave it. But also, and I'll end here, this is why everybody watching this has to support this platform.

Your influence, like Dave Chappelle's influence, is based on the fact that when people hear you, they trust you. Roland Martin said it. I may not agree with everything he said, but I trust he's saying it because he's thinking about our best interests. And when you have that kind of trust, you can either to kind of paraphrase Frantz Fanon, you can either fulfill the investment of trust people give you or you can betray it. There's no middle ground. And at some point you got to choose.

So invest in something that people own. Invest in Roland Martin unfiltered. We kick in the door. You ain't got to worry about it. All you're going to hear is the company saying, Papa, don't hit me no more. And what people have and what people have to understand is and I certainly understand what that brother was talking about when he said how long it took. What I'm trying to get our folk to realize, I'm trying to get our people to realize that I'm not waiting for somebody to give me a green light I'm not waiting for somebody to say you ready I'm not waiting for somebody to say we'll fund it. I'm not waiting for somebody to say

it's now time. What I'm trying to get everybody to understand is that when black people who have built their names and they've got a following to what Greg said with Dave Chappelle. I didn't text Dave Chappelle.

I sent him an audio file. I said, I got to talk this one. What Dave Chappelle. See, oh, y'all. Y'all gonna make me preach this what dave chapelle did was activate his base and he unleashed them on netflix and hbo that's right he said i'm about to show y'all. And he said to all this, I need y'all not to watch. That's right. What happened?

He told Netflix, can y'all kindly take that down? The CEO of Netflix wasn't crazy. Because they've already invested. They invested more money in Dave Chappelle than he made from the Comedy Central show. He wasn't

crazy enough to say, we're going to keep running the Chappelle show to make Comedy Central happy because he said, hell, I'm not going to have Dave Chappelle walk away from me and take his talents and his followers and their eyeballs to another streaming service.

And so now all of a sudden they now making the money. So they said, hell yeah, we're going to take this thing down. That's how we're going to do it. Y'all that's called using your influence and your leverage and then talking to power. And so what I'm saying is to all of these black actors and black actresses and black producers who all have made these lists on the rap and variety and the Hollywood reporter and deadline the most influential powerful people and this is that and the other what I'm saying is I need you to come to the table in your full blackness. I need you to walk to the table and walk in your full authority. I'm trying to get you to walk in the room and say, we not about to have a conversation just about me.

I want to know, are you putting money in black banks? Are you helping black caterers and black limousine companies and coming out with a do a roll call? Because now what you're doing is you are forcing them to realize how they have been ignoring and denying black folks in so many areas. And that's how you take the collective. And then you begin to build the village and you then begin to take it further and imagine what it's like five years from now if a sister comes up and says, thank you Michael B. Jordan

not for being people sexist man alive, but because of what you said they hired me on two productions and now I've done 25 productions for my catering company. Thank you for saying what you said when it came to transportation companies because I had two cars. And all of a sudden, because of what you did and getting those contracts, I now have a fleet of 50 or 100 limousines and sprinters and other transportation vehicles because you use your power.

Yeah, I watch you and you didn't know about me, but because of what you said and did and forcing them to change, then that's how this thing is going, which is all I'm trying to say to everybody. The same thing applies in these political campaigns. I'm going to say this, I'm going to end this right now because I told you all I was going to preach this thing

and that is this here. I need the same thing happen in political campaigns I need this and I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there right now and it don't even matter uh and I'm not just putting it on her but I need Vice President Kamala Harris to call the DSCC and to call the DCCC and to call the Democratic Governors Associations and call in Emily's List and call in labor unions and call in all of these folks, the environmentalists,

all these folks who are funding this political apparatus and say, same thing, what black event planners are y'all using? What black audio video companies are y'all using? What black streamers are y'all using? What black ad agencies are y'all using? What black political consultants are y'all using? Because see, again, if it ain't,

I go back, if it ain't, if you don't have black talent, if you don't have black votes, if you don't have black political power, then nobody can get elected. All I'm simply saying is challenging folk on this whole deal. Because see, I'm going to tell y'all what happened to us when it came to the Georgia race, when we sought media money, but they funded us with celebrity influencer money. See, y'all ain't going to make me really go there with this here. See, don't make me have to go there, because what they offered is not what we asked for. We appreciated what we got,

but it was not what we actually asked for. And we over delivered on what we did in Georgia and what was funded. And so all I'm saying is if you're going to be black and you're going to come into the room, I need you to walk in your full authority. I need you to walk in with all of your people at your back, your ancestors at your back, your president advocates at your back. And when you sit in that room and you walk in your full authority and when you sit down, you need to bring the presence of your people with you. So when they look across the table at you, they not just looking at you, but looking at our army of black people going back centuries behind you and say, I'm here now to do business.

That's right. All right. That's what we should be talking about. Yes. Folks, that is it for us. Greg Carr, Racy, Erica, I certainly appreciate that. Thank you so very much, folks. I'll be back in studio tomorrow.

We've had a fantastic time here in Jacksonville on the road. I cannot wait to see the conversation between Janetta B. Cole and Tiffany Lofton, Charlie Cobb, and Phillip Agnew, and, of course, my man Cliff Albright, Ambassador Andrew Young, and my one-on-one with 90-year-old Fred Gray. We shot yesterday in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was an unbelievable conversation all week. And so we certainly appreciate it. Our crew has been fantastic.

We are here. And I posted this on Instagram, and this is going to be the last point I go ahead and make because I need people to understand I am, I said this on Instagram, I'm an efficiency geek. And so what we do here is when we travel, and also because of COVID, I had somebody who posted, well, I see how fan money is being spent. I'll say, you're absolutely right.

I mean, this is a fabulous house and waterfront here in Jacksonville, Florida. Because of COVID, I didn't want to have us in eight hotel rooms, okay? So what we did is everybody had been tested. We're in the house, COVID-free. Now we can actually have our whole staff living together in the same location as the eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom house here. Not only that, we were able to shoot

all of our interviews here as well. We did them outside. So it gave us the full protection. It also kept us from having to unpack, pack, take stuff down, set it up. And so this is how we also are efficient when we're doing our work. Same thing last week when I was in St. Louis. I was in St. Louis for three days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I can't wait to y'all see the interview I did with Wesley Bale, the first black DA there, and also Kim

Gardner, the first black woman DA there as well as well Then of course, we also sat down with Michael McMillan the amazing stuff They're doing with the st. Louis Area Urban League and then of course my amazing conversation with Tev pole Yo, we shot all of that stuff y'all in essentially two days there in st Louis and so the stuff that we are doing is about taking this show on the road, taking our power and helping our folk out. It's allowing us to be able to constantly put them in a position where we are telling the stories. And so this is not the only time we're going to be doing this. We're going to be doing this and going to other cities as well. I simply cannot wait.

To the folks in the control room, do me a favor. I'm loading a video in GroupMe. I want y'all to play the video. You got to turn the music down because we don't own the music rights to it, but I want y'all to run that. But what I'm talking about here, y'all, is we are creating this whole deal to be able to tell our stories in a unique way, to be able to capture these conversations that exist between our people and allowing them, Greg, to be able to tell their story in their own way,

not in a five, eight-minute segment. And here's the other deal, Erica. We ain't doing this because it's February and Black History Month. So, I mean, that's cute, but that's not why we're doing it. And so what we are trying to do is to actually build something. And here's the other piece, y'all, because we own it and control it. This ain't going to get edited by somebody who don't know our story.

Y'all need to understand. You're not going to have a situation where we're going to do an hour and a half, two hour interview, then we're going to pick the 10, 12 minutes that we think are interesting. No, we're going to give you the whole thing so you can actually hear it in its fullness and in its rawness.

But see, that's what I'm talking about. But see, this only happens if it's black owned. This only happens if it's black controlled. And this only happens if it's black owned. This only happens if it's black controlled. And this only happens if it's funded by you. What Greg said, being able to sit at the table and say no. And let me be real clear, OK? We got some white folks who are watching this show.

I told y'all about the 70-year-old white gay man who sent me a letter. He said, I watched Rolling Mark Unfiltered. And I appreciate his $ unfiltered and I appreciate his $50. The same way I appreciate somebody black $50, somebody who not gay, somebody who not white, they don't matter. But the folk who have given us $1 or $5 or $10, y'all need to understand how our people are. We were in Atlanta, Erica, at the Biden, the last Biden rally for Ossoff and Warnock. And a sister saw us on YouTube. She said, I needed my daughter to come meet you.

She brought her twenty dollars. She came there in the cold to get a photo and brought her $20 donation by bringing the funk fan club. That's what I'm talking about. I've had people stop. I've had people stop me in airports and put $10 in my hand. They said, you ain't got to put my name down,

but I'm making my contribution to Roland Martin unfiltered. I'm trying to tell y'all, I'm not, look, I ain't, this ain't no creflo dollar stuff. I'm trying to make stuff up to I'm not, look, I ain't, this ain't no Creflo Dollar stuff where I'm trying to make stuff up to get you to give and give a story. No, I'm

telling you literally what we have experienced as we have traveled around this country yesterday at the Tuskegee, the museum there, man, the Multicultural Center. Man, they laid it out for us. They were great. They were wonderful. They had the video on the sign. It was all of that. I mean, we just had an amazing conversation.

We had a get chalet. I need her to send me tell her text me chalet. I need the name of the black caterer in Tuskegee and the black caterer here in Jacksonville. Texas to be right now. All of that. So I just want you to understand why we're doing this we're doing this because we're not interested in talking about black excellence and only through the prism and it's no disrespect but we ain't talking about black excellence as if it's defined by barack obama michelle obama by uh by uhBron, by... No! No! The depth of talent and knowledge

that we have in our community that goes unknown and unsupported every day is unbelievable. That's right. I'm sitting here texting. Congratulations, Bree Newsome, on having your baby, you and your husband. But we're going to be recording a conversation between Brie Newsome and Reverend Dr. William J. Barber. We're going to be recording a conversation between rapper Chris Payne and Chuck D.

I've already confirmed it today. So we're doing this because I'm not interested in asking somebody else for permission. Nobody. We have the same knowledge and we can buy the same cameras and the same lights and the same the same live view. We can rent the same big ass houses with pools if they can as well. We can do all the same stuff. But we also need your support. So please support us.

Again, show the graphic, please. Cash App, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered. Remember, you give on YouTube. We only get 55% of that. They get 45%. They already got billions. So just go get the money directly to us so we can get 100% because I prefer 100% over 55%. So support us at Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered,

PayPal.me forward slash RMartinUnfiltered, Venmo.com is forward slash RMUnfiltered, Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Money Order, 1625 K Street, Northwest, Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 2006. Y'all, we're going gonna end the show with this and so Tiffany Lofton and Phil Agnew They are they of course we took them to the airport after they interview and you know Tiffany had to be real extra in the ro-ro mobile y'all also paid for that our sprinter That's what allowed us to travel with all of our gear We can have what we got a restroom, a microwave, a refrigerator, all this sort of stuff. So we can actually be protected

traveling around this country, doing some amazing things. And so that's it right there. I'm about to go again, Greg, Reese, Erica. Thanks a lot. Y'all show that video of crazy Tiffany. That's how we're going to end the show from Jacksonville. I'll see you guys 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. Sure. 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. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

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

Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.