#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Haitian migrants rattled by Trump's lie flee. VP Harris in Pa., White House Black Excellence Brunch

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

9.13.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Haitian migrants rattled by Trump's lie flee. VP Harris in Pa., White House Black Excellence Brunch Haitian families in Ohio fear for their lives after false racist claims spread.  We'll talk to a reporter from the Haitian Times about school closings and how the thousands of Haitians who settled in Springfield in the past four years are dealing with being the target of lies. And singer John Legend had something to say about the MAGA lies about his hometown.  Vice President Kamala Harris continues her post-debate campaign by stopping in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.  She's set to speak in about 30 minutes. We'll take you there live to her "New Way Forward" tour of swing states. The Justice Department's investigation into facilities run by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department found conditions violate the Constitution and cause children serious harm. The White House hosted the first Black Excellence Brunch. We'll share what President Biden has to say. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Today is Friday, September 13th, 2024. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Haitian families in Springfield, Ohio, fear for their lives after racist claims, false racist claims spread against them, touted by Republican candidate Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

We'll talk to a reporter of the Haitian Times about this unsettling issue there in Springfield. Also, folks, Vice President Kamala Harris continues her post-debate campaign by stopping in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. She's set to speak in about 30 minutes. We'll carry her speech live right here on the Black Star Network.

Justice Department investigation into facilities run by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department found conditions violate the US Constitution. We cause children serious harm. The White House today hosted his first black excellent brunch. I was there and will certainly share

with President Biden had to say. Also folks, we'll talk about again, the presidential race, what is unfolding, and the continuing focus on black men. And it's time to bring the funk on Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it.

Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling, yeah It's on go-go-royale

Yeah, yeah It's rolling, Martin, yeah, it's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah, it's Rollin' Martin. Yeah, yeah, rollin' with Rollin' now. Yeah, he's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Rollin' Martin now. Folks, since the lie first surfaced about Haitian immigrants killing pets in Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian families have kept their children home from school for their safety. The lie is putting hardworking innocent people in harm's way. In Springfield officials there have

made it very clear that these accusations are vicious lies. In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.

Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents' homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic. Thank you. Now today, two schools had to be evacuated as a result of threats made there as well. Folks, this is shameful.

What is going on there? Haitian Americans across the country have been up in arms. There was a big news conference yesterday in New York City. Today when we were at the White House, Korean Jean Pierre, of course who is Haitian American,

talked about her proud heritage. And also we're going to show for you what President Biden had to say about the attacks on Haitians as well. Joining me right now is McCovey Neal. She is the special progress editor at the Haitian Times. All right, Mr. Neal, glad to have you here. So this is the thing that is unbelievable. We are watching in real time Republican candidates, Senator J.D. Vance, oh, I'm getting phone calls from my constituents, as if these Haitian immigrants are not his constituents. The first lie is they're here illegally.

Donald Trump literally has been repeating that at rallies. They're not in Springfield, Ohio, illegal, illegally. No. And that's the thing. It's funny that these claims came up just a few days before the first presidential debate and so close to the election rolling. And it wasn't really surprising for us

at the Haitian Times to really see it reach this level because this type of rhetoric, we're used to it, right? We've felt it and dealt with it before in different places across this country. And I think for folks who don't know, I have to just do a quick primer on Haitians and Asian Americans. We're about 1.5 million people in the U.S., okay? And we've been in the U.S. settling here for the past 50, 60 years. In the past few years, after the assassination of Jovenel Muiz, the exodus of Haitians from Latin America, we've had people land here under a temporary protected status, okay, through the family reunification program,

and now the Biden humanitarian parole program to come here legally. So, you know, that's the first lie, as you said. And a lot of towns like Springfield, they've wanted and needed a lot of our recent immigrants, not just Haitians, but people from all over the place. And so when you see cities like Springfield getting a boost from all this migrant labor and people are starting to see the effects of it, others are going to be mad. And so when you have MAGA, you have people online spewing whatever they can spew, it's natural for them to take that and try to continue to use it to distract us, right, from the election and to divide us. Unfortunately, it has real consequences, like the bum scares, the schools shutting down, and people literally feeling like they can't go

to Walmart without having to deal with some sort of attack, right? And so that's where we are. Unfortunately, this is not unique to Springfield, Ohio. It might be getting coverage more than anywhere else, but this is not a unique situation. This type of thing has been happening all over the country in towns that are seeing more immigrants, more Black immigrants come And without the proper resources to to help them settle in here. Listen, I wrote an entire book called White Fear, how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds.

And that's exactly what's happening right now. White folks in Ohio, they're losing their minds. And so what you have is you have these white people who, in their mind, oh, you hear it. We've got housing issues. They're taking our jobs. They're taking our housing. First of all, Springfield, Ohio, you were dying. Yes.

You were literally dying. Your tax base was dying. Jobs were lost. You had a housing crisis because you didn't have folks living there. And so Haitian immigrants looking for opportunity, all of a sudden they come there. You have business owners who are saying, thank God folks arrived. And so now Sutton and they're paying taxes. They're paying sales tax. They're buying goods and services. They're doing all of those different

things. That is the reality. Yeah. And so it's really funny because we're actually headed to Ohio to have what we call community conversations with our communities because there are so many Haitian, new, nascent Haitian communities popping up all over these heartland towns like Springfield, right? People are bypassing New York, Miami, Boston, our traditional enclaves, and going straight to places like Indiana, Springfield, and rural areas outside of Detroit and Michigan. And part of that, we got to say this here, one second, part of that is because of the policies of President Biden, Vice President Harris, how manufacturing has been rebounding. And so those places, they're like, we're looking for workers.

We're looking for people who can do the job. And so this is so whether they're Haitian immigrants, whether they are Venezuelans, whether they are Mexican, whether they're from other countries, they're going where the opportunities are. And also cost of living is lower and the ability to be able to get a job and work. That's what's going on. That's exactly what's going on. I mean, to your point about Springfield dying. I mean, we've seen the numbers. I've looked at the charts from BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Every metric you could think of is just on the upswing from four years ago, and even more so compared to 10 years ago, as far as employment,

how different industries are faring in there. So it's just really interesting that a lot of this rhetoric, right, the fake claims, the racist claims that we won't repeat, they have been swirling around online for a long time, right? And so I think this is where we have to recognize and do more work within our community when it comes to the impact of digital media, of virtual spaces where we're spreading these lies, right? These have been swirling around for a very long time, the bullying, the cyber bullying, the harassment, all of it, Right. And because so many people picked it up, it ended up in J.D. Vince's mouth and then up on the debate stage. Right. And unfortunately for some of us, we took that and amplified it further. So we have to be mindful

about the fact that this is a strategy the right wing Republicans have said, you know, has been useful for them with things like DEI and critical race theory. Right. And other progressive type of efforts where it starts out being attacked or some crazy rumor shows up somewhere on 4chan and it gets enough play and steamrolls online that it ends up on true social and whatnot. And so I think we need to do a better job with our own communities about how to respond when we do hear and see things like this, right? So we can stop letting these things just spread like wildfire and spreading the rumors, even if it's to express outrage and all of that, right? It would really be helpful to see our communities, our leaders, pay more attention and advocate for something specific, right, in terms of action to help states, cities, municipalities, different local governments actually respond to the influx that they're getting. We know these people are coming. The manufacturing sectors, all of these employees said they wanted these people to come. So it

shouldn't be a surprise to cities or be left up only to the cities to deal with these influxes. There should be a more comprehensive way to respond to immigration so that it's not just an issue of, okay, we're at the border, who comes in or out, who gets to come in, who has to stay. But once that person comes in, what is that experience going to look like for their neighbor, the teachers at the school, and vice versa, right? If we don't do that work to help people settle in and integrate, we're always going to have these issues. Well, look, certainly let us know when those community conversations will be taking place. We appreciate you joining us.

Thank you so much. All right, folks, this is what that idiot Donald Trump had to say today. And if you want to see stupid, listen to this. No, I will. Maybe Springfield, maybe Aurora, maybe both. We'll go there. I can say this. We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We're going to get these people out. We're bringing them back to Venezuela. You know, he told Biden he's not accepting anybody back. They moved all their criminals, not all of them, but the rest are moving in now.

First of all, how are you going to move Haitian immigrants to Venezuela? Again, that's just how stupid these folks are. Singer John Legend weighed in on this. He's a native of Springfield, Ohio, and dropped this video on yesterday. Hello, everyone. My name is John Legend, and I was born as John R. Stevens from a place called Springfield, Ohio. Oh, Springfield, Ohio. You may have heard of Springfield, Ohio this week. In fact, if you watch the debate, we were discussed by our presidential candidates, including a very special, interesting man named Donald J. Trump.

Now, Springfield has had a large influx of Haitian immigrants have come to our city. Now, our city had been shrinking for decades. We didn't have enough jobs. We didn't have enough opportunity. So people left and went somewhere else. So when I was there, we had upwards of 75,000 people. And in the last five years, we were down to like 60,000 people. But of late, during the Biden administration, there have been more jobs that opened up, more manufacturing jobs, more plants, factories that needed employees and were ready to hire people. So we had a lot of job opportunities

and we didn't have enough people in our town of 60,000 people to fill those jobs. And during the same time, there had been upheaval and turmoil in Haiti and the federal government granted visas and immigration status to a certain number of Haitian immigrants so they could come to our country legally. And our demand in Springfield for additional labor met up with the supply of additional Haitian immigrants. And here we are. We had about 15,000 or so immigrants move to my town of 60,000. Now, you might say, wow, that's a lot of people for a town that only had 60,000 before. That's a 25% increase. That is correct. So you might imagine there are some challenges with, you know, integrating a new population, new language, new culture, new dietary preferences, all kinds of reasons why there might be growing pains, making sure there are enough services to accommodate the new larger population

that might need bilingual service providers, et cetera, et cetera. So there are plenty of reasons why this might be a challenge for my hometown. But the bottom line is these people came to Springfield because there were jobs for them and they were willing to work. German ancestors, your Irish ancestors, your Italian ancestors, your Jewish ancestors, your Jamaican ancestors, your Polish ancestors, all these ancestors who have moved to this country, maybe not speaking the language that everyone else spoke, maybe not eating the same foods, maybe having to adjust, maybe having to integrate, but all coming because they saw opportunity for themselves and their families in the American dream. And they came here to do that. Some facts about immigrants. They usually do very well here. They are hardworking. They're ambitious. They commit less crime than native born Americans. And they will assimilate and integrate in time. But it takes time. So I think all of us need to have the same kind of grace

that we would want our ancestors to have when they moved here with our Haitian brothers and sisters who moved here too. And nobody's eating cats. Nobody's eating dogs. We all just want to live and flourish and raise our families in a healthy and safe environment. How about we love one another? I grew up in the Christian tradition. We said to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and treat strangers as though they might be Christ. So how about we adopt that ethos when we talk about immigrants moving to our

communities and don't spread hateful, xenophobic, racist lies about them. John R. Stevens from Springfield, signing off. Alright folks, my panel, Michael Imhotep,

he's the host of the African History Network show. Joining us from Detroit, Caleb Bethea, communications strategist. Out of D.C., Matt Manning, civil rights attorney out of Corpus Christi, Texas. Folks, go to my iPad. This is a story that was in Reuters that shows you the population of Springfield

and how it had fallen sharply since the 1970s. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st

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It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. You see, in 1960, 1970, the population of Springfield, Ohio exceeded 80,000. Dropped 1980, further in 1990, further in 2000, further in 2010, further in 2020. In 2020, it dropped below 60,000 people. Now, based upon this chart, the last time the population of Springfield, Ohio was below 60,000 people was in the 1930s. Let me say that again. The last time Springfield dropped below 60,000 was in the 1930s. Now, when you look at that chart again, so if you go from 80, 82,000 down to 70, 75, then lower, and then you get just above 60, then you get to 60, then you get below 60.

The impact shows up in several different ways. First, it shows up in sales taxes. Fewer people who are buying things. Secondly, it shows up, you don't have available housing. It impacts everything. You have fewer people in your schools. We can go on and on and on. Now, you have this influx over the last several years, 15,000, 20,000 Haitians. Is that a significant population growth? It is. They're going to be growing pains with that because if your population has been dropping, your population has been dropping for that period, you now have to recalibrate as a city to deal with that influx. And so you're going to actually have that.

I dare say, Michael, the real issue among these white folks, what's scaring them is, uh-oh, 15,000, 20,000 Haitians, what happens if they become voters? They now become a voting bloc. They now can then have political power, which means economic power. And so what you have is you have these white folks trying to hold on to their old white town that's dying. As we keep saying, the average white death rate in America

in about 15 states is higher than the average white birth rate. And so what they're saying is we would rather go down to 50, 40, 30, 20 than to have these black folks come into our city and save our asses. Yeah, Roland, you know, this is a multi-pronged problem here. And I was following this conspiracy, this racist conspiracy, even before the debate, because J.D. Vance was spewing it previously before the debate. The Haitians, in their numerous articles on this—it's a good one from CNN.com—Fear and Frustration in Ohio City as Political Debate Seizes on Growing Haitian Population.

And it talks about how these Haitians who are there legally, OK, because of temporary protective status, those Haitians that are there legally in Springfield, Ohio, how they have rejuvenated the city. And they also talk about how many of the Haitians are highly educated as well. So one of the things—now, this whole thing is not unusual for Donald Trump, because in January 2018, remember, Donald Trump called immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries S-hole countries, OK? And he said, why can't we have more immigrants from places like Norway, meaning European

countries? So this coming from Donald Trump spewing this is not surprising. He's done this before. America owes a debt to Haiti. One of the reasons why you have the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the territory of the U.S., is because of the Haitian Revolution. And these Africans beaten the hell out of Napoleon and France almost going bankrupt, so they sold the land that they had here, the Louisiana territory, to the U.S.

And this is how you get—this is how you double the territory of the United States. So this is another racist lie. This is in the vein of Donald Trump and MAGA. This is another example why these people have to be defeated, period. Hopefully nobody ends up physically harmed because of these lies. What we're seeing here, Kelly, again, are folks who don't want to confront the reality of dying, largely white, Midwestern America. And again, what these white folks are yelling and screaming, because, no, we're not racist. We're losing our culture. I remember the Wall Street Journal had an article in the last election,

and these white folks in Iowa, same way, because of Latino immigrants coming in. And we're losing our culture. When white folks start saying we're losing our culture, they're saying we're losing our white culture. That's what they're actually saying. And so they want to maintain these nearly all-white enclaves. That's what they're actually saying. And so they want to maintain these nearly all white enclaves. That's what it boils down to, pure and simple. And they despise the multiculturalism that exists in large cities because they have been living in 75, 80, 85, 90 percent white enclaves. And To your point about this white culture,

what exactly is that culture? You know, you have to ask yourself that question. Is it the culture of exclusivity? Is it the culture of being siloed? Is it the culture of, you know, being okay with othering other people, if that is considered a culture, then that needs to be eradicated anyway, because frankly, this country cannot survive on that culture. We cannot survive on exclusivity. We cannot survive off of not learning from our neighbor, off of not learning from other cultures, from other people, from other perspectives. So it is inevitable that this culture you speak of, if we're going to assign it to whiteness, that is going to be eradicated anyway.

It has to be replaced with something more inclusive if we are to survive. So to your point, it is, again, ridiculous that these white people think that change is not going to happen and that by being racist, you are going to prevent said change and preserve a way of life that, frankly, isn't working for you in the first place. It is actually counterproductive to your survival, but you want to hold onto it because frankly, it is all you know. So Matt, they have not been able to keep up with the changes in population there due to the census. And so as of the 2020 census, Springfield had a population of 58,598 people, and they were seeing that growth go down. So that's what we're seeing. But what we're talking about here, again, these are white folks.

By the way, Springfield, Ohio, they had 58,598, 70 and almost 73 percent white. So that's the real deal. They're looking at going, oh, my goodness, you bring in 15, 20,000 Haitians. We go from a 73 percent white town to maybe down to 50. And that's what's scaring the hell out of them. I think that's a very astute analysis. I can't even lie. I didn't consider that angle until you mentioned it. And I think you're exactly right. I saw it as just out and out playing racism, which is ironic in a country that sits on stolen land,

because many of those same people will regale you with stories of how their great, great grandparents came from Sicily and through Ellis Island and how they're immigrants who made themselves. Right. But when it comes time for somebody else to have that opportunity, they're not afforded that opportunity because they don't look the way that they think is appropriate. They are, quote, not like us. And that's the issue here. It's just straight up racism. I mean, I went to law school in Toledo, Ohio, and Toledo is a perfect example of a Midwest town that was built around a factory that no longer exists and is fledgling. And cities like Springfield already have these issues. So to act as though there's not a benefit to a boom to the

tax base and to the labor base with people coming in, it's just economically dishonest. And on top of that, I mean, we do have to concede that there are surely going to be, as you said earlier, growing pains as it relates to the school system and social services systems that are just not necessarily built in the short term to provide benefits and other things immediately with an influx of people. However, there's an overall aggregate benefit. So if you look at it from an economic standpoint, you would think this would be a beneficial thing. But none of that matters if your problem is the people who are coming in don't look like you, you don't give them the same level of humanity you might people from Nordic countries. And ultimately, you know, the mongrelization that we see of the Haitian immigrants and black immigrants, the fact that

they're not even put on the same level by people like former President Trump and talking about them coming from certain countries as opposed to people from countries he thinks are permissible. I mean, that's what it comes down to, to me. It's just straight-up racism. And it's sad that it's not only xenophobia from an ideological standpoint, but that people are literally having to shut down schools because there are bomb threats and things coming in from unsubstantiated allegations. We can't we shouldn't live in a country that's like that.

But we know the reality is when white homogeneity is threatened and white comfort is threatened, then you get violence. And that's what you're seeing here. So at the White House today, this is what President Biden had to say when he spoke at the Black Excellence lunch on the South Lawn. I want to say, take a moment to say something like so many Americans like Kareem, as he pointed out, a proud Haitian American community that's under attack in our country right now. Simply wrong. There's no place in America. This has to stop what he's doing. That's a stop. And thank you all for being here this historic day. Today, recognize that this nation would not exist. And this is literal without the blood, sweat and tears, without the determination, dreams and contributions of black Americans. That's a fact. This place wouldn't exist. At the White House briefing,

Karine Jean-Pierre also spoke to this issue. And as I said, she is Haitian American. Listen to this. But do you take this personally when the community is a target of attack as it is at the moment in Springfield? I take it personally when any community, any vulnerable community is attacked. Not just a community that I belong to

and proudly belong to, but any community, any vulnerable community that is attacked, wrongfully so, in a hateful way. One of the things that I'm proud about in being part of this administration is that we condemn that type of stuff. We condemn that type of hateful language. That's what I'm going to continue to do. And I get to do that on behalf of President Biden, who also condemns that type of hateful rhetoric,

as you have heard him today and many times before, when a vulnerable community is attacked. That's not what national leaders should be. Political leaders should not be attacking vulnerable communities. Folks, we're going to break into that. Vice President Kamala Harris is right now speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Let's go live there. Criminalized health care providers to punish women.

Now more than 20 states have a Trump abortion ban. Many with no exceptions. Many with no exceptions for rape and incest, which is immoral to tell a survivor of a violation to their body that they don't have a right to make a decision about what happens to their body next? That's immoral. And let us agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do.

Not the government. And I will tell you it into law. And I'm traveling our country and I'll tell you, across our nation, we are witnessing a full-on assault on other hard-fought, hard-won fundamental freedoms and rights, like the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to join a union, and the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. And generations, let's remember who we are as Americans. Generations before us led the fight for freedom. And to the friends here, I say, the baton is now in our hands.

And so much is on the line in this election. We all know and remember this is not 2016 or 2020. The stakes are even higher than they were then, because two months ago, the United States Supreme Court essentially told the former president that he will effectively be immune no matter what he does if he gets back into the White House. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. Imagine what that might mean. Right.

He who has vowed if re-elected he would be a dictator on day one. He who called for the, quote, termination of the Constitution of the United States. And let us be clear, someone who suggests we should terminate the Constitution of the United States of America. Should never again stand behind the CEO of the President of the United States. Never again. So, Pennsylvania, it all comes down to this. We are here together because we love our country. We love our country. And we who are here understand the awesome responsibility, the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on earth, the privilege and pride of being an

American. USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! And I do believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country and to fight to realize the promise of America. So, Pennsylvania, 53 days until Election Day. And we know ours will be a tight race until the very end.

We are the underdog. We are the underdog. Let's remember that and know that. And we know how they play. We know how they play. We are the underdog, and we have some very hard work ahead of us. But here's the thing. We like hard work.

Hard work is good work. And with your help, we will win. We will win. So Pennsylvania, today I ask you, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it. And when we fight, we win. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Fuck over it. Folks, that was Vice President Kamala Harris just finishing her speech there in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. A jam-packed audience. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Banik-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill, NHL enforcer Riley Cote, Marine Corps vet, MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more.

Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Yesterday, she had two speeches that took place, and I tell you, they drive me crazy when they cut the feed that fast. It's just me. All right. She was in Charlotte and Greensboro on yesterday, really out there hitting the road in a very aggressive way. You're seeing that, again, Pennsylvania, critical state, North Carolina. They're seeing the polling data there as a critical state as well. Go back. I'm going to go back to our panel real quick before I got to go to a break and go to our next guest.

The thing here, what they are seeing, Kelly, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, he said she has an excellent chance of winning North Carolina because of how the data is shifting. Also, that governor's race, Josh Stein, he's up some 12, 14 points against Mark Robinson. And they really believe that Mark Robinson, the crazy, demented black Republican who is so anti-abortion, they think that he is going to play, him being on the ballot will play a huge role in driving people out to also vote for her to beat Donald Trump. Again, with North Carolina being in play is a really big deal.

I did some work down there a couple of years ago during the 2022 election cycle, and I noticed and truly felt exactly how purple that state is. It is not—they should not take for granted the Republican vote, because it really is split down the middle in so many of the micro-jurisdictions being, you know, their voting districts as well. I really, truly think that Vice President Harris has a shot. If we galvanize, organize, get people to the polls, she gets her message out there as clearly and as succinctly as possible with the time allotted before November 5th. I truly think she has a shot. And that helps with the people down ballot in that state as well, as you mentioned, because, again, we are not going to take for

granted or not assume that this is just going to be a red state. North Carolina Dems have fought very hard to make that state purple. And in 2024, God willing, it'll actually be blue. Matt, I don't have anything to add, really. I think Kelly hit the nail on the head. I think the momentum, not only from the debate, but just from what the polls are showing, shows that not only do I think Vice President Harris has a good chance, I think she's going to win. And I think Lichtman predicted that the other day, and he's been correct in what, like 38

or in the last several presidential elections since 1984, I believe. He's been correct every time except for twice using his metrics. And it just looks like the tide has shifted pretty clearly. And, you know, I think the debate, I'm sure you talked about it robustly on the show on Tuesday. I didn't get a chance to watch it. But I think the debate and the response to the debate has been very effective for her campaign because for the same reasons it was ineffective for Mr. Biden before, it's very clearly effective for her now, particularly because of how strongly she

appeared in that debate. So I think forward for them. Just keep building that momentum. And I'm seeing if it's going to be victory for her in November. Michael. Roland, I think she has an extremely good chance of defeating Donald Trump. I think the chance increases every day. The debate was a decisive win for Vice President Kamala Harris. I posted on my Facebook page somebody called the elder abuse hotline because she beat the hell out of that old man. And she beat him so badly that he doesn't want another debate, but he's lying, saying he won the debate.

And everybody saw it. Sixty-seven million people saw her beat the hell out of him. And she prosecuted the hell out of him. She continues to roll out policy. She has the policies at her website. We also know that Penn Wharton said that her policies for the economy will be much better than Donald Trump's. And as we learn more about her policies, we see how they will target the middle class,

help people prosper, and also lift—bring more people into the middle class, whereas Donald Trump's policies, his tariffs are going to cause a recession and cause middle class families to pay close to $4,000 more a year. So this is all hands on deck. But I think I think she's going to win it. I think we're going to win it. All right. Got to go to break. We come back more on Roland Martin unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Lots to talk about as we continue to break down what's happening in politics. Also, Juvenile Detention Center in Texas, violating the Constitution, according to the Department of Justice. We'll talk about that as well. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered back in a moment. He told us who he was. Should abortion be punished? There has to be some form of punishment. Then he showed us.

For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. Now Donald Trump wants to go further with plans to restrict birth control, ban abortion nationwide, even monitor women's pregnancies. We know who Donald Trump is. He'll take control. We'll pay the price. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

IVF is a miracle for us because it allowed us to have our family. After having my daughter, I wanted more children. But my embryo transfer was canceled eight days before the procedure. Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade stopped us from growing the family that we wanted. I don't want politicians telling me how or when I can have a baby. We need a president that will protect our rights, and that's Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. Who has not stopped whining about his problems.

Oh, she had a big crowd. Oh, the crowd. This weird obsession with crowd sizes. It just goes on and on and on. America's ready for a new chapter. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now those people have a warning for America.

Trump is not fit to be president again. Here's his vice president. Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year. His defense secretary. Do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation's secrets ever again? No. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk.

His national security advisor. Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. invest. Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy. We can't let him lead our country again. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. The overturning of Roe almost killed me. I had a blood clot in my uterus that caused my labor to have to be induced because of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I wasn't able to get life-saving treatment sooner. I almost died. And that's because of the decision that Donald Trump made.

I was able to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I'm proud to have done it. The doctors and nurses were afraid that if they treated me in the incorrect way, that they would be prosecuted for that. And that's appalling. Donald Trump says that women should be punished. Do you believe in punishment for abortion? There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah. I believe that women should have reproductive freedom to make the choices about their own bodies. Four more years of Donald

Trump means that women's rights will continue to be taken away one by one by one by one. This has to stop because women are dying. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. Hi, everybody. I'm Kim Coles. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. The overturning of Roe almost killed me. I had a blood clot in my uterus. Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Black-ish, and you're watching...

Roland Martin, unfiltered. What's this next? Folks, a group of black Texas clergy who brought to light allegations of mistreatment at the Dallas Juvenile Department says they want to play a role in the changes after a state report confirmed many of the concerns about what was going on at the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center. The report found that personnel unjustly used a special needs unit, secluding children in cells for up to five days. Frequently confined juvenile residents inside of their cells and the staff falsified records and observation reports. The Dallas Black clergy is now calling for an independent review, more accountability and community input in the search for the new executive director. In addition to that, Department of Justice has also been looking into what's happening

in Texas as well. Joining us now is one of the Dallas Black Clarity's founding members, Reverend Dr. Michael W. Waters. Glad to have you here. Doc, so the thing here is, look, you've got Governor Greg Abbott running around. You've got Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick just extolling how wonderful and great things are in Texas. But you have a fundamental problem there, and they have been unwilling to address these issues.

And that's why the DOJ has also been confronting it. Absolutely. And these concerns are grave concerns. Just two summers ago, there were reports of young people in the Texas facilities who were drinking their own urine because of lack of access to water. When you come to what we are experiencing right now in Dallas County, you have young people who were held for up to five days in a cell. Right now, in our community, you can only keep a dog on a leash for three hours in a 24-hour day. And yet young people were kept in their cell for 24 hours a day for five days. That literally means that we are treating dogs better than children in Dallas County. And it is a shame

before God. And so we, as the Dallas Black clergy, along with allies and colleagues in the fight of justice, are seeking to illuminate this issue and to hold those accountable who have harmed our children. Now, it was three years ago where the Department of Justice, go to my iPad, three years ago, the Department of Justice announced their investigation into conditions at five juvenile facilities in Texas. You're talking about just in Dallas County. So it was five different centers where they were talking about there. And again, that was three years ago. And so on August 1st, they released their report. And this is from the Texas Tribune. Go back to my iPad.

Justice Department finds Texas juvenile detention centers violated youth offenders rights when you go through this particular story here, they found unconstitutional conditions at all five of the Texas juvenile detention facilities. It says where children were exposed to excessive force, sexual abuse, and in the

case of disabled children, discrimination that kept them in custody longer or sent them to adult prisons. It says federal investigators found that the state agency excessively used pepper spray on children, employed dangerous restraint techniques, and kept children isolated for days or weeks on end. The Texas agency failed to implement measures to end sexual abuse. Investigators concluded, describing, quote,

a pervasive atmosphere of sexual abuse, grooming, and lack of staff accountability and training. Have y'all heard from Dallas County officials? Have you heard from the governor, lieutenant governor, about this DOJ report? You know, actually, I was on that call when that report was released earlier last month. And we have not heard from officials in Austin, not from the governor, not from the lieutenant governor. Certainly, there are persons in Dallas County who have heard of the report and are supporting our efforts, certainly, to turn things around in our county. But statewide, it is a true tragedy. As we were on the call, there was a mother who

was weeping over the death of her child while in custody in a Texas unit. And so this is a pervasive issue that actually has been going on for decades. And the only reason we are really gaining momentum now is because we've had courageous children, parents, and their attorneys who have began to highlight this issue in a way that they've never done before, as well as whistleblowers. And I want to commend and honor those men and women inside the facility who have begun to raise the flag of concern, to say that we are not treating children humanely within this system. And again, it's amazing how Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, they got lots to say about the border, lots to say about Vice President Kamala Harris, but quiet as hell on this.

Absolutely. And unfortunately, Texas, you know, wonderful Dr. Martinez out of the University of Texas talks about these three interwoven histories that inform policing within our state. The history of chattel slavery, colonization, obviously, right, as well as genocide against the indigenous people of the state. And those three realities continue to inform the criminal legal system in our state, as well as the prisons in our state. And we are doing significant harm to the next generation of individuals within our community. It's amazing that so many of these young men and women, 92 percent of which within

our community are Black and Latino, who go into this system and they go in, many of them, for nonviolent offenses. But due to the trauma, the terror, the horror that they experience within this system, it impacts them psychologically, and they have far greater issues leaving the center than they did before they went in. A center, a system that is supposed to rehabilitate, in fact, is traumatizing and terrorizing our youth and increasing threats to public safety. All right then, Pastor Waters, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Bless you, thank you. Matt, I wanna start with you. Look, I was born and raised in Texas, and I remember, and it goes to show you when you talk about how much they were in the news, the name Federal Judge William Wayne Justice. So William Wayne Justice literally oversaw the Texas prison system for like almost 30 years.

And it was so pervasive, the fact that I still know the man's name. Not many of us know federal judges outside of, let's say, Supreme Court justices. But it was always in the news that that man's name was locked into my head because he oversaw the Texas prison system. You have, they built new prisons there with no air conditioning. You literally have Republicans in Texas who are so shameful and despicable, they want to go back to the 1920s and 30s and 40s in terms of how you treat inmates. They don't care. These people are ghouls.

They're evil. And for them to say nothing about this, the sexual abuse of children in the facilities, and Abbott and Patrick say nothing, they should be firing folks left and right. They're not. No, and they don't care unless it involves a gun or a church or some political point to be made or, you know, arming teachers or some other asinine policy response to a sad, heinous thing that's happened instead of making good policy decisions. I want to include a few things in my response here that I think will give you context.

I mean, you talk about no air conditioning. I am literally preparing to file a case where a woman died in a Texas, a TDCJ facility, despite being diagnosed with a heat-related diagnosis, despite asking for water for several days, despite all the inmates pleading for her, TDCJ decided not to give her water. She died, and the reason is she died of a health-related complication. This is happening in Texas prisons, and you hit the nail on the head. I mean, you said it better than I could say it. They do not care about inmates. That's the reality. When somebody comes into my office and wants to hire me on a jail case, I tell them, you have to recognize that they are

not going to care about your loved one as a full person. And that's the reality of this. Now, what makes this especially difficult to, you know, listen to and heinous is that you're talking about children, obviously. And it's really interesting you brought up Judge Justice, because right now, Judge Janice Jack, another federal judge here in Texas, has a prolonged case where she has been repeatedly fining and hitting our CPS system here in Texas, the Child Protective Services system, for a number of abuses that have happened to children in the system. And I think, if I remember correctly, she's fined CPS like upwards of several million dollars for repeated offenses when evidence has come before her that CPS is not protecting children. So there is a current case that is a good barometer to show TDCJ or rather TJJD here, the Texas Juvenile Justice Division, what a federal judge will think of when they see that. And I think one of the things that's

actually a bright spot here in this DOJ report is one of the U.S. attorneys that's in there is Jaime Esparza. I've met him before. He's the former D.A. of El Paso for like 30 years. And he was one of the kind of leaders with the prosecution of domestic violence in this state. And he is a hard charger. I mean, just to be frank, he's a prosecutor who's not afraid to bring a case. So it would be interesting to see if him and his his attorneys in the Western District bring some kind of case against the TJJD officials, because not only do you have them not protecting these children and allowing them to be subject to repeated offenses, but you have guards in there who are lying on the records. And that, to me, shows you not only do they know something bad is going on, but they want it to be covered up. In fact, one of the things I read in

the report in advance of the show today is one of the things that's been falsified is the records about how many times they have to go around and check the children who are in the facility. And that's a very common issue in prison litigation, where people are not getting medication or not getting medical treatment because the guards are not doing the rounds that they need to do. So if you have guards who are actively lying on records about how many times they went to see children, that can not only have a measurable effect on medical issues, but can also have a measurable effect on other violence issues, including sexual abuse and other things. So I'm hoping that this transitions from a report to actual litigation. And I'm hoping that, you know, I don't I'm not going to hold out hope that Abbott and Patrick are going to do anything beyond spout political lies. But I'm hoping that some attorneys bring cases to make sure TJJD is held accountable. But the sad thing in this case is the way our state tort claims act works is the maximum anybody could get in these cases is $250,000.

So even that, the game is rigged, because no matter how heinous it is, the state has a law that does not allow people to be compensated beyond a certain point. But the bigger issue is we need to make sure that this is litigated robustly in the courts, because these are children. And the way that we protect children in an incarceration context is much different. It should be much different than the way adults are protected. But adults need to get a basic level of humanity that they are not also getting in our Texas prisons. All right. Hold tight one second, folks. Going to break. We come back. We're going to talk

about this mysterious case of a black man found at the base of a tree in North Carolina. Reverend William Barber is calling for a full-scale investigation. We'll also talk about the end of the first week in the federal trial of three of the former cops who brutally murdered Tyree Nichols. You're watching Rollerball Unfiltered

on the Black Star Network. Don't forget to support the work that we do. Join the Breana Funk fan club, folks. Of course, see your check of money or at Appeal box 57196 washington dc 2003 7-0196 uh you also uh of course paypal r martin unfiltered venmo is rm unfiltered zale rolling at rolling s martin.com rolling at rolling martin unfiltered.com remember we told you a cash app for some reason. We don't know what the hell they're doing. They're literally capping daily, weekly and monthly transactions. And so we normally have, of course, our cash app is is normally a dollar sign RM unfiltered. But we have two others that

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So use one of those three. We are trying to get it sorted. Trust me. After I posted my video complaining about them, they did reach out to me. No surprise. So we'll see what happens next. And so we'll keep you abreast. So use the QR code for each one of those or just go right to it.

And please support the show. Of course, our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average 50 bucks each to raise at least annually a million dollars to continue the work that we do. So please support us any way you can. I'll be right back. He told us who he was. Should abortion be punished? There has to be some form of punishment.

Then he showed us. For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated. And I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. Now Donald Trump wants to go further with plans to restrict birth control, ban abortion nationwide, even monitor women's pregnancies. We know who Donald Trump is.

He'll take control. We'll pay the price. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. IVF is a miracle for us because it allowed us to have our family. After having my daughter, I wanted more children. But my embryo transfer was canceled eight days before the procedure. Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade

stopped us from growing the family that we wanted. I don't want politicians telling me how or when I can have a baby. We need a president that will protect our rights, and that's Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. Here's a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems. Oh, she had a big crowd. Oh, the crowd.

This weird obsession with crowd sizes. A lot of times, the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser

Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote

drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.

They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council.

It just goes on and on and on. America's ready for a new chapter. We are ready for a president, Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now those people have a warning for America. Trump is not fit to be president again. Here's his vice president. Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.

It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year. His defense secretary. Do you think Trump can be trusted with the nation's secrets ever again? No. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk. His national security advisor. Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump. And the nation's highest-ranking military officer. We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator.

And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. Take it from the people who knew him best. Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy. We can't let him lead our country again. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. The overturning of Roe almost killed me. I had a blood clot in my uterus that caused my labor to have to be induced because of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I wasn't able to get life-saving treatment sooner.

I almost died. And that's because of the decision that Donald Trump made. I was able to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I'm proud to have done it. The doctors and nurses were afraid that if they treated me in the incorrect way, that they would be prosecuted for that. And that's appalling. Donald Trump says that women should be punished. Do you believe in punishment for abortion? There has to be some form of

punishment. For the woman? Yeah. I believe that women should have reproductive freedom to make the choices about their own bodies. Four more years of Donald Trump means that women's rights will continue to be taken away one by one by one by one. This has to stop because women are dying. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. And you're tuned in to Roland Martin Unfiltered. Thank you. We'll be right back. Folks, testimony has concluded in the first week of the trial of three former cops who are on trial for the murder of Tyree Nichols. To Darius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith have all pleaded not guilty to charges if they deprived Nichols of his rights through excessive force and failure to intervene and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Nichols was pulled over in January 2023 and led the cops on a brief chase before getting yanked out of his car.

Police video showed officers viciously attacking Nichols when they got him out of the vehicle. Today, the families of Tyree Nichols, Sonya Massey, and Breonna Taylor joined the attorney Ben Crump here at the Congressional Black Caucus addressing the issue of systemic police reform in this country. Crump expressed extreme disappointment for what he said was a lack of substantial changes despite numerous instances of police brutality across the country. Tragically, since George Floyd died, we really thought we were at a turning point, that we were going to get systematic police reform in America that had eluded us for decades. We hadn't had systematic police reform in the United States of America since Lyndon Baines Johnson Great Society legislation in the 1960s. We thought after Rodney King was killed, after Rodney King was brutalized in the 1980s in Los Angeles, we would get systematic police reform.

It did not happen. We thought surely after Michael Brown and Ferguson, hands up, don't shoot, that we would get systematic police reform in America. It didn't happen. We thought certainly after George Floyd was tortured to death on video during a pandemic, and everybody saw it, Congressman Horsford. We thought we were going to get police reform in America. It didn't happen. And then after Tyree Nichols was brutally beaten by five police officers, we thought we would get systematic police reform. It didn't happen.

And I can only fathom, had we got that reform, how many families up here like Sonia Massey and others would have been spared their loved one becoming another hashtag. It is an urgent call, an urgent call. How many more exhibits, America, do we have to give you before we say we have to have some reform on these officers? If we would have had the National Registry, Sonia Massey's family would not have lost her just because she was a black woman having a mental health crisis because that officer who had been at six police departments in four years would not have been on the force and he would not have had the ability with a gun and a badge to shoot Sonia Massey in her face after she said I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. Now, folks, this is another story which is absolutely crazy.

So people were emailing this here. And so Javion McGee is a brother, a trucker out of Chicago who was found at the base of a tree in North Carolina. This video has gone viral. And so we want to play this video for you. Check this out. Hey, y'all. I would have never thought I had to make this kind of post on my TikTok, but my family desperately needs your help. This is my little cousin, JVM McGee.

He's from Chicago, Illinois. He was 21 years old and would have been 22 in a few weeks. He was found hanging from a tree in Henderson, North Carolina yesterday. He drove trucks, so that was his reason for even being out there. The police officers are trying to say that he went to Walmart and purchased a rope and hung himself. We obviously don't believe that, and we are just asking for your help to push his story out there. This isn't covered on any local platforms. No news stations, radio, none of that.

So we're trying to push it out there. We really need your help. The police officers in the coroner's office are giving us a hard time not allowing his mom to identify the body. At one point they told her she can't identify the body due to COVID. And then the next day, today, they told her

the father has to give her permission for that, which he said that he would. She asked if they could send her pictures, at least. They told her yes, and then turned around and told her, oh, I don't think that you want to see your son like that. Come on. Like, this is just very devastating for my family, and we really, really, really, really, really need to push this story out there. So if y'all could please repost this video, keep saying his name, JVON McGee, hashtag justice for JVON,

and we are going to fight for him, and we are standing behind my cousin 100%, and they're not getting away with this. So please, share this video. Thank you. Now, folks, just a few moments ago, Reverend Dr. William Barber sent me this statement here. He is calling for a third investigation into his death. The death of a young person is hard and painful enough. But in this circumstance, we must have truth and transparency. Hanging, whatever the cause, is not a form of death that can be easily dismissed Particularly here in the south where it has been used as a weapon of terror against black families for generations. I join attorneys Daniels and Merritt of course

As they see Trent as they seek transparency truth and justice for JV on McGee and his family We must and we'll find out what has happened the family's represented by Harry Daniels, Lee Merritt and also a North Carolina attorney, Jason Keefe. When you look at what Ben Crump talked about there, I'm going to go back to our panel here and I'm going to start with you, Manny. Matt, what he talked about here, I mean, he's right. You continue to have these cases of police brutality. You have cases like this where the family's like, wait a minute, hold up. Like, is there a real investigation going on? And folks simply want answers. And unfortunately, we continue to have this sort of

blatant disregard for the concerns and the feelings of these black families. And you got to ask yourself the question, do you see this happen with non-black folks? You don't. And I know that you're saying that that is kind of the question that you extrapolate from that, but that's the truth. I feel like a lot of times you don't. You know, it's a difficult thing, especially in cases that are not straight ahead for the police. Oftentimes they don't do a good job

of communicating to families what it is they're actually trying to accomplish. But, you know, frankly, the corollary here is just like in the medical context. There are a lot of black people who have said historically, I know something's wrong. I tell the doctor she doesn't believe me. And I find out later that I was right. There was something wrong. The same is true with a lot of these cases. And sometimes the police, you know, in my experience as a prosecutor, a lot of times they get a very simple myopic view on a case and they will not go beyond that simple myopic

view. And when it relates to black people, particularly something like J.V. Onn-McGee, right, the family says, we know him. He is not the kind who would do this. They don't start with that premise. They start with the easy decision, which is, you know, we believe he went to Walmart and bought a rope. And here's the reality. Sometimes the evidence will bear that out. But oftentimes police dealing with black families, at least in my experience, will start

with the premise that either there wasn't a crime or that what the family is telling them is not correct and won't work from the standpoint of perhaps it's true. And in the instance of a young man like J.B. Onn McGee, that is such a thing that is so stark and so jarring that, you know, you should start with the premise that there is likely criminal activity afoot here and not necessarily a suicide unless you've got compelling evidence to that end. So I've seen that in my own career, that police do this. But I will say, to be fair and balanced, a lot of times people's expectations of how quickly an investigation should happen or how quickly they should get information are

not always realistic. And sometimes that gulf between is what you see reported in the news and what creates a lot of the issues, because, frankly, for law enforcement to be able to do their jobs, they do also have to have the ability to investigate. And sometimes their inability to communicate what they're finding or what they're working on and to do so quickly is what creates the issue. So I think one of the big issues is there has to be better transparency and there has to be a better system of communicating to families. We are, in fact, working hard on this issue. And I think both things can be true. But I have seen that police often do not take Black families' complaints at face value and, you know, investigate those

with the idea that, in fact, there may be something criminal afoot. But I will say, as it relates to J.B. on McGee, I saw that Jason Keith posted that on his Instagram, and they've got a very, very strong, solid team of people who will investigate and get to the bottom of that. So God willing, there will be answers for that family sooner than later. And the reality is this here, Kelly, when we look at this election, you have a man in Donald Trump who has made it perfectly clear.

He will give. He wants immunity for all cops. One hundred percent immunity. He wants to bring back stop and frisk. So for any black person, male or female, especially brothers considering voting for Donald Trump. Let's be real clear. He gets back in the Oval Office. There's a bullseye on your back in every single community because he will let cops do what have their have their way with black people. For sure. And that's terrifying. But something that also you need to consider is if cops have full immunity in the way that Donald Trump has been touting that he will do once he becomes president, what does that say about accountability between the law enforcement departments themselves? What if you have a dirty cop and he kills another cop. You understand what I'm saying? It goes so far

beyond just us, right? There are Black cops who could be susceptible to legislation that will do something like that, right? You can't hide behind a badge. You can't hide behind your job. This isn't something that will just be affecting us civilians. This affects other cops, too. It affects all of us. And the fact that this orange Mussolini man just simply does not comprehend the power that he wields accurately anyway. He just, I just feel like he feels like he's a rich kid who just has a bunch of toys to play with and the toys just happen to be the government. You understand? And the gravamen of this office, like the gravity, the weight, the prestige of this office is just frankly eradicated should this man come in again just

because, you know, he gave you $1,200 that one time that he didn't even do, by the way. Or, you know, you feel like, oh, the economy is so bad and it was so much better under him. Well, he inherited Obama's economy. You know, of course it was better. You know, like, there are so many excuses that I'm hearing about why people are going to vote for him, and all of them can be debunked with straight facts and, frankly, just a modicum of common sense that needs to be utilized ASAP so that, you know, terrorism doesn't happen. Domestic terrorism doesn't happen. Domestic terrorism doesn't happen in this country. And again, Michael, what voters need to understand, especially black voters,

Donald Trump does not give a damn about police accountability. He, remember, his Justice Department, they wanted to pull back on consent decrees. And so folks can sit here and dance around this stuff and play games with it. When he is openly talking about bringing back stop and frisk, that right there is a non-starter. No one should be remotely considered voting for this fool.

Well, any black person considering voting for Donald Trump needs to have their head examined. They are out of their minds and don't understand history, don't understand politics. Donald Trump in April 2024 said he would give police 100 percent immunity from criminal prosecution for doing their job. When he was at the National Association of Black Journalists, and he was—Rachel Scott asked him about Sonia Massey, and the other—they asked him about Sonia Massey. He didn't have a good answer about what would happen to the officer who shot and killed

Sonia Massey, OK? And you—when you look at this, you have attorney—you have Attorney Benjamin Crump there. We know the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 220 to 212. No Republicans voted for the bill. It was Senator Tim Scott who blocked it. But what people have to understand is, a lot of white people in this country think the

police department is working just the way it's supposed to work. And now you have attack ads that Republicans have launched attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for saying the protests during— when the protests were happening after the killing of George Floyd, she said, you know, these were peaceful protests. The majority of the protests were peaceful, even though you did have, you know, some fires here and there to take place. The majority of the protests were peaceful. A different approach has to be taken with this, okay? Because a lot of the—the majority of the people in the House and the Senate that got to vote for a bill that reforms police are white,

and they represent a lot of white people that think things are just fine right now. You got to talk about the white people who have been unjustly shot and killed by police as well. Elevate those stories. Bring those white crying mothers into Senate hearings. Have them testify. Bring those pictures of those white people unjustly killed by white people as well. The way that they're approaching this, if you just make this a black thing, you're going to lose, because most of the people who vote for this are white. They represent constituents who think, a lot of them think everything is just fine the way it is. So we will continue to see what happens there.

Let's go to Michigan, where a former Michigan officer who assaulted a black man in custody was being 366 days behind bars. Matthew Rodriguez pled guilty to using unreasonable force against 19-year-old Jaquan Smith while processing him at the Warren City Jail in the Fingerprint Room in June 2023. Rodriguez also admitted to making false statements about the incident. Court documents state Smith was not physically resisting arrest or attempting to escape. And here we go. Got to go to a break. When we come back, we're going to tell you about the settlement in the lawsuit dealing with the Fearless Fund. And we'll discuss that and more right here on Rollerbutton Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

He told us who he was. Should abortion be punished? There has to be some form of punishment. Then he showed us. For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. Now Donald Trump wants to go further with plans to restrict birth control, ban abortion nationwide, even monitor women's pregnancies.

We know who Donald Trump is. He'll take control. We'll pay the price. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. IVF is a miracle for us because it allowed us to have our family. After having my daughter, I wanted more children, but my embryo transfer was canceled eight days before the procedure. Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade stopped us from growing the family that we wanted. I don't want politicians telling me how or when I can have a baby. We need a president that will protect our rights, and that's Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message. Here's a 78 year old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems. Oh, she had a big crowd. Oh, the crowd. This weird obsession with crowd sizes.

It just goes on and on and on. And on. America's ready for a new chapter. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message. In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House. Now those people have a warning for America. Trump is not fit to be president again. Here's his vice president. Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year. His defense secretary. Do you think Trump can be trusted with

the nation's secrets ever again? No. I mean, it's just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation's security at risk. His national security advisor. Donald Trump will cause a lot of damage. The only thing he cares about is Donald Trump. And the nation's highest-ranking military officer. We don't take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator. Take it from the people who knew him best.

Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy. We can't let him lead our country again. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. The overturning of Roe almost killed me. I had a blood clot in my uterus that caused my labor to have to be induced because of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. I wasn't able to get life-saving treatment sooner. I almost died. And that's because of the decision that Donald Trump made.

I was able to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I'm proud to have done it. The doctors and nurses were afraid that if they treated me in the incorrect way that they would be prosecuted for that and that's appalling. Donald Trump says that women should be punished. Do you believe in punishment for abortion? There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah. I believe that women should have reproductive freedom to make the choices about their own bodies. Four more years of Donald Trump means that women's rights will continue to be taken away one by one by one by one. This has to stop because women are dying.

I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message. I am Tommy Davidson. I play Oscar on Proud Family, louder and prouder. Right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin, unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Well, folks, there's been a settlement in the case of the Fearless Fund, a venture capitalist firm out of Atlanta

that provided grants to black women and other women of color. They were sued by Ed Blum and his group, saying that this fund discriminated against non-black women. The lawsuit, of course, from the American Alliance for Equal Rights claimed that the Fearless Strivers grant contest, which was open only to black females, was discriminatory. Now, according to an online post by Fearless Fund founder Arian Simone, the grant program was at its end when the court case began in 2023. The fund said that it was

motivated to avoid a court ruling to not lead to a Supreme Court decision that could end nationwide minority-based funding. The Fearless Fund said it will continue to focus on helping under-resourced entrepreneurs who have been ill-served by traditional capital markets for far too long. In a statement on the settlement, it announced a new $200 million debt fund to lend to more than 3,000 under-resourced founders. Matt, that particular point there is important because a lot of people don't understand when you're making decisions how you want to proceed. Thurgood Marshall was brilliant with this with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where they were very careful about certain cases because they did not want a precedent to be established. A lot of times the big economic

forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,

and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family.

They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. With the Supreme Court, they wanted the right cases. And so what they said here is that, hey, we know this very far right-wing Supreme Court, if we keep fighting this and it goes all the way to them,

they could totally rule against us and shut down all such programs nationwide. Yeah, you know, I'm waking up in a cold sweat like three times a week, cause I'm going to argue at the Fifth Circuit for the first time next month. And I have a pretty novel issue in one of my cases and that's exactly my fear. I don't wanna make bad law.

I think the facts are on my side in my case, so God willing, that won't be an issue. But that is something a lawyer has to consider. You have to consider, look, if I take this up higher in the Fifth Circuit or the Eleventh Circuit here or the United States Supreme Court comes down with a rule against me, then that disadvantages all other people who may either be claimants or may be defending cases similar to mine. So that is a part of the calculus. I do also think, though, you know, wrongs have to be righted, and that is a necessary risk. It's something I grappled with in my own case, but I think it's meritorious.

I think it's righteous. And my client was, you know, good to go forward and we are going forward. But that is absolutely a practical consideration of appellate law, particularly when you are in courts that have shown historically they are not going to be amenable to a position like this, which is one where you're trying to deal with anything that's marginalized people or discriminatory laws. And what I think is really strange about this is, you know, my first question with this was standing, is how Edward Bloom even has standing to bring all these cases. I know he's done it through anonymous business owners.

But the thing is, the state sometimes does these very things. I was having a conversation earlier this week where I learned that in the state of Texas, the CPS system to incentivize non-white children being adopted, considering they're not adopted at the same levels, they give a subsidy if a child is adopted at a younger age who is not white than they do if it's a white child being adopted, because apparently most of the people who want to adopt want to adopt white children. So to incentivize adopting non-white children, there's a subsidy that you are eligible for earlier. The reason that's important in this context is because this is an example of a reality that requires some kind of remedial action. And here it's, you know, minority business owners who are not having the same access to capital historically. We as a society have to figure out how to reconcile that with things like the Civil Rights Act that are supposed to prevent discrimination in certain contexts. But when you have a reality that, you know, there's such an inequity that there needs

to be somebody remedying that in a situation like this, there needs to be a policy response that we have not found how to, you know, promulgate yet. Because until that happens, you're going to continue to have that disparity. And obviously, some people want that disparity. But if you want to actually give people a leg up, you have to allow organizations like the Fearless Fund to do the great work that they're doing in giving grants to minority female business owners. Erin Simone was at the CBCF this week on yesterday. They had a panel dealing with the whole issue of wealth creation in the country. This is what she said on her panel. Grow this economy by $5 trillion over a five-year period.

If we get rid of discrimination, why? Because it distorts the market and it causes it to underperform. So it's in our economic interest, but to Michael's point earlier, we've got to have an economic and moral conversation. It's time for us to receive the dignity of our government's policies, because that's what has been extended to white Americans. Arianne, and she mentioned something. She talked about changing the rules. How do we do that?

And why is it because of the economic opportunities that people are so afraid of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion? Would that help us economically? And how do we get people to not be so fearful of it and change the rules when it comes to this? Oh, Lord. I feel like we've had three keynotes, so I'm trying to figure out how to sum this up before I get into this. Thank you so much for having me. I want to touch on something right before I answer your question, if you don't mind. When you started the conversation, you were talking about the wealth gap.

Yeah. And Attorney David elaborated on the 8 to the 12. I want to shed light on why we're having a catalytic effect right now when it comes to the wealth gap. It's called the technology industry. It's the world's largest wealth-producing industry, and it is funded by venture capitalists. The venture capital and private equity industry is a $62 trillion industry. And the largest investors are pension funds. Pension funds are made up of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and many more. Many careers that have people of color at the backbone of those industries.

Sounds similar to something before 1865 when I'm about to break this down. have people of color at the backbone of those industries. Sounds similar to something before 1865 when I'm about to break this down. So you have the pension funds right here, and then the money goes up to the P.E.V.E. P.E.V.E. Excuse me, VC industry. That's $52 trillion. That's controlled by 92% white male. And then that money goes all the way up to the white startups that make these tech companies. And very rarely does it make a full circle impact. So I wanted to

explain that because the tech industry is what's making this wealth gap get even larger and larger at a very, very rapid rate. So I wanted to definitely give that clarification. And when you talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, to answer your question, no one should back away from the term of it. No one should back away from anything because diversity is just good business. The U.S. economy is made up of over 50% small businesses. And when you disrupt the access to capital to small businesses, you are in essence disrupting the whole entire U.S. economy from a macro standpoint. So DEI needs to stay and not die, and everybody needs to just stand strong.

Mahalette, I'm going to let you get in, but there's something I just... Kelly, that she said I think is critically important when she talked about pension funds and what I keep saying to black folks is that we're trying to change stuff from the top of venture capital no the money's coming from down here that's public workers and so what needs to happen is the organization and the mobilization of public workers saying uh yeah y'all not gonna take our money and just invest it. We're going to demand stuff on the front end and not wait until you already have received our money

and you keep giving it to white folks. Exactly. And to your point, I believe this is where unions come into play and why they're so important. And when you see these union strikes, when you see people being disenfranchised because they want to be in a union, they want to build a union, and they are being blocked by their employers for whatever reason, this all is connected. It all makes sense. And when we finally understand our collective bargaining power. I think we're really going to make some substantive

changes as far as what we were talking about in that clip. Michael. Roland, I'm glad. Two quick points I want to make. I'm glad you brought up pension funds, because I remember back a few years ago when you hosted the State of Black America, one of the things Reverend Al Sharpton talked about is how money managers will take pension fund dollars, our pension fund dollars, and loan it to business developers. The business developers would then come into our communities and gentrify us out of our own communities with our pension fund dollars. But also, we can also choose different areas and investments that our pension fund dollars are invested into as well. A lot of us don't know that we can do that. Secondly, the person that spoke before, Ariane Simone, she talked about $5 trillion and how closing loopholes and gaps in policies, the U.S. economy can grow by $5 trillion.

That was a study by Citigroup Bank a few years ago. They talked about how the U.S. economy had lost $16 trillion over a 20-year period of time because of racism. And they specifically stated that about $13 trillion in business revenue never flowed into the U.S. economy because African-American entrepreneurs could not access bank loans. They talked about how black workers have lost $113 billion in potential wages over the past two decades because they could not get a college degree. Black people could not get a college degree.

And lastly, they talked about how the housing market lost $218 billion in sales because black applicants could not get home loans. Well, Vice President Kamala Harris, when we look at policy, $50,000 tax cut for new businesses, that's something that we can take advantage of. And then, also, when she talks about 3 million new homes being built in her first four years in office, that also addresses housing and a generation of wealth, having an asset to pass on to future generations as well for African-Americans. So all of this is connected to policy, which is connected to who the hell you vote for.

Once again, if you're black and you're thinking about voting for Donald Trump, you need to have your head examined. You don't even understand that you don't understand. What I also want to do is I want to play for you a couple of more items here from that particular town hall because it was dealing with wealth creation. And I'm going to talk more about this in an expansive way on Monday, but just go ahead and give me one second. Let me go ahead and cue this up. Give me one second. Let me go ahead and cue this up. Give me one second, y'all. I wasn't going to go to this, but what the hell, I'm going to go ahead and play it. Let's see here. When Martin Luther King gave the speech here in Washington in the 1960s, the wealth gap between black people and white people was eight to 1 in the 1960s. Today it

is more than 12 to 1. That's important foundation for us to think about how do we close the wealth gap, how do we think about generational wealth. We are in a moment in this country where we can rethink and reconceptualize how we grow into creating generational wealth for people of color. This is not about how much money are you making at your job. That is wages. We're talking about creating wealth. And that is about creating assets, homes, and other assets that you can pass on to your children, to people that you are descendants. And that's what we have to think about in this conversation of generational wealth. When you say from a moment of, you know, talk about from a place of aspiration, I want us all to think about how we look at our young people and talk to them about financial literacy. Talk to them about what a balance sheet looks like. Talk to them about

what interest rates are. Talk to them about the difference between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve and why they need to care. Because the other families are talking to their kids about interest rates. They're talking to their kids about creating bank accounts. And we need to do the same thing if we want to create and close this generational gap, this wealth gap that unfortunately continues to increase. So I think that's where I would want people to focus on and start thinking about. Because yes, we can pass all the laws and all the regulations that we want. And I want to thank Chairman Horsford for doing so much of this work

with the Black Economic Agenda that they introduced legislation. But a much of this work with the black economic agenda that they introduced legislation. But a lot of the work is on us. A lot of the work is making sure that we talk to our families and our friends about creating generational wealth and how we do that. John, I want to continue the conversation that we were having in the green room, the conference room in the back, and just to fill people in, you know, you mentioned knowing what a spreadsheet and all of that is. Did you say a spreadsheet or a financial? So let's talk about financial literacy. And you said that the vice president mentioned it the other night. Those aren't just words. It needs to be done. You talked about starting savings accounts for young people, especially young black people, and that we need to be financially literate. Can you fill our audience

in and pick up on what we were talking about? Because I think it's really important when it comes to this conversation we're having. Thank you, Don. I agree with you 100%. Mr. Chairman, thanks for having the vision to do this. We're sitting in a moment in history. History does not feel historic when you're sitting in it. It just feels like another day. But that does not mean the moment is not historic. This is the third reconstruction right now. It started in 2020. The first reconstruction was after slavery. The second one was the Civil Rights Movement. The third one was 2020, kicked off with George Floyd's murder.

With regard to us, it'll last to 2030 if we're lucky. This moment's not coming back again. Financial literacy is the civil rights issue of this generation. Period. Black capitalists matter. Period. This is not a new conversation, Don. After the Civil War, by the way, slavery was about money.

Am I talking to myself? Slavery was about money. Free labor. Slaves were worth more than railroads and everything else in this country combined in 1860. The wealthiest city, Don, in America in 1840 was Natchez, Mississippi. In the world, rooted in slavery. 1865, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, after the Civil War, Lincoln called for the Freedmen's Bank to create a bank charter to quote teach freed slaves about money.

The minute he called for that, he was assassinated. The next month, it was 40 acres, a mule, a bank, assassination. A hundred years later, here comes Dr. King. Civil rights, war effort, he calls for wealth, but really redistribution of wealth, murder before his first march in Washington. We're not dumb and we're not stupid. It's what we don't know that we don't know that's killing us, but we think we know. I was last night, Don, I was going to dinner with a guy who runs Raven, Sashi Brown, and I was last night, Don, I was going to dinner with a guy who runs a Raven, Sashi Brown, and I was recommending my hotel restaurant. He said, no, let's go to Bronze, which is on H Street, I believe, in Northeast, the Black-owned restaurant.

So we go to this restaurant. I meet the owner. He's behind the bar. Here's his story. He bought this building in 2020. During the pandemic, all of the property values were down. Yes, he's making an income. He got receipts from that night. Yes, he has some revenue. But none of that matters. That building he's in is worth seven figures.

The credit score Don and Anacostia today is 612. The credit score in, I think it's called Tinleytown, is 775. Fifteen minutes apart. All across this country, you can go across this country, black people are the lowest credit score in America. That means that half of black people who have a credit score below 620, financial literacy, below 620, there's nothing wrong with us, we're brilliant. But we're talking about getting that bag, getting that cash, getting that money,

getting that dollar. You build wealth in your sleep. You make money during the day, that's why it's called making a living. So when you wake up in the morning, half of us are locked out of the free enterprise system because our credit score is 580, 550, 600. What do we see in our neighborhoods that have that credit score, Don? A check casher, next to a payday loan lender, next to a rental own store, next to a title lender, next to a liquor store, next to a pawn shop.

Can I get an amen? And a church down the street trying to make you feel a little bit better once a week, that's your neighborhood therapist. Because we are afraid to go see a psychologist, and if you black and American don't think you're crazy, you're crazy. So the problem is that's a 500-credit-score neighborhood. You want to change America beyond what the chairman can do, what congressmen do? We move credit scores 100 points, which we can do ourselves.

You move credit scores 100 points neighborhood by neighborhood. You, listen to me now, you stabilize this country. You never had a riot in a 700 credit score neighborhood in America's history. 700 credit score neighborhoods go shopping. And I don't care whether you're black or white or red or blue. When you got some more green, you got freedom. This battle has changed. And hopefully later on we get into demographics we talked about backstage. But this financial literacy thing, this is the new battleground. Because when you know better, you do better. Last thing I'll say, where have we succeeded?

For somebody cynical out there saying, I don't know about this. Where have we succeeded? The arts. Professional sports. Faith. Public policy. Rules are published, playing field is level. Can I get an amen? No one's ever taught us capitalism and free enterprise.

And hopefully before this panel is over, you're going to see this nation now literally cannot do without us. It's never been this place and this space and this time in the history of this country, we're no longer asking for charity. We're no longer asking to do the right thing. Literally, economically, the country needs us. But we have got to be prepared with the tools to be able to go in and get that access, to get the number one way you build wealth in America, which is home ownership, small business ownership, entrepreneurship, etc. In Atlanta, Mayor Andre Dickens said, I want a bank account for every kid in kindergarten. People laughed at him. What are you talking about? And Keisha Lance Bottoms. We now have an account for every kid and 7,000 kids in Atlanta public schools and kindergartens. Here's the drop the mic. Check this out. If you

have a bank account in kindergarten, nothing else, no money in it, you're 50% more likely to go to college. If you have $50 in that account in kindergarten, you're 75% more likely to graduate from college because the key is connecting education to aspiration. There's nothing wrong with us. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding

of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working

and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes

one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it.

I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Except we never got the business plan, we never got the memo. And we never got a chance.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Except we never got the business plan, we never got the memo, and we never got a chance. Applause for generational wealth. So I'm going to get more into this on Monday, Michael. But we've had, well, we got lots of wealth creation conversations.

The problem is the conversations are all about panels. It's not actually leading to wealth creation. And I dare say, and again, I can pull up right now, it is a massive list of events, receptions, all sorts of things. I mean a massive list of events that begin Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. It's a ton of stuff tonight, tomorrow night, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, ALC. And I'm not begrudging any of that. But I dare say, if there is a place to start when it comes to driving this,

it's all of those sponsors, and we're going to show them all on Monday. All of the sponsors, all of the corporations that are here at CBCF, that are sponsoring concerts and tables and receptions and awards and panels, and we've got to be asking the question of every single one of them, how much money are you spending

with black law firms and professional services? Black accounting firms? Are you using black caterers? I'm not talking about this week at CBCF. I'm talking about in their companies. Do you have black limousine companies? Black event planners? How much money are you spending with black-owned media?

That's the question. See, I'm not actually interested in more conversation about wealth creation. I want to actually spend time on wealth creation. And to me, if 95% if 95% of all black-owned businesses do less than $5 million in revenue, well then to me, the CBC should say, our target goal when we come back in 2025 is is that we push that up to 8 or 10 percent. But unless you establish those goals, unless you then begin to challenge people to actually do that, then all we're going to keep doing is having more damn conversations.

Oh, I agree, Roland. First of all, I'm glad they had the panel because they are giving out some good information. I'm glad you have my frat brother, John Hope, on as well. But, yes, number one, the sponsors of the CBC. This is a question I have when I look at things like that. And I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who managed an African-American-owned business, who had various contracts, who had contracts with local city government and state government, things of this nature, but also worked alongside, corporations as well, because people talk about business ownership,

but don't realize that if you don't have clients, if you don't have contracts, you really don't have a business. And we're spending billions and billions of dollars a year with these white corporations. And they're largely taking that money and giving the contracts to white-owned businesses. So the white-owned businesses, the catering companies, the advertising agencies, the law firms, largely benefit, and also media, advertising and media. Okay? I have a background in radio. Used to sell ads for the time during the morning show locally. I remember no urban dictate.

You know about that, Roland? No urban dictate when it came to radio and media. Okay? Well, first of all, that don't just apply. That was with Kat Zvi a number of years ago with radio. That question should also be asked about Apple. And I'm

going to be dealing with Apple on their absolutely lack of spending with black-owned media across the board. So, again, I'm going to deal with them later, but go right ahead. Yeah. So all these corporations have to be pushed on this. And a lot of us really don't understand that. We get excited when they buy tables at our events or we see their logos and things like this.

But I look at the back end. My degree is in business administration. I taught entrepreneurship for seven years. I know the money on the back end. And this is one of the things that Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Rainbow Push, was so good about when he had his nationwide economic boycott of Coca-Cola in 1981 because he was able to get tangibles from that. And people really need to go study what he did. Economic investment into black-owned banks, bottling companies, bottling distributorships,

things like that for African-Americans for Coca-Cola. And we're not really approaching this from the perspective of understanding the potential growth that getting a return on our investment in these white-owned corporations can have, because we're spending money with them, just like how they're starving African-American-owned media, okay? That's unconscionable. They should be targeted nationwide. Some of these corporations should be targeted nationwide for economic, for some type of economic withdrawal strategies or something like that, to put pressure on them

because they're not just going to do it willingly. We saw what happened with George Floyd. After the George Floyd protest, we saw corporations donating millions and millions of dollars and then after a period of a year, two years, three years, they start scaling it back, especially with the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So we have to understand how to play this game to win, and we have to keep our foot on the gas. So, Matt, again, the thing that I look at whenever these conversations happen, and I've seen these discussions at the National Urban League Convention, whenever these conversations happen. And I've seen these discussions at the National Urban League Convention, at the NAACP, and I can just keep going on and on and on. And the first thing I do is I go, what's their spend? Not the philanthropic spend.

What is the corporate spend? You're a lawyer. Every single one of these companies use outside law firms. Every single one of them. And they spend millions of dollars a year on professional services fees and very few of those dollars go to black folks.

So if you're a black law firm, and you're a black accounting firm, and whatever, this is how you're able. I told somebody, I was having a conversation with the head of the SBA. I said, listen, this business has been profitable. Now, for people to understand, profitable means that you made at least more than $1 than you spent.

So the problem for some folk, they hear profitable and they think, oh, you make as much money as CNN. No, no, that's the whole problem with some folk. So you can make $1 more than you spent. You're in the black. You're profitable. But the reality is we have been profitable by more than one dollar. But the bottom line is those expenses have to be seriously managed because we don't know what the economic downturn will impact us next year. So I have to actually be very, very careful with what we spend between now and December 31st, because one, got to pay taxes, and then got to be

able to ensure that if there's a shortfall in advertising revenue in the first and the second quarter, you're able to still pay everybody all expenses so you don't lay people off. So I say all of that to get people to understand that if we're talking about how do we build wealth, how do we create economic opportunities, I'm gonna use an example, and this is very basic. I need everybody to listen to what I'm talking about. Because I think when we say create wealth, people start thinking, Tyler Perry wealth.

No, that's a whole separate type of deal. When my TV One show ended, the sister who was doing the makeup, I was in the chair and she says, Roland, I gotta thank you. I said, why? She said, I gotta thank you for hiring me to do the makeup for this show.

The previous person we had to get rid of. So Sharon did the makeup. I think it was the last two, two and a half years of the show. She said, doing the makeup on this show allowed me to buy my first home. Now, so she worked. It was four hours a day. I think it may have come out to 70,000 plus thousand dollars based upon hourly rate. But see, here was the key.

Because she was doing the makeup on my show, a lot of the sisters who were coming through the show liked the job that she did. So when they had other things happening in D.C., including some of the entertainers, they were hiring her. So she was getting other jobs off the basis of doing the makeup on my show. In fact, in fact, she began to get other opportunities. She began to pick up other opportunities. She began to do the makeup, and she would often say,

oh, yeah, this person and that person and that person, and I follow her on social media. I follow her on social media, and I saw her, I saw her, one of her posts. And one of the posts was real interesting because she was talking about where she started and where she's been, and by doing the makeup on our show, connecting with other people, led her to do the makeup for Supreme Court Justice

Katonji Brown Jackson. So, when Katonji Brown Jackson was in Vogue, you're sitting here seeing Sharon's work. And she posted just how

amazing the opportunity was. Now, Vogue did not give her credit. As a matter of fact, they did. See, I need everybody to listen and watch and understand because, see, y'all don't understand how these things are connected. What does that say right there? Drop the lower third. In this story, make up Sharon Richmond. So, if there's no black-owned media show,

Sharon is not getting the opportunity because in the television makeup industry, there are few black women doing women doing makeup on TV shows. Some of y'all don't hear what I just said. So that's wealth creation because by working on this show, Sharon is able to buy her first home. This is what we're talking about. So for me, when I hear these conversations, this is what happens when if you are getting contracts, getting opportunities, you now can hire more people. So when I talk about this show, lighting, set design, control room, green screen, set, all built by black companies. So when we get more advertising, when we can hire black production crews,

more producers, more writers, more staff, those folks have jobs. What's then happening is they are sending their children to school. They are babying to buy homes. That's what we're talking about in this conversation. So we need our black organizations, NAACP, National Urban League, Rainbow Push, National Action Network, Fraternities and Sororities, Prince Hall Mason, Eastern Star, Lynx, Jack and Jill, CBCF, CBC, CBC Institute, using their collective influence and power to say, if we're going

to have wealth creation, we will start with the companies that come to us to sponsor stuff looking for that black stamp of approval because that's how you change it and there's no better place to start than the folk who are sitting right in front of you. I think this is a multi-pronged thing, and I think you're 100 percent right. I think your example of sharing your former makeup person is a brilliant example of how that can cascade and lead into other opportunities. And I think it's important for black entrepreneurs to be not only empowered, but to be well capitalized and to have as much access to capital to flourish. What I'll say, though, sometimes is when we talk about the wealth creation conversation and financial literacy, I think sometimes our focus can be a little off where we are too focused on the capitalistic element of it, because I would dare say that the real barometer for a community and a community's

financial health and a community's financial progress is the people who are primarily going to be investing and making their life off of wages, because that's the reality for most people. That's not to eschew credit rates and interest. I mean, all those things are important. If you don't know how to negotiate a better interest rate or get a better interest rate when you buy a car, then you're subject to paying more for the cost of that car over the time of the contract. We understand that. But the reality is a lot of this has to be rooted in conversations about policy. And we talk about it all the time on the show. And I know you're focused right now on the wealth creation as it relates to black entrepreneurs and black capitalism. And that's important. But at the end of the day, we really need to look at how is your average black person,

what is happening in their life as it relates to policy that affects their ability to get that biggest asset, which is usually what, your house, right? But Matt, I'm not just speaking about black entrepreneurship because here's the piece. The black entrepreneur piece, I hire people. So what I'm talking about leads to hiring. So same thing with you. How many people in your law firm? Well, about 20 some odd, six lawyers and team support staff.

All right, so if you get additional clients, you have the ability to grow., you have the ability to grow. If you have the ability to get professional services, contracts with corporations in the corporate law space, you now have the ability to be able to hire more people, hire more staff, provide scholarships or whatever. And so that's what I mean. So the wealth building conversation is not solely about the entrepreneur.

It's also for that individual. It's for the brother or sister coming out of prison. And so I think what happens sometimes is we think that's only about the person who owns it. That's why I use Sharon as the example. No, this was the example of the person who didn't own it, but who was a beneficiary of being hired to do something and now is able to be able to build something even on her own. Sure. And you're not wrong. We actually agree a hundred percent. So I agree with you. I'm saying what I have seen, what I've experienced

is sometimes when we talk about black wealth building, it's too often in the context of how a person who in an entrepreneurial context can get assets to do exactly that. And I think that's important. I think Sharon is a perfect example of exactly why black entrepreneurs and black businesses are not only important, but need to be capitalized better

and need to get a much larger share of the pot. But in addition to that, what I'm saying is when we talk about black wealth building, we have to start at the common denominator, which is not necessarily entrepreneurs. It's the people who work in a government job for 25, 30 years. Right. And how do those people, how do those people, how do we ensure through policy, through institutional support, through the, you know, the, the organizations that you mentioned and otherwise, how do we make sure that you can live a fruitful and successful life as a black American where you can invest,

you can own your home, you can have financial security, you can have a trade or a business, a small business, if you want, or you can go to college? I mean, there's so many things that dovetail. and I don't mean to imply that this is an easy answer. But the reason I think that conversation is important, because that's the vast majority of our brothers and sisters. It's not people with necessarily the highest earning potential and who have the opportunity to take disposable income and buy a real estate, you know, an investment property. It's more, how do I make sure if I don't necessarily have some of those opportunities that I can send my children to a good school, I can get them educated, I can make sure they've got a little money to go out into the world? And that's the conversation I don't think we have robustly enough when it comes to wealth building, so to speak, because that's the reality for more people. And I think the real question is, how do you make sure that the government support and the government programs, like we're talking about Vice President Harris, support that? Because that's the reality of most of our brothers and sisters,

and that's what we need to look at. And I'll give you this. I'm going to close it out with this here. So, you know, John O'Brien, he praised Deion Sanders for getting with the bank. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will

take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice

to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. And opening accounts for his players who have children,

who have babies. In John's comments, he talked about the likelihood of a kid who has $50 in a bank account in kindergarten the likelihood of them going on to college and actually graduating because now they're learning that I mean I remember when we had little savings and loan accounts and me my brother my sister we all had our little accounts and had twenty thirty dollars in it whatever and so it was again it was it was changing sort of your view terms of

what you were focused on. But the thing that I wanna talk about here is that, again, close with is that, when we're talking about on the granular level, I remember when I was at TV One, we had a, it was Thanksgiving or Christmas, I forgot. So they had potluck, whatever the hell it was. So we're sitting in the conference room eating.

And we were just talking and I brought up the fact that when I was in Chicago a few weeks earlier, we were just taping something at Rainbow Push, and John Rogers just sort of casually, Judge Greg Mathis was asking about mutual funds. He was talking about how his money was in Merrill Lynch. And we all thought that John Rogers and Ariel dealt with institutional investors. We didn't realize they actually had their own individual, their mutual funds were just regular ordinary folk.

And then John goes, oh, yeah, yeah, those. You know, people can start with as little as $50 a month. We all like, any of y'all know that? Everybody was like, we know that. We were like, John, y'all don't want to tell that story. So what happened was, here we are at the staff luncheon, and I mentioned that, and two of the folks at the table literally after lunch went back to their office and opened an aerial capital mutual fund starting at $50 a month. And it was one of those basic small things that got them on the road of putting money

away in the mutual fund and then be able to grow that and go from there. And that's what we're talking about here. That's information. And so what I desire is from our organizations is to use their leverage and influence to be able to drive these corporations to begin to create the downflow of dollars. I don't want them just buying a table. I want them leaving here and having the downflow of dollars

to our corporations, to black companies, which this allows us to hire more people, be able to probably level education, because that's actually how you create wealth. Everybody is not going to own more people, be able to probably level education, because that's actually how you create wealth. Everybody's not going to own a company, but if we are hiring more people, being able to grow, then we can actually impact. So I'm going to have more of this on Monday.

Mike, we appreciate it. Matt, thanks a lot. Kelly had to go. Folks, thank you so very much. Folks, that is it. It's been a fabulous week, a difficult week. Of course, we had the the vice president of the debate taking place on Tuesday. Learn earlier that morning, the death of Frankie Beverly. And that took place.

So we had our special of the next day as well. Next week, we'll have our tribute to James Earl Jones. We appreciate all of y'all and your support. Don't forget, support the work that we do here. Critically important. Your dollars matter. And I'm telling y'all, we're fighting a good fight. Apple and some other companies. I'm going to tell y'all more about that later. Trust me. But you can join our Bring the Funk fan club.

Send your check and money order to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, again, it's dollar sign RM unfiltered, but the backup one is cash app. Uncle Roro Martin also, I'm sorry, dollar sign Uncle Roro Martin. Also dollar sign BLK Star Network, Black Star Network. Dollar sign BLK Star Network. PayPal, RMartin unfiltered. Venmo is RM unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com.

Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Folks, that's it. Tomorrow, Phoenix Awards taking place. Congressional Black Caucus will be there. And then on Sunday, if you're in Virginia, I am going to be actually having my other phones. Look for it on social media. I'm going to be helping folks. They're going to be canvassing in Loudoun County. I'm going to be

helping them kick it off the canvassing on Sunday at 1 p.m., I think. So be doing that as well. And then again, I'll see y'all on Monday right here on the Blackstar Network. Blackstar Network is here. Oh, no punch! A real revolution right now.

Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.

Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that

a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.