#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Global #GeorgeFloyd protests; Dems unveil police reform bill; What does #DefundPolice mean?

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

6.8.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Worldwide #GeorgeFloyd protests; Dems unveil sweeping police reform bill; What does #DefundPolice mean? Former Obama adviser debunks Trump's claims about the economy; Rev. Barber explains how to address systemic racism; #BlackVotersMatter launch new campaign to make sure we use our voting power in November; How to use yoda to relieve stress + More crazy a$$ people found out in the wild Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered #RolandMartinUnfiltered Partner: Ceek Be the first to own the world's first 4D, 360 Audio Headphones and mobile VR Headset. Check it out on www.ceek.com and use the promo code RMVIP2020 - The Roland S. Martin YouTube channel is a news reporting site 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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An end to police brutality. We'll show you what took place in the United States and across the world. Also, Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C., she has painted this particular street lead to the White House Black Lives Matter. We'll show you the reaction from folks. Not only that, we're going to talk about, of course, the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats unveiling today a major, major police reform bill. Also, what does defund the police mean? What does it look like? We'll break it down with our experts.

And also, Dr. Cecilia Ross is one of Obama's economic advisors. She'll explain why Donald Trump cannot take credit for this economy. Because the economy here now officially in a recession. Folks, we've got a jam-packed show. It's time to bring the funk. Roll the button, unfilter. Let's go. He's got it.

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It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's rolling, Martin. Rolling with Roland now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Roland Martin now. Martin! The police murder of George Floyd has sparked global protests against racism, inequality, and police brutality for a second week. Thousands took to the streets in the United States and across the globe. Here is an example. No justice, no peace!

Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Make us better! We cannot breathe. We are not free. We are not free. We are not free. Matter. Matter. Breathe. Breathe. Just fly. Just fly. Just fly. We want equality! Take the whole world and leave your sons and daughters! We want equality! Take the whole world and leave your sons and daughters! We want equality! Take the whole world and leave your sons and daughters!

We want equality! Equality! Justice! Right now! We want equality! Equality! Justice! Right now! Right now! Right now! All you old guys, all you old guys, all you old guys! And I, he beat me with a win! I brought my house back!

That's right, daddy changed the world! Daddy changed the world! She wait! She wait! She did what? Daddy changed the world. Daddy changed the world. He did what? Daddy changed the world. Daddy changed the world.

All right, folks, that's a glimpse of what took place. Again, massive protest. Man, it was just unbelievable to see what took place. In fact, that was, I don't think we had it in there. Did we have that drone video from Los Angeles? I mean, it was just this unbelievable just shot of people. It's just been happening just all across, all across the globe. Now, the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, instructed city workers to paint Black Lives Matter, as you saw when I was out there, in bold yellow letters along 16th Street, which leads up to the White House grounds.

Bowser also added a street sign that reads Black Lives Matter Plaza. in bold yellow letters along 16th Street, which leads up to the White House grounds. Bowser also added a street sign that reads Black Lives Matter Plaza. And so Donald Trump resides at 1600 Black Lives Matter Plaza. Check this out. All right, folks, I'm doing demonstrations this past weekend. Protesters added defund the police to the mural in bright yellow paint. Now, again, calls to defund the police have been growing during the protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Of course, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city's police department. We'll be talking about that in a moment with Reddit Hudson. Now, let's talk about what took place today. The Congressional

Black Caucus unveiled a massive criminal justice reform plan and announcing that today. Folks, let's go to that video. Now, let me know what y'all have. The legislation would make it easier for victims of abuses to recover damages, create a national registry of police misconduct, and ban chokeholds, among other provisions. Let's play some of the sound from the news conference. All right, not sure why we don't have that ready, folks. I need y'all to get it together in the control room, please. Let's go to our panel. Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeaver, political analyst, Maj Ture, activist, founder of Black Guns Matter, also Brittany Lee Lewis is a political analyst.

We also have joining us Reddit Hudson. He is founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice. We have you. Doesn't look too great, but we got you, Reddit. First of all, Reddit, you have a proposal before Congress. Please explain. Please explain just your thoughts on this proposal. A lot of people on social media spend all the time talking about wearing kente cloth,

but the focus really should be on the bill itself. Let's break it down. Well, the bill is a good bill, man. It reflects work that's been done over the years by people who worked on the issue of police reform and reimagining the criminal justice response here in the country nationwide, which we know reform means tinkering around the edges to some people. And obviously, we're at a moment where we're well beyond tinkering around the edges of a system

that has been broken for so long. It would create a national use-of-force policy, which is very, very important. It would also increase independent investigations of police misconduct, assuming that policing remains to some extent intact in the way that we understand it right now. And it would also expand pattern and practice investigations of departments that have shown that they likely have a pattern and practice of abuse. All of that, though, is contingent on

winning the Congress and the Senate and the presidency. Man, we have a president, Donald Trump, whose original attorney general, Jeff Sessions, came in and the first thing he did was disregard the consent decrees that were in place nationally and say that going forward, we won't be taking any of that too seriously. And Bill Barr gave a little bit of lip service to concerns about law enforcement as it relates to black bodies. But we know that's BS because he lies just like Donald Trump, two peas in a pod. So all of that is contingent upon getting an administration that is willing to implement it. But what we've seen, those images you showed a minute ago, brother, are just breathtaking to see around the world that we are in a moment and a space where people

are tired of white supremacy and what it has wrought, especially through its expression through state violence, state-sponsored violence. When you see a man hold his knee on a man's neck while he pleads for his life, that is pure and simple an expression of his feeling of, you know, I'm superior, and there is no system that is going to hold me accountable. Accountability is the best training that any officer can have. Derek Chauvin, behind bars for much of the rest of his life, is the best training tool you can have for officers who are going to be on the streets of Minneapolis or anywhere else.

Now, one of the things here that they have in this bill, and that is revises immunity provisions. It also creates a national database of police use of force incidents. That immunity provision is really critical because that's how police are protected. Yeah. They're not protected from civil liability, but they're right now protected with qualified immunity from criminal liability, which is the most important thing. You get departments on the hook for millions and billions of dollars, like in New York City and cities around the country, that paid out millions based on the misconduct of their officers, which again is a solid argument for defunding or reallocating monies that go to departments and giving them to other responding agencies, which more effectively respond anyway in the first place. When I was on the streets rolling, I would say more than half

the calls, man. Maybe 60, 70 percent of the calls that we went on, we wound up referring people to a different agency, an agency that was better equipped to handle whatever the actual problem was, whether it was mental health, physical health, whatever it was, whatever social service agency or otherwise. So it makes sense to look at that model. But relative to qualified immunity and other immunities, those things are the result of these police unions' political leverage in writing laws, both locally and at the state level, that advantage them, keep them from transparency in terms of investigations, and for damn sure keep them from accountability when they violate

our rights and bodies. So that's something that has to change, and it has to change, man. There is no point in compromise at this point. Again, today they unveiled at this particular news conference. Many of them spoke. One of the things that they also did, you had leaders who actually took a knee for eight minutes and almost nine minutes before, actually it took place as a photo right there

of them kneeling in a sign of respect. That obviously was critically important. And of course, they step forward leading in this way, of course, calling on the Senate to also do their job. Do you believe that this bill they proposed goes far enough? I haven't read it in its fullest detail, so I don't want to give you an answer that is not as informed as it should be. What I see right now with what I just listed off to you, the database that you described, the uniform standard of use of force nationally, which is critical, expanding pattern and practice,

independent investigations, truly independent investigations, which myself and some others are even looking at how we might form a damn independent investigative entity. Those things are a nice foundation. I would have to see the rest of it to decide whether or not it goes far enough. You know, historically in this country, we never go far enough when it comes to dealing with the police. And all of those legislators who took a knee better get up off of their knees and get the

law passed and make sure that accountability is built in throughout. Otherwise, none of it means anything. We've had good policy and training on the books. There's good training available in departments around the country. They don't adhere to the training. They don't stick to it. They don't care about it. They don't use it.

They will violate it to take your life and not be held accountable. That's what has to change first. Absolutely. Redditt Hudson, we so appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot. Sir, good to see you. Thank you, sir. All right, folks, this is Senator Kamala Harris today at that news conference. Many in America right now already live in places with minimal police presence. Go to any middle and upper class suburb and you will not see the kind of presence of

police that you see in other neighborhoods. But you will also see in those communities that those families have jobs that allow them to pay the bills and keep a roof over their head. You will also see in those communities thriving schools. You will also see in those communities access to affordable health care or families that can afford access to health care. So what we are doing today is saying that we need to have consequence and accountability in America for policing. But we also know that this is not the way that we are going to achieve healthy and safe communities. It is but a part of a much bigger issue that we still must address. Let's go to Avis Jones-Weaver. Avis, a lot of people obviously been demanding that political leaders do something. This is the first salvo coming from Democrats in the House. Your thoughts? You know, I do believe that the bill

that was put forth today included a number of different elements that we all know that we need. And so I was encouraged to see exactly some of these key points that were included in the bill. And I was disappointed, quite frankly, to see that people were so distracted by Kente cloths. OK, let's let's keep our eye on the ball now, okay? The bill actually made sense. Let's focus on that. But the other thing that we need to focus on

is the fact that, you know, unless we take over the Senate and the White House in November, the chances of that bill actually becoming law under this regime probably resides somewhere between zero and none. And so if Democrats are savvy, they will use this as a campaign tool, as an example of what they are positioned to deliver to the Black community specifically in exchange for their support. I think people are right in saying that we should expect deliverables for our vote.

And this is a prime example of a deliverable that the Democrats need to be very clear that they can deliver come November, come January, if they're able to take over both houses of Congress and the presidency in November. Brittany, what about that? Because, again, at the end of the day, House Democrats can do one thing, but if Mitch McConnell doesn't take it up in the Senate, the bill goes nowhere.

But let's just talk about the House right now. According to Karen Bass, a congresswoman from California, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, they already have more than 200 co-sponsors in the House and the Senate. Sure, and you know, I'm not gonna sit here and say that we shouldn't support that bill. We should support the bill. It's an important step forward. However, I don't want us to stop with that bill.

I think that we've seen some of the things that they're addressing, specifically, you know, changing the way in which we identify use of force. You know, also talking about de-escalation techniques, talking about, you know, making people take racial, you know, racial justice training. And I think that we've seen these implemented in other local departments, and we've still seen these reforms fail us, Roland. So I'm not saying I think we should support it, we should push it forward, but we need to continue to push for more. Because I'm fearful that unfortunately the reality is black skin is seen as a threat, no matter how many weeks of racial training we take,

or no matter how many body cameras we have on. Because we've known historically police turn those off every now and then. Well, but I think I think what was key here is that this is the federal level. The reality is there's action that must be taken by state legislatures, by county officials, by city officials. And so everything can't be addressed in the federal bill. Trey, do you hear me? We're not hearing you. We need you to unmute your button. There we go. Go ahead.

Yeah, I also think that to everyone's point. Yes, I agree with the fact that, yes, this is a great start. This is a ground foundation, like I was saying. But I think that there's things that also could be added to this. I'm also along the lines of we were saying some of these things are very vague. I would like to see some of that information to go into conflict resolution and some of those funds in the defunding concept of it, well, let's put some money towards actually training the citizens. And I'm not saying that the citizens are responsible for their own deaths. What I am saying is we are responsible, as we all see it, you know, over the last week, the police will leave. I think that we have to start talking about the conversation in regards to how are we arming urban Americans. I know this conversation that, you know, a lot of people are with the, like, hands up, don't shoot thing.

You know, at Black Guns Matter, we are here to inform and arm black America. Just like my gay friends don't get bashed, for the most part, armed responsible firearms owners, when they have the right ability to actually defend themselves when an officer's not shooting them in their car. I would like to see some energy go in that direction as far as that way. I just don't want us to get caught up in these things start away. We're going into an election year. You know, we're a few months out. This is great thing. You know, these guys will go to jail. You know, you know, hopefully these guys go to jail and then we simmer down again and this gets pushed under the rug. So I would like to see

more specifics on in regards to the defunding, where that money is being reallocated to. Well, here's the deal. Right. In a moment, we're going to discuss defunding. But remember, Congress can't defund. Now, granted, there are federal dollars that go to local police departments, but the defunding part is actually going to come from city officials. And I think that's what's important for our audience to understand, that when we talk about this whole idea of police reform, I think historically a lot of people have made the mistake into somehow thinking, oh, Congress, y'all act, when the fact of the matter is the Minneapolis City Council, when they voted to defund, they only have the power. They control the city resources that fund the police department. And so, in a moment, we'll talk about that.

Before I want to do this here, this is Congressman Jim Clyburn today at the news conference. I'm here to speak to Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader Hoyer, Chair Leather Bass, and all the other members who are here today with liberty and justice for all. When I was a kid growing up in a little town of Sumter, South Carolina, we said the pledge every morning and it ends with that phrase, with liberty and justice for all. A vision that we all knew in that little town was simply a vision. And when we were trying to put together our response, what was then Kier's package, I said on the telephone call

that this gives us a tremendous opportunity to restructure things in that vision. I was mocked for that. I was attacked for wanting liberty and justice for all by various media. I don going to back away from that. We're here today in search of that vision, liberty and justice for all. Now, you've heard what's going to be in this legislation. I want to say two things. First, to those who are responsible for writing it.

And secondly, to those who are responsible for writing about it. Let me say this. With few exceptions, white people came to this country willingly in search of a new world full of liberty and justice for all. With few exceptions, black people came to this country against their will. Chained, shackled,

and came to these shores enslaved, and stayed that way for 244 years. Think about how long that is, how many generations that is. It was a long time, eight minutes and 46 seconds. It was a long time to be on one knee. But for 244 years there are plenty knees on the necks of blacks who came to this country. And so as we write this legislation, and as you write about this legislation... I think what, Avis, this moment is showing us, when you heard Congressman Clyburn say eight minutes and four to six seconds is a long time,

I believe that that is why this thing is resonating so much, because people literally saw the life of George Floyd being extinguished out of his body. And folks are having to deal with that and now deal with the repercussions of that, which is why this is a massive undertaking to confront. When you talk about systemic racism, that's you're dealing with a system and the police is just a part of that total system. Absolutely. But and, you know, you just a part of that total system absolutely but and i you know you can see reflections of that once again i have to go back to the legislations it's it you know there are some real tangible advancements in here of course we could always say let's add more but included in here already it bans chokeholds it bansans no-doc warrants. That right there, we're talking

about what killed Breonna Taylor. We're talking about what killed George Floyd and others, right? It requires, it demilitarizes the police. So it stops in terms of the federal involvement in making sure that local police agencies receive some of these huge sort of materials that they should only, that people should only have in the course of an actual war, right? It also provides for a police misconduct database, which I think is absolutely critical because, you know, Tamar Rice, for example, was murdered by somebody that had just gotten fired from a previous police force after already being found to be someone who was irresponsible with their gun wielding, right? And so it goes on from there. It includes the lynching as a federal crime and all of that. But what I wanted to sort of mention is that

this legislation actually points to specific tangible issues that we know touch these specific instances that we're talking about right now. It's really important that we know touch these specific instances that we're talking about right now. It's really important that we focus on what can be accomplished here. Is it going to end systemic racism? Is it going to end racism? Hail to the no. We know that. But we need to make sure that we have something codified so that when people sort of move past these barriers in the future, it'll be easier to make sure that they pay a price if they do. Folks, what you're seeing right now is a live feed from Fountain of Praise Church in Houston, where George Floyd's body is lying. Folks, go ahead and pull it up, please.

And again, this is give me one second. Looks like that screen is lying. Folks, go ahead and pull it up, please. And again, this is, give me one second. It looks like that screen is frozen. I'll try to fix that. This is a live broadcast from the church. Again, folks have been coming through the church since this morning. The viewing began around 10 o'clock this morning, and it will, of course, his home going is tomorrow. They're at Fountain Parade. Joining us right now is Reverend Dr. William Barber, of course, with repairs of the breach in the LACP board member. Reverend Barber, that that police bill today that announced by the Democrats, as I keep saying, is a part of this. It's not the be all to end all. Exactly right. And I want to join with your guest and say there are

some very tangible things there. But our lawyers are still looking at it. We must make sure that it is big enough for the moment. When I hear people say this bill represents what can be passed, it sounds to me like people are still operating in a moment prior to all of this movement in the street. We don't know what can be passed yet because we haven't put it on the table. I think Democrats ought to put everything that should be passed on the table and then let McConnell block it. They're going to cut it anyway. We need to see. People need to see because then that will have an impact on who turns out in the polls.

But what we don't need to do is pass something now that folk can say they voted for and it really not be all that's necessary. So let's celebrate everything that's in there. But let's also talk about the fact that one of the reasons the Ku Klux Klan and other groups and these police have killed people at the state level is because they always knew they would never be prosecuted beyond the state level because murder is confined to a state issue. But if we had a federal piece of legislation that says if you kill with racist or discriminatory intent, that you could be prosecuted at the federal level for murder, that changes the game.

And that's something we certainly ought to put on the table right now. It ought to be something that we ought to be discussing to let a signal go out, Roland, that if you can, even if you can play all the games prosecutorial in the South and get, I mean, in the state and get off, you still could face federal prosecution. One other thing that we have to do if we're serious right now about dealing with death Brother Floyd also had COVID. Brother Floyd lost his job because of unemployment

because of this pandemic. He didn't have necessarily unemployment sickly we need that same group of legislators to go back to those three rescue bills or in this fourth bill and pass the kind of policy changes that will stop our people who are dying in the midst of COVID because of racism and racist public policy. You know,

if we're going to deal with death, Roland, we have to deal with death. And hundreds and thousands of our people are dying every year from the lack of health care. Now Now think about it from a racist standpoint. We have seen massive people in the street and should have, because somebody suffocated, murdered, lynched somebody for eight minutes and 46 seconds, and we should have. But 700 people died today from poverty, and hundreds of them were African-American, and they didn't have to. Thousands die every year from the lack ofAmerican. And they didn't have to. Thousands die every year from the lack of health care, and they don't have to. And these are policy changes where racism is still a part of how we sit and how we make policy. So our lawyers are actually reviewing now the bill. I have not looked at it in its total because we are examining it against our agenda. And we

will push and support the right things and push for the things that need to be more as we go forward. And we talk about pushing. I mean, look, you're seeing the reaction there in the streets. As I said, we're right now, we are showing folks the live feed of the viewing of Mr. Floyd taking place right now at the Fountain of Praise Church there in Houston. And this has been going on all day as people have been approaching that cast and viewing his body. And look, these are thousands of people who never even knew George Floyd. Reverend Barber is that his death has indeed sparked a worldwide movement of protest to get folks to change. And when people talk about martyrs, when I listen to these cranks out here who say, oh, he wasn't perfect, the reality is there's a whole bunch of folk who were not perfect,

but what happened to them is what led to changes in this country. Exactly. I mean, that's a ridiculous statement. Somebody said that person is not perfect, as you rightfully know. But you think about it, Roland, next week is the anniversary of the nine that were killed at the Mother Church in Charleston.

We saw outpouring, but we didn't see it like this. Why? Because people didn't see it. They didn't actually view it. They didn't actually die with George. And the reality is what the reason Emmett Till changed it all because his mother said open the casket because I

want them to see what they did to my baby. That's exactly right. If that was a closed casket, it would not we would not be talking about Emmett Till today had that was a closed casket We would not be talking about Emmett Till today Had that been a closed casket Exactly And that policeman made a classic error He posed over him

For all that time Like a killer over an animal But the hero is that girl That 17 year old girl Wouldn't put that camera up That's the hero Now what we must do, we've learned something in this moment, though, Roland, you have to put a face on it. So just so and his death

happened in the midst of a whole lot of death, the pandemic death and other, but people saw him. And then we're in a season of grieving. Roland, we also now have to put a face on this other death. That's why I believe we've got to get cameras in places, in hospitals when people are dying. You know, what we're trying to do with the Poor People's Campaign is getting people on camera who are dying from poverty. We've got to show America this is not just about numbers, damn it. This is about human beings. I think we almost have to do, I'm going to talk about it at a national sermon at the National Cathedral this weekend, is that we have to do what's called a death measurement now on every piece of public policy. How much death does this cause?

You know, that's what we have to do and show it to people. But his death, the way he died, we died with him, but we also were resurrected. When his spirit was released, it came into us all over. Look at all the people around this country. Some of them don't even know all the reasons why they're out there, even around the world, but they know something's wrong. Something's terribly wrong. And that's why I'm saying to political leaders, don't just try to hurry up and put this back in the box. Don't just hurry up and try to make people stop mourning.

Don't just talk about what McConnell will allow. McConnell has no control over this now. Trump has no control over this now. What you need to do is put before them what ought to be and let them in the face of all of this voted down and see what happens at the polls and see what happens throughout America and the see what happens in throughout America and the world. This is a, this is a watershed moment. This is a watershed moment. And you know what,

what I like a Roland when Emmett Till was killed and, and, and, uh, uh, his, his killers were acquitted in the state court. Rosa Parks said, all right, I'm going after the whole system. Her response to his death was not just to say we need to keep fighting against his killers. Her response was, we're going to go after the whole system. That's what Rosa Parks did, and that's what we have to do. Reverend Dr. William Barber, we certainly appreciate it, sir. Thank you so very much. Take care, my friend. All right. Again, folks, to that point, to that point, Maj, that's when you talk about going after the system, I think what you are seeing when you look at these Confederate statues being torn down, when you look at folks being fired, when you look at the Variety editor in chief

writing a column on diversity, and she gets smacked by a former staffer, and then they have her step down. Then you got folks getting fired. You got seven Republican county chairs who've been sharing these George Floyd conspiracy memes. And then now you got the governor of the state and the lieutenant governor, both Republicans, telling them, y'all need to step down, not take office. There is a reckoning that is taking place. And this is where we should not be ratcheting it down.

But I say ratcheting it up. Yeah, I 100 percent agree. But what I what I would again encourage everyone to do, I think we had these these conversations and we you know they're going to pull back with the police we're going to defund and all those different things we need to be armed we need to be educated we need to be in shape we need to be in position i think that you know again it's the same cultural conversation we kind of got to look backwards a little bit to move forward when i think about these types of things harriet tubman wasn't someone that was you you know, trying to get things done just with good intentions. I think that our community, because we've seen so much ignorance and negligence around firearms, we also forget that these firearms and proper, safe, responsible

ownership of them is what has helped us. When you're talking about Dr. King, you're talking about SNCC, you're talking about, you know, Dr, uh, Dr. King had his nonviolent arm of it. But there were a lot of, you know, guys that came home from the mil... from different types of military understanding that, you know, we have to be armed to protect ourselves. You... The reality is, America was built on money and violence. America was built on the Black...

the back of Black people. That's just the reality of it. When we want these things to stop, you have to either attack their money violently, or you have to be willing to defend yourself. That is the primary goal here. Legislation is great. Legislation is great, but we're talking about officers. I mean, hate crimes, murder, that's been unlawful for however long now. They've been lynching people for how I belong. But here's the piece though. How does us arming ourselves change education? How does us arming ourselves deal with health disparities? How does arming ourselves deal with wealth inequality? This whole issue we're talking

about goes beyond arming ourselves. Well, absolutely it does. We can deal with, this is a holistic approach. Just like there's a solid group of good things in this legislation. So I ask you, how does arming ourselves lead to police reform? So the same reason how police reform happened when people were getting brutalized when the Black Panthers stood up. The same way that we are in spaces right now, we got to look at the stats. In areas where there is more gun control, more less educated Black people that are armed, violent crimes are up, which seemingly justifies

law enforcement officers coming into our community, controlling and patrolling. So what you can't listen at a certain point. Now, this is just one angle of it. This is just one angle. At the same time, when we're talking about the firearms being there, I want brothers to be armed and responsible and lawful. So when they are accosted or attempting to be accosted by law enforcement officers that are corrupt, one, they're not going to jail because they got a dirty gun on them. That's one angle. That's my angle

at Black Guns Matter. When we're talking about legislation around arming black people, when we do these classes for free all across the country, we're talking about safe and responsible ownership. We also add in conflict resolution and political education. But again, though, I'm still stuck on, I get you supporting arming us, but what is still confusing is how does arming ourselves actually lead to systemic changes in police departments? How? You do not brutalize people just like those racists in Fishtown that were protecting their neighborhoods because they were armed with bats. I am not a person that's going to continue allowing police to brutalize us. Okay, so that means, so you're saying that what, if you see a police officer committing

police brutality, then folks should be firing on those cops? I think that one step is, for me, for example, Roland, if I see somebody attacking you, police officers, I'm going to jump in that fray. Everything doesn't mean go right to a firearm, because there's a difference there between being armed and being a firearm. I want black people to have enough pride for themselves to be willing to step in when we see somebody after minute one, minute two. I went to Minneapolis. I was there, and I did a firearm safety class right at where George Floyd was murdered last week in Minneapolis. I wish I would have loved for someone knowing that that officer was killing a black man for instead of 20 people to record it. I would have loved for one black man to jump in and potentially save his life. Okay, so... So, okay, so...

So, if one black man jumps in to save his life, and then the cops then have probable cause to fire on him for obstructing the police, and so now we're dealing with... Do you want to stand

up and fight against these things? No, no, no, Actually, no, no. What I actually want is, I don't want more black people dying. I'm tired of the argument that we cannot fight back. Okay, okay, okay. You can go buy as many guns as you want to. There were four officers on the scene.

Hold on, hold on. I'm not talking about guns at this moment. No, wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. There were four officers on, hold on. There were four officers on the scene. I'm talking talking about guns at this moment. No, wait, wait a minute. There were four officers on the scene. I'm talking about in one scenario because you're asking me four different questions at the top. No, actually, I'm not. I asked one.

If I see you, my brother, if I see any police officers or any of these beautiful people in this panel right here, if I see officers, we as black people have the right. It doesn't have to necessarily be a firearm. We have the right to, I'll gladly catch that case to save any of these sisters. Actually, actually, actually, we don't have actually on the scene as well. Actually, based on the law, actually based on the law, we don't education reform is a part of it. Civics is a part of it. Civics is a part of it. Being responsible is a part of it. But you actually, but you actually, Bermond, you actually, you don't have the right

because the law is in their hands. If you obstruct. That's not true. That's not true. The Supreme Court precedent says that if you see officers initiating an unlawful arrest, you are well within your rights to stop that officer up and to death.

We got proof for that. Tupac shot two off-duty police officers. But wait a minute. Did he go to jail and save his life? But wait a minute. When you talk about determining what is an unlawful act, it's no different than when the officer

told Sandra Bland, get out of the car. The moment, and see, first of all, you're talking about the moment he gave her that directive. According to Texas law, it did not matter if she thought why he stopped her was not proper. The moment he gives a directive, Texas law says you are to obey the directive.

It doesn't matter if you think it's unlawful. That's why he did it. Let me tell you something, Roland. Let me share something with you. You're talking about law, and I'm talking about saving black people's lives. Okay, what I'm talking about? No, no, you can't say you have the right if you didn't talk about law. I'm going to goalpost a little bit in this conversation.

Okay, okay. Actually, I'm not. What I'm trying to explain to you is. What I'm trying to explain to you is. This is my brother. No, hold up, bro. Bro, follow me here. I'm born and raised in Texas.

I saw the entire video. The moment that state trooper told Sandra Bland to get out of the car, she was compelled to follow his directive. She said why she did nothing wrong. It did not matter if she did nothing wrong. At that very moment, she was actually the moment she said no, she was actually breaking the law. That's actually law. No know who else said no? You know what other women said no? Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells. This notion, slavery was lost. Bro, hold up.

Okay, hold up, hold up. Stop. Hold on one second. I'm going to pick this back up. Hold on. No, no, no, no, no. Hold on, okay? You can't say, you can't say, hold on one second, one second, one second, one second.

You can't say on one hand. One second. One second. One second. You can't say you can't say on one hand. Follow me here. You can't say on one hand we have the right to do something if the law says you don't. But I've got to do this here. Now, I'm trying to. OK. All right. Hold on one second. Here's the whole folks. The economy is a critical issue. And that is, of course, you've got Donald Trump out there trying to claim credit for this whole economy. We're now officially into a recession. Well, one of the folks who actually can talk about this with a real perspective is a woman who was one of the Obama White House Council of Economic Advisors. She right now is the, of course, she's now the dean. Okay, guys, let me know when she

comes back on. uh we're supposed to have uh cecilia rouse on dean cecilia rouse of the woodrow wilson uh school so let me know when she is back on the line please uh because i want to talk about the economy i want to talk about the economy uh because this is also a part of this whole deal this the economy and police reform is all going to be a part of this election that's coming up. You're already seeing it right now. We already have the report that they sort of fudged the numbers where really the unemployment rate wasn't 13.3 percent. It was really more 16 percent.

You're seeing all these different things. And so we need somebody who can actually explain it to us. And so in a moment, we're going to have Dean Cecilia Rouse, who's on. Dean Rouse, how are you doing? Fine, thank you. How are you? All right. So it had to crack you up laughing to see a tweet when Donald Trump said that he built this economy when we had 75 months of consecutive growth. And he hasn't been president 75 months. No, he has not. So the National Bureau of Economic Research just came out today. They look back and they dated the recession. So they did the start of our new recession as being February of 2020,

which means that we had about 128 months of consecutive growth, which means that growth started in the summer of 2009, which was when President Obama was president. And so you have to laugh at, again, somebody who thinks that they came into office on third base and then they want to crow about hitting a triple. Well, you know, that is this president. So we were in the longest expansion, I think, ever recorded. Now the recording doesn't go back forever, but this was one of the longest expansions on record. The economy was humming along. And then what happened was not a problem in the economy per se, but we had a pandemic.

And the way to deal with the health side of the pandemic was to put the economy on pause. Unfortunately, other countries, I should say you will, asking people to stay home, which had the effect of causing a spike in the unemployment rate and bringing our economy to a halt. So that's so that's where we were. And that's where we remain. Right. And when and so again, you were you were with the Obama administration before going back to Princeton. And when you hear, oh, deregulation and the tax cut, that's actually what has caused this economic resurgence or for Trump building the greatest economy in the world. We've never ever in American history had it better.

I mean, seriously, look, you're an economist. When you hear somebody say, we've never ever had an economy like this ever in American history, do you laugh? Well, so look, we our economy was doing OK. We had an expansion. The growth rates were not shooting the lights out, but we were seeing progress in February of 2020. Unemployment was at a very low 3.5 percent. One of the other challenges in our economy, though, was that we had very high levels of inequality. And so we would see that in terms of income inequality, wealth inequality, so that while some were doing very well, those who were

particularly wealthy were continuing to grow, we were seeing rather stagnant wages and income in the middle classes and below. And so, yes, we had on one measure, we saw that the economy was sort of was humming along. It wasn't, you know, seriously broken in the aggregate. Not everybody was participating, but it was, you know, it was hanging in there. It was fundamentally doing OK. So right now. So obviously explain people to this again. This this White House love to tout how the stock market stock market is doing and how the Nasdaq and how everything is going. And that people keep pointing to that in the financial networks. Oh, my God, the economy is great. That's actually not the economy. So the stock market is not the economy.

The stock market reflects the trading and buying and investing in companies. And so the stock market is going to do well when people have a lot of confidence. And so they're willing to buy into companies and pay more to buy in those companies. And it's not going to do well when they get skittish. It doesn't reflect the fundamentals such as the unemployment rate, GDP, other measures of production and consumption, which is how we measure the real economy. So while the news tends to focus on the stock market, that does not necessarily reflect at all what is happening in the rest of the economy. Moving forward, obviously, we see what is happening in terms of this last report. Can you explain also this so-called discrepancy where it was they announced 13.3 percent,

but then we were told, well, it really was 16 percent? OK, what is that error? So the problem here is that the way we measure unemployment is through a household survey. And when they go to individuals' houses, they say, were you working last week? And if you weren't working, they have a series of questions. This current population survey was designed for typical economic times. So if you said you were not at work, say for other reasons, you might have had a job, but you weren't at work for a reason that you chose typically. I wasn't at work because I was on vacation. How people in a pandemic, when their employers were doing, were working, they

had a job full time and their employer said, well, we have to stop. We have to close. We're going to ask you to stay home until we know whether we can start again or whether we get past this virus. So when you go to an individual and say, OK, did you have a job? Do they have a job? Do they know whether they have a job or not? And if they say, well, I think I had a job. Well, why weren't you at your work? What do they respond? So many of them responded, I was at work for another reason. I wasn't at work for another reason. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics had intended to count those people as being unemployed.

But it's a household survey, and how individuals interpret that question is not clear. So if you add everybody who responded that they were not at work for other reasons to the numbers of unemployed, then the unemployment rate reaches a level of 16.3 percent. So this is very much the result of the fact that the survey was designed for a different kind of economic crisis than the one we're in today, which is really fueled by a pandemic. All right. So this is June. Obviously, the economy is going to be a big part of this election. Obviously, forecasting is sort of like the weather and the White House. Oh, my God, we're going to have an explosion of growth in the next report. And then by August and September. And are you seeing the same thing? Well, I try not to forecast. I think it gives economists a bad name. But I would not

expect us to see growth suddenly taking off for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's the pandemic that's in charge. So we took the measures we needed to take because we wanted to slow the spread of COVID-19. We do not have a vaccine. We do not even have really effective therapeutics. I think there's one that's been approved and is for people who are really, really quite ill. So as a result, the way that we are trying to bring back our economy and generate some increased economic activities, which is what we observed in May is the beginning of more economic activity, is with more aggressive testing and contact tracing and, importantly, physical distancing. So the problem here is that when employers have to implement physical distancing,

it's going to be very hard for them to maintain full employment and to expect that we're going to have full economic activity. Restaurants cannot have a full set of tables with everybody eating and a full set of, you know, wait staff and cooks and where everybody's physically distanced. So even if restaurants, when they open, and in some places they have, they have to do so with restrictions on the number of clients that they have or, you know, guests that they have, probably the number of staff that are there. And all of those restrictions are going to be a headwind for our economic activity. So until we get to the other side of this pandemic, I do not expect us to be back to a humming growth rate and really able to take off again. So we need to see a widespread vaccinations or at a minimum really effective therapeutics so that the consequences

of contracting COVID-19 are not nearly as serious. All right. Dr. Cecilia Rouse, always good to see you. Certainly enjoyed our conversations with you in the Obama White House and look forward to having you back. My pleasure. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. All right, folks. Got to go to a quick break. when we come back. Senator Cory Booker is going to join us. Also, we'll be talking with Cliff Albright of Black Voters Matter, discussing a new initiative that they have. We'll pick up on the conversation with regards to black folks arming themselves. How does that actually lead to police reform? That's next. Roll the mark.

The man who followed this flag 150 years ago knew what it meant. Treason against their country. The death of the United States. America defeated the men who followed that flag. Those with honor

surrendered and cast it aside forever. So why does it keep showing up today at events supporting Donald Trump? And why does he call the folks who carry it very fine people? I think there's blame on both sides, but you also had people that were very fine people. What does it say that they're all in for Trump? What does it say that he won't condemn a flag of hate, division, and losers? For us, it says this is a time for choosing America or Trump. The matter as the destruction of our national fabric. With all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes.

Would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? Before and after. Brittany, I got to say, Brittany, those folks at The Lincoln Project, those group of Republicans who hate Trump, they know how to make ads. They definitely do. And I like that ad, too. I thought that was really important, especially in this moment when we've seen so many Confederate statues, imperialist statues

come down in the United States and abroad. I think it's an important moment, and I'm glad that we're seeing it happening. I love that commercial. Avis. I agree. I mean, here's the thing. Republicans understand how to message. I really believe, I really hope that the Democrats start taking some notes because we have real problems in that area. So this is why I believe that they do such a great job

of putting together their ads, because they understand how to message. They don't pull punches. They make things plain. You don't need to pick up a dictionary to figure out what the hell they're saying. This is how you make people listen and move people to act.

Clear messaging, that's a master class in what it looks like. Maj? I think it's more the same. I think, you know, like Sister Ava said, you know, they know how to message, but clearly they don't know how to message when it comes to urban America. They

clearly haven't, you know, reached out where they don't want to. So, I mean, this is just more the same. I'm not like moved by it. I just, I think that they, you know, they throwing me to their base. They doing it in a cool edgy way. And that's, that's just what they do. You know, they know how to mean. So cool. Well, again, if I got no problem with a group who doesn't like Trump, uh, if they are, if they are talking to some white folks, uh, who do that's fine's fine, because frankly, I know I talk to black people. But again, I think what this is, this is all hands on deck. We deal with this crazy nut.

I want to go back to our conversation because we're talking about, again, how do you achieve form? You're making the point about why we must arm ourselves. I'm going to bring Avis and Brittany into this. And I'm still, and again, I'm looking at this and I'm still trying to arrive at how do you achieve that if you're arming yourself when what you're talking about has nothing to do with arming yourself? Brittany, what are your thoughts on all this? Oh, well, okay. So in terms of arming, like, let me say this. I don't think, you know, we discuss the history of the black community using firearms and using arms to protect ourselves. You know, I specifically think of the messaging around Martin Luther King and how folks are like, oh, you know, he was nonviolent in his efforts. But a lot of folks don't realize that he was also supported by the deacons of defense. So I will give that to the folks who are pro-firearm. At the same time, I think that we run the risk with firearms. And

again, this is not my specialty, but I think we do run the risk with firearms of if we're a person of color, we're using that firearm against the police state. I think that in their mind, it will justify the means of violence that they will use against us, if that makes sense. So, you know, I think it's a complex and nuanced issue, and there's just a million different directions that we can go. But it's a tough one. And again, you know, firearms is not our only solution to this issue. We know that there's several changes that need to take place, and we have to be careful with firearms. Well, again, the point I'm making is. I get the argument arming yourself.

Charles Cobb wrote a book called This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed. I got that. Understand it. I understand all of that. But what I'm still trying to I'm still trying to ascertain is what does arming yourself have to do with police reform? Avis? Well, first thing I want to say is I want to thank the brother for saying that he would catch a case for me. I appreciate that. Okay. I appreciate that. And, you know, as someone who grew up around firearms, you know, I think it's important that people know that the Second Amendment goes both ways. I think that's an important thing that everyone knows and that our community also embraces. I know just when it comes to me and my house and protecting my children,

I want to be able to do that. And, you know, if anyone rolls up on my house, I want to know that I can protect myself and my family. Right. Now, what makes this complex is the issue that you state. And what was so unfortunately true is that, you know, every when it comes back, when we look at what happened, for example, to move in Philadelphia, You know, there are so many examples of the state exerting tremendous amounts of violence against Black people from the very beginning of our, you know, introduction to these shores. I understand theoretically where the brother is coming from, because to me, his argument is ultimately, it's a big picture argument. To me, his big picture argument is, hey, if people understand that there is a price to pay, perhaps behavior will change. I believe

that's his big picture argument. But I also know that in the short term and maybe and the long term, that black people are being killed in every situation. And I think that in an attempt to defend ourselves as we have a right to do. I agree with that. Here's the deal. I mean, but you still it's the second to law enforcement that they will use it anytime. I mean, honestly, they will go over and above the call of duty. Of course, to be to meet any sort of even perceived threat. It doesn't have to be a real threat, any perceived threat with overwhelming force. Here's the deal. OK. Second Amendment, Second Amendment applies to everybody. Philando Castile had a had a license still got

shot and killed i'm still trying so again making the argument about black folks arming themselves it's a separate argument i'm still trying to ascertain how do you do that to achieve police reform that's that was the question so it's a different discussion if we say hey let's encourage black people to get armed okay got it you could. You can go buy a gun. It's the Second Amendment. How does that achieve police reform? So there's several things. One, first, I want to say thanks to, you know, Roland. I get passionate about these things when we're talking about, you know, our people being murdered unarmed. My primary objective is to make sure that they have the means to defend themselves, to protect life.

I think you initially brought up something in regards to, you know, what's lawful. But I'm more concerned of falling in line and alignment with saving life. Again, you know, we have scenarios where a lot of things have been lawful. But that means that doesn't mean that they were morally correct. So I kind of want to add that distinction in regards to how we change. I can go with my lived experience. I got a firearm on me right now. I carry a firearm every single place that I go. I deal with law enforcement a lot. When going back to the Philando Castile thing, one of our classes,

what we deal with in our classes is knowing the law, to your point. Minnesota is not a duty to notify state. Duty to notify means you have a duty to notify a law enforcement officer when you're pulled over if you have a firearm on you. Minnesota is not a duty to notify state. Philando Castile and not knowing that information, and I want to be very clear on how I say this. God bless him, the work that he did working with young people, his family. They will never see him again. If I could have jumped into Philando Castile's body and tell him, hey, man, you have no legal obligation to tell this coward, excuse me, officer at the time that you have a firearm. I think that scenario goes a little bit differently. So education about being armed and knowing the laws, to your point, Roland,

is how we not only save life, but we also, when those rights are being violated, when you're talking about, I spoke earlier about attacking people's money violently, we have to start suing the state. I hear so many guys in the class that said they got pulled over, they weren't speeding, but then they don't want to go to court. A big part of this is knowing the law, educating the people about their rights, that to be perfectly honest in our

democratic cities and our urban centers all across the country, those laws are not applied equally. Let's just be real. But I'm going back to, first of all, everything you're saying is absolutely correct. Know the law, know the provisions, which is also why I'm making

the point about when you say know the law. So for instance, I go back to what happened to Sandra Bland. The problem that we have, which is why I'm dealing with police reform. The problem that we have is you have officers who know the law,

who know what buttons to push, and then know how to get somebody. You play that video back. He knew he had pissed her off. He knew that she was agitated when she was smoking that cigar, that cigarette, when he told her to put it out. And the moment he gave her a lawful command and she resisted, that's when he began to pull on the door and at that very moment she was under arrest. Because even if I am in the car and if I know what you're doing is BS, I know what you're saying is BS, the moment you give the order based upon

that state, then I have to comply. Now, there are some places where if the officer demands for your ID, you have to show them. We showed a video out of Chicago where this cop rode up on these two brothers and there was another brother who was videotaping. He started reciting the law because that was that particular state. I want the people who are watching to understand that you might be in New Jersey and somebody else might be in Georgia and somebody else might be in California, somebody else might be in North Carolina, and the law ain't the same. It's based upon your state

in terms of understanding the law. And that was the whole point there. And so, again, I think it's a separate conversation about making the argument about African Americans being armed. I actually believe that that is a separate discussion than police reform. Well, I think, yes,

I do agree with you that those are separate discussions because, again, like we were talking about, even in this legislation, there's different levels and layers to it. So I think you're talking, armed, when you're talking about knowing the law, that is a part of being armed. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about knowing the law. I don't even carry a gun.

I better know the law in my state because I need to understand when somebody rolls up and, again, understand that. And so here's the deal. I live, I work in D.C., I live in Virginia. I also live in my home in Texas. I might be thinking, well, Texas law is this. That don't't mean damn thing. I'm getting stopped in Richmond, Virginia. I need to also know the law in Richmond. We say the same thing. What we're talking about, again, there was a reason why they didn't want us to read books like the one that you mentioned here. Got it. There's a reason why I want you to read, you know, more guns, less crime, so forth and so on, because that's still a form of arming.

Now, I'm not saying that, you know, hey. About 20 seconds. I got to go to the next guest. About 20 seconds. Go. No, no, no, no. Seriously, I got Senator Cory Booker holding. So make your point. If anybody wants information on it. No, no, no, no, no. You're not off the show yet. I'm saying you got 20 seconds to finish that point so I can bring on the next guest. Be armed, be informed, get a CCW ad, know the laws of your municipality and state to start out. Hold tight one second, folks. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey joins

us right now. Senator Booker, how you doing? I'm well. Thank you for having me. Let's just talk about the bill that was announced today by the correction of Black Caucus and other Democrats. Um, is this the most aggressive police reform bill that Democrats can put on the table? Well, first of all, I wouldn't call it a police reform bill. A lot of people are rightfully suspect of police reforms because we've seen so many of them before. This is about real accountability. It's about making sure that in courts of law, civil and criminal courts, when cops, when police officers do bad things, that we can actually make sure that we can hold them for 1983 civil rights violations on the civil side and hold them in accordance to the criminal

code on the criminal side. So that's number one. Number two is it's just going to outright ban things that has caused the death of African-Americans and many Americans, like chokeholds, no-knock warrants, racial and religious profiling. And then finally, it's going to empower activists by making sure that from whether you're an activist, a leading nonviolent protest, or an organization like the ACLU or NAACP, or a state legislator, that You have transparency into police departments by mandating data collection on misconduct, use of force and other critical information

that's now not collected in any uniform way across the country. So I've seen lots of reforms and we've seen them in Minneapolis and still have these kinds of awful deaths. It's now time talking about something that's more systematic in terms of real accountability, transparency on the ability for people to take action against police officers

who do wrong. When people right now are very much obviously engaged in this, but there's only so much Congress can actually do because many of these issues deal with city contracts, union contracts. It deals with state bill of rights. And so it's not just the jurisdiction of Congress. You also have to have an intense lobbying effort in state capitals, county government, as well as city government to deal with law enforcement across the country. Absolutely. And we know that, that this change is going to have to come at the federal level, state level, and local level. But let's not forget, when it comes to protecting the rights of Americans, whether they're LGBTQ Americans or Americans of religious minorities. We have seen the federal law get involved in everything from school desegregation to voting rights,

which are, both of those are very local issues. But the federal government can get involved to protect people's civil rights and protect people's lives. So there is a role to play on the federal level. And I intend to continue to work with a lot of my colleagues who are also leading to lead the effort on the federal level to create real systems of accountability for our national policing. Well, one of the things that we have to continue with the reality is Democrats control the House. Then Republicans control the Senate. Let's say Democrats' past is in the House. Is there any chance of actually coming up in the Senate between now and November? Well, if you told me a month ago, literally four weeks ago, was there any chance that a bill like this could have been written and have gotten as many co-sponsors in the Democratic Party,

I would have said, I don't see how it's going to happen. But hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans in all 50 states from the whole rainbow of ethnicities, religions, races and ages, protesting nonviolently out there across our country has made this moment possible. And so I believe that anything is possible because we live in a nation where still the power of the people is greater than the people in power. And that's why folks who are out there demanding and protesting and doing everything they can to wake up the comfortable and get more people off the sidelines of history into history to make history.

It gives me a lot of hope about what can be possible over the coming months. And remember, we're five months away from the Senate being up, where Mitch McConnell will either stay in charge and in power, or he will be removed because we'll be electing new senators. And this could be a turning point, not just for police accountability, but for other critical civil rights legislation, environmental legislation, environmental justice legislation, health care, and more. There's so much coming in this tumultuous year of 2020. But the secret to the change is always going to be, as it has been for the suffrage movement,

for the civil rights movement, for the labor rights movement, is the activism and engagement of citizenry. And that's why I have so much hope because of what I'm seeing around the country today. I've got to play this for you. Over the weekend, one of your colleagues actually took to the streets. Here is Senator Mitt Romney. Violence and brutality, and to make sure that people understand that black lives matter. There were folks on social media who were saying that, oh, look, that was a waste. I disagree. What I said is I appreciate seeing Senator Mitt Romney out in the protest saying Black Lives Matter.

Now I will judge him based upon what he does with policy. Just like there are people who have been critical because CBC members members decided to and other democrats decided to have their kente on today and people were sitting here making jokes about it and i'm like shut the hell up focus on the bill as opposed to when the kente will speak to that in terms of again judging now you take cinnamon romney take all these corporations making statements now it's we appreciate the. Now let's see the work. Look, Roland, first of all, about my colleague, we need to leave room for people to evolve. Right. Keep pathways to redemption because, brother Roland, thank God you and I are not the same people we were 20 years ago. We are better.

We are more involved and getting better, thank God. And so when I see the commissioner of the NFL, somebody I have not been happy with, but respond to African-American players and say those words, Black Lives Matter, and admit that he did things to suppress the protests of the athletes, that's an evolution. And I'm not going to condemn him for getting better. He's not where I want him to be, but he made some progress. We have seen a lot of, we've seen the whole slogan back, Black Lives Matter. I remember we had people in the Democratic Party at high levels that kept saying all lives matter. And so I just, this is not a movement that's going to be won until we realize that great movements are achieved when we call to the conscience of others and activate their empathy and their – not just empathy, frankly, get them on the streets working with us. So I have nothing but hope that more people will get woke,

more folk will get woke, and more people will get into this fight. Because what we need is change, is dramatic change. And this bill is an incredible step forward, but there is so much more needed to be done in a society that has decided explicitly or worse, complicitly decided that we are going to treat mental illness in this country with jail and prison and police and not health care. Go ahead. And that was a point that I'm making. And again, that is Senator Romney could have easily not gone out there. He initially he initially posted a photo on his Twitter feed of his father marching in marching with folks, the civil rights movement. I think that was on Saturday. And a lot of people tweeted him and said that was your daddy.

What are you going to do? And the next day, he was out marching. The point I'm making to people is, appreciate that. But now that he's done that, now it's, okay, what are you going to do? Just like I see all these corporations. Same thing. Okay, Roger Goodell, you did a video, you apologize. Are y'all going to change that policy that you just put in the collective bargaining agreement that made it harder for athletes to protest?

Are you going to allow them to kneel? Are you going to now change those things? All of these companies who are posting statements, we all black lives matter. I said on MSNBC, do I say do black employees matter where you're black corporate execs, where you're black board members? What's your minority supplier development? See, now the moment somebody goes on the record, then we get to say, OK, we appreciate that. What you going to do now? That's to me, that's what where we have to be now in terms of challenging folks saying we appreciate that. But let's see what happens with this. Listen, I first of all, I know you're serious because you got no pocket square on today. I got I got my poor people's campaign shirt on represent my Reverend Dr. Barber.

I know you I know you come hot today. So look, look, this is the challenge of me looking back at our history. You and I are young men and you look suddenly at all the corporations that use Martin Luther King's imagery and they've created a Disney

version of him or a Santa Clausification. Yeah, I call it a bobblehead. I call it a civil rights mascot. Yes. I call a civil rights mascot. Right. And by the time of his assassination, you know, the majority of Americans disapproved of him. Black people. Yes. Yes. Whitney Young, Urban League, Roy Wilkins, NAACP, Carl Rowan. A number of black people were not happy with Dr. King when he got killed because of his stance on the Vietnam War.

Yes. And he was starting to talk a lot about a poor people's campaign and economic injustice and challenging what was then a corporate culture that was morphing into the perversion of a free market that we have right now with unbelievable corporate consolidation to the detriment of entrepreneurialism and competition and more. So, look, I'm just trying to say right now there's still issues where we are too comfortable with injustice in this country. When we say that we're the land of the free and one out of every three incarcerated women on the planet Earth is here in America, overwhelmingly they are survivors of trauma, of sexual assault, where 95% of the people we incarcerate are nonviolent, more than that actually, and are people that often need help, health care, and not harm and hurt or be put into environments that compound their injuries and put them back on the streets in worse shape, more economically disempowered,

and often with those with mental health challenges, often have had more trauma in their lives that further undermine their health. And so I'm just saying that we are not there yet in understanding the breadth and depth of the problem. And it's hard to get to solutions before we start really starting to have a conversation about what does a beloved society look like. We are a nation that has an untapped reservoir of love for one another that is not reflected in our policies. And that's why creative artists of activism have to continue to try to push to get people to confront those things that we've grown used to, but like a frog boiling in the water,

that we are fast moving towards utter peril if we don't address them. America right now has injustice, and King was right. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And our criminal justice system, what did Dois Taisky say? If you wanna see the nature of civilization, go to visit the prisons and see what's happening. Well, our prisons contain the poor,

our prisons contain the mentally ill, the addicted and overwhelmingly black and brown people. And we have to address this and much more. So today, I'm proud that we got a bill written in a very short period of time to do the things that for 50 years members of the Congressional Black Caucus, back to its origins, were writing bills about police reform, asking for, excuse me, police accountability, asking for things that would have made a difference and save black lives we now have a chance to get those things done and a kicker and you know this there's another little tiny bill that was included in this bill i say tiny uh more sarcastically but

it's the anti-lynching bill that has been tried to be passed for a century that finally got passed through the house of representatives with only four dissenters. So that means overwhelming Republican and Democratic support, has 99 senators ready to vote it out here in the United States Senate, but is being blocked right now by Rand Paul. So this is something that is to me astonishing, that we're still trying to, one of the greatest periods of domestic terrorism in American history, the period following Reconstruction, all the way up into the 1960s, where thousands upon thousands of blacks were lynched, were murdered, were gruesomely killed. We've yet to make that a federal crime.

Senator Tim Scott posted on a Twitter feed that, look, all Democrats can do is just, in the House, pass the original bill without Emmett Till's name on it. But the other side of this here, Senator Tim Scott can demand Mitch McConnell put this on the floor. I mean, it's not like I mean, they can ignore Rand Paul by just putting it on the floor for debate and for a vote. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, I I there's some things that are larger than us that we should put our egos aside and just do it. Yep.

Just get it. This is one of those things where it's not complicated. And by the way, history is gonna look back. Whatever thing people might wanna write about Mitch McConnell, they would say he stepped up to make sure this got done. And talk about Donald Trump, you know he wants to talk about how he has done this and this and this for black people. I don't care, let the man sign the bill and make it the law of the land. Everybody could take credit for doing what is right. But we have a century of agony,

our ancestors are looking down in pain at the shame of our inaction to get this done and get this across the line. There's no excuse. We should just get it done. Last question. Last question. All this discussion about defund the police. Senator Kamala Harris is on The View this morning and Meghan McCain. So I just learned about this. I don't really know. But you would defund the police. I think it's a bad idea. OK. You have been a city councilman. You've been a mayor. You're in the United States Senate. I keep trying to explain to people, Congress can't defund police departments. When you hear the phrase defund police, what does that mean?

Well, I know what it means because I know the spirit behind it. But as a guy who's in politics and who's watching Donald Trump try to weaponize that phrase, like he tried to weaponize Green New Deal or Black Lives Matter, even weaponize Obamacare to the point now where you poll Obamacare, it's not that popular amongst Republicans. But if you poll Obamacare, it's not that popular amongst Republicans. But if you poll the Affordable Care Act, it's very popular. Which is which is why which is why I kept telling the Obama White House to stop saying Obamacare, because all you're doing is furthering the Republican poll tested phrase.

And they were like, but Obama does care. I was like, OK, I'm just done. But you're absolutely right. When you say the Affordable Care Act, it polls very well, but Obamacare, but even the Obama White House was using Obamacare, saying we can flip it. I'm like, no, you can't flip what was meant to be a negative, but go right ahead. Right. Right. And so here we are now in another slogan contest. And when I want to get to the spirit and the substance behind those people who are calling in agony about the reality in America, that we have defunded public education, and we know dollars invested ins and the BAs and MAs in prison, save you $4 to $7 in recidivism, which means police in more prisons. We know the things to do to lower the taxpayer expenditures on police and prisons. We know the things that we could be doing, but we're not funding them. Drug treatment, job training, mental health care,

support for children who are below the poverty line to get them above the poverty line. And that's the absurdity of where we are. We're about to have a false debate in America when we simply should say, what is the real things that keep communities safe? Because I remember sitting in one of my first meetings as a mayor, sitting with the FBI in Newark, New Jersey, when we were talking about gang interdiction. And I said, how do we solve this? And the head of the FBI at that point, I wrote about this in my book, looks at me and says, we don't solve these problems. Police, in other words, law enforcement, head of the FBI, we don't solve these problems.

They're just dealing with the symptoms of the deeper problems. And so activists in the streets who are saying police don't solve the problem. In fact, I'm worried about the police killing me. Can't we start funding the things that even the police know actually solve the problems? We know kids who have trauma, and there are numbers of trauma. Poverty alone is an indicator of trauma, according to medical experts. Lead poisoning in toxic sites give trauma to child bodies. We know that. And we live in a country where there's more than 3,000 jurisdictions where children have more than twice the blood lead levels of Flint, Michigan. And the number one indicator of if you're around a toxic site or not is the color of your skin. So this is an absurd argument. When I was mayor and I had violent crime issues, I was trying to do everything I could to help my police get more guns off the streets.

But my police themselves would tell me these problems are starting because we're not doing enough for our children. We're not doing enough to deal with addiction. Across the street from me, Roland, I don't know if you've ever come. Why do you ever visit me, man? You just all talk. I don't know. We're talking about where? Newark? talk. I don't know what kind of friend you are. What are you talking about? Where? Newark? Yeah.

I've been to Newark. Matter of fact, I spoke in Newark a couple of months ago at the Symphony Hall for Mayor Roz Baraka. Where were you? Well, damn, that's even worse. Oh, see, come on. You were in my city and you didn't even come visit. They ran posters, they ran, I mean,

they put it all over the place. You got my number, man. You got, because I know you used my digits. 2,000 other black people saw me there. And they cheered. I would have been up, I would have lit a candle, man. I would have put the

flashlight on my cell phone and waved it around. Alright, so hold up. So let's just do this here. Fine, let's do this here, okay? I own this show, so let's do a town hall between now and November in Newark and we'll live stream it

on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Not Roller Martin. I want to get you out of your comfort zone. Fine. I want to do a walk around my neighborhood. Dude, I got portable equipment. We can live stream that. So I want to go to Integrity House across the street and sit with fellas who were arrested

dozens of times, costing us millions of dollars before they got the drug treatment they need. Let's go sit in the barbershop. You and I both might need a little help. Touch up there. I'm good. I'm good. I got way more hair than you. And talk to fellas about what's really

happening. We can go portable. We got portable. We can do all that. And we can still live stream it. So you tell me when and we'll have my cameras there. Alright. See because I think what I would love for your viewers to see

and most of your viewers probably know this already because they live it or they know it intrinsically, is that we waste so much money in society. Think about the drug crimes. At Stanford and Yale, I'm sorry, I saw lots of drug use. Nobody got criminal charges. People doing the same thing in communities of color where you're over policed then as soon as you get an 18 year old now with a a criminal conviction for doing things that two of the last three presidents admitted to doing now that kid can't get a job can't get

a pell grant can't get a business license can't get a loan from the bank. And so this is the shame of our society, is by over-policing, over-criminalizing, over-incarcerating, we're actually creating the conditions for more violence and more challenge. And so as a mayor, I need to protect my community. The number one polling thing when I ran for mayor in 2002, 2006, 2010 was police wanting more police, wanting more protection. Because in many ways, black communities have concerns about gun violence and more. So how does that jive, though, with defund police? Are you saying that the problem with this whole conversation is that people are stuck on the phrase itself and really not what they're focused on? Because, look, this is what I'm hearing.

People are not saying get rid of the police departments. What they're saying is cities are spending an inordinate amount of money on policing and they're completely ignoring the mental health problems. So when cops encounter people with mental health illness, they end up being dead because cops don't know how to deal with that. What they're saying is to, to, to one of my guests, Maj Ture, he was like, you need conflict resolution. You need to be teaching police officers at pulling the gun is not your first, second and third option. So when I hear defund the police, they're saying study your budget and stop just saying, oh, we're just going to throw more money at the cops because that's

essentially saying the same as build more jails. Throw more people in and that solves the problem. And see, that is the race to the bottom when you have people standing up saying, I'm going to put a million more cops on America's streets that are persecuting a drug war.

I remember having a good conversation with people who study policing and saying, look, communities of color often have too much of the policing that they don't need and not enough policing of the ones of the type they want. And ultimately, what you're saying there, Roland, which is true, which is if we started to invest in the ways our communities really deeply want to see for their children, for their schools, for their job opportunities, and more, ultimately the demands in communities of color for more security protections would be going down, as would those budgets for mayors who understand that their crime rates are

going down for the right reasons. All right. Senator Cory Booker, we appreciate it. Let me know when we want to do this thing, man. We'll make it happen. All right. Don't sneak up in my neighborhood anymore without letting me know. Yeah, okay. All right. Glad you came out, hung up, hung out my hood for a little bit. I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. All right, folks. Today, Shona Kamala Harris was on The View. And Meghan McCain, throughout her defund the police question, I've been knowing what the hell it even means. Watch this. The activists right now are calling for a defunding of the police. The Minneapolis City Council just agreed on a bill on this.

Right before I came to tape the show, there was a clip on CNN from a Minneapolis city councilwoman who said, quote, it's a place of privilege if someone breaking into your home wants to call the police. This is gaining a lot of steam. Nancy Pelosi this morning just refused to answer if she would support defunding the police. I just want to know from you, do you support defunding and removing police from American communities? And if not, why do you think there's such a hard time being differentiated right now between defunding and reforming police departments? So, Megan, I think that a big part of this conversation really is about reimagining how we do public safety in America, which I support, which is this.

We have confused the idea that to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street. Instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities, you put more resources into the public education system of those communities, into affordable housing, into home ownership, into access to capital for small businesses, access to healthcare regardless of how much money people have. That's how you achieve safe and healthy communities. And so we really do need to understand and reimagine what and how we can actually make and help make communities safe. Because here's the bottom line. If you contrast many communities which have a heavy presence of police to middle and upper middle class suburbs in America,

you will not see that presence of police. But what you will see, you will see families who have an income that allows them to get through the end of the month. You will see good public schools. You will see people who have access to health care and can afford it. You will see people who have jobs. And so this has to be the conversation, which is how are we going to be smart in achieving what should be our collective goal, which is that all communities are safe and knowing that safe communities are usually safe because they are healthy, healthy because of a number of things, including the economy, including education, including access to health care. And that's how I think about this. You know, in many cities in America, over one third of their city budget goes to police. So we have to have this conversation.

What are we doing? What about the money going to social services? What about the money going to helping people with job training? What about helping with the mental health issues that communities are being plagued with for which we're putting no resources? And most, and here's the other thing. When I talk to law enforcement, they know that they don't want to be, nor are they skilled, to be the ones who are responding to someone with mental illness or substance abuse or the homeless population. But in many cities, that's what's happening because we are not directing those resources, those public resources, to where they need to go, which is addressing mental health, homelessness, substance abuse, so that we don't have to have a police response because we are smarter.

Senator, I hear you loud and clear, and I don't think there's any rational American right now who doesn't think that we need to take a cold, hard look at reforming our police. But there was a video that went viral over the weekend of the mayor of Minneapolis being yelled at saying, yes or no question, are you for defunding the police? So I'm going to ask the same question the protesters asked him. Are you for defunding the police? How are you defining defund the police? Well, I'm not for anything remotely for that. So I would ask the protesters the same thing. But I assume it's I assume. And again, this is something that is new to me. I assume it's removing police. And as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said, bringing in a whole new way of governing and a law and order into into a community.

And my understanding, again, this is something that has just come into my understanding recently, is that you would not have police officers like this Minneapolis city councilwoman said that I would be a place of privilege if someone broke into my home and I wanted to call the police. So, again, we need to reimagine how we are achieving. Come on. Avis, you're sitting there like, well, I got to answer this little child. First of all, you're saying I assume I'm just learning about this. Megan has no clue what the hell she's talking about. Kamala Harris just sat there and explained to you what defund the police is and you have no idea. OK, so, Avis, you were tweeting about this. So is the issue the hashtag?

Is it too complex or is the problem folks don't actually want to read? What is it? Well well here it is i kind of alluded to this earlier democrats need to be very a lot more savvy when it comes to messaging you know we have great ideas and i don't think anyone with two grains of sense would disagree with anything that senator harris just said there uh even megan Even Meghan McCain seemed to agree with what she was saying. The challenge is that the actual phrase that's being used to describe that can lead people to misinterpret what's being demanded here. When I hear the word defund, the original thought that comes to mind is to zero out of budget, right? That's what most people

will believe. So it requires a lot of explanation and a lot of education to get people to the point where they really understand the broader arguments around it. Here's the challenge with politics. When you're explaining, you're losing, period. But the deal, though, but Brittany- And it seems like to me, if're going to if you're if your argument is that you want to redirect funding and you have to go into greater detail that's fine to me a better argument or better thing to focus in on would say would be to say demilitarize the police and then i think more people can get that and understand that okay now i can go and explain other things that i might want to do in the funding.

I disagree. I disagree because here's the problem, Brittany. Even if you say demilitarize the police, then that means, hold up, the police, the other military? Hold on, the military is the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. No, no, no. No, no.

But that's not, but that's still a limited piece of terms of police reform. The real. But it makes more sense. Actually, it doesn't. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. Defunding Planned Parenthood.

When people are making the argument about defunding Planned Parenthood, they weren't saying take the money from Planned Parenthood and put it into all these other places, but still make sure that Planned Parenthood. They weren't saying take the money from Planned Parenthood and put it into all these other places, but still make sure that Planned Parenthood exists. That's not, that wasn't the argument. Right, because, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, but Avis, that's because they were talking about bringing it to zero. And that's because, and Avis, that's because the people who were saying

that got to define it. The problem here is... How else do you define? No, no, no no no follow me here follow me here the people who are in opposition to something what you have here no no no no i understand no no i understand politics as well but my point is this here you can explain defund the police means this that's why senator kamala harris britney, how do you define it, Megan? She explained it. But then Megan didn't want to hear the definition because Megan had her own mind what it is. The point, Brittany, I believe, is that if you are for defunding the police, you must be in front of the narrative and not allow someone else to define what your meaning is. Brittany. Roland, I absolutely agree.

I've actually seen two different factions in terms of how we discuss defunding the police. I've seen people who believe that defunding the police means that we will still have police in the way that we think about it today. They will literally just have less funding. We will divest from policing and we will invest in communities of color, as Kamala Harris just stated.

But I've also seen people pushing for something different, which is to get rid of policing as we know it. And I think that they've used such examples as what's going on in Minneapolis. You know, we think about the University of Minneapolis contracts with, you know, they cancel their contracts with police. We see them being pulled out of, local school systems there. We hear council members talking about completely revisioning what we know and understand policing to be in its current state. And just real quickly, I want to go back to what Senator Booker said, which I thought was really interesting. He said, four months ago, I didn't even think this bill would have been possible. And what I thought was so

powerful is, well, why is it possible now? And that's because the power of the people, the people said it was possible. You know, at one point in the United States, we didn't think we could go without slavery. We didn't think we would have a world that had, you know, we could go without legal segregation. And yet here we are. And I think we're at a really key moment. And I just hope that we are continuing to radically think about a new world. Yeah, I just hope we continue to think about a radically different world. But I have an excellent point in terms of the naming. Maj, I think the key here is this here. I think the key is when people were asking the question to the mayor of Minneapolis, will you agree to defund the police? I think you've got to actually state what that is

and not just sit on a phrase that's just that's all that's all i'm saying here i know republicans are excellent with bumper sticker slogans that don't require explanation because a lot of their people who follow them are not smart but well but go ahead go ahead. Here's the thing about that, though. When we're dealing with our people that are still victims of that same horrible education system, you have to, you got to leave with empathy.

And I can't be, you know, a little frustrated that, you know, I, you know, have a certain level of understanding because of the books that we read. Of course you don't know. We haven't studied the same things. So I think everybody in the panel,

I'd say your point, Roland, which is like, come on, bro. You can't be talking about something that you can't even pretty much explain. At the same time, when you're, first is this point, you have to be able to explain this in a manner.

You got to applesauce it. Babies don't have teeth. You have to be able to give it to them in applesauce chunks. If these are the people that you're trying to explain, because like Brittany said, there's different packaging. It's no different than the riots. You know, there are people that are there that are actively trying to peaceably protest, that see something that's wrong. They're trying to solve the problem with civil disobedience or unrest, whatever you want to call it.

Then there's instigators and then there's the guys that just want LeBron James sneakers, that just want to call it. Then there's instigators, and then there's the guys that just want LeBron James sneakers, that just want to wait later. But the general public, when it's shown on television, they may have, unless it's explained and broken down, right, they may have that one view of a thing one way, and it can be incomplete. When a lot of these issues, I think we try to make them very simple, but again, it's a holistic process. In certain areas,

we do need more reform. There are certain areas where they have not handled people the same way. There's other areas where 70% of that needs to get trashed. You can look at an Ahmaud Arbery situation. That whole DA, that whole situation is horrible. But you may not have the same scenario there. I think that's an example of how you can explain that to people at different levels. And I think that, you know, Senator Harris asked her, well, what is your definition of defunding? So I can see where I'm actually meeting you at. Even though I did just explain this to you very thoroughly, I can kind of meet you somewhere in the middle. I'm only making this point, and it's very thoroughly. I can kind of meet you somewhere in the middle. I'm only making this point, and it's very simple. The people who are advocating for defund the

police must control the narrative. What they can't do is allow the opposition to now define their own phrase and define their narrative. And's why and that's why for those protesters for the people who are organized behind this there has to be a marketing campaign a pr campaign that is clear that is consistent the phrase alone doesn't do it that's the point I'm making. So when Megan asked the question, when Megan asked the question, she didn't know jack about it. And so she was just asking the question solely based on the phrase.

And what I'm saying is it requires an education process. Hopefully those behind it will do that and make this happen. Hopefully. I agree. Just real quick. That's where Kaepernick failed. He did a perfect explanation of why he was taking a knee, of who he conferred with, a

military man. That man told him it wouldn't be disrespectful because he was bringing attention to a thing. At first interview, he explained it thoroughly. There's no way to mess it up. Then he disappeared. Then media hijacked the message. And so in that sense, absolutely. But again,

but also, he still explained it. And he's not, look, Colin's a very shy guy as well. That goes to it. And so it's all a part of that. I'm just saying, for the people out there who believe in defunding the police and the concept, what I'm saying is control the narrative. Do not let those who, the negative folks,

start telling you what it actually means because that's where it's going to be a problem. And I can see it happening, but it hasn't taken foot yet, but we'll see what goes down. Folks, the Black Voters Matter Fund has announced the We Got the Power campaign, which is a series of power-building initiatives and events to provide black voters with tools and support to address the issues and challenges we face in our communities as we head toward the November election and beyond.

Joining us right now is Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Cliff, explain this initiative. Yeah, so basically it's a continuation of some sorts. It's a continuation of doing what we've always done, which is holding events, having conversations, tough conversations, conversations like the one y'all just had, which, by the way, I would love to get into the defund the police conversation. But having these conversations, doing a virtual bus tour, doing virtual town halls. You know about the Blackest Bus in America rolling.

Well, we've been sidelined because of coronavirus, but we're bringing it back in a virtual sense, including an animated bus. And so we're having these events, we're having these conversations, we're bringing in partners from local communities, community groups that are doing this work, including criminal justice reform work and gentrification work and coronavirus mutual aid work. And so we're just having these conversations and just the overall message is we got power. Right. Because in the times that we're in, it's easy for us to feel powerless.

Right. It's easy for us to get frustrated. We've got people dying from this virus. We've got, you know, people frustrated in the streets over, you know, all these deaths that are still ongoing, by the way. And so, you know, we just wanted to remind people that we have power. We got power. And that's what you're really seeing in the streets. And that's why you're seeing some of these cities already starting to give way on some of these demands that people make. And so what is this going to look like? And so what will these various these meetings be in person or digital? Largely digital, because, you know, we're trying to we've been consistently trying to spread the word that our coronavirus is serious, that it is not on the decline. We don't care. Don't let these governors kill you. You're right here in Georgia where we're based.

We're seeing some of the highest number of cases since it started. Florida has just seen like five straight days of more than a thousand cases per day. And so we're trying to really continue the message of getting folks to see, you know, we need to continue to stay at home as much as possible. So we're talking mainly about a virtual strategy. We're talking about virtual events, virtual town halls. We're talking about webinars. We're talking about virtual training sessions that we're going to be doing with folks to teach some organizing skills. So a lot of it's going to be virtual information, partners talking, sharing policy, right, so that we can do some teach-ins on what some of these policies look like, like defunding the police. And so it's mainly virtual conversations mixed in with a little bit of love

and a little bit of black joy and a little bit of black culture. But we believe that especially in these times that we've got to center black love, black joy, and black culture. Cliff Albright, man, we appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Where can folks get more information?

Thank you. Where can they get more information? Tell us where to go. What's your site? Oh, I'm sorry. They can check us out at Black Voters MTR. That's on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. That's Black Voters MTR. Like us, share it, check us out. You'll find graphics, including some graphics that explain what defund the police is about.

And you can find ways to get connected with us. You can text We Matter, one word, We Matter, one word to 797979. All right, Cliff. All right. I appreciate the man. Thanks a lot. One word. We matter. One word. The seven nine seven nine seven nine. All right. Cliff. All right. I appreciate the man. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right. Y'all know what time it is. No charcoal grills are allowed. I'm white. I got you. Illegally selling water without a permit. On my property. Hey!

I'm uncomfortable. Selling water without a permit? On my property. Whoa! Give us your address. You don't live here. I'm uncomfortable. Oh, my Lord. I've got some good ones, y'all. Let's start in Phoenix. Are you the manager? Yes. You need to leave.

You need to leave. We're not starting you. Hold on, guys. Okay. We do not start you. Excuse me, but you did say that she needs to go back to her country. What kind of, what is that? Excuse me, this is what this whole world... You don't tell...

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Continue surveying, continue surveying. You need to leave. You're not a part of this. You need to leave. You're not a part of this. You need to leave. You're not a part of this. No. No, you do not come in here and use the F word and swear and call me a B-I-T-C-H. I've never even said that.

I said she is and you're not a part of this. I've never even said that word. So you get out of here. No. No, I said she is and that's why she's leaving. So you will leave too. No, no, no, no, no. This is going all over the internet.

You don't know who I am. You told her to go back to her country where she's from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were you born, bitch? I was born in America, bitch. Where are your ancestors from? They're not from this country. Bitch, you better go back to where you're from.

You just, no, you just walked into her. Excuse me? Oh, my God. Bitch, you just touched me to where you're from. You just walked into her. Excuse me? You just walked in, bitch. You just touched me. Oh, my God. Yeah, you deserved it, in my opinion. You pushed her, and she smacked you. That was self-defense on her part.

No, she grabbed me. No. Ha, ha! Come on, bail out. Ha, ha! Oh, my God. Yeah, she smacked your ass. I keep trying to tell these white folks, y'all keep rolling up on folk.

Y'all are going to get jacked. Keep trying to tell y'all that. All right, y'all, roll the next one. Officer, yeah, this is him right here. DNX. Chris, Chris, no, I is him right here. DNX. Chris Taylor Tree Service. Yeah, I got him right here, officer. I got him right here, officer.

Chris Taylor Tree Service. Pulled in, driving off. That's him. That's him right there. That's it right there, officer. That's it right there, officer. That's it right there, officer. Taking off his shirt. He's attacking me.

I ain't on your trailer. I ain't on your trailer. He hit me. He antagonized me. He's going to hit me. No, nobody. He just spit on me, officer. Yeah, he just spit on me.

Chris Taylor, tree service. He will be got. I got my lawyer, too. I got my lawyer, too. I got my lawyer, too. He smell drunk, intoxicated. Yep, we gonna sit here for them, buddy. We gonna wait on them, buddy. Chris Taylor, tree service.

He just spit on me. Yeah, we finna call them, buddy. You ain't getting away with this one. You will not get away with this one. I'm nobody's nigger. I'm nobody's nigger. I'm a black man. I ain't calling you a honky.

He heard it. He heard it. He couldn't hear it. I never say a honky. That's all right. I'm not even racist. Niggers don't ever admit to nothing. I'm not a racist.

I'm not a racist. Yeah, Chris Ervin. He just told me. No, no. No, you just spit on me. Yep. Bring him on in you just spit on me. Yep. Bring them on in. Bring them on in.

No, yeah. Bring them on in. Bring them on in. Bring them on in, baby. You will be in today. You will go in today. You will, yep. You will be in today.

No, you just headbutted me. You just headbutted me. Yeah, you just have to say about it. Yeah, you just said about it. We got it on camera buddy. Y'all ain't going nowhere like this today. Just here but he took his shirt off. Yeah, buddy. You're going in today, buddy. You're going in today, buddy.

You're going in today, buddy. You're going in today, buddy. You're going in today, buddy You're going in today, buddy You're going in today, buddy You're going in today, buddy Haha, oh that's a good one last one I don't care about my tires going flat The last one last one for my panel. Y'all go to my iPad, please go to my iPad, please Charlotte Hornets, Charlotte Knights ending partnerships with CPI security.

Y'all gonna love this one. So this white guy who owns a security firm, he decides to say some inappropriate stuff that was then revealed. His name is Ken Gill. Brittany, the Charlotte Hornets dropped him handling security for their team. The Charlotte Knights baseball team dropped him from handling security for their baseball team.

The Carolina Panthers dropped him from handling security for their football games. And the University of South Carolina Gamecocks have dropped him from handling security. Avis, I keep trying to tell all these white folks, y'all keep acting a fool. Don't get all the contracts snatched. I want black security firms lining up right now to get every single one of these contracts.

You about to lose your job. Remember that? Oh, hold up. I'm sorry. The North Carolina State Wolfpack dropped the company from handling their stuff. They lost the contracts for two

colleges, three professional sports franchises. Boy, I bet he hate releasing that damn email. You know that white man mad. They don't mess with his money. He mad. He mad as hell. I keep telling people,

these white folks keep rolling up on black folks. When that girl smack the hell out of her, it's going to be hashtag team whip that ass visiting folk constantly if they keep rolling up accosting black folks and questioning whether they should be there. So it's two things that literally earlier I was talking about money and violence. The sister that had to slap the one young lady, that was the violence in return. And the one dude that lost all his contracts, that's the money.

And that's instant karma and immediate accountability. I mean, you get slapped, and you get slapped with losing a bunch of money. I mean, that's a sign maybe you're not really on the right path. Well, no, no. Well, no, here's what's going on. What's going on is they have been able to show their racism for years. The problem is we're living in time now where folks like yo we ain't playing that we're not playing it and so that's what you're dealing with so when

that woman roll up on her telling her what country you born in my girl was like i'm trying to be calm i'm gonna whoop your ass in a second but when she rolled up on her and she grabbed her arm. Then again, the law says she physically assaulted you. You can you can defend yourself. And when she smacked her ass, homegirl backed up. But can we give a shout out? Can we please give a shout out to the brother that held his composure for being spit on? Oh, yes. Over that fact, the brother held his composure.

He was called a nigga a few times. Right. But he but he but he focused on videotaping. He focused. He did everything right. He shot the side door. Chris Taylor, tree service, shot the license plate. The only thing he didn't do and black people, I just want I keep telling y'all, let me give y'all direction.

I need y'all to hold the phone horizontal. So that way, that way, that way the video feels the whole screen and it's not, it's not vertical. So listen, when white folks act crazy, I need y'all to hold the camera like this. See, listen, take the two middle fingers, put them in the back of the phone, put the index finger on top, the pinky finger on bottom, and I want you to simply just place it right there. Anthony, come on. Come on. Place it right there. That way

it's in your hand, and then you can just do all of this here. That way, I need to see the whole screen feel for crazy-ass white people, and that's our segment right there. So, please do that. Pal, I appreciate it. Maz, Avis, Brittany, thank you so very much for joining us. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, folks. I'm going to take a real quick break. When we're coming back, we got to, like, bring it down. We got a yoga expert who's going to give you some tips on how to namaste. You're watching Roller Mark Unfiltered. You want to support Roller Mark Unfiltered? Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club.

Every dollar that you give to us supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered, support the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year. You can make this possible. RolandMartinUnfiltered.com our goal is to get 20 000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year you can make this possible rolandmartinunfiltered.com all right y'all derrick dj towns is a former nfl player turned personal trainer and international yoga instructor uh what's up y'all don't have him yet well guys i i don't know what's gonna happen yet i mean um okay all right well

guess what y'all we don't have the guest so we'll do him tomorrow so uh that's how we do that sorry um so we're trying to get him on but we've not been able to reach him and so we'll push the segment uh until tomorrow uh let me do this here i think i have my bring the fan club um members let me see if i can pull that email up to give y'all a shout out uh for contributing uh to the show So let's get going. Let's see here. Oh, my goodness. Lots of folks.

Athea Thomas, Andrea Cole, Andrew Daniels, Angela Aubrey. We have Anthony Smith, Ariella Brimley, Arkina Daly, Audrey Shields, Austin Brown, Avon, Brian Lucas, Carletta Straken, Carol, Celeste Bowman, Charles Woods, Charmaine LaChapelle, Lemmy, Colette Mosley, Crystal Shannon, We have... So, Gemalina Jackson, James Kelly, Jason Luter, Jennifer Graves, Joan Malazuski, John Young Jr., Johnny Johnson, Johnny Whitting, Joseph Williams, Juanita James, Katie Lindsey, Kenneth Shaw, Carrie Ann Dawkins, Crystal Crockett, Kristen Williams, Crystal Williams, LaVon, LaVar Graham, Lisa Young, Marilyn Josie, Marsha Jackson, Mavis Knight, Michael Smith, Mitchell Brown, Ned Sidnor, Nicole Shepard, Onika, Oslo Inc., Patricia, Patricia Cook, Patricia Rogers, Paulette Griffin, PMI, Reginald Harris, Rhonda Simone, Robbie Thomas, Ronald Wilburn, Shandrika LaFrance, Stephanie Avent, Stephanie Cooper, Sulemane, Thomas McCroskey, Torion Watson, Tasha Hardrow, Tracy, Travis Everett, Ursula Hamilton, Vanessa Howard, Zandra Bonds, and Yolanda Bowman. Folks, if you want to join our Bring the Funk fan club,

our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans to contribute at least 50 bucks each for the course of the year. $4.19 a month, $0.13 today. All you got to do, pull it up, please. Cash App. Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal's paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered. And, of course, venmo.com forward slash rm unfiltered you can also send a

cashier's check money order right to new vision media inc 1625 k street northwest suite 400 washington dc 20006 those of you who are on youtube more than 4 000 right now you can give right there on youtube and so it's real easy i'll just do it right there again every dollar you give goes to support this show to make it possible for us to bring you the kind of content you're not going to find anywhere else. All right, folks, looking forward to a great show tomorrow. We got lots more stuff for you.

We couldn't get everything in today, but trust me, it's going to be great. Also, we're going to be live streaming the funeral of George Floyd tomorrow from Fountain of Praise Church there in Houston, Texas. And let me just pull it up here. A lot of news media is doing their shows from there. I saw the folks at CBS, they were there as well.

And I think they are still in, no, they're not. So the viewing has ended, I think it ended at 6 p.m. Central, which is 7 p.m. And so, of course, the funeral of George Floyd tomorrow morning will be streaming right here, Rolling Mark Unfiltered. All right, folks, y'all take care. And so the worst. So, of course, the funeral of George Floyd tomorrow morning will be streaming right here. Rolling Mark unfiltered. All right, folks, y'all take care. I got to go support people's campaign. All right. How? Thank you. Martin! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated,

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