#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Ga. voting rights battle; State Rep. Park Cannon "traumatized" by arrest; Jacob Blake sues cop

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

3.26.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Ga. voting rights battle heats up; Lawsuit filed against the state's blatant voter suppression law; State Rep. Park Cannon "traumatized" by arrest at Gov, Kemp's door; Can abolishing the filibuster end the drama in DC? Jacob Blake sues cop who shot him + Roland sits down with Michael McMillan, President and CEO of the St. Louis Urban League. Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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thug cops in Georgia arrest a state lawmaker as she knocked on the door of Governor Brian Kemp's office as he was signing the Georgia voter suppression bill. Hmm. We're going to break it down. And civil rights groups, voting rights groups, they have already filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia with regards to this bill.

Folks, we're going to be sitting here talking about that and other issues. Can this be resolved by abolishing the filibuster? We'll see. Plus, Jacob Blake files an excessive force lawsuit against the police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who shot him in the back. And folks are also on

today's show. We will continue our focus on what's happening on Capitol Hill as well, where the focus still is, can Democrats stick together to drive an agenda that speaks to our issues? We're gonna break all of that stuff down right here on Roller Barton Unfiltered. It's time to bring the funk.

Let's go. Got it, whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling. Yeah, yeah. It's on go, go, go, y'all. Yeah, yeah. It's rolling, Martin, yeah. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah.

It's Rollin' Martin. Yeah, yeah. Rollin' with Rollin' now. Yeah, yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Rollin' Martin now. Martin. Yesterday, as Governor Brian Kemp was signing the massive voter suppression bill in Georgia, this took place as State Representative Parker Cannon was trying to get access to his office where he was signing the bill. Listen. Yeah, you said you gave her one more time like you're going to do something.

Are you serious? No, you are not. She's not under arrest. For what? Under arrest for what? For trying to see something that our governor is doing? Our governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians. And you're going to arrest an elected representative. Why does the governor have more power than a representative? Why are you arresting her? Stop arresting her.

Why are you arresting her? Why? Cite the violation. Cite the code. What is she in violation of? I want you to cite the code. Cite the code. What is she in violation of? I want you to cite the code. Cite the code. Cite it.

Cite the code. Cite the code. Why are you arresting her? Under what? Under what? Are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her?

Tell us now. Why are you arresting her? Cited. Give me a reason. Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Can you cite the code? Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Can you cite the code? Why are you arresting her?

Stop suppressing the vote. Why are you arresting her? What did she do? What did she do? Can you cite the code? What did she do? What did she do? Why are you arresting her?

Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? Why are you arresting her? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do?

What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? Excuse me, what did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? What did she do? Why are you arresting her? That will affect all Georgians.

And you are choosing to arrest an elected official. Why is she getting arrested? You are choosing to arrest an elected official. Why are y'all arresting her? Why are y'all arresting her? What is she doing? What is she doing? What is she doing?

What is she doing? What is she doing? Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting Governor Camp. Y'all need to be arresting her? What does she do? What does she do? What does she do? Y'all need to be arrested in Governor Camp.

Let me say something. We sit here every single day and we defend these bad bills, like SB202. And all we ask is for her to be able to see them sign a bill that is signing our rights away. And you arrested her. She did not touch anybody. She did not say any slanderous words to any of these senators. But you're going to tell me that you arrested a city state representative for nothing. She didn't do anything but knock on the governor's door. a city state representative for nothing.

She didn't do anything but knock on the governor's door. I'm done. I'm so done. I'm so done. Protect and serve who? Protect and serve who? Protect and serve the Georgians. Because she knocked on the door. You just arrested a state representative. I'm done. She was elected to serve the people of Georgia.

The same as Governor Kemp. Now, folks, just to understand again what happened there, they represented State Representative Parker Cannon because she knocked on the door, charged her with two felonies as a result. Joining us right now is State Rep. Renita Shannon of Decatur. Glad to have you back on Roller Martin Unfiltered. This goes to show you how the governor utilizes his thug police. Knocking on the door? Seriously, that that results in an arrest. Absolutely. And you hit the nail on the head, because after what we saw on January 6th

with Trump supporters storming and desecrating the D.C. Capitol and these people were treated nicely by police, some of them were even helped out of the Capitol. Certainly nobody was arrested on the spot. And Representative Cannon, who was just knocking on the door, which by the way is a part of our job, what many people don't understand is when bills are being signed, we are invited to watch those bill findings. So what she was doing was a part of her job, and state troopers treated her worse than they treated the folks in D.C. on January 6th. There been any response from the governor's office? Any at all? No, not to my knowledge. The governor has not said a word. But again, I mean, this isn't par

for the course in the Capitol. We have seen where Republicans have used state troopers to basically put their hands on black women legislators whenever they get the chance. If you remember, in 2018, Senator Nakima Williams was arrested just for standing with her constituents who were asking after the election where Stacey Abrams ran for governor. Constituents were in the Capitol saying count every vote because they want to make sure that every vote was counted in that election. And she was arrested. So there's no shortage of state troopers being used to put their hands on black women legislators. Is the response has the governor said anything about how his troopers conducted themselves? I have not seen anything. But when you think about the fact that they are always used in a very political way,

I don't expect the governor to say anything because I'm sure he thinks that they were correct in what they did. This, of course, this is turning to obviously a massive fight now. You now have some people calling for boycotts. National Black Justice Coalition, they actually called for PGA Tour players not to play in the Masters. Yesterday, Black Voters Matter, they were actually protesting outside at the airport there, trying to get Delta to stand up. And then there are others who are saying, no, first of all, folks, chill with the economic boycott. We're not there yet. Your response to those calls for economic boycott of Georgia because of this passage? Well, I understand why people are

calling for economic boycott, because at the end of the day, these corporations headquartered right here in Georgia cannot basically wrap their arms around black Georgians during Black History Month and talk about our culture and promote our culture. But when our rights are under attack, they have nothing to say. And what we have been asking them to do is nothing. It's not like they've not done it before. When we have had other bills come through the legislature that would be bad for business, their voices have been really, really loud. So why do we have to drag them to stand up over voting rights? At the end of the day, we are a significant part of their revenue.

And so if they can't stand up for us, then why would we stand up economically for them? I was looking at a tweet from Eric Erickson, conservative Eric Erickson, who said, hey, you know what? This bill really doesn't do that much. Why folks making a big deal out of this? And I said, well, if that's the case, why the hell do it? Well, and also, I don't think that he's in any position to talk, considering that this bill is targeted at black and brown voters. So Eric would not know what this bill actually does because none of it will likely have an effect on him. Case in point, the bill makes it so voting hours are now nine to five.

Most people are at work between nine to five. In addition to the fact that we know that black people are disproportionately represented in the number of low-income workers in this country and those without flexible schedules, which is why we were hit so hard by the COVID pandemic because we didn't have jobs that we could just easily work from home and that were flexible. And so hold tight one second. So just for everybody who's listening. So voting hours,

early voting hours are only nine to five. What were they were before? All voting hours, nine to five, unless you make an exception. Voting hours before this bill passed were generally 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. We would always tell voters across the state, if you get in line by 7 p.m., you are able to vote. So wait a minute. Are you saying on election? Wait, hold up, hold up, hold up. So even on Election Day, on Election Day, voting ends at 5 p.m.? That is correct. The standard voting hours, you start at the baseline of 9 to 5 in this bill. Yes, those are the voting hours. And you have to jump through hurdles in order to make an exception to be able to vote outside of those times. Absolutely. The other thing it does is it restricts when you can drop

off your absentee ballot. So this is also very restrictive. The bill says it does is it restricts when you can drop off your absentee ballot. So this is also very restrictive. The bill says that you can't drop off your absentee ballot unless voting is during the early voting period, unless voting is going on, which means you can't drop off your absentee ballot and I'm trying to drop it off before I go to work, I can't do it until 9 o'clock. That is correct. Because they're moving this BS about security, they're moving the drop boxes inside, correct? That is correct. So whereas now, the way it is, the drop boxes are out there at any time. You could just, hey, nine o'clock at night, you could drop your ballot off. They're only allowing you to drop off an absentee ballot during the same hours. But why in the hell am I going to sit and do that? Might as well go in and vote. Absolutely. And it's even worse than that. So you're correct. You can't even drop your absentee

ballot off on your way home from work. The other thing that it makes a crime is to drop off somebody else's absentee ballot. So think about this. If you have an elderly parent who has decided to vote using absentee, because a lot of times it's hard for seniors to make their way out to the polls or really anywhere. So frequently they will use their adult children to, you know, handle many of the things that just make it easier for them. So if you want to drop off your elderly parents absentee ballot, that is a crime. This bill makes it a crime to drop mom or dad voted absentee, they physically have to carry their ballot and drop it off in the ballot box, I can't get their ballot that's signed and sealed and drop it off. That is correct.

They would have the choice of either dropping it off themselves in the drop box or mailing it in. And we all know that USPS is not running in the ways that it used to run. So it's very risky to put anything in the mail nowadays and expect it to be on time, delivered, wherever you want it to go. That's correct. That's now a crime. Mm-hmm.

And when you say a crime, explain that. In the bill, it's listed as a crime. And there are quite a few areas where it's a felony crime. Some of these things, for example, watching people vote is a felony crime. Some of these things, for example, watching people vote is now a crime. There are several things in the bill that are a crime now. Some of them misdemeanor, some of them felony. So if I dropped, so if I drop it off, then, oh, you dropped it off, so therefore we can prosecute you for dropping off your parents' absentee ballot?

Absolutely, because it is not your absentee ballot? Absolutely, because it is not your absentee ballot. Yes. What else? Because see, I love all these conservatives, especially these black conservatives who keep saying, hey, what's the big deal with a voter ID? This bill is not about voter ID. This bill was a two page bill that then blew up to a 100-page bill, correct? That's correct. Absolutely. There are many things in this bill that are really just meant to target Black and brown voters and to just make it harder to vote for anybody. This bill even goes after the judges. It says in the bill, you know how sometimes a poll might not open on time because maybe they're having an issue with the machines.

This bill now says that judges have to use clear and convincing evidence to even be able to extend poll hours. So it's even going after the discretion of judges. We have had no problems with judges using their discretion to say that a polling location may need to be open later because of logistical issues that may have happened earlier in the day. This bill now even makes judges have to jump through more hurdles to show the exact reason why they would allow a poll to stay open later. It reduces early voting times. I mean, there are so many things in this bill, in addition to what you're hearing on national media, which is making it a crime to give folks water and snacks near the polling location. Mm-hmm.

So, and again, I go back to Eric's tweet, you know, this really doesn't do much when we talk about, but what it also does, which is quite nefarious the state legislatures can essentially overturn a county elections board and republicans also are always about local control they this bill also restricts county election boards from making their own decisions about voting in their own counties, correct? Absolutely. There's a state takeover mechanism. And in addition to that, we have seen countless bills get passed this session, which hadn't even been covered by media, but we've seen countless bills to gut current board of elections in counties where have a history of racial discrimination against black voters. We are seeing boards be gutted to

say, listen, if you're on the board of election today, that whole board is being wiped clean and new people will be seated based on political appointments for these boards. So they're doing a lot of things to make sure that at the end of the day, when Trump was looking for those 11, 12,000 votes, he tried to pressure the secretary of state to find him. This bill will give many avenues the next time the secretary of state gets pressured by someone to overturn an election. And I heard one of these white Republicans actually say, we're in charge of the election. We get to determine how everything goes.

I didn't hear that comment, but it would not surprise me. As I've said before, what you are seeing happen across the country is that Republicans elected a committed white supremacist to the president of the United States. And when Trump failed to win reelection, they, since that point, have made it their business to go and try to invalidate all of the votes of black and brown voters because they largely turned out and powered the win that we have with Joe Biden and the U.S. Senate seats. They are making it their business to target black and brown voters. That's just what it is. All right. State Representative Renita Shannon, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you

so very much. Anytime. Thank you. All right, folks, I want to bring in someone who is with a part of the lawsuit, part of the lawsuit that's taking place there in Georgia. And that is Francis Johnson, board chair of the New Georgia Project. Francis, glad to have you on Roland Martin Unfiltered. This is a huge, huge issue here because what we're looking at, Republicans across the country are looking at Georgia and they're saying, oh, we're going to follow the exact same thing they did in order to pass this legislation. That's correct. And Georgia is setting the blueprint for the rest of the nation that wants to resurrect Jim Crow. Georgia did it in time for Palm Sunday. But make no mistake about it, the other states that were in play in this past election, the failed bid of Donald

Trump to be reelected will follow suit as well. I got a slight issue here with your picture. We're going to get that fixed. And so I'm going to pull you up in just one second. Let me bring up our panel here. Michael Imhotep, he's the host of the African History Network show. Dr. Neombe Carter, Howard University Department of Political Science. Robert Petillo, executive director of the Rainbow Push Coalition, Peachtree Street Project.

Robert, I want to go to you first, then I'm going to go back to Francis. Georgia is ground zero. And for the people who are saying this is no big deal, no. You start going down, this is absolute, everything, every lie that Donald Trump told, every lie, Republicans essentially put it in this bill to try to do exactly what he wanted to do, and that is steal the election. Well, something to understand, Reverend Jetson has been talking about for the last 30 or 40 years, this concept of the mechanics of voter suppression. We think about voter suppression as being Bull Connor, standing outside with water hoses and dogs, or Axe Hand-O-Matics, sending people away from the polling locations in the 60s. Modern voter suppression is about skimming. It's about what can you do to stop one out of every 100 or two out of every 100 people who are against you from

having access to the ballot? Because if you look at that Stacey Abrams race back in 2018, one out of every 100 people turns into 1% in the polls at the end of the day. And when you're talking about a race that comes down to 1% to 2%, all you have to do is skim off every one out of every 100 votes to move an election. And we knew as soon as we saw Raphael Warnock take that seat, as soon as we saw John Ossoff take that seat, as soon as we saw Joe Biden win the state of Georgia, that voter suppression would come back alive and well. And just as Joe Biden said, this isn't Jim Crow, this is Jim Eagle. This is a step above Jim Crow, primarily because they're using every legal apparatus possible in circumvention of the will of the people of Georgia. Georgia is a state, as I've said many times, and I'm sure people can quote it by now,

it's 35% Black, 15% Hispanic, 6% Asian American, 52 percent women, and one of the largest LGBTQ capitals in the country. Because of that, we have the demographic advantage in the state. The only way to beat a demographic advantage is to go to the refs, is to change the rules from under. As most deaf ones said, we start keeping pace, they start switching up the tempo, and that's what they are doing. First, in 2004, 2005, they wanted to have the voter ID bill then, which required you to buy a $10 state voter ID because they said in-person voter fraud was the issue. We took that to court and got struck down as a poll tax. Now they're saying that absentee ballots are the place where voter fraud is taking

place. That's because back then, elderly white voters, old Confederates, were voting for Republicans. Now elderly voters are old veterans of the civil rights movement, and they're voting for Democrats, and now they have to make it harder for them. There's no rational basis for these laws to be put in place. Therefore, they are trying to skirt and circumvent democracy in order to put an oligarchical and an autocratic Republican regime in place that does not reflect the will of the people of the state of Georgia. And they understand that this is the last stand of the Confederacy. It wasn't bull run. It wasn't first and second Manassas. The last battle of the Confederacy is taking place right now in Georgia. The 2022 election will be that

battlefield. If you can beat them at their own game, if you can beat them playing by their own rules, that thing that puts the death nail in the end of this battle going forward. It won't be the end of the end, but with the end of this fight right now, we have to keep going. I think we have to use every mechanism possible to do so. Let's go back to Francis. Francis, the thing that we're looking at here, first of all, this lawsuit is being filed. Mark Elias is filing on behalf of the New Georgia Voter Project, as well as Black Voters Matter and others. And look, the only way you can fight this thing is in the courts. Absolutely. The New Georgia Project, as well as Black Voters Matter and Rise, will mortgage every asset we have to defend the right to vote. This attempt to resurrect Jim Crow will be met toe-to-toe in the federal courts.

This is a violation of the Voting Rights Act, and we expect the federal courts to do what they've often had to do when Georgia demonstrates that it's got the can't-get-right won't get rights, to put it in its place and remind Georgia that the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land. But the problem that you have here is that Republicans, led by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and that traitor Clarence Thomas, they actually gutted Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance measure as well. And so now you have these Republican judges, Supreme Court is a 6-3 majority. I suspect this is going to go all the way because they want this. They do not want anyone to tell them what to do. This is also why there has to be a John Lewis voting act out of this Congress. And you've got to have Joe Manchin and Christian Siena to get out their asses and stop blocking, stop trying to embrace the filibuster and get this done.

That's right. We have a date with destiny. At one point, the Senate has got to determine whether the filibuster is more important than freedom. But until that happens, we have got to use every tool at our advantage and at our disposal. And so the federal courts have been where we've turned. And we are asking for immediate injunctive relief to prevent this law from truly taking effect. And we expect to have some action on that. I do expect this is going to go all the way. But remember, we've got municipal elections coming up

and we've got a showdown for the governor's mansion in Georgia in 2022. And so we've got to do everything we can. You should know, your listeners should know that despite all of the voting suppression that they've thrown at us, we still turned out in record numbers. We flipped this state blue.

We captured two United States Senate seats that we will hold. And we're determined that the new Georgia is here to stay. All right, then, Francis, I certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much for joining us. Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Neom Bacard, I want to go to you. This is, look, this is the war, and I'm using that purposely. This is the war that we are engaged in. This is crucial because Republicans, they are not going to stop. They are going to fully embrace these Jim Crow laws. Well, absolutely. I mean, this has been their playbook for a very long time. Their share of the population is shrinking. They're not popular.

People don't actually support their view of the world. And the only way they can win is changing the rules. And all they're trying to do here is frustrate and ice out people who they know are the easily or the most easily dissuaded from participating. So raising the stakes. I mean, we know that even just people who live 10 miles away from the closest place they can get an identification, for example, are far less likely to turn out. And they're not going to just not turn out in the general election.

They're also not turning out in primaries. And they're hoping to run out the clock on this. If they can stall this and take this all the way to the Supreme Court, which I'm sure they're hoping to, they can pull out the time horizon for years with this, right? And so by the time people seek relief, it could be too late to change the outcomes of midterm elections. So this chilling effect is really sort of insidious and can be around for many years and affect whole communities of voters or potential voters. And that's exactly what they're hoping to do in Georgia. And like Robert said earlier, there are other Republicans in other states taking a note out of this playbook,

and they're going to try it everywhere, Arizona, Wisconsin, all of those places where we had people of color turning out and changing the shape of elections, they're going to go after them next. Michael, we had Reverend Wendell Amion yesterday, head of the Detroit NAACP. Same thing is happening in Michigan. 39 bills have already been introduced there. Again, Republicans, where they control the state legislature, they want to move forward on this. This is absolutely the agenda of the entire National Republican Party.

I don't want to hear a single one of these trifling- black conservatives who defend this try to say, oh no. I mean, every time Malik Abdul was on here, oh no, you're wrong, Roland. That's not the policy of the Republican Party. Yes, it is. It's on full display right now. Well, you know, Roland, this is what I've been warning people about going back to the 2016 presidential election, going back to the 2012 presidential election. We saw the backlash of the 2012 presidential election when a record number of African Americans, record percentage of African Americans came out and voted. Sixty six point six percent of African Americans registered to vote came out and voted, reelected President Barack Obama. The backlash was called Shelby County

v. Holder, 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case that gutted the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance. Because the preclearance was gutted in Shelby County v. Holder, this allowed this to take place in Georgia last night, because otherwise they would have had to go to a federal judge to get this approved. But because of Shelby County v. Holder, this allowed this to take place last night. So, see, we don't understand law. And politics is the legal distribution of scarce wealth, power, and resources. And we don't understand how to defend ourselves against these threats. This is the white backlash that always comes after periods of time

of advancement of African Americans. If you go back to when Stacey Abrams ran in 2018 in Georgia for governor, you had some black people saying they weren't voting for her because she didn't have a black agenda. But your dumb ass let somebody who has an anti-black agenda become governor and he signed this law. I guarantee you, if Stacey Abrams had become governor, she would have vetoed the bill. See, we're playing a game of political football and don't know the difference

between a first down and a touchdown and wonder why we don't have any points on the board. So this is all-out war. As I said four weeks ago on your show, we have to engage in all-out economic guerrilla warfare. I'm totally with LaTosha and Cliff Albright, but it's in

the courts. Yeah, they're going to file lawsuits in the courts. You have to do that. But it's not just in the courts to fight. It's in the streets and it's nationwide economic boycotts on these few corporations, okay? And I hope you bring up how many of these same corporations spoke out with force and threatened economic withdrawal from

the state of Indiana and the state of North Carolina when you had the transgender bathroom bills in 2015 to 2016. But now many of these same corporations, many of them have laryngitis now. I hope we talk about that as well. Well, and that is the case. I mean, Robert, I mean, you're there in Georgia. They're putting massive pressure on Coca-Cola, Home Depot, on Delta, on UPS, and other companies, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. And, you know, frankly, the statements have been lukewarm. And I'm telling you right now, you've already seen some protests outside of these companies.

I think, look, if this thing moves forward and these companies don't say anything, you're going to see the ratcheting up of these companies being targeted, and it's going to be even more placed on them. Well, you know, Wednesday afternoon, myself, Reverend Jackson, Reverend Tyler, we're on the phone with Coca-Cola to talk about this exact issue. And this is the concept of performative justice. Remember last year when there were 20

cities on fire around the country and everybody put out their statements and their billboards and their ad campaigns saying how much they supported diversity. You know, if you look on a commercial now, you can't find two black folks together. You can't find two white people together. It has to be a very diverse coalition of people because they support the cause. You know, they're down with you. They believe in supporting black people.

They're going to give some money to different organizations. But when the rubber hits the road, when it's time to talk about laws, when it's time to talk about the one thing that can change the lives and the future of people in this country, now the performance is over. The little song and dance was fine then. The little commercials and billboards and T-shirts and slogans, they were fine then. But when it is time to say we're going to stop buying your sugar water unless you stop these Republicans from stealing the right to vote. We're going to stop buying hammers and nails from you. We're going to stop putting our packages and parcels to your service.

At this time, we're going to stop buying from Georgia Pacific and Mohawk Industries. Now they get very quiet. So it's important to understand what real allyship is. Allyship is not saying you support me and putting your arm over my shoulder and sinking a knife in. Allyship is being ready to fight the real fight, and this is when the rubber hits the road. And what we're seeing in Georgia, we're going to see around the country.

We saw this in 2006 with the Stand Your Ground laws. They started in states like Georgia and deep red states. Then they spread to 21 states around the country. And by the time we realized they were on the books when Trayvon Martin was killed, it was too late because they had become entrenched in state legislatures nationwide. You're going to see very similar efforts such as this to stop the vote. And we're going to have to push through a voting rights act for the 21st century that is now before the United States Senate, because Republicans understand that this is their last stand. They are not a dying, they are a dead party. That party died back during the

Bush administration, because that is when they had to make the corrupt bargain, the Faustian bargain with the Tea Party in order to get their numbers up. And then they were completely overtaken by the MAGA movement. There's no longer a Republican Party. It's now a MAGA Party, with Republicans being a third party in America. A recent survey said 34 percent of Americans are independent. 33 percent are Democrats. 28 percent identify as Republicans. Republicans have not won a popular vote in a federal election since 2004. So if you are 17 years old, you have never seen a Republican win the popular vote. They have only won the popular vote one time in the last 30 years because they are a dying party. The 50 Republican senators represent 41 million

fewer people than the 50 Democratic senators. So without voter suppression, without bending the rules, they will no longer be even relevant to U.S. politics. And this idea that we keep hearing that, well, we can't get rid of the filibuster because if Republicans take back power, then we won't be able to stop them. Well, hell, if you push through a real voting rights act, they ain't going to get back in power because they haven't won any elections and they represent 40 million fewer people than the rest of the country. So it's time to take the gloves off, understand that these people have not been even attempting to play fair. We should have realized that with Merrick Garland. And it's time to take the gloves off and fight this out the way that has to be fought to win this battle. Neon, beyond that point, that is exactly what I've been saying.

And also, for all these people who have been sending me messages all week, oh, man, you keep talking about voting. When you had that young black conservative on from Georgia, he was talking about doing for self. Let me explain something to you. You can talk about doing for self all you want to, but if they control the state house in Georgia, and the state senate in Georgia, and the governor's mansion in Georgia,

they gonna put it on the ass of black people in Albany, Columbus, Athens, Atlanta, Savannah, all those places. Because for all of y'all out there, okay, who've been sending me e-text tweets and all kinds of crap, talking about I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Man, you kept pressing this whole deal on voting. Let me explain something what they also have done. They also have, like, for instance, in Alabama, they've told the cities there, Birmingham, Montgomery, with black mayors,

y'all can't pass your own Confederate laws. You can't take down Confederate statues. We oversee you. Georgia passed a bill. So for all y'all folk who running your damn miles in the bullshit y'all been saying to me, Dr. Carter, you know what they did? They passed a bill. So for all y'all folk who running your damn miles in the bullshit y'all been saying to me, Dr. Carl, you know what they did? They passed a law that said no cities can defund the police. So where you have black people

elected, black mayors and black city council members, the white Republicans in Georgia have said, y'all cannot run your cities as you see fit. We are telling you what to do. So for all y'all people who keep saying, I don't know why you keep talking about voting because they are going to look at everything you do, your schools, your police departments,

they're going to hear every single thing, and then y'all going to be saying, I mean, what happened? Because you got stuck on stupid, thinking this black conservative was talking about self-sufficiency when all those white Republicans supporting him, they ain't voting for nothing y'all care about. Well, and I think those are, you know,

false equivalencies. Either you do for self or you vote. You can actually do both of those things. Right. And when you're talking about all of these services, I mean, we're talking about clean water. We're talking about the air we breathe. We're talking about a range of things

that state and local governments actually have control over that matter for black life. And also you have to wonder sort of why would these people be going through all of this trouble to take something away from you if it didn't matter, if it didn't do anything? Because we know that is one register of power that people understand. And I think, you know, what my colleagues have said, this is a both and proposition. This is everything that we can throw at the wall to make something stick type of time here. We don't have the luxury of sort of picking and choosing with

strategy. It's an all-in strategy, because these people are doing everything they can. And they have been doing it for decades. It didn't just start today with these sort of voter measures in Georgia. I mean, this happened decades ago ago when we start seeing these challenges at the local, these scarcely used state laws to challenge people's voting rights. I mean, it starts with projects like Red Map, which, you know, in 2010, these people were forecasting what Robert was talking about. They already know that they're losing, right, that the demographic tide has shifted. They are nobody's left. And so what did they do? They said, well, let's look at these states where we can take over these legislatures and we can change the rules for those states. And if we can control the states, then we can control what happens

at the national level. And that's precisely what they did. And if we're not paying attention and being as forward thinking and really as uncaring and sort of savage about the policies and protecting those policies that are going to help extend our lives, then we are really not in the fight. And so talking about voting as if it doesn't matter or that if it means the exclusion of all these other things, I think is a really short-sighted strategy. We have to be thinking about all the different things we can leverage and bring to the table to really bring about a more just life.

What we want is to not be as oppressed as we are today. And that's always what this fight has been about, is about throwing off oppression and trying to get underneath this white supremacy that has its foot on all of our necks. But if we're talking about going at this one way or the other, if we think we can live in this country

and sort of leave it to the majority of this country, right, or leave it to some small segment of this country that wants to kill us every chance they get and think we're going to be okay, then we are in for a very rude awakening. See, Michael, the thing that is

just really, again, is just really cracking me up with all these people, okay, is and I've said this, and this is where black people need to stop being gullible. Okay? Because first of all, black people have been doing self-sufficiency

for a long time, okay? So, ain't no argument over self-sufficiency. The problem is when you say, well, that really ain't my concern. That ain't my fight. And when you defended the Republicans in Georgia, well, I don't understand what black folks see. This is what the brother literally was tweeting me.

You saying black people can't vote. You saying black people don't know how to bring their own snacks and their own water. And I'm sitting there going, fool, you think that's the most powerful thing here? Let me say this again. You heard the state representative. What the Republicans in Georgia have done is that if you are in Fulton County and the Fulton County, y'all black people, Atlanta, if the Fulton County Election Board says we want to have early voting seven to seven, the white

Republicans in the legislature said y'all can't do that now. They've even changed the law that external groups, foundations, let's say Fulton County said we want to hire some additional personnel. We don't have it in the

budget. And let's say the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation decides to say, you know what, Fulton County, we're going to give y'all a million dollars to pay for additional staff. This law forbids that from happening. So for all the people out there, again, who's stuck on stupid, who does not want to understand why I was going so hard on voter suppression, is what they are doing.

They literally will be able to throw out the certification of votes in Fulton County and certify them on their own. That is what this law does. Well, actually, it allows the State Board of Elections to overturn the overturned certification of votes at the county level if the state disagrees with the election results. So I talked about this extensively on my show yesterday. I encourage

I think people should really read the article from... And Mike, Mike, Mike, don't forget, they have removed the Secretary of State who is a Republican from being over the state election board, made him a member, but he has no voting power. So I think with this, a lot of people don't understand the different parts of this bill

and the negative impact that all of these different parts coming together will have on African-Americans, Hispanics, and others voting. And people have to understand there are 253 bills and 43 state legislatures that Republicans are pushing. And that's based upon analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, February 19th, 2021. Georgia's ground zero is coming to your state next or a state near you. So a lot of times we don't understand how all this connects, okay? When you look at Fulton County, like I'm looking at the article right now, it says it will block the use of mobile voting vans, as Fulton County did last year after purchasing two vehicles at a cost of more than $700,000,

and prevents local governments from directly accepting grants from the private sector. Well, Fulton County is where Atlanta is. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has to run for re-election next year. Right, right. Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. Again, hold up. For everybody listening, the bill does not mean just presidential years.

This will be this. Y'all is every election in the state of Georgia. May oral elections, school board elections, D.A. Racist, judicial racist, county races, all of them. And see, the other thing that's important for people to understand is the history of Georgia. You're dealing with a former Confederate state, and

in Georgia, they have Stone Mountain. Okay? Stone Mountain's a city, but Stone Mountain's a huge mountain. Stone Mountain in Georgia is the largest... It's the largest... KKK monument? Well, no, it's...

Yeah, it's the largest monument to the Confederacy, okay? I've been to Stone Mountain. I've climbed to the top of Stone Mountain. On Stone Mountain, you have the carvings of General Robert E. Lee, Thomas Stonewall Jackson, and it's one of them. I can't remember whether it's PGT Beauregard or one other one. But these are three Confederate heroes that are right there, okay, on the side of Stone Mountain. Then when you get to the top of Stone Mountain, there's a souvenir shop.

In the souvenir shop on all the souvenirs are these three Confederate heroes, the images of them. And when I went there in 2017, I'm looking at this and I'm looking around at the people. I know who these people are. These are people who took up arms, fought against the Union. These were insurrectionists. They committed treason to maintain slavery. And I'm just looking at people in the souvenir shop just acting like everything's all right.

I'm like, do you know who these people are? General Robert E. Lee is who the call on the Dukes of Hazzard is named after. General Lee is named after a white supremacist who thought that African people were inferior and took up arms to maintain slavery. So this is exactly what they're trying to do right now in Georgia. They're trying to take us back before the Civil Rights Act of 64, back before the Voting Rights Act of 65. All this impacts economics. We have to understand how to leverage our economics to enforce our politics. And lastly, I'll wrap up with this. Go look at the article from Forbes from August of 2020, Forbes.com. They talked about how black people have lost almost 50 percent of small black

businesses. As of April of 2020, African-Americans, we lost 41 percent of our businesses due to the coronavirus economy. That's April of 2020. This is from the New York Federal Reserve. It's probably at least 50 percent now. But it's because they were impacted by an economy that, and you had the coronavirus pandemic mishandled by an incompetent trader in chief. So this is how

federal government is impacting us at the local level and decimating our businesses. So all of this works together. It's not just African history and culture. It's not just economics. It's not just politics. We have to have a synthesis of all of this. Okay. So we have to understand how all this works together. It's not either or, it's both and. It's all at politics. We have to have a synthesis of all of this. Okay, so we have to understand how all this works together. It's not either or, it's both and. It's all at the same time. Allow me, Robert. Robert, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Well, no, just to piggyback off, I think it was generous to say that Georgia's the former Confederacy, because they never gave up. They never surrendered. They considered to be an armistice that the war continues. And let's understand on this idea of it being either or conversation between voting and doing for ourself. What the hell do you think politics is? The first day of political science

class, they tell you, is to determine who gets what when. When Donald Trump got into office, the first thing he did was have a $1.5 trillion tax cut, which sent money as an economic stimulus to millionaires and billionaires. The first bill Joe Biden passed was a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill to get $10 billion to black farmers. It's easier to do for yourself when you've got $10 billion in your pocket. It's easier to do for yourself when you have a $3 trillion infrastructure bill, which is pushing its way through. It's easier to do for yourself when you have criminal justice reform, which does not criminalize everything that you do, does not lock up an entire generation of people for things that are otherwise legal. When you're looking at marijuana and the way it is going to affect the economy going forward, that is a public policy

question, which will impact your ability to do for self later. So I think what's important to have a more broad-based conversation about Black history. Because a lot of young people in particular, along the, you know, I've been out there at the marches and those things, they think they thought of these things first. They thought they were the first people to think,

hey, we should do for ourselves. What the hell you think we're, you don't think nobody was on that slave ship thinking, hey, we should do for ourselves. It's about the ability to execute that. You have to look deeper into Dr. King's speeches, deeper into Stokely's speeches, deeper into H. Brett Brown's speeches to get the actual true texture of the fight going forward. And when people make this false assumption that somehow voting is not connected to our efforts at self-sufficiency, they do not understand what self-sufficiency means.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is self-sufficient. You didn't have the politics. They burned it down. Auburn Avenue was self-sufficient. The Harlem Renaissance was self-sufficient. If you don't have the politics to back it up, it's going to be ephemeral at best. Neomby, first of all, y'all, go to my iPad.

And I want y'all to understand something. What you're looking at are the election results of the 2020 election. That's what you're looking at right there, okay? And what I want you to understand why we are going so hard on this. You heard what Robert just said. What he just said is that if Democrats don't control the House and the Senate and Biden ain't president, there is no

$1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. If there's no $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, black farmers don't get that money. Exactly. Let me further unpack that. No, no, no. Go back. Stay on this. I need y'all to understand the numbers.

I need you to understand the numbers. Arizona, look at the numbers. Joe Biden, 1,672,143 votes Donald Trump 1,661,686 votes

That means Arizona was decided by 10,457 votes. Let me go down to Wisconsin. Here is Wisconsin. Joe Biden, 1,630,866 votes. Donald Trump, 1,610,184 votes. What is the margin? 20,682. Let me go to Pennsylvania. 3,458,229 votes for Joe Biden. Donald's a margin of 80,555 votes. Last one I'm going to go to is Michigan. Actually, you know what? I'm votes. That's a difference, 2,804,040 votes. Donald Trump, 2,649,852 votes. That is a difference of 154,188 votes. So, Dr. Carter, for everybody who's watching who don't understand, Michael, everybody who's watching who don't understand, this election literally was decided in three states, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, by a total of 41,000 votes. If Republicans are successful with this bill in Georgia, they are introduced 39 in Michigan.

They've introduced a bunch in Arizona. They're trying to do the exact same thing in Wisconsin because they control the Wisconsin legislature. But you got Democratic governor. These vote margins right here can be completely obliterated. And in 2024, Donald Trump or the Republican candidate can win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, based upon voter suppression. So for everybody sitting out there trying to lie, why y'all making a big deal out of this? Y'all, these are not large numbers we're talking about. Right, right.

These are not blowout numbers, right? These are all within the margin of error here. Right. That could have gone either way. And they know this, which is why they don't want to keep you all from voting. They just need to keep enough of you from voting. And even if these laws are overturned, it can have the effect they want it to have, which is people will be discouraged. People will decide, you know what, it's just not worth it. I don't have the time off from work. I can't take that time to go, you know, effectively buy a state ID, right, to be able to register to vote or do all of these other requirements. And they know this. And that's what they're preying on. They're preying on the fact that the people who feel the least empowered and the least able to really stand up to the system, as it were, are the people who don't vote. And one of the things that they often do with these sort of voter suppression methods is to remind you that these are felonies and that you will be prosecuted under the law.

And if you are not sure and you don't know, it's like, oh, wait a minute, I'm not going to chance getting a felony. I'm not going to chance getting arrested, because we saw they'll arrest anybody without any provocation, right? Representative Kander was knocking on the door and got arrested. So if it's just little old me and I'm just a person in the world, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm going to stay home. And that's what these laws are meant to do. They're meant to frustrate. They're meant to waste your time. They're meant to confuse you. They're meant to do everything they can to make it less likely for you to show out. And then we know in some of these elections, a lot of these margins were for people who were new voters, people who have not necessarily been engaged in the system for a long time,

again, the people who are most persuadable, the people who can be the ones who will be told some misinformation and feel like they have to stay home or be so confused by this sort of new maze of restrictions that they don't actually know what to do. Right. So they become immobilized. And that's what they're preying on. And that's what they're hoping for. And I hope that, you know, the black people in these places are not discouraged. And their resolve continues, because if it wasn't important again, then they wouldn't be trying to take it from you. They wouldn't be trying to keep you from the closest thing we have as a voice, as a collective of the populace. They wouldn't be trying to keep you from it.

This thing is absolutely important, and it's sacred, and they know that. And that's why they're going to go after it again and again and again. And they've been doing it steadily since 2013 with Shelby County v. Holder. And they know that as long as they have that filibuster in the Senate, they can hold up H.R. 1 and anything that looks like a semblance of trying to actually protect Black

people and other communities that are minoritized in this country from the voting booth. And that's what they're going to do every step of the way. It's going to be a fight. Michael, I got this idiot named Dre Smith on our YouTube channel. This show is nothing about Democratic politics pushing it on the black community. No, idiot. It's about black politics being decided and voted upon.

I mean, we can run down the policies. My mind is this here. Black folks don't show out in Georgia and elect Ossoff and Warnock. Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader. Mitch McConnell controls the judges. COVID doesn't get passed. George Floyd Justice Act, forget about it.

Ain't going to happen. H.R.1, ain't going to happen. That COVID bill, ain't going to happen. I can go down a whole list of stuff that's not going to happen. See, and this is the problem, Michael, for all these simple Simon-ass people who keep saying all you want are folks to vote Republican. Excuse me, Democrat. Show me a Republican in the United States Senate

that gives a damn about our issues. Take your time. Show me a Republican in the House that gives a damn about our issues. Take your time. Show me a Republican-controlled state legislature. They control 31 of them in America. Show me which one of them cares about the issues

we care about. Take your time, Dre. Go ahead, Michael. I think oftentimes a lot of people look at political party as opposed to actually looking at the policies. What's most important are the policies and how they impact African Americans and how they impact people in general. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican, but I study policy, and I'm not stupid. I can see who is writing laws and who is voting on policies that are most beneficial for us, and I can see who is blocking those policies consistently. Now, maybe at the local level, and even at the city level, usually that's not partisan. Usually you don't have a Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate running for mayor.

That's usually nonpartisan. But at the federal level, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, the White House, okay, it's very clear if you actually study this. And I'm somebody that's actually been involved in writing public policy for the city of Detroit. So being involved in that, helping to write an executive order for the city of Detroit a few years ago, that helped me gain a better understanding of politics as well. But, you know, Roland, I think another thing that people are confusing is thinking that voting is the only aspect of politics. And it's not. Voting is just one part. Another aspect of politics is holding elected officials accountable and continue to push your agenda after the election, leveraging your economics to enforce your politics after

the election. Very quickly, Roland, I don't know if you saw or read about the interview that Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, just did yesterday. And it's with The Washington Post. I talked about this on my show last night. And he talked about the $5 billion that's in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill, American Rescue Plan, that went to Black farmers. And why it went to Black farmers? In almost a century of discrimination against African-American farmers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, okay, and going back to, like, the Farmers Home Association,

Farmers Home Administration, created in 1930, all these federal government programs, but African-American farmers have lost about 92% of their land over about the last 100 years. And what Tom Vilsack said was, of the $26 billion in subsidies that Donald Trump gave to farmers because of the trade war with China, African-American farmers got one-tenth of 1 percent, okay? Point one percent, one-tenth of 1 percent, 20.8 million out of 26 billion, okay? African-American farmers are 1.3 percent of the 3.4 million farmers in the U.S.

All this deals with politics, and this deals with economics, because they lost—African-American farmers lost about 12 million acres of land. So all of this is connected, okay? If African-Americans and Hispanics didn't come out and vote, especially when those two Senate seats in Georgia, you wouldn't have African-American farmers getting $5 billion from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan because not a single Republican in the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate voted for that $1.9 trillion bill, even though it will benefit white people in their states that keep voting for them.

Lastly, Roland, a spineless-ass Lindsey Graham has come out in opposition to the $5 billion in the $1.9 trillion bill. He has 6,000 African-American farmers in his state of South Carolina. John Boyd has talked about this. He has 6,000 African-American farmers in his state of South Carolina. John Boyd has talked about this. He has 6,000 African-American farmers, and he's not doing anything for them. Politics is the legal distribution of scarce wealth, power, and resources. All of this is connected. It simply is. And so I just want people just to understand why we're laying this out,

because other shows are not going to do it. They're going to focus on the process. We are trying to connect all of these pieces and all of these dots and get you to understand, Niamh, I know you have to go, but I want to bring in even the whole issue in Texas. Here you have this black elections administrator there in Harris County.

The Republicans, the governor is literally saying that this issue, election integrity reform, is more important than COVID in Texas. One of the, what they want to do is, same thing. They're looking at Georgia. And one of the things that they want to do, Niyambi, they literally want to, they want to outlaw curbside voting. All curbside voting is, is you stay in your car. You drive the hell up.

You present your information. They hand you a ballot. You vote in your car. You hand it back and they process it. No, they. No, no, no, no. We want to make you get your ass out your car and physically walk into the building.

And it does not matter. And then we saw in 2020, Ohio, Texas, others, one drop box per county. Now, with the Georgia law, oh, yeah, we're going to do one drop box, but it's going to be inside the location. And as Representative said, you can only drop it off when the location is open 9 to 5. Come on, y'all. Come on. Final comment. Go ahead.

Texas sees the writing on the walls just like Georgia saw it, just like Florida is seeing it, right? They know what's coming. And you cannot going to beat back these demographics by playing fair, right? So they know what they have to do. And I will say this, and this is funny because Texas was already

notoriously difficult place to vote in the first place. So the fact that they're going to be more draconian and more stringent just lets you know how much in fear they are for the change that is coming. And it will get to them. It's just a matter of when. But in the meantime, they're going to obstruct, they're going to cheat,

because that's all this is, is cheating, right? They're going to do everything they can to make this process as unpleasant as it can be, as difficult, even more difficult than it already is. Because I don't know that most people appreciate how costly of an activity voting is. I mean, you already have to register, right? And you have to register in advance in many places. Then you have to show up on election day, but then for the general, I mean, primary election, then you got to show up again at the general election. Then you have midterm elections. There are already a lot of barriers here to getting people to register to vote and turn out anyway. So the fact that they

even want to make the task of just simply turning in your ballot even more odious, lets you know where we're headed and lets you know also how scared they are, right? Because they know what's coming before them. And they are doing this in daylight. These people are hijacking elections in broad daylight, in full view with their names, right? They're telling us what they're doing. I think the fact that people are not more outraged, because this is a dual pandemic situation here, people. It's not just COVID-19. It's also this and these voting rights issues.

And if we don't have good voting rights and can actually elect the representatives that we want who can actually look out for our interests, we're going to have a continued terrible response to this COVID-19. And this pandemic will become endemic very quickly. And we will see how our lives turn out and see how dangerous voting really can get,

right, if this thing is not addressed and gotten under control. And with silly governors and these corrupt legislatures, you're going to continue to get bad outcomes for Black folks, quite frankly. All right. Then Dr. Niyami, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Michael and Robert, hold tight one second. We'll be back on Roland Martin Unfiltered in just a moment. 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 SB 202 and HB 531 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 and last anywhere from two to five to even 10 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 HR1, the For the People Act. Please call your elected officials today and join us in the fight to protect voting rights. Black TV does matter, dang it. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore, and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. All right, folks, let's go to Kenosha, Wisconsin,

where Jacob Blake has actually filed a lawsuit against the cop who shot him, that's left him paralyzed. We might remember that led to, this was the video that took place there in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the police officers there were trying to detain him. You see him walking over to the side of his car and they're falling right behind him with a gun as if, I mean, no weapon or anything. Then all of a sudden, the cop just unloads on him in the car. And that, of course, sparked massive riots there in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rustin Sheskey, of course, was the former Kenosha officer. Of course, this took place while he was trying to get into his SUV to file a domestic dispute. Of course, captured on video by a bystander. Blake, as I said, paralyzed. Filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing the officer of excessive force.

Of course, charges were not filed against the officer. They basically defended him. But this is, you know, hopefully you will see some civil action here. That's really his only recourse left, Robert. Absolutely. And I think this is a pretty clear-cut case. And this is one of those cases that's going to be headed towards settlement because cities, as we've seen, one, you have the issue of qualified immunity for the officer, so the officer doesn't have to pay directly out. So whenever you see these police brutality cases, just like in Breonna Taylor, just like with George Floyd, you're seeing the city paying

out multimillion-dollar settlements in order to prevent these things from going to trial. cases, just like in Breonna Taylor, just like with George Floyd, you're seeing the city paying out multi-million dollar settlements in order to prevent these things from going to trial. And that's what we're probably going to see in this case. It's terrible and innate to have a nation where the police departments and cities are more interested in maintaining white supremacy and maintaining racism than in saving money. They would rather pay the fine or pay the cost of doing business to be able to continue to shoot black people than they would to make the type of structural reforms that are necessary to stop these things from happening going forward. So what we're going to have to start doing, and

it's a hard thing to try to say to a family where they're talking about life-changing amounts of money, eventually we're going to take one of these to trial. So instead of taking a $10 million settlement, instead of taking a $10 million settlement, instead of taking a $20 million settlement, going all the way to trial, winning at the jury level, forcing them to waive sovereign immunity, and then literally taking a city into receivership because of the lawsuit that you filed against them. If you start filing lawsuits and winning judgments in the billions of dollars, we see this with Dominion voting machines. They're not taking settlements. They're suing these people for one, two, three billion dollars at a time. That's what you have to start doing if you want to see real actions. Because since George Floyd was killed, we've seen no federal legislation signed into law.

We've seen very little state legislation signed into law. We've seen very little citywide legislation signed into law around the country. And when cities did try to address police brutality, we saw a nationwide police slowdown, which led to a spike in violent crime across the country last year, which is being blamed on black mayors across the country because police won't show up and do their damn job. So the only way to make this finally stop is going to be bankrupting a city. Have his family members start carrying off the marble pillars at the courthouse. Start renaming the streets after his auntie and uncle because they own the city now, and then you'll see

police brutality be moderated and mitigated down. Michael. You know, Roland, this ties right into the previous segment that we just talked about because the prosecutor here in the Wisconsin area refused to press charges against the officers,

but the prosecutor is elected. Once again, this ties into politics. It's beyond just voting. This ties into politics. So when we have people fighting for police reform and people want to defund the police or people want to reduce responsibilities and reallocate resources. You're dealing with laws. You're dealing with policy. Well, who puts those in place? People who are elected and people who are appointed by people who are elected. Well, how do they get in office? to vote the right people in the office and vote the wrong people out of office, hold them accountable, and push these policies, vote more progressive prosecutors in the office, okay,

to prosecute police officers like this. When I saw this and when I went through, it was in the last, actually when the prosecutor, I watched the press conference the prosecutor had and refused to press charges. And I went through and read everything. I read statements from what he said about Jacob Blake because Jacob Blake said, according to the prosecutor, Jacob Blake said he had a knife in his hand but couldn't remember whether the knife was open or not. When I saw the whole, put all the pieces together, I came to the conclusion that was excessive use of force because Blake was shot seven times at close range.

And to me, that was an excessive use of force. So this would be a civil lawsuit. They'll probably have to pay out money in the civil lawsuit. But then you have to look at reforming policies in the police department so things like this won't happen. And then also, I don't remember what the percentage of African-American police officers are at this police department. But the other thing is changing the culture of policing. And I've said this before, at the end of the day, in a lot of these police departments, many of us are going to have to apply to these police departments as they start firing more

of these white supremacists. OK? Who are they going to replace them with? Where are they going to come from? Many of us are going to have to become police officers, to be the officers that we want to see, the guardians, not the warriors, not to inflict police brutality upon people, but to serve and protect,

to actually be the type of police officers that we want to be. And those are less opportunities for white supremacists to be officers. Filibuster here. Mitch McConnell actually had the audacity, Robert, to stand up and say that the filibuster has had no racial history at all.

Dick Durbin, a senator from Illinois, took exception to that. This is what he said on the floor of the United States Senate. There was a statement made by Senator McConnell, the Republican leader yesterday, which is nothing short of amazing. At a press

conference, he said of the filibuster, and I quote, I'm not going to say anything about this, but I'm going to say something about the Republican leader yesterday which is nothing short of amazing. At a press conference he said of the filibuster, and I quote, it has no racial history at all, none.

Amazing that he would say that. If you go back and study the history of this body, John Caldwell Calh by the senator from south Carolina started in early parts of the 19th century of using this unlimited debate to protect slave states, to protect the

interest of the southern states. And that progressed in history to the point where in modern times, at least in the 20th century, the filibuster was used consistently to stop federalizing the crime of lynching. I don't know who would argue in Kentucky or anywhere else that the crime of lynching has nothing to do with race. But the filibuster was used to protect federalizing that crime.

And it was used in an effort to stop the bills that were trying to outlaw a poll tax. Poll tax? That meant you had to pay to be able to vote. It was used in the South to try and discourage African Americans from voting. It clearly was racial. And the filibuster was used over and over again to protect a vote on the Senate floor, this Senate floor, taking place on the poll tax. Then fast forward several decades to the 1960s. Richard Russell of Georgia engineered, he was the architect, the legislative architect of the filibuster that stopped the civil rights bills in the 1960s.

Certainly, Senator McConnell, who was working in the Senate at that time as an intern, if I'm not mistaken, must remember the filibuster being used against a civil rights bill. And to say that the filibuster has no racial history at all, none, is to ignore the obvious. It's amazing, Robert, just the BS that comes out of these Republicans' mouths. Oh, no racial history whatsoever. from South Carolina, that is enough right there to have all the racial impact from John C. Calhoun, part of the corrupt bargain, to Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, to Lindsey Graham now. All they are doing is enforcing racism because what they understand is that they can no longer win the policies of America. If you go to a college campus, there's no droves of 20-year-olds putting on GOP and MAGA hats. They do not support the policies of the future.

America is becoming an increasingly black and brown country. We're going to be a majority-minority country in less than 20 years, because before the estimates were that that singularity was coming in 2024, they have now revised that up to 2036. So white people are no longer going to be a majority in this country. If they do not have the political ideals that young people support, if they represent 40 million fewer people in the Senate, if they've lost the popular vote in presidential election for the last 17 years and for the majority of the last 30 years, then what other choice do they have than to gum up the

wheels of progress? They know right now that H.R. 1, that the restoration of the voting rights act in the Senate right now, will be effectively the end of the Republican Party as we know it today. Donald Trump said it last year, that they could not win another election when voting in that level. Ted Cruz said last year that they had to stop voting for them or Republicans would never win another election. The speaker of the House in Georgia, Ralston, said that we had absentee ballots at this level, that they would not be

able to win the election. This is why they wanted to put people out there in the middle of a pandemic to vote, because they would rather you drop dead after you ring that ballot for them than to have absentee balloting and to be able to have a democratic process where you have a representative government. Simply the fact that we have a president, or we had a president who lost one election by 8 million votes and then lost the previous election by 3 million votes and still could argue that he won the election is proof that they are not interested in the will of the American people, and they're willing to fight and die to maintain any system which will help them to maintain power. And Democrats have to stop pussyfooting around.

They have to stop playing this old game of chivalry when the other person has a shank in their hand. Because what we are seeing is that if you do not get Joe Manchin and Christian Sinema on board, if you do not at least require a talking filibuster, go back to that rule, if you do not reform the filibuster at all, we will not be able to push through voting reforms. We will not be able to push through student loan reform.

We will not be able to push through voting reforms. We will not be able to push through student loan reform. We will not be able to push through the types of progressive reforms that people voted for in every election in the last 30 years. And if you do so, guess what? When Republicans get back into power, it will be a no-holds-barred assault on our system of government. If you think that we aren't getting rid of the filibuster, guess what? If they have a 51 to 49 majority after the next election, they damn sure getting rid of the filibuster, guess what? If they have a 51 to 49 majority after the next election, they damn sure are getting rid of the filibuster. And they're going to push through every conservative justice, every conservative judge, every conservative policy, every tax cut, because they know this might be their last dance at the rodeo, so they got to get everything done while they can. It's time to stop dancing and start fighting.

Absolutely. This just in. First of all, actually, Michael, I'll give you your thoughts on this, and then I'm going to the next story. Go ahead. Okay, so very quickly. Yeah, I agree with Robert here.

And, you know, it's interesting that Senator Dick Durbin mentioned Kentucky because what he was referencing was Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky blocking the anti-lynching bill in the Senate. That's really what he was referencing was Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky blocking the anti-lynching bill in the Senate. That's really what he was referencing. You have to connect the dots on this.

Senator Rand Paul, then also throw in Senator Ron Johnson. Now, it wasn't a filibuster. It was, if I remember correctly, the unanimous consent rule, but he still blocked the anti-lynching bill. Okay. And then throw in Senator Ron Johnson blocking the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday and give white people the day off from work. He blocked that using unanimous consent. But when we tie all this together, Moscow Mitch McConnell, the grim reaper, he also

said reparations is dead on arrival in the Senate when he was Senate majority leader. See, all this is connected. Because, you know, I hear people say, oh, well, you know, we want reparations is dead on arrival in the Senate when he was Senate Majority Leader. See, all this is connected. Because I hear people say, oh, well, we want reparations, we want reparations. And yet people say reparations now. I'm all for reparations. I'm for making legal arguments for reparations. And I ask them, my response is reparations how? Explain to me the process. Because you need 218 votes in the House of Representatives. You don't have that now. Dr. Ron Daniels said you got about 173. That's after the Evanston, Illinois, and the reparations they're doing in Evanston, dealing with redlining, because I haven't even seen any evidence that slavery even exists in Evanston, Illinois. That's a whole other conversation. But they're talking to redlining.

But you need 218 votes. Then you need 60 votes in the Senate. I don't even think you can have 40. Okay? So you have some people that think that a president can do an executive order for reparations. No. Read Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution. Congress controls the power of the purse. The first thing we should do is read the U.S. Constitution. Because if we understand the Constitution, then that explains all these different things, the Senate, the House, the president, the three branches, the government, executive, legislative, judicial, and understands how all this comes together. Because a lot of this we don't understand. We're in the dark. Many of us mean well and are fighting tooth and nail to try to help our people, but don't understand the rules of the game.

So I'm glad you played that clip, brother, but the filibuster has got to go. And you studied Strom Thurmond. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat, but then Strom Thurmond became a Republican, okay? And so you have a lot of people who say, oh, well, the Democrats used the filibuster. But you have to understand, that was before the party realignment

that goes back to the Lilly White movement in 1928 when Republicans used a Southern strategy to push African-Americans out of the Republican Party. And we went over to the Democratic Party slowly because they were more receptive to our issues. So people think we switched to the Democratic Party because of the civil rights act of 64, the voting rights act of 65. No, by 1960, two thirds of African-Americans had already switched over to the Democratic Party. You've got to go back to the 1920s and Herbert Hoover and the Lillywhite movement in 1928, which is what a lot of black Republicans, black conservatives, don't want to tell you about. And they don't want to talk about the compromise of 1877 either,

when Democrats and Republicans worked together to end Reconstruction. They don't want to deal with that either. Got to go to a break. When we come back, Sharon Osbourne out at the talk on CBS. We'll discuss it next on Rolling Martin 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 love? who needs love who needs love hey i'm donnie simpson what's up i'm'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Well, after the little flare-up over her support of Piers Morgan on the talk, Sharon Osbourne, she is out as a member of the talk panel. Of course, the show is going to return on April 12th.

This is the breaking news banner. This is right here on Deadline.com. Go ahead and write to my iPad, please. She exited the talk. The allegations of misconduct and racist remarks. Show returns April 12th. You might remember there were a variety of folks who talked about what took place. CBS, actually, they had an investigation.

This was the statement that they put out. The events of the March 10th broadcast were upsetting to everyone involved, including the audience watching at home. As part of our review, we concluded that Sharon's behavior toward her co-host during the March 10th episode did not align with our values for a respectful workplace. We also did not find any evidence that CBS executives orchestrated the discussion or blindsided any of the hosts. Y'all remember, that's what Sharon actually alleged. At the same time, we acknowledge the network and studio teams, as well as the showrunners, are accountable for what happened during that broadcast, as it was clear the co-hosts were not properly prepared by the staff for a complex and sensitive discussion involving race. During this week's hiatus, we are coordinating workshops, listening sessions,

and training about equity, inclusion, and cultural awareness for the host, producers, and crew. Going forward, we are identifying plans to enhance the producing staff and producing procedures to better serve the host, the production, and ultimately our viewers. Now, of course, she was one of the original hosts, Sharon Osbourne was, their 11 years. And you might remember Holly Robinson-Pete had actually posted, y'all, that Sharon once called her ghetto and was responsible for her being booted off of the talk. Sharon's lawyers sent Holly a cease and desist letter demanding she take down those comments from social media. Yashar Ali posted a story where he talked about other comments that Sharon Osbourne made, negative comments, about Julie Chin and other hosts on the show.

Micah, what do you make of Sharon Osbourne getting the boot? Here she was defending her boy, Piers Morgan, who walked off his show and got the boot. Now her defending him, let the hug get in the boot. I'm sorry, you know, her comments were really insensitive. Come on, Mike, stop turning your microphone off. Sorry. Her comments were really insensitive.

And, you know, this deals with, you know, I did a whole broadcast, man, dealing with Meghan Markle marrying into a family of colonizers, okay? And they're not colonizers because they're white, they're colonizers because Great Britain colonized one fifth of the world population. But brother, this is the chickens coming home to roost. You know, in today's climate, unless you're on Fox News, you can't just say anything and be white and get away with it.

There are going to be repercussions. So and especially behind the interview that Meghan Markle did, where she talked about contemplating suicide behind the racism she was experiencing, but also Meghan Markle was being attacked by the British tabloids as well. OK, that's another aspect of this also. But, you know, hey, also, but hey, gotta go, gotta go, as Robin Harris says. So, I'm happy to see this. But this also ties us to another point, Roland. America, I know she's from Britain and she was the wife of Ozzie Osbourne, but America

needs a massive history lesson. Americans are very, very ignorant, regardless of race. Americans are very ignorant of the history of this country. America needs a massive history lesson as well. So, you know, this is this is good news. You know, Rush Limbaugh died during Black History Month and now Shannon Osbourne is gone. Oh, did I say that? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Damn! I ain't happy anybody dies. I'm not saying I'm happy he died. I'm just saying it's a coincidence he died during Black History Month. I'm not saying I'm happy he died.

All right. No, I'm not saying I'm happy he died. Robert. I'm not going to lie to you. I've never seen or heard of the talk. I don't know who Sharon Osbourne is. I don't know what channel the show comes on. It sounds like a racist lady got fired. I'm glad that she did. I think this opens up the door for more diversity of thought in media,

that maybe we can have more broad-based discussions involving more people. But as far as this individual, she sounds like a terrible person. I'm glad she's gone. You don't know who Shanna Osbourne is and what the talk is? I don't watch TV, Roland. I really don't. I watch the news and sports. Ask me about LeBron or something.

You know, the Hawks just traded Rondo. I got you on that. You know, we got Lou Wilkins back. We had the four seed in the East. I'm good on that. Have you heard of Ozzy Osbourne? Oh, that same person? Cool. I'm good on that. Have you heard of Ozzy Osbourne? Oh, that same person? Cool. I know Ozzy.

I don't know Ozzy's wife. Is this his daughter? Or whoever the lady is. His wife. Well, good for her. Are they still married? Whatever works for them. But yeah, Hawks. Number four is East.

How the Rockets doing? Okay. When you say Rockets, are you talking about NASA? Lord have mercy. He is sitting here. He don't know Sharon. He don't know the talk. He don't know what network He don't know the talk. He don't know what network it's on.

Okay. Okay. But, you know, also, it's not a TV show. I don't watch it. I've seen clips of it before, but I kept up on what was going on. Because I do radio six days a week. I kept up on what was going on. Sharon Osbourne and, you know, the comments she made about Meghan Markle,

things like this. So, you know, the comments she made about Meghan Markle, things like this. So, you know, go ahead. The reason this is still a huge deal is because CBS, CBS has a massive race problem. We've been covering the two executives with CBS own operations who were suspended because of their leadership there. That NABJ, I'm on the board. We released a statement calling for them to be fired. That investigation is ongoing. We've gotten calls from people from all aspects of CBS.

We had Dr. Rachel on talking about, of course, what she experienced, toxic behavior on the CBS syndicate side. We've heard stuff from CBS radio, CBS news, all throughout. Look, George Che heard stuff from CBS Radio, CBS News, I mean, all throughout. And so, look, George Cheeks, who's all over CBS, you know, he knows they've got a massive company-wide problem of significant issues at CBS. And so it's no surprise that she's out.

And you know what? I would love to see them bring back Holly Robinson-Pete. Yeah, that would be good. And when I saw the statement that she said, Sharon Osbourne said, Holly Robinson-Pete is ghetto, I'm like, wait a second. Hold on. 21 Jump Street, Holly Robinson-Pete. So, you know, it's clear Sharon Osbourne is, like, out of touch with reality also.

Okay, you know, that's clear as well. So, hey, you know. She declined saying, she said she'd never said that. But, yeah, got it. Well, she ain't there. Are we talking about Rodney Peete? Who you play for, the Eagles? Holly Robinson Peete is his wife. Okay, got you.

Okay, cool. All right, we here. We here. I got you. 21 wife. Okay, gotcha. Okay, cool. We here. We here. I gotcha. 21 Jump Street, Holly Robinson. Robert, you don't know Holly Robinson-Pete. Not in the slightest. Couldn't pick her out of a lineup. From 21 Jump Street?

I don't watch. I was four when 21 Jump Street was on. From back in the 80s? The TV show back in the 80s? I was born in 84. Yes, I was born in 84. I was like three. I know. I don't know. Your purple rain came out, man.

Your purple rain came out. I remember Rodney Peet because I was a Randall Cunningham fan. And Rodney Peet was the quarterback after him. I remember Ozzie Osbourne. But I didn't know we were required to know people's wives going forward. So, look, just send me the cliff notes on it or something. Boy, Holly Robinson Peet has stature in her own right. She ain't just Mrs. Rodney P.

I just don't know those things. The Rockets broke their 20-game record. You know what, Robert, Robert, Robert, you really on the verge of being benched. I mean, you don't know how. See, you're going to make me cuss. You're going to make me cuss. You're going to make me cuss.

All right. Y'all, you know what? On that, I'm just going to cut the damn show short. I can't even. I can't even. I ain't even, you know, these last 15 minutes, I ain't even going to put nothing in there. If y'all want to support what we do here at Roller Barton Unfiltered,

please join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you get goes to support this show. We certainly appreciate all the support that we get from our fans. You can get us via Cash App, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. Of course, PayPal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, Venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered. Shoot me. You can contact me via Zelle, roland at rolandsmartin.com.

You can give that way. You can also give to us at roland RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. And so, again, we certainly appreciate all that you do, all that you can do for us, folks. We are, you know, all about, look, this is a black-owned show. This is a place where we speak truth to power. We have an opportunity to have the conversations you can't get anywhere else. We've got some other things that we are planning. I can't wait to tell you'all the stuff that we got planned,

but I'm really looking forward to that. And so trust me, y'all really, I'm telling you, we're going to really make this thing happen. Let me also thank all of you. Y'all saw the graphic earlier that we put out on social media. Let me pull it up right now for a second. No, don't pull that one up, y'all. That's not what I want to show. This is what I want to show. Hold on. Come on. It's being sent. Here we go. We have crossed 750,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. 750,000. We started this show,

we started with 157,000 YouTube subscribers. We are now at 750,000. We thank all of you folks if you watch on YouTube and if you give, be sure to give to us directly because again, money you give on YouTube

is 55%. We get that. But of course, you give directly. We get 100%. So I appreciate that as well. Tonight, 9 p.m., we're going to be streaming this on my platform. It's called Freedom Fest. Check this out, folks. I am one of the participants.

Freedom Fest. You can register for free. It's Freedom Fest 2021. FreedomFest2021.com. I am one of the speakers along with Damon John and being hosted by George Howard Jr. And so we're going to be live streaming that right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

And we certainly look forward to that. And so we want y'all to certainly check that out. Freedom Fest, again, you can register Freedom Fest 2021, Freedom Fest 2021. You can take a look at that. And while we were doing the show, I also had a Zoom up, and I got to give a shout out. Last week, the brother in the center is Henry Stewart.

Henry worked at AARP. Henry worked with the communications office of Alpha Phi Alpha, top PR executive in the country, PR marketing executive. Last week, Henry died at the age of 44. That's a photo there with me, Henry, and PR expert Lalonde Walls, also in Alpha. Henry died 44 years old. Henry Stewart, shocking and stunning

for obviously his family. So many of us have been stunned with the death of Henry. And I just wanted to give our condolences to him and his family. And again, while we were doing the show, the Alphas had our Omega service for Henry. His family has his funeral tomorrow. And I certainly wanted to pay my respects

to a good Alpha man, a good brother, who was committed to black people. his funeral tomorrow, and I certainly wanted to pay my respects to a good alpha man, a good brother who was committed to black people. And we don't know, some reports said it was COVID-related. We don't know waiting results of an autopsy, but certainly

sad to lose a brother that talented at the age of 44 years old. We'll end the show with that. Folks, thank you so very much. I'll see you at 9 p.m. Eastern on Freedom Fest. We always end the show with our

Bring the Funk fan club members. If you don't see your name, be sure to send us an email, and we of course will add your name to it. Thank you so very much. I'll see you guys on Monday. Holla! I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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