#RolandMartinUnfiltered - GA passes heinous voter suppression bills; Biden blasts GOP; Big tech grilled over misinformation

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

3.25.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Georgia passes heinous voter suppression bills; Biden blasts GOP; Big tech grilled on The Hill over misinformation and extremism on their platforms; Facebook group outs racist cops in Pittsburg; Buffalo radio fired for racist comments; Malcolm X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz talks about her new children's bookSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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at taylorpapersilling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. Thank you. today is thursday mark 25th 2021 coming up on roland martin unfiltered at this hour georgia governor brian kemp is signing one of the most onerous voter suppression laws in the country. Republicans in Georgia are advancing Jim Crow era laws. We'll talk with Natasha Brown, who is the co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Republicans in Michigan are also pushing forth their Jim Crow-like voter suppression laws. We'll talk with Lyndon Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP. President Joe Biden held his first news conference today. We'll show you what he had to say,

especially about voter suppression and ending the filibuster. Also, folks, on today's show, the top three tech CEOs answered Congress's questions for the role they play in the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Also, a Facebook group for Pittsburgh police officers reveals racist post. No shock at all. And a Buffalo radio host is fired for comparing black women to toast. Plus, I'll talk with Malcolm X's daughter, Yasa Shabazz, about her new children's book regarding her father. It is time to bring the funk. Roll the mark, got a filter. He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's Rolling Martin. Rolling with rolling now.

He's funky, he's fresh, he's real. The best you know, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know, he's rolling Martel now. Martel. As we speak, the governor of Georgia, he is signing a new law into place that many are calling Jim Crow like voting suppression laws. Republicans in Georgia are pissed because Donald Trump lost the state and because a pastor, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff both beat Republicans for the United States Senate. Instead of actually trying to compete for voters, what they want to do is cheat. Like I said, they want to cheat. The bill that they are, that they signed today is a house bill. This particular house bill, folks,

is one that we have been talking about significantly. It's called House Bill 202. And what this is going to do, it is going to change the Georgia code when it comes to mailing absentee ballots. This is code when it comes to mailing absentee ballots. This is what it says, that mail absentee ballot applications shall mail such applications only to eligible registered electors who have not already requested, been issued, or voted an absentee ballot. To require certain comparisons to remove improper names from mail distribution lists, to provide for sanctions for violations, to provide for related matters, to repeal conflicting laws and for other purposes. Bottom line is, folks, this is the first of many efforts by Republicans in Georgia, Michigan, Texas, all across the country, because they do

not like the fact that black people voted in record numbers. Joining us right now is Latasha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter. She's broadcasting, she's there live from a protest they are holding there in Atlanta. Latasha, glad to have you on the show. You know, we are out here right now. I am out at the airport. We have probably about 150 protesters. We're out on the concourse, on the Delta concourse, because one of the things

that's deeply disturbing and troubling is that corporations that are based right here in Georgia that receive millions of dollars of support, of public dollars of support to bail them out, that here's an issue that we know is rooted in racism and anti-democratic reasons that literally we expect them to stand with us. And as you said, in this very hour, Brian Kemp is saying that he's getting ready to sign a bill that is an egregious bill that not only limits voting rights, one of the most egregious parts of it, it's really based on the political part that the GOP will actually be able to take over the board of elections in the different counties.

If they don't like the outcome, they can actually take over that. That in itself is totally anti-democratic. In addition to that, in the runoff election, you will have the Sunday voting. There will be no more weekend voting, no more Sunday voting, which what we know is black people vote 10 times greater than any other constituency group on Sunday. In addition to that, it's still the provision that criminalizes organization like Mines that give voters who've been standing in line an hour, two hours, three hours, eight hours, water and snacks to provide some comfort care for them.

So the bottom line is this is a terrible, terrible bill. It's a bill that was really designed to be punitive, to punish black folks for coming out in record numbers. But can't stop. We won't stop. We're not going to stop. And so now we're out at the airport. We're doing a protest at each of these companies every day this week. Today, we're focusing on Delta because there's no way that you can actually be a homegrown company in Atlanta, Georgia, and not stand with the people that built your company. What they are doing, Latasha, not only that, they are stripping this Republican secretary of state, stripping power from him, removing him as the head of the state election board.

That's one of the things that they are doing. And then, of course, you have and this is just so people understand, this is the nonsense that Brian Kemp actually said earlier today on Fox News. Listen to this. Okay. I'm not sure why you guys are not seeing, but give me one second. We're going to pull this video up. So I definitely want to play this because y'all need to understand exactly what what's going on. I have a set up in a second. I want to go back to you again. But then they're they're so pissed off that they actually strip power from the secretary of state. Who's a Republican?

Roland, I am so sorry that it's hard to hear. They've started the chanceants in the protest. Yo, yo, yo. So as you hear it echo throughout the space, so it's hard, it's difficult to hear. I would just say that it is a beautiful, at some point, you know, I will kind of send pictures and videos of what's out here. What you're seeing, you're seeing that Asian American voters, there are black voters, there are white voters, there are members from the labor union, there are members from ACLU, Black Voters Matter, NAACP, Georgia Stand Up, there are organizations, labor unions, businesses, people who are standing out there black voters, it is bad for all Georgia voters. And we're not going to stop. We're not going to stop. We're not going to take this. We know that we're in a prolonged fight, but that's what we're here to do because black voters do matter. Latasha, can you actually just flip your camera just so we can see the protesters who are out there? Not her audio folks.

Uh, can we get that taken care of audio, please? Uh, Latasha, we can't hear you. So I think Latasha may have hit her mute button, folks. But you see, as she said, about 150, go back to the video, please.

Go back to the video. There we go. Now we got the audio, folks. Thank you. Leave the audio. All right, then. Georgia! Georgia! Georgia! Georgia! Georgia! All right, then. We are out here in these streets, Roland. We are out here in these streets. All right. Natasha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot. Folks, again, they are there at the Atlanta airport because they want the business community in Georgia to step up and actually hold Republicans accountable for their actions. As I told you, Brian Kemp was on Fox News. Listen to the nonsense he had said earlier today. Listen. We had a 351 percent increase on absentee ballot by mail. And when you have the signature check process that's in Georgia, it became overly burdensome for the county elections officials. It took forever. It created a lot of doubt. At times, I'm sure it was arbitrary in place.

But did it cost, in your opinion, Governor, do you think it cost Donald Trump the election in Georgia? Well, I wouldn't want to speak to that because I'm not the Secretary of State. The election was certified and, you know, that's what it is. Because the guy who's challenging the Secretary of State there is saying just that. I'm just curious what your view is on that. Well, i'm not worried about who's running for secretary of state um i'm looking forward to running for governor on the record that i have and that has been to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat and i'm easy to vote hard to cheat but the reality is they are actually trying to cheat as we speak. Folks, that's what

they're doing. At today's presidential news conference, President Joe Biden was asked about the issue of voting rights, also into the filibuster, because the Democrats want to pass H.R. 1 that could actually prevent a lot of this voter suppression. Here's what President Joe Biden had to say today from the White House. I want to go back to voting rights. And as Yamiche mentioned, Republican legislatures across the country are working to pass bills that would restrict voting, particularly Democrats fear impacting minority voters and young voters, the very people who helped to get you elected in November. Are you worried that if you don't manage to pass voting rights legislation, that your party is going to lose seats and possibly

lose control of the House and the Senate in 2022? What I'm worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It's sick. It's sick. Deciding in some states that you cannot bring water to people standing in line waiting to vote. Deciding that you're going to end voting at five o'clock when working people are just getting off work, deciding that there will be no absentee ballots under the most rigid circumstances. It's all designed. And I'm going to spend my time doing three things. One, trying to figure out how to pass the legislation passed by the House, number one. Number two, educating the American public. The Republican voters I know find this despicable. Republican voters.

Folks outside this White House. I'm not talking about the elected officials. I'm talking about voters. Voters. I'm talking about voters, voters. And so I'm convinced that we'll be able to stop this because it is the most pernicious thing. This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle. I mean, this is gigantic what they're trying to do. And it cannot be sustained and do everything in my power, along with my friends in the House and the Senate, to keep that from becoming the law. Is there anything else you can do about it besides passing legislation? The answer is yes, but I'm not going to lay out a strategy in front of the whole world and you now.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I have a question for you, but first I'd like to follow up on a question from Yamiche, and that's on the filibuster. That counts as a question, but go ahead. Okay, I'll make it quick. It's a quick question. No, no, you can. Regarding the filibuster, at John Lewis's funeral, President Barack Obama said he believed the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era.

Do you agree? Yes. If not, why not abolish it if it's a relic of the Jim Crow era? Successful electoral politics is the art of the possible. Let's figure out how we can get this done and move in the direction of significantly changing the abuse of even the filibuster rule first. It's been abused from the time it came into being by an extreme way in the last 20 years. Let's deal with the abuse first.

It sounds like you're moving closer to eliminating the filibuster. Is that correct? I answered your question. Okay. I don't quite understand why President Joe Biden, if you're going to say it's a Jim Crow relic, say it's time to get rid of Jim Crow relics. My panel, Dr. Greg Carr, Chair, Department of African American Studies, Howard University, Brittany Lee Lewis, political analyst, and then joining us in a bit, Amisha Cross, political analyst and democratic strategist. Folks, pull the panel up, please. Thank you very much. Greg, I want to start with you. This battle that we are dealing with right now, this back and forth that's going on here.

Republicans are very clear what they're doing. They have a very clear desire to cheat. We see what they're trying to pass. You listen to the lies of Governor Brian Kemp right there on Fox News. There were absolute lies. They're showing exactly who they are. The reality is, if you're Democrats in that video right there, you can say Joe Biden, you can sit here and condemn it. But when you're asked, you can't stand there and take a long pause and give, frankly, a BS answer when you're asked, is it a Jim Crow relic? Yes. Well, isn't time to get rid of Jim Crow relics?

Dude, say it. Enough is enough. Get rid of the filibuster. If you look at the history of the filibuster, no, the filibuster has been used to stop nothing more than civil rights legislations. That has been how it has been wielded. White Democrats have got to have the guts to say it must go. Or not, clearly. Roland, as we see, I respect Joe Biden's position. He thinks there's something called the United States of America that has an identity. And so when he says that this is un-American, of course,

he's historically inaccurate. But when he says it's despicable, he's correct. A little bit later in that press conference, he, when asked if he was going to run again, he said yes. And then he said, then they asked they asked him, oh, so what's your strategy three years now? He said, hold on. I have no idea whether there will be a Republican Party. Do you? There were enough tales in that press conference to let us know where Biden is headed. I think where he's being pushed by Cliff and Latosha, by you, by all of us. He's being pushed in. The Democratic Party is being pushed to make a choice that's going by you, by all of us. He's being pushed and the Democratic Party is being pushed to make a choice that's going to require a strategic type of intervention.

Now, here's where I think the Republican Party and shout out to Brian Kemp. I love Brian Kemp in the tradition, the racist tradition of the Talmadge father and son who were once governors of Georgia. I like Brian Kemp because Brian Kemp's a white nationalist, as you said. The Republicans are not obstructionists. They are secessionists. This is the next generation of a civil war that we saw previewed in the 1850s and 1860s, the John C. Calhouns and others. They are either going to have the white state they want, the ethno state they want, or they're going to destroy the country. So when Joe Biden, he really isn't walking the fence there. If we listen back and forth, even when the conversation about filibuster today, he basically said, we're going to blow up the filibuster. He didn't say it directly. You're right. Because I think that would overplay

the hand. I think his strategy finally, and the strategy of the Democratic Party is going to be to try to use the momentum of these polls and the voters. That's why he talked about Republican voters, to get them in a position to try to either tiptoe past the graveyard, retain a majority, flip the Senate in a year and a half and then move forward. Or and this is what I think is more likely is going to happen. They're going to abolish the filibuster if they can't get the talking filibuster as a compromise. They're going to abolish the filibuster sometime this summer at the latest. Joe Manchin, you blow dried fake cosplay coal miner. Joe Manchin, you tool of the special interest. Joe Manchin, it's over and you're going to have to make a decision as to whether or not you're going to stand by while black people, brown people and other folk. Put Coca-Cola, put Delta, put Home Depot on blast and ultimately show these white nationalists that we're not about to bow down.

We need some villains. Shout out to Brian Kemp. Good job. Brittany, the thing here, as we as we look this whole deal, and Dr. Carr is absolutely right. I mean, Joe Biden, President Biden, there's been cagey in terms. He knows they have no choice but to get rid of the filibuster. They don't want to say it because they don't want to, you know, rile up Republicans. But here's the whole deal. You got no choice. You have no agenda. You cannot pass all these bills through reconciliation. And then you have Kristen Sinema, who has to be stuck on stupid because this is going to impact her running for reelection. The Supreme Court is voting on, deciding on a lawsuit challenging Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, specifically in Arizona.

OK, that's clear. Manchin can run around and and defend this whole nonsense and they can they can all just look cute as the game of all, you know, you know, bipartisanship. The ball don't lie. He said he stripped certain provisions out of the covid relief bill in order to garner more support. It passed 50 to 49. Joe Manchin didn't get one vote. See, so all this little cute talk of, oh, no, we got to secure more votes. You're not going to get it because the Republicans are playing a level of hardball that Democrats don't necessarily want to be able to counter. Uh, call me one second. Uh, is this, is this governor Brian Kemp live? Go to his lot. Go take live? Go to the police.

Understandably led to the crisis of confidence in the ballot box here in Georgia. While I am no longer Secretary of State, as governor, I was the first to call on Secretary Raffensperger to complete an audit of signatures on the overwhelming number of absentee ballots that were cast during the election. I did that four times publicly. I was the first to call for a change in state law through the legislature that would implement a photo ID requirement on all absentee ballots. And I joined many others, including President Trump, in urging the Secretary of State's

office to quickly and fully investigate any and all fraud irregularities. I also offered the assistance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to get to the bottom of each and every allegation of fraud. I'm proud of the dedicated men and women who answered the call to duty. But more needed to be done. We quickly began working with the House and Senate on further reforms to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. The bill

I signed into law does just that. First and foremost, SB 202 replaces the signature match process with a state-iss issued ID requirement to request and submit an absentee ballot. When voting in person in the state of Georgia you must have a photo ID. It only makes sense for the same standard to apply to absentee ballots as well. For example, the November 2020 election saw a 350% increase in the use of absentee balloting, over 1.3 million absentee ballots total when compared to Election Day in 2018. This obviously led local election workers to have to process far more ballots using a time-consuming, labor-intensive, and at

times arbitrary process. By moving to a state-issued ID requirement instead of a signature match, Georgia will dramatically streamline the verification process on absentee ballots. SB 202 also secures all ballot drop boxes around the clock, speeds up processing to ensure quicker election results, requires security paper to allow for authentication of ballots, and allows the bipartisan State Election Board to have more oversight over counties who fail to follow state election law. And contrary to the hyper-partisan rhetoric you may have heard inside and outside this gold dome, the facts are that this new law will expand voting access in the Peach State.

Every county in Georgia will now have two mandatory Saturdays of early voting and the option of two Sundays of early voting. Georgians will no doubt be soon overwhelmed with fancy TV ads, mailers, and radio spots attacking this common-sense election reform measure. In fact, left-wing groups funded by out-of-state billionaires are already doing that now. They're using outrageous false rhetoric to scare you and put millions of dollars in their own pocket. They're threatening to boycott Georgia businesses in the middle of a pandemic because they oppose election integrity. According to them, if you support voter I. D. For absentee ballots, you're a racist.

According to them, if you believe in protecting the security and sanctity of the ballot box, you're a, quote, Jim Crow in a suit and tie, end quote. I've fought these partisan activists tooth and nail for over 10 years to keep our elections secure, accessible, and fair. Like before, I'm sure they will threaten, boycott, sue, demonize, and team up with their friends in the national media to call me everything in the book. But fighting for free and fair elections is worth all of that and more. Standing up for the constitutional rights of all Georgians is part of the oath I took as your governor. And you

have my word I will continue to uphold that oath. Putting hard work in Georgians first starts with ensuring that your voice is heard in restoring each and every citizen's confidence in their vote. With SB 202 now becoming law, Georgians should know what the alternative being pushed by the other side contains. In Washington, D.C., Democrats and the left are showing exactly what their dangerous agenda is for all elections across the country, including here in the Peach State. By trying to ram House Resolution 1 through Congress, the

contrast could not be clearer. While strengthening our voter ID laws here in Georgia, HR1 would remove ID requirements on voting. What's the problem? Looks not quite sure what's going on there. John Lewis came in the room. Let me know, please, if we have that back. Brittany, the reason I wanted to play that is because I wanted people to see the lies being told by these Republicans who are advancing Jim Crow laws. That absolutely, Brian Kemp, you spoke truth. You are Jim Crow in a suit.

Hi. Hello. You know, I mean, we know this, though, Roland. We know that this is a backlash to the historic voter turnout. But this isn't just, I won't even say it's necessarily just specific to this moment, right? This has been ongoing, right? This is the GOP's plan is to ensure if they can't actually get people to vote behind their

ideologies and their beliefs and their policies, that they're just going to make it impossible for Black and brown folks who have a different worldview to vote. So I'm absolutely not surprised. And I love what Dr. Carr was saying earlier. You know, we can't continue to, and I pray that President Biden isn't going to go in this direction. I don't think he is. But we can't continue to play this game of reaching across the aisle because Republicans haven't been doing that.

They haven't been doing that for a long, long time. The Republicans, you know, they want their way by any means necessary, and they're going to continue to fight. So we have to continue to put pressure, you know, on the president to end the filibuster and to do what's necessary so we can get H.R. One passed. So the thing that that that, you know, first of all, Amisha, when we spent five weeks in Georgia, I came back and I warned everybody. I warned everybody on this show. See all these national media people. Oh my God, look, they're doing in Georgia. Well, if you spit your ass time on the ground in Georgia, you would know exactly what's going to happen. The same thing happened in North Carolina after

president Barack Obama won in 2008, where they changed the laws. The same thing has happened in Texas. This is what they do. And the thing here is, you know, it's like all these black folk, the last 48 hours been sitting here trying to dog me because of the interview I had with this with this 21 year old dude who was who was endorsing the voter suppression on Twitter, booked him on a show to discuss it. Then he's going to pull a bait and switch, talking about self-sufficiency. And all these Negroes are like, you dissing that young man, that young man, and I'm going to give money to his school. Yet he is standing with them. Now, he tried to say on the show, oh, I don't support that. But I specifically called out all the black Republicans. And here's the deal, Amisha.

You ain't heard nothing from Alveda King. She loves running around talking about she's the niece of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But you ain't heard Alveda open her mouth. You ain't heard nothing from that thug Angie Stanton, okay, who's pimping the King name as well. All right? You heard nothing from Bruce Lavelle standing with Donald Trump. You've heard nothing from Paris Denard. You've heard nothing from C.J. Pearson. All of these

black MAGA people saying nothing. That little punk of former rep Vernon Jones, same thing. An embarrassment to Kappa Alpha Psi. Thank God he's not an alpha. But all of them, all of these, all of these, all of these black Republicans running

around scared. Wimps. Don't want to criticize anything. And then we're trying to sell us on vote for that thug Donald Trump. Brian Kemp just stood at that news conference in Michigan and said, well, people, they need to have trust in the ballot. No, stupid fools like you, Kemp, got dogged by Donald Trump,

lied to voters, and you idiots believed him. Republican, your own Secretary of State, a Republican, said no voter fraud. But Donald Trump, no, no, no. Check Fulton County. The ballots were coming out by the thousands. They were coming in barrels. thousands of them coming in barrels. Lies, lies, lies. So these white Republicans, these white Jim Crow Republicans are passing the laws based upon the big lie.

And now, don't you call us a racist? Well, don't act like one. You're absolutely correct, Roland. I'm going to give you credit for something that I think a lot of major media didn't pay attention to. The fact that you were down in Georgia and you were covering a lot of the change, the winds of change, the seas of change that were going to happen in Georgia long before the 2020 presidential election. And I think that with that, you also illuminated the fact that a lot of people who had previously not voted, folks who hadn't voted for years, were now going to come out and they were going to come out in droves.

Black organizing has the power to bring out multitudes of people. And I think that what we're seeing in Georgia and what we're definitely going to see in other places as well, particularly battleground states where the black vote made the decisive victory for Joe Biden, is that state legislatures are largely still run by Republicans. And to Brittany's point earlier, these voter suppression tactics aren't new. As a matter of fact, during Barack Obama's eight years, we saw more voter suppression bills pass at the state level than we've seen since the 1950s. This is something that has been in the works for a while now, and largely because the ideology

among Republicans has always been that we have to stop progress, we have to stop gains. And the way to keep America looking the exact same way and to keep white supremacy intact is to ensure that Black people don't have access to the ballots and Black people don't have access to the vote. And I think that what we're seeing in Georgia is part and parcel of what we're going to see in several states across this country if we don't see action at the federal level. It's the Voting Rights Act, the reauthorization of it. But it's also making sure that the Constitution is upheld. Withholding the rights of American citizens to vote is unconstitutional. And just because Republicans feel as though their way of

life is going out of style and that the country is getting more black and brown, that doesn't mean that now all of a sudden we're going to eradicate the rights of those who are American citizens. That is not what we do. This is unconstitutional. It is Jim Crow round 2.0. And it's frustrating that we hear from Governor Brian Kemp, who, as you pointed out and stated very well, was one of the biggest targets of Donald Trump. He's not a governor who was loved by that president at all, but he's also somebody who keeps bootlicking as much as possible. And I think that at this point, any Republican who stands up and acts as though voter fraud, and mind you, voter fraud in their mind means black people actually exercising their right to vote because

they are only using this term to elicit a certain angst among white voters that their way of life is going away. Voter fraud just means black people actually voted. It doesn't mean that anything fraudulent happened at all. Black people exercise their right to vote and white people want it to go away. And that is extremely frustrating, problematic. It's something that a lot of our people fought and died for. We remember the Cheney, Schwerner's and Goodman's. We remember John Lewis. This is something that is a fundamental principle of American society and eradicating it from black people makes us less American, makes us less democratic every day. And it should not be something that we allow to stand. What we are seeing is not just Georgia. In Michigan, Republicans, they put forth 39 voter suppression

bills. Folks, 39. Don't think it's happening just in Georgia. Again, they want to alter the state election laws. The bills target, same as in Georgia, absentee ballots, voter qualifications. Switch camera, folks. The bill targets absentee ballots, voter qualifications that were the focus of Donald Trump's campaign to overturn his 2020 defeat. Don't forget, folks, don't forget what took place. Don't forget what took place. We're in Michigan. They were actually saying, hey, let's count all of the ballots except in Detroit. Joining us right now is Reverend Wendell Anthony. He is the president of the Detroit NAACP. Reverend Anthony, glad to have you back. What we're talking about here in Georgia applies there in Detroit. And so bottom line here, the Republicans are doing what they do.

They want to cheat to win. Well, you call it rolling. They are cheating to win. And it's a bigger issue than just Michigan or Georgia. This is a national issue. It's a strategy. And unfortunately, people want to take us back to the plantation. And I ain't going. I don't know about y'all, but I'm not going. They want to reduce, eliminate, suppress, and reject the ability of black people to have the right to vote in this nation. And if you can't win legally, then you suppress them illegally. You reject them.

You take them away from that. In Michigan, they introduced 39 bills, and we knew it was coming. The only thing they did differently in Georgia was that they also made it a felony that you cannot give water to people standing in line or food to people who have been in line trying to vote. That means you can't take water to your workers, to your grandmama, your auntie, your uncle, your neighbors who are there trying to exercise their franchise. It's a way of suppressing.

It's almost rolling like Reconstruction III. First Reconstruction after the Civil War, dealing with the rise of the KKK and the White Knight, White Knight rioters and all those folk, the fact that folk were being hung and killed relative to their ability or their desire to exercise their franchise.

And then after we got it later on, Jim Crow, Jim Crow, Esquire, getting the Voting Rights Act, then the poll taxes, all the stuff that they put into place to counter that. And now we're faced with this rejection of the ability of black people to come together and to vote. When their people, their leadership, William Barr said there was no indication of voter fraud. Chris Craig said there was no indication of voter fraud. We had the best and most secure election in the history of the nation. You remember when Mike Pence and Chris Cobot was put in charge of the Bogus Integrity Commission, Voter Integrity Commission. They went out of business because they could not

find any voting disparity issues. They went out of business. The Brennan Institute has indicated that this is a false issue. The ACLU has indicated the same thing. Lindsey Graham said that if we don't stop this move to vote, then there will never be another Republican elected as president. Therefore, we got to stop it. So this is a strategy. It's intentionality. There is no vote of fraud, y'all. The fraud is these people who have created it. It is a remedy in search of a situation that does not exist. And the only alternative to it is that we must pass H.R. 1 and the Florida People Act. We must vote. We must vote. And we must vote. We got to come out in numbers. We cannot allow this to stop us or deter us. We got to come out in numbers, y'all. And if you ever thought that your vote did not matter, look at what they're doing now. If it did not matter, they wouldn't be trying to cheat.

If they did not matter, they wouldn't be trying to steal. If they did not matter, they would not be trying to stop you. Eliminate voting ballots. Eliminate absentee ballots. Stop early voting. Stop the fact that you have the ability to take your souls to the polls on Sunday and Saturdays and vote like your life depends upon it because they're losing. We are winning, y'all. That's the issue here.

We are winning and we must continue to win. We got a fight rolling until we win. It ain't over until it's over. And we cannot throw in the towel. Fannie Lou Hamer said it well. I'm just sick and tired of being sick and tired. And if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, then get up and work and change the situation in the course of this nation. We have the ability to do that. What you laid out is precisely why when I saw the poll numbers in Michigan,

when Senator Gary Peters was down to a black Republican. I called you. I called others and I said, I said, I'm bringing the show there to elevate Senator Gary Peters, because the reality is that black Republican. Let me be real clear, y'all. That black Republican made it clear he was standing with Donald Trump. Oh, no question. He said he supported Donald Trump, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, 2000 percent. He supported Donald Trump 2000 percent. Can you imagine, Roland, if he was in the position of being governor now with these 39 bills that this raggedy Republican legislative body has put up? He would sign it. But thank God in a discussion this morning with our governor, Gretchen Whitmer, she went on record and said, I have the authority of the executive. I have a pen and I will exercise my authority and it gives me veto power and I intend to utilize.

And and and see for all and let me just let me just go ahead and put it out there. OK, let me just be real clear. I got all these black folks sitting here. Man, you talking about voting for Democrats. Y'all is two damn choices. It's two choices. And see, here's the deal. If we did not go to Detroit. To give an assist to Senator Gary Peters. If we did not sit here and light into John James every single day and expose his record, if the black folks in Detroit did not turn out the way they did, everybody listen to me right now. The Republicans will be controlling the United States Senate.

No question. The COVID bill wouldn't have passed if we did not take out John James in Michigan. Mitch McConnell right now would be the Senate majority leader. So for all y'all who are like, bro, I don't know why you keep talking about voting. Well, guess what? We ain't even having an H.R. one conversation, a George Floyd Justice Act conversation. We ain't even having a conversation if they were in charge. So a whole bunch of y'all can sit your punk asses at home and talk all this stuff and you can criticize. And let me be real clear. Ain't no way in the hell Democratic Party perfect. Because see, Senator Gary Peters is now the chair of the Democratic Senate reelection campaign, the DSCC.

Right. And I'm going to make it perfectly clear to him, because he owe a brother, that they're going to have to spend more money on black media. They're going to put more resources in these campaigns. all these fake-ass black YouTube historians, these wannabe folk who can't even carry Greg Carr's bag, who think they know politics, and they spread BS, and then folks like, well, man, I ain't gonna vote.

I ain't gonna do nothing. Well, if you don't think public policy has an impact on your life, you are out of your mind. Can you imagine what we would be if Trump was still in the White House? If we did not have Ossoff and Warnock as senators, and certainly if we did not have Gary Peters here, we would be in a whole different situation. And I'm simply saying we cannot afford to go back. We cannot afford to lose our ace in the hole. Our ace in the hole is our vote. And if you're not exercising that, you are playing into what they have put forward.

The country is changing demographically. Ain't nothing we can do about it. Ain't nothing they can do about it. It's becoming more and black and brown, whether we like it or not. And the reality is, Roland, we have never done to other people what has been done to ourselves. Now, we might treat each other bad, but we've never done that to other folks. We are a loving and nurturing and fellowship-filled people. All we want is what is right. Voting is right. We died for that right to vote. We cannot allow it to go. And we cannot come to this point in 2021 and let these individuals turn us back. For those of you who talk about Democrat versus Republican,

I want some Republicans to stand up. I want to vote for some. I want to vote for some that think right, that vote right on health care, that vote right for income equality, that vote right on police relations and reform, that vote right to help poor people, that vote right on foreign policy. I want some that vote right on those issues. The problem is, y'all, I can't find none. And if you've got some, please tell them to call me, Wendell Anthony in Detroit, Detroit NAACP, and we can work together. But until then, we got to run in the race with the horse that we got. And the horse that we got happens to have a D on his back, whether we like it or not. When you look at all the people that supported the stimulus package,

it was Democrats. When you look at all the people that opposed it, it was Republicans. When you look at the people who supported the cancellation of the presidential certification on January the 6th, who stood up in Congress, who opposed it, it was Republicans. What more do you need? I'm simply saying saying if you got some, bring some. Until then, that ain't nothing. And you and me gotta take our souls to the polls and vote like our lives depend upon it

because, quite frankly, they do. Reverend Wendell Anthony, Detroit NAACP, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Lord. Appreciate you, brother. Yes, sir. Greg, I want to go to you. And this is the thing and we talk about this a lot. Thanks, Lord. Appreciate you, brother. Yes, sir. Greg, I want to go to you. This is the thing. We talk about this a lot

on this show. Because we don't have Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative discussions on this show. We have black conversations. Right. What we try to do is walk people through the issues and understand.

If somebody wants to argue with me, I mean, I literally got these fools on my Instagram page and my Twitter page. And they all upset. Man, you always pushing this Democrat thing on us. Fools. I ain't even a Democrat. I have never, ever self-identified as a Democrat in my life. I voted for Republicans. I voted for Democrats. I voted for more Democrats than Republicans.

But I'm not blind. Reverend Anthony just said there was a $ point nine trillion dollar COVID relief bill. Not a single Republican in the House and the Senate voted for it. One hundred and seventy two Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act. Not a single Republican. All y'all folk out there hollering reparations, show me a Republican who's on record saying they support it. All I'm saying is this here. If I'm living in a world where there are two parties and one going in, then I've got to first make a choice.

Who is more likely to at least listen to a conversation with me? Hell, who going to take a meeting? That's first. That's right. Two, who going to show up to black media? That's second. And I ain't forgot Nancy Pelosi. You still need to come here. But third, who am I likely able to apply pressure to get them to vote the way we want us to vote. We got to have folk stop playing games because this what was happening in Georgia and Michigan and Texas and Florida and Tennessee and Arkansas and North Carolina

and South Carolina and Louisiana. That's where our people are living. That's right. That's right. And Roland, every state you mentioned, with the exception of Louisiana, has not accepted the Medicaid expansion. Those federal dollars, our tax dollars, which are available to them. Brian Kemp, again, much respect to that punk, is a papier-mâché racist. He doesn't have the heft and the weight of a George Wallace or a Eugene or Herman Talmadge, his predecessors in the Georgia State House. And listening to you, Brittany, and you, Amisha, it's very clear what you all are reminding

us of is that we've been here before. And, Amisha, when you say that they passed all these voter suppression laws during the Barack Obama presidency, that's absolutely right. Reverend Anthony is also correct. We're not going back. Your little tissue paper experiment is getting ready to dissolve. So when people call this an existential threat to democracy, I have one little corrective. There's never been democracy in this country.

There's only been struggle. And we've always been very clear as black people what our permanent interests were. So, you know, I look over your shoulder, Brittany, and told black people in New York in 1917 and 18, do not vote for the right to vote for women. Now, that may seem counterintuitive, but what they were saying is these white women in the feminist movement are also white supremacists. So they're not including us in the conversation to pass this legislation in New York State and the 19th Amendment conversation at all. So we're Black, and people say, why would those Black women vote against their interests?

They're not. They have a very clear lens on interests. So I think what is happening finally now, what we're seeing is, if we don't understand where we have been, which is why I was watching last night and the night before, and I was like, man, Roland, I love you, brother. Don't even give that young brother a conversation that takes up too much time, because as a teacher of young people, I understand if you don't know, you're doing the best you can with what you know. So it's just a matter

of educating. If you get to argue with them, people might think there's a legitimate position that you're arguing against. I say, no, no, no,. You get to argue with them, people might think there's a legitimate position that you're arguing against. I say, no, no, no, don't get distracted. Keep talking. Because, you know, what the white nationalists are doing right now, and they don't understand it, they are really overplaying their hand. When those poor white people in Georgia who think Brian Kemp represents them with that fake, that's the other reason you know he's a Piper Miche racist.

When the thing looked like it was interrupted, did you see how shook he was? See, that's a punk right there. What's going on? And his accent changed, too. But at any rate, when those poor white people realized that, wait a minute, this bill passed because of people I voted against, and now you want to expand Medicare, Medicaid? See, what the Democratic Party needs to do, and you're right, we're not Democrats or Republicans, we're Black people.

What the Democratic Party needs to do is move to these southern states, because it's the Confederacy, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, along with Wyoming, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, that have not expanded Medicaid. And so now when the election comes up, you need to run on that and say, see, you think that you're freeing. But you can't go get no health care because they have decided that they are going to put your whiteness over your life. Overplaying their hand. Finally, I'll say this is very interesting. This is to all the black folks who say the parties are the same. That's incredibly naive. And if

you got one in $1,400 checks, please send it to me so I can add it to mine because clearly money is I know that ain't no money. No, it's actually $1,400. And I know that's not a lot of money to use, because some of these people are petty bushwalkers

who are sitting up at their very expensive computers and talking all this revolutionary theory. Meanwhile, somebody for whom 14 hours at a red light today in D.C. And the brother's like, I'm waiting on my stimulus check. He out there panhandling. So y'all go look that brother in the face and tell him the parties are the same. Man, shut up. Just be quiet.

If you can't, you want to be a revolutionary, be a revolutionary at home. It's all good. But go talk to that brother at the light. Tell him that. But get ready, because he probably going to punch you dead in your face and you're going to mask me bloody. But just, you know. I was up, Brittany, until about 6.30 this morning

dealing with some crazy fools last night on the Clubhouse chat. And they were sitting there just talking all this craziness. And you know what? And a brother, they would text me later, Roland, just get off. I said, no, no, no. I said, because sometimes you just got to smack the shit out of some people just to show them what it looked like. Sometimes. And I know the brother who emailed, who tweeted me today.

He said, Roland, can you stop cussing because your child watch this like HBO? OK, let's let's let's be real clear. And like you ain't that your child ain't heard nobody cuss. Let's just be real. But see, the thing, Brittany, that I'm trying to get our folk ready for. I'm trying to get them to understand when I did that commentary in 2017 and I re-upped it in 2020 when I said, this means war. I've already made it clear. We're going to be on the road in 2022.

We're going to Wisconsin. To mobilize and broadcast live from and to get black folks to take Ron Johnson out. We're going to Pennsylvania to get black folk to elect a Democrat to replace Pat Toomey. Now, again, all y'all folks who listening and watching, I need y'all to hear what I said. We're doing this for black people. Because the Republican running in Pennsylvania ain't going to give a damn about us. I done told y'all, outside of the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and the suburbs,

Pennsylvania is Alabama. Yes, it is. And them fools sent one of the dumbest members in the history of the world, Tommy Tuberville, as their senator. So I ain't sorry. We going to go to North Carolina and put somebody in who's going to replace Burr. Because, see, let me remind y'all, and that was an uptick in black voter turnout for Tom

Tillis against Carol Cunningham. Tom Tillis and Burr, two white Republicans, they blocked all of the black women who were nominated for the federal bench of the circuit there in North Carolina. That's right. See, see, y'all keep want to play games with this. And I know Marco Rubio Democrats trying to figure out what we're going to do in Florida oh he's invincible no no no no we're going to go to Florida because we're going to take out Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio as well

I'm saying all of this because oh by the way and we damn sure going to Georgia to take Brian Kemp's punk ass out gotta go and we damn sure can go to Georgia to re-elect Raphael Warnock. Hello.

So all the black folks out here who are watching, y'all need to be prepared because they already control the Supreme Court 6-3. If we play games and they control the Senate, they control the federal judges.

They control the public policy. Y'all don't play games with your children's future by being stuck on stupid in 2021. Brittany, go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, you hit the nail on the head, Roland. Not much by being stuck on stupid in 2021. Brittany, go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, you hit the nail on the head, Roland.

Not much else to say there. They know that we're coming for them and they know the simple fact that if they weren't concerned about us coming for them, they wouldn't have introduced well over four times the number of bills to restrict voting access as compared to roughly this time last year. That alone tells you everything that you need to know. But, you know, that's in the American tradition, right, is to fight against the black vote

and to not allow us to have some, to be a part of this failing American project, if you will. So, but we're going to do, we're going to continue to show out. We're going to continue to fight in masses and numbers. And I have no doubt that we are going to. The time has come. We are at I like what the gentleman said earlier. We're at the third reconstruction, if you will. The time has come. Misha, final point here. I've all I've been using that language. This is the third reconstruction. And I've been using it for a reason because the wake of the death of George Floyd, we've seen this awakening. But see, the problem is

that first reconstruction, DuBois' book had it at 20 years. It's really 10, 12. Others had it a longer period of time. Most folks don't call the Black Freedom Movement the second Reconstruction. Manny Marable's book lays out a longer period of what he called the second Reconstruction. But if you use the death of Emmett, the murder of Emmett Till August 28, 1955,

or if you want to go Brown vs. Board of Education 1, 2, and 54, and then go through King's assassination in 68, you could say the second reconstruction lasted 14 years. The third reconstruction has to fix what the first two did not do, and that is focus on the money, which means that it has to last longer than the first one and the second one. So this needs to be at least 20 years.

This is 2021. So if the third reconstruction lasts at least 20 years, we've got to be locked and loaded all the way up to till 2041. And by the way, y'all, by 2039, majority of the working class in this country will be people of color. By 2043, the majority of the population will be people of color. So I'm trying to get people to understand today we are in a generational, a multi-generational battle. So what happens this year and next year sets up not 2024, but 2044. But if you only look at this thing in terms of the next one year or two years, and then you approach this with your very selfish interest, when idiots say, well, I'm ignoring the top

of the ticket, I'm going to vote down ballot. Dumb ass. You got to vote bottom to top, top to bottom, because politics is linked. Federal, state, county, city, school board, water district, judges, DA, constables, sheriffs, they're all linked. And you can't say, well, I'm going to remove this link and deal with the rest because if you remove a link from a chain,

you have rendered the chain powerless because a chain, no matter how strong the material, cannot do its job if a single link is missing. You're right, Roland. And the issue here is that at the end of the day, all politics is local. The local politics of any given city or state are always going to affect individuals more than what they see at the federal level. That just is what it is. I think that we as a culture have diminished

the importance of local elections. That's why we see more people come out every four years than we will ever see in mayor's races than we will ever see in statehouse races. And right now, state legislatures are the ones that are basically shutting down, pushing against and fighting against all things that elevate African-Americans. It's very frustrating to me that consistently and even with the stats that you gave before asking your question. Yes, America will be more brown, will be more people of color within the next few years. However, just because you have population increases doesn't mean you have economic gains, and it definitely doesn't mean that you have power increases. So there's a lot that has to be done within the next few years to ensure that we get to that next level of reconstruction,

that part of reconstruction that was left out of the first two, meaning that the economic gains, meaning that force and that power that not only aligns us in equity, but also ensures that we are not consistently behind four, five, ten times the rate of personal wealth, of family wealth that we see within the white community. That's where reparations comes in. But beyond that, we need to have equity in our systems that create that balance. That means education. That means health care. That means housing. That means all of these modes of progress that we see across cultures that have consistently been denied to African-Americans. And a lot of that, again, takes place at the local level. So it means having our people get out in full force with the same numbers they did in 2020 and November elections and every single local election that they can at home, because those are the elections that are going to shape their futures.

And being intent and being very serious and real about the policies that matter the most to our community, the ones that will help us move forward when it comes to economics, whether that is entrepreneurial, whether that is retooling, reshaping and refocusing, because right now we have way too many of our people who are housed in low wage jobs. That $15 minimum wage definitely matters. And we still need to be fighting for that. But we also need to be working to move our people outside of those jobs and ensuring that they understand the jobs of the future and the jobs that are going to help them to be able to sustain in a middle class and beyond. Those are things that we need to focus on. Let me make my last point before I go to a break and we talk about tech CEOs today on Capitol Hill. Because I know somebody who's stupid, plans on tweeting something stupid.

And I know somebody's stupid may want to sit here and try to post a little link or something out of context so let me just go ahead and say I am not saying vote. We good. Right. Y'all ain't never heard me say that. What I am saying is after we vote, we then have to go from we then have to close the chapter on that and open a new one. So somebody said,

who was this fool, ignorant truth seeker who never has any truth whatsoever on YouTube? He goes, y'all pushed us to vote for Biden to hold him accountable. Well, where is he? Fool, that's what we doing. Are you not paying attention to the conversation?

Right. I had a fool tell me, Greg. Well, see, that's why we should have got the tangibles and the commitments before he ran. He can't pass a bill. Civics one on one. Many people clearly have failed. Joe Biden, President Biden and Vice President Harris could have promised the world. Congress passes bills.

They can advocate. They can't pass bills. In fact, civics lesson, a president can't even introduce a bill in Congress. They can write it. They can prepare it, but they literally have to give it to their party to present.

So what we are doing is holding President Biden accountable. See, all these folks who've been running their mouths this week about Tamika Mallory. See, this is what happens when your target is wrong. Y'all find what Tamika said at the Grammys and let me know when y'all have it ready. All this week, folk have been trashing and dogging Tamika and Black Lives Matter and Ben Crump and Sean King, all based upon comments from Samara Rice and Lisa Simpson. But here's the problem with that. While y'all been talking about Tamika, y'all ignored what she said in the speech.

She said, we got to hold Joe Biden accountable. Do you see what happens when you get off focus? Play it. It's a state of emergency. It's been a hell of a year. Hell for over 400 years. My people, it's time we stand.

It's time we demand the freedom that this land promises. President Biden, we demand justice, equity, policy, and everything else that freedom encompasses. And to accomplish this, we don't need allies. We need accomplices. It's bigger than black and white. This is not a trend. This is our fight until freedom.

She specifically said and looked at the camera, President Biden. But the whole discussion this week has not been on Biden. It's been on her literally just speaking at the Grammys. See, that's what happens, y'all, when you allow yourself to get played, when you allow yourself to get thrown off focus, thrown off kilter. Biden could not, as Greg noted, he couldn't come out against the filibuster,

which means that black folks, y'all should be calling Joe Manchin's office every single day. Come on. Y'all should be calling Kristen Sinema's office every single day. And Tim Punk asked Scott to roll. Yep. Senator Tim Scott, who is no Senator Ed Brooke. That's right. That's right. You can't send a Scott. You can't claim a legacy or center Ed Brooke.

When he stood up against his own party, when they were standing with Southern Dixie crats and were filibustering the Fair Housing Act in 1968. You, Senator Tim Scott, you are no Colin Powell, who went to North Carolina and while the governor was sitting in the audience, called him out for the voter suppression laws. Don't come to me with your silly ass woke nonsense. audience called him out for this voter suppression laws. Don't come to me with your silly as woke nonsense. Have some guts, Tim Scott. Find. Some roots in your shrimp and grits.

Stop being scared of your own party, man. Find some soul and be willing to say what needs to be said. But black people who are watching and listening. stop being consumed with the during the first and the second reconstruction. The history of America is clear. At every point in American history where there has been black success, it's been followed by white backlash. What you saw with Trump after Obama was white backlash. We now got to make sure that we don't let the white backlash get back in control. So what are y'all prepared to do?

Y'all know what we prepared to do. We hear every single night, five days a week, giving them hell and we backing up. And as long as God gives breath in my body, I'm going straight bring team hashtag team whip that ass to every single Republican who is standing in the way for us voting. And for every weak-kneed Democrat, we going to whoop them tricks too until they do what's right. Y'all can either roll with us, but it's all good. Because sometimes you got to roll by yourself to let folks know you're not playing. I'll be right back. Georgia lawmakers have unleashed an all-out attack on voting rights this year, including through the introduction of more than 80 anti-voting bills

since the legislative session began in January. Two of the worst voter suppression bills in the nation right now are SB202 and HB531, and they are rapidly moving through a flawed and non-transparent process in the Georgia General Assembly. It should come as no surprise that these bills are a reaction to increased participation by black voters. That context is critical to understanding the purpose and impact of these voter suppression bills. Georgia

lawmakers want to restrict voting access by significantly restricting the use and availability of secure drop boxes, by restricting the ability for voters to cast provisional ballots, and by adding new ID requirements for absentee voting. They're also seeking to allow for unlimited voter challenges, which is particularly troublesome given that just this past January 2020 runoff, tens of thousands of Georgia voters were subjected to baseless, untimely, and potentially discriminatory voter challenges. Georgia lawmakers want to criminalize people for giving out free food and water to voters who are standing in extremely long lines. It can last anywhere from two to five to even ten hours. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is in

partnership with a coalition of on-the-ground partners including Black Voters Matter, All Voting is Local, and Fair Fight to push back on SB 202 and HB 531. If you live in Georgia, please call the Georgia General Assembly line and ask to be connected to your representative. Tell them to vote against SB202 and against HB531. If you live outside of Georgia, you can still help by contacting your U.S. Senators and asking them to support H.R.1, the For the People Act. Please call your elected officials today

and join us in the fight to protect voting rights. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Well, you know, big tech matters, folks in this country, and social media executives answered to Congress today for their role in the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey and Google's Sundar Pichai all appeared virtually before a joint House committee. Y'all want to roll the video today. I want to start by asking all three of you if your platform bears some responsibility for disseminating disinformation related to the election and the stop the steal movement that led to the attack on the Capitol. Just a yes or no answer.

Mr. Zuckerberg. Chairman, I think our responsibility is to build systems that can help. I just want to get no answer. Okay. Yes or no. Do you do bear some responsibility for what happened? Congressman, our responsibility is to make sure that we build effective systems. Okay. The gentleman's business is not to answer the question. Mr. Pichai, yes or no. We always feel a deep sense of responsibility, but I think we worked hard. This election effort was one of our most substantive efforts. Is that a yes or a no?

Congressman, it's a complex question. We— Okay, we'll move on. Mr. Dorsey? Yes, but you also have to take into consideration a broader ecosystem. It's not just about the technology platforms we use. Thank you. Thank you.

And I agree with that. Other concerns include disinformation and extremist campaigns that flourish on social media. Joining me now are social media analyst and diversity strategist Shereen Mitchell, Dr. Dominique Harrison, director of technology policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Dominique, I want to start with you. This is what I find to be quite interesting in this conversation.

You saw the members saying, hey, do you take responsibility? These tech companies have to, they must confront lies and misinformation with their desperation for profits, especially Facebook. Valonique, go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry. So, yes, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity. Totally agree with what you just said. I watched most of the hearing today. You know, a lot of things stood out to me. First was there is a lack of, you know, recognition around the kind of challenges that are facing Black people as a result of the platforms that they own. We know that online platforms can exacerbate discrimination, voter suppression tactics, and race-based extremism. What we don't know is the extent to which the government needs

to regulate tech companies to prevent this kind of behavior. There's a lack of accountability by tech CEOs regarding the roles their platform plays in online disinformation. Their company codes of conduct, ethic boards, stakeholder groups, all kind of self-policing activities are not enough. And the American public has no real knowledge about the enforcement of the disinformation policies adopted by these companies or their effectiveness.

We lack a full understanding of the impact of different information on black communities and other communities of color. And we only receive that kind of information when an outside group does research on the company and their kinds of services, and with that we learn about the harms that those technologies have on communities of color. So social media companies need to be providing more transparency and accountability about the enforcement and effectiveness of their moderation policies, because they need to understand that there are real-world consequences for what people do online.

We saw that in the January 6th indirection on Capitol Hill, right? Social media companies were slow to move racist, abusive, and hateful language long before that happened. And it wasn't until advocacy groups started saying that, yo, you have to take off this content. You have to moderate what you see online because it can end up in having what we saw on January 6th. So what we're advocating for at the Joint Center is that Section 230 be reformed, right, to say that tech companies can't say that they have liability. They're shielded from taking down content that's racist. Right. Or that espouses hateful messages and that has discriminatory outcomes on black communities. So that's just a little bit of what I saw today.

You know, Shereen, I talked about again the business plan. The reality is this here. Facebook has made billions off of the misinformation. The reports have all come out how they, during the last four years of Trump, they literally paved the way for right wing people. Dan Bongino, The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, folks like that. They have Breitbart. They literally changed the rules because they knew these crazy white conservatives, they eat that stuff up and they consume and spend so much time and money're on Facebook. So they've got to own up to them creating the financial system to allow it to thrive

for misinformation and lies and terroristic activity to go unabated. So I would have to agree in multiple forms based on this, really, in terms of what you're saying. And I also want to agree with what was just said. It's not only that they're benefiting from it, but it's also that they also are profiting from it. They're profiting from the hate. They're profiting from the anger. And we also know, though, that with the last few reports is that literally they have the AI to stop hate speech on the platforms, but they're deciding not to do it because they feel like it's biased to one political party versus another. That's the choice that they're making.

If this is even across both political parties, then we're fair to say hate speech should not be on their platforms. But what they're doing is they're trying to basically say there's certain portions of this that's free speech and certain groups of people get more privileged than others. And that's what's different about the quote-unquote following their terms of service, which they're not. But they are actually allowing the harassment. They're allowing extremism because they're basically saying, hey, this is free speech. What they're doing different in America versus in other countries is that what we're dealing with is them saying, hey, you know, if it's a foreign actor doing this, we will take it

down and we will respond to it. But if it's a domestic actor, we'll leave it, because this, you know, the freedom of speech for Americans is different. Even though that freedom of speech can include incitement to violence, death threats, or targeting certain groups of people. And something really important that Zuckerberg said today was that he was okay with Section 230 being changed with two caveats, which is making sure there's clearly illegal stuff is being added to the Section 230.

When you say clearly illegal, that also means that you can't use domestic terrorism as a framework because there's no law that focuses on domestic terrorism, and there's no law that makes it possible to call out what we have been dealing with, which is white domestic terrorism in this country, which is what the insurrection ended up being. So there's this fine line that they're also trying to walk through in terms of the legislation and regulations, things that they're agreeing with. But also the key thing that I think is very important that is being brought up is that

they don't feel that they should be held accountable for other people's actions, which is not the experience for most users. And they are saying, we want you to be here present, but we're not gonna protect you. And here's all the reasons why. And those are the types of things I heard today when they couldn't answer just simple yes or no answers. It was a whole bunch of caveats.

There was quote unquote new nuances but at the end of the day what what they were saying was what happened was was harmful and problematic but they should not be held accountable because of xyz while they're purposely in some instances not taking down certain content and they're also banning certain people from speaking up which is black and brown people, when they're trying to defend themselves against the harms afflicted upon them on

these platforms. And Bobby Rush asked a very specific question. Where's your audit to Jack Dorsey? And Dorsey had a different answer, which was, oh, we're going to go to civil rights organizations. We just threw out the audit framework. Questions from my panel. I'm going to start with Amisha.

Sure. Sorry, I was on mute after watching the testimony today. My my big question is, what are the limits? So if we are to push in terms of restrictions and I hear what you say you say about how they act towards international actors who do negative things, specifically spreading misinformation and lies. But what is the slippery slope between that and pushing too far and specifically targeting minority groups? Because what we've seen when we've initiated this type of action before is that the groups that you expected to get targeted never were. But groups like Black Lives Matter and groups that were organizing Black people always tend to be the ones that fall under the ire. How are we to stop that type of action on these platforms? So if this is for me, I just want to make sure that you're talking to me. I have an answer to that. Yes. Okay. Yes. So the thing is, this is the, this is the key about free speech and the like, they use the conversation about marginalized people being most affected by the

way in which we handle free speech. But the truth is at this moment, free speech has not protected us and they're not protecting us right now, right now in this moment, they're not using that free speech model for the Black Lives Matter people, for us. They're actually in opposite, basically banning us and suspending us for speaking up. And so when people say to me, well, what happens next if this will be a bigger effect on Black Lives Matter or anyone else? it's already happening. What we're not doing right now is calling out the fact that it's already happening and what we need to do right now that is not being covered. It isn't about the right for people who are inflicting harm, who are inciting violence. We're protecting them over us protecting those people who are being

targeted. And we need to rethink that. Brittany, your question for our panel. Yeah, Amisha, I loved your question. That was my question for them. We're thinking about that balance because we know so many of our various activist groups and educators are being shadow banned. They're seeing a decrease in their engagement when they're talking about eliminating white supremacy and talking about organizing via these platforms. But I guess I'm interested in

how can we get these CEOs to be more transparent in terms of it's fascinating that they're able so quickly to silence the voices of Black activists, but they are not able to silence, you know, these white supremacists. What is their argument there, and what can the community do to push them in the right direction? Dominique? Yeah, those are really great points. I mean, it's important that we understand the algorithms, right, the data sets that they are using in which their tools operate and how their services operate online, whether it is them providing that information to a third-party entity or giving that information to a third party entity or giving that information to government, we need to understand how those technologies are working and the impact that it has on our communities.

But they do not, you know, outright kind of give that information to anybody, right? Some of that is for proprietary concerns. But the point is, is that we need to understand the implications of these technologies, right? so we can understand how they're operating, but also what other kind of interventions can be used to make sure that we are not having more harm on communities of color. So there are legislation right now, right, that members have introduced to say that these tech companies should be audited to see how their algorithms are working, what kind of data sets they're using, but nothing has been passed yet. And so a lot of civil rights organizations and advocates

are pushing for some of this legislation to pass to make sure that we are indeed holding these companies accountable. Because even though they may have research teams that are housed inside these organizations, sometimes, as we've seen lately, those researchers, many of times people of color and women, are pushed out or their research is not deemed as being worthy of publication. And that research is very much centering Black folks in the conversation and the concerns that we have with regards to technology. Greg Carr. I'm sorry. Shereen, go ahead, then Greg Carr. Yeah, so I just want to highlight that because she was picking up on some of the things that

happened with Timnit, who was doing ethical AI. If you're a Black person trying to do ethical AI for any of these companies, you're not welcomed. And you can tell that by what just happened with Timnit. But the other piece that I also want to say is that when there is transparency projects, like the one that was in NYU that was focused on the transparency projects of the political ads, Facebook actually tried to shut those things down. So what we need to deal with is the fact that there are projects already present that are not being utilized properly and also being shut down by the companies. And Congress needs to actually focus on the regulations to make sure those projects can continue to exist.

Greg Carr. Thank you, Roland. And thank you both, Shereen and Dominique. As we see this damn ad with this sister every 30 seconds on social media 25 years ago from Facebook, talking about the Communication Decency Act of 1996. Thank you for walking us through how that Section 230 is really the only thing there and is protecting them because they're private actors. Um, what can we take and learn from attempts in recent years, 2018 with sex trafficking, 2020 with the Earn It

attempt, which has some bipartisan sponsorship? What can we learn from these attempts to, quote, unquote, regulate, as you say, Dominique, regulate the extent to which these private actors can hide behind that third-party content immunity? What can we learn from these previous attempts to it so that we can basically call Zuckerberg's bluff and put some teeth in regulation? And I say that because he's clearly been out here saying, we want you to do it. We want you to regulate us, realizing that the response could be to put some regulation in that would only require them to make a good faith

effort, which means they still wouldn't have to comply with anything. And how comfortable are you all with attempting to go past that? And can we learn anything from previous attempts to regulate them around issues like sex trafficking? So, I mean, we think it's very important that Section 230 at least stands, but we need to reform it, right? We need something that still says to tech companies, you should remove content that is harassment, that is negative, whatever. So we need that kind of regulation still standing. But I think what you're getting to is that we certainly need bipartisan support on this issue. Today in the hearing, what I saw was Republicans focusing on children and the

impacts of technology, which is important. And Section 230 does help in protecting child pornography not being on contents. But we also need to understand the discrimination that is happening because of these technologies and the data in which they are using. So we need people on both sides of the aisle to understand this is a real problem and to come to some agreement with passing legislation. Another concern of ours is around privacy, right, and how that relates to black folks and discriminatory outcomes of the personal use of their information. We need that to be federal legislation because there are states right now coming up with their own rules, right? This is why tech companies want some kind of federal law so that they don't have to comply with California privacy laws or New York privacy laws. But the point is, is that without this kind of legislation at the highest level, then they are out to do whatever they want and they can come up with their principles and they can come up with good ethics and good ways to do business, you know, the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights actually

has a document called DDoS, which is a play on DDoS. But there's a framework there for the legal aspects from a state perspective on basically claiming that social media companies are public spaces and using the public spaces law that could be utilized in some of this. So I think there's ways that we can do this that does not even have to go through Congress, but that can be a state level framework that we look at in terms of how we can hold these companies accountable. Because they're saying regulation, but they're also dancing around what that regulation looks like um you know zuckerberg actually admitted to wanting transparency documents from all the groups while he's blocking that right but he's also said something about

making sure that there was um clear illegal aspects that they can follow so if we put those laws in place then that makes it legal to clear legal lines that they have to deal with in terms of public spaces. So I think there's ways to deal with this. I just think that we're not being forward enough

about how to navigate that in terms of that regulation, but also the existing laws. All right. Dominica Shireen, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Folks, going to a break. We come back. A Facebook group. Private. Cops in Pittsburgh. There are racist comments on it. Shocking. Next, a Roller Mart unfiltered. Who needs a little love today?

Who needs some love sent their way? Who needs love? Who needs love? Who needs a little love today? Who needs some love sent their way? Who needs a little love today? Who needs some love sent their way? Who needs love? Who needs love? Who needs love?

Who needs love? Who needs love? Who needs love? Who needs love? Who needs love? Hi, this is Essence Atkins. Hey, I'm Deon Cole from Blackist. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. Well, Associated Press report discovered that a private Facebook group for Pittsburgh police officers became a place to spread hate online. Several pro-Trump members of the Pittsburgh area police break room Facebook group often referred to Black Lives

Matter as terrorists and thugs. They shared posts criticizing law enforcement who marched with Black Lives Matter and Democrats whom they often referred to as demoncrats. Over time, the conversation within the group shifted from jokes about policing and moralizing fallen officers to racist and transphobic comments. In 2019, the Plainview Project shared thousands of racist, sexist posts from active and retired police officers in eight other departments around the country. Now, Greg Carr, we ain't shocked by any of this. This is the stuff, though, that we need to understand that happens in these police departments, that people, oh, no, there are a few apples, but it's amazing. We keep hearing about racist cops in St. Louis, out of Florida, out of California, out of Pennsylvania, out of Georgia. We can go on and on and on.

Can we stop playing games that we have white supremacists on these police forces nationwide? No, because they've always been there. That's what the police means. Goes back, as we know, to the slave patrol. The two quick things right quick from the story that you just covered. When we heard Dominique and Shereen talk about the Community, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and Section 230, the platform gets to choose what to restrict or not. And as we heard, they're punishing black folk. They're taking us out of there.

The solution that Shireen offered is really the one. You have to almost treat them like public utilities, make them public, and then you tell them what to do. Otherwise white nationalist groups like this, which we've always known to exist, will continue in this, and they'll be abetted by these private actors like Facebook, who then hide behind Section 230 by saying the law says that we're not responsible for what third parties post. So they're basically enabling them without any harm. So you got to do public revelation.

The second thing of the two is this. I'm glad you keep bringing up the third, Reconstruction, because what we saw in the wake of the first Reconstruction almost immediately in places like Colifax in Louisiana, in places like North Carolina and other places, is that those white nationalists, in collusion with extralegal folk, so not just the police, but the Klan and everybody else, started almost immediately with voter intimidation, started almost immediately with violence and with this rhetoric to begin to claw back the loss that they felt in the Civil War. This is what's happening again.

This rhetoric isn't harmless. It isn't just some people playing around on social media. You combine that with Brian Kemp using the alarm words, well, it's billionaires and left-wing. No, that's like saying communists in the 1950s, and that's like saying carpetbaggers in 1860 and 70. This rhetoric is of a piece of this larger problem that is going to finally be solved one way or the other. You can pass a law, which is going to be challenged

in court, of course, that says you can't pass out water, but we are black people. So, you know, we're going to arm people with eight water bottles and a piece of chicken at the church before anybody ever goes to get in line. And then when you show up with your gun because you think the police are going to be on your side because you've been monitoring the Facebook chat, when them young brothers and sisters in the Not F-ing Around Coalition in Georgia show up on the other side, this is when we're going to have a decision to make. All this is going to end up probably in violence unless we come up with different types of solution to disarm them.

And part of it, I think, is disarming Facebook, regulating it like a public utility. And that then takes the decision out of the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, whose company's worth $800 billion right now. Racist cops. What a shocker, Amisha. It's one of those things where I'm like, color me surprised, Roland. At the end of the day, I agree with Dr. Carr here. We have seen generation after generation where police, law enforcement, to a large extent the military as well, has become a home to white supremacists and white supremacist terror. So acknowledging the fact that they have found these private Facebook groups and anything on social media isn't private. So that's, you know, an oxymoron in and of itself, but they found these private Facebook groups where they feel it open enough for

them to be able to have these conversations with each other where they not only share racial epithets, but they also share things that are essentially dog whistles to help to, you know, stress their covert ideology around how they actually feel about Black Lives Matter, how they actually feel about the racial reckoning that we happen to be in, as well as how they feel about race and culture writ large. This tells us something not only about these officers, but about the fact that a continuation of people who are chosen to lead in law enforcement, who are chosen for these roles where they are to protect and serve, are individuals who inhabit very, very problematic viewpoints against people of color,

specifically Black people. And that, to me, shows, again, this isn't a bad Apple scenario, to inhabit very, very problematic viewpoints against people of color, specifically black people. And that to me shows, again, this isn't a bad apple scenario because if there's, if it was, we wouldn't see it across the country. We wouldn't see it for generations, time and time again, regardless of whether it's an urban or rural area. What we see is that this is the police department. This is who they are. And you cannot, and I get tired of hearing it, you cannot train your way into equity. That's not a thing. These are people who have brandished with guns and people who believe wholeheartedly that they are an elite class, that not only them, but their whiteness is an elite class. And that their job is to dismantle black people, to dismantle the communities,

to instill fear, to invoke violence. That is something where, you know, I feel like this generation, when we talk about the defund the police movement, this is what they are talking about it for, because they recognize what many on the right, as well as some on the left, the moderates being the most spoken about, don't, in the sense that there's many people who are irredeemable. This is a system that is irredeemable. This is one that has to be broken apart and started anew. This is one that has to be removed from our culture as it exists today because it is one that is more damaging than it is helpful. And it is one that automatically sees black bodies as criminals. It is one that automatically sees black bodies as something to dismantle and to disengage with. It is one that automatically sees Black bodies as

not mattering. And it's one that automatically sees Black bodies as those that can be dismissed. And I think that that's very clear in those social media posts. Brittany? Yeah. I mean, I have to echo the, you know, the things the other panelists said. This isn't anything new. And in 2019, you know, the Plainview Project released a database of similar posts from eight different police departments. And the project, you know, it showed Facebook accounts of over 3,000 individuals, 600 which were retired officers. And they found thousands upon thousands of posts that were racist, sexist, advocated for police brutality.

But I think this goes back to the point that both of the panelists made earlier, which is, you know, this isn't something new. And these aren't individual bad apples. We know that the earliest iterations of policing are related to the slave patrol. When we talk about that mantra, you know, related to the police protect and serve, we're missing the second half of that statement. It's to protect and serve the interest of the ruling class. So the police and extends to the military and all other state soldiers essentially are not here to protect us as black people. It's not about finding a home for their rhetoric. Their very existence is white supremacist in nature. And that's why you don't see the National Guard mobilized when black bodies are killed by police or the community watch. But, you know, you let some capital burn

down and then all of these entities are being mobilized because that's what these institutions, that's what these groups are actually about. And, you know, I always say it's why we have to not only defund the police, but completely re-envision policing, try and envision a world where policing doesn't exist, at least not in the way that we currently know it. And I always say to people who are like, it's not possible, it's not going to happen. There was a point where we didn't think enslavement was ever going to end. There was a point where we didn't think legal segregation was ever going to end. And yet here we are, because the collective power and will of the people is all that we need. All right, folks, y'all know what time it is.

No charcoal grills are allowed. I'm not a community. I'm white. I got you, Carl. I'm illegally selling water with our permit. On my property. Whoa! Hey! Give me your ID. You don't live here. I'm uncomfortable. Imagine listening to Buffalo Morning Drive Time Radio and a shock jock is talking about about toast and the crew is discussing how they like their toast and they make a comparison to black women listen what so what is your what's the number

you're saying it's it's probably a seven isish. Oh, my God. Six to seven, probably seven. See, we have ours, and I may get into trouble for this. It's like 2 o'clock. I have them to the attractiveness of women that I find to be attractive. So I'll go, I will never go to a Serena Williams level. But I'm very comfortable with, like, I'm very comfortable at a Halle Berry level. Okay. I need a little bit of mulatto still coming through. It can't be, you know.

Is Gayle King not, that's not your realm? No, Gayle King is not even on my toaster. You about to lose your job. You about to lose your job. You are about to lose your job. WGRF 97 Rock radio host, my bad, former radio host, Rob Letterman, said he was so comfortable with his toes. Well, let's just say as that clip went out, things didn't go so well. Not only that, Letterman also lost his job as a host

for the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres, and his two co-hosts who giggle at his comments have been suspended. See, Greg, I keep saying every time one of these white folk do this, a hundred black people should apply for their job. I'm telling you, if they keep this up, if they keep this up if they keep this up we could in all black unemployment With this crazy as white people segment. Oh No, the only reason I say I don't know brother is because

Clearly he was there because he was popular We think of dynamis We think of Howard Stern so-called shock jocks We think of Don Imus, we think of Howard Stern, so-called shock jocks, we think of Rush Limbaugh. Now, well, I guess he's too far away from John Lewis to have a conversation given the proximate distance between heaven and hell, but they are popular.

They have listeners. If you put black people in it, you put a black woman in that seat or a black man in that seat, and the ratings plunge. See, the thing that keeps these things, these people going is not the individual, it's the people who listen to them and the ad rate and the ad buy they can use it. I mean, you know this much better than all of us combined. And so when I hear something like that, my, you know, of course, get rid of him.

But that's just cutting the head off of the deeper problem. The problem is this is how non-white people are viewed with black people at the bottom of a pyramid at which whiteness is at the top. And at the bottom of that pyramid of blackness is the black man and the black woman, depending on who's doing the talking. Mulatto, that conversation, that is about sexuality. That's about gender. that's about gender, that's about how women are viewed in general, and then black women in particular. All of that is in the soul

of the listeners. So you get rid of him and put somebody else in there, then they probably tank the thing. Then he's going to put his replacement in who's just going to be a little bit more careful next time and have a different type of narrative, but tap into that same psyche. The guy's popular. That's why he was there in the first play. The thing here,

Amisha, is yeah, they to even think that conversation, yeah, I like mulatto toast. Oh, no, I'm not. I will not go as far as my toast being serena williams

yeah yeah yeah the station fired them before it happened yet look it did not take long to fire them because they they saw that heat that was about to come there's no coming back from something like that and roland when i had originally heard this story i thought that this was a hot mic situation not that that that would make it any better, but the fact that they did this during a live broadcast makes it even worse. And I'll add something else to that. I think that as a black woman,

I'm always extremely offended when I hear white men specifically make fun of, castigate, and throw under Serena Williams on a regular basis, not only because of body type, but also because of skin tone. And it is devastating. It is hurtful. It is something that comes from a relic in an era in our country's history that is not only disparaging, but disgusting. But I'll also add this, Roland,

we can't act like colorism and this level of disgust isn't something that exists within the African-American community as well. Now, there are some kitchen cleanup that has to be done here when it comes to how Black women specifically are rated in terms of their attractiveness based on this idealism that the closer they are to whiteness and lightness means that they are, you know, closer to closer to being worthy, closer to being, you know, this idea of beauty. That level of frustration I heard from those being is the same level of frustration I get when I'm looking at some of the chats and hearing from black men down the streets who say very similar things. This is a whole problem that exists not only within that minutia that we just heard, and yes, they deserve to lose their jobs. I'm glad that the two who giggled and also helped to carry that conversation along are also suspended, but this is a much bigger context and conversation because black women have been through so much in this country. And the last thing we need is this consistent judgment based on skin tone, not only from white people who created that that lever, but also from black men who continue to perpetuate it to present day.

Really? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have to just echo everything that, you know, the panel said. Obviously, this is all happening under the umbrella of white supremacy. And, you know, I'm so glad that you said what you said, because you hit the nail on the head. Look, I'm a light-skinned Black woman. We know this. And it is so interesting how often being catcalled and being, you know, people are showing some type of interest, right? And the first thing they say is, you know, something about my skin complexion, right? Because it is the white supremacy and the anti-blackness is so pervasive. And we continue to see this manifest itself in numerous ways, whether that's the skin bleaching creams that women feel like they need to use in South Asia, whether it's the umbrellas that are

used in East Asia to make sure that there's no tanning of the skin. Again, it's a legacy of white supremacy that we see not only in the white community but in various communities of color. And I have to do a little shout-out to a documentary that's about to come out called Subjects of Desire, which deals with the intricacies and legacy of black women in beauty, white supremacy, and colorism. All right, then. Look, we certainly appreciate it.

Great conversation today. Hey, folks, if y'all want to support what we do, look, the conversations we having, y'all, ain't nobody else having. I don't care. The black networks ain't having the conversations. The white networks surely ain't having the conversations. That's why we're here five days a week, two hours a day, broadcasting Roller Martin Unfiltered. Your dollars make it possible for us to do what we do. So please support us at Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered, Venmo.com forward slash RM Unfiltered your dollars make it possible for us to do what we do so please support us at cash app dollar sign rm unfiltered vidmo.com forward slash uh rm unfiltered paypal.me forward slash r martin

unfiltered zelle rolling at rolling this martin.com you can also hit us on zelle uh at uh because on zelle at rolling at rolling martin unfiltered.com all right then that was the people who uh gave to us and so let me just go through. Let's see. Robert Young. I want I wanted to keep supporting you. Roll over here. My tithes. This is good ground. You know, and see, this is so Nicholas Rodriguez. He gave five dollars. He said not much, but I want to contribute. I just heard you in an interview. And he said, thank you for being an inspiration. Alan Orr, keeping up the good work, 50 bucks, appreciate it. James Davis, support,

thank you very much. Joyce Nichols, 60 bucks, membership support, thank you so very much, Joyce. Let's see here. Let's see, Anna Ford, keep doing what you're doing. Rolling. Uh, Michelle Trufant, thanks for what you do. Uh, let's see here. Um, uh, Ido Shapira, all your amazing work. Thank you. 18, um, 18 means, thank you. 18 means life in Hebrew. Hebrew, my big fan. Uh, break bread Thursdays. Appreciate y'all team rolling. Uh, excuse me, y'all. Uh, gotall. Gotcha. Let's see here. Scott Fabiani Beeman. Tight. Thanks to you and all your panel contributions for the super refreshing, substantial

and depthful conversation. Just digging into the topics that need air. Thank you. Turn the camera on them don't do it don't do it don't do it turn the camera over there turn camera one over here turn camera one over here T, bring your ass back over here. Unfiltered. Y'all, so we sitting here. So my publicist, Tasha Whitten-Greens, I'm going to give you a whole government name.

Now sit your ass down. You know what? It's all right. Y'all too damn slow. Go to my iPad. Go to my iPad. Y'all too damn slow go to my iPad go to my iPad y'all too slow right there so Monique Presley

decided to pick Tasha up and bring her by the studio so they've been sitting ass over here for the last two hours watching the show you were thinking two hours you could turn your damn phone off two whole hours so here in two hours, you could turn your damn phone off. Two whole hours.

So here I am trying to give shout outs to the people who have contributed to the show, but y'all got to sit over there and make all that noise. Right there. Take the shot. Them two right there. Go to my iPad. Go to my iPad. Go to my iPad. That's them right there. Right there. Right there. Making all that

doggone noise. All right, come back. All right, let me go on back to read these names. See? Didn't think that was going to happen, huh? Uh-huh. Rico Hooper, join the Bring the Funk fan club, watch the show every day. Olean Snail, subscription 100, thanks a lot. Michael Bryant, renew Bring the Funk fan club.

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do what I do. Look, if y'all give on YouTube, I appreciate that, but we only get 55% of what y'all give. They get 45%. So if y'all going to give on YouTube, if y'all going to give money, give direct so we can get the whole 100%. Okay. I appreciate so, um, tomorrow I'm going to read more names of people who've given, let's see, uh, I got some stuff in the mail. I'm going to read this. Um, also, uh, so, uh, Erica's recuperating. She had a little accident, but she's all good. She'll be back April 1st. Uh, Reesey y'all is on maternity leave. She's like, look, hold my spot. So, uh, so Reesey's on maternity leave. And so, so Greg's out leave. And so Greg is the only one left. We guarantee Greg will never go on maternity leave.

Well, he might go, but it won't be because he had a baby. Let's see. Moses Cooper. He only gives birth. I don't give birth. Moses Cooper, your show is my news source. I watch you every day. Thomasville, Georgia.

Moses, I appreciate that, Moses. I appreciate that, man. Thank you so very much, uh, for your contribution to the show. Uh, and somebody sent this here. Uh, let me go ahead and read this here. Uh, and see some of y'all who are watching right now on YouTube and Facebook, y'all keep getting a free ride. So, you know, y'all need to hook. So who is this? Uh, Deborahby. Debra. I appreciate that. She didn't leave a note. But Debra, I appreciate your contribution to our Bring the Funk fan club. Hey, y'all, don't forget, if you give 50 bucks or more, you get a personal shout out.

Okay? That's how we do it. And so thank you so very much. Folks, I'm going to see y'all tomorrow. Do not forget. Are we showing anything tonight? Oh, don't forget the Black Women's Roundtable having their virtual summit we have been live streaming their conference it started yesterday it happened today it's going to happen tomorrow friday and uh for tomorrow saturday and sunday

so we're going to be actually streaming it all weekend please go to our youtube channel you missed my commentary yesterday on megan mccain and her white privilege oh y'all really want to see that go to our youtube channel you'll see it there as well and when y'all watch us on our youtube channel uh that's really the best place uh to get to let folks know and yes y'all we are making way we're making way for our ott channel that way we can be completely independent uh and so we'll still be on facebook and youtube we'll have our own channel uh it's gonna be be Apple TV. It's going to be Fire Stick. It's going to be Samsung TV. It's going to be Xbox. And I'm missing some others

is going to be. And so your contributions, I have to say, I'm up front with y'all. That cost us $153,700 to get all of our OTT channels up and running. And so we appreciate it. That's why your support matters to do what we are able to do. So thank you so very much for all that you do. And also shout out to Ashley with Forever First. Her dad is the former acting president of Alpha Phi Alpha. And so this is her company. So she sent me this shirt. So I certainly appreciate it.

I know, Greg. I know you wanted it, Greg. I was looking, man. certainly appreciate i i know greg i know you wanted to greg i was looking man i i know i know you i know you so so it's forever first uh and it's ph hold on one second it's ph uh what the heck is it uh is is ph something hold on it's not it's not spelled the normal way. Forever First is P-H-O-R-E-V-E-R-P-H-I-R-S-T dot com. And so I appreciate that. And so Ashley, only because I like your daddy, you got that free shout out. So I expect Ashley, you to be joined to bring the Fung fan club at a higher rate than $50. Because you got a shout out on my Instagram page and on the show. So Ashley,

that's going to cost you. I'm just saying. Alright y'all, I will see y'all tomorrow. Howl! I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future

where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two 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.

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 does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. This is an iHeart Podcast.