#RolandMartinUnfiltered - House passes SAVE Act, MAGA budget blueprint passes, HBCU Talladega College,Black Voters Matter doc

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

4.10.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: House passes SAVE Act, MAGA budget blueprint passes, HBCU Talladega College,Black Voters Matter doc Two crucial votes out of the House today...The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility or SAVE Act is a major voter suppression measure that, if it becomes law, will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters and badly undermine U.S. democracy.  A budget blueprint for the MAGA agenda passed the House after Republican leaders scrambled to convince GOP holdouts who want deeper spending cuts to back it. We'll discuss how this budget could dismantle social security. An Alabama HBCU rebounds from financial struggles.  Talladega College Interim President Dr. Walter Kimbrough will be here to explain how his stable leadership is providing a bright future for one of Alabama's oldest HBCUs.  Black Voters Matter Co-founders will be here to talk about the organization's documentary, "Love, Joy, and Power: Tools for Liberation."  I'll also introduce you to the co-hosts of Black Star Network's new show, "The Other Side of Change." #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com 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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hello, I'm Isaac Hayes III, founder and CEO of Fanbase. And right now we're accepting investors in our $17 million round to revolutionize the future of social media. Today, for just $399, you can own 60 shares of stock in Fanbase at $6.65 a share. Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and invest today. While the big platforms have grown too massive and disconnected from their users, Fanbase is building a platform where creators and users truly come first. We've already raised $8.6 million from everyday investors who believe in this vision, and now you can join them. This is your chance to invest in a social media tech company with over 1 million users We'll be right back. serve their users, and Fanbase is stepping up to fill the gap. Don't wait until it's too late.

Invest now. Invest for yourself and your future. Go to startengine.com slash Fanbase and own the future of social media. Today is Thursday, April 10th, 2025, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. More calls to investigate these crooks in the Trump administration

when it comes to who knew the tariffs were going to be paused and who made off like fat cats. Also, some members of Congress have also done the exact same thing and who made off like fat cats. Also, some members of Congress have also done the exact same thing. Insider trading, is that what's going on? Also, Donald Trump caught, recorded, talking about how his rich donors,

oh, how much they made, said how one person made $2.5 billion. $2.5 billion. When the news changed, another one made $900 million. And I told all these idiots, the working class, that he didn't give a damn about y'all. Speaking of the tariffs, a lot of people got opinions on tariffs. Don't know what the hell they talking about. Did Risi have a couple of words

for Stephen A Smith? Also crucial vote to safeguard American voter eligibility on the Save Act passed by Republicans in the House. Massive voter suppression bill will tell you all about it. Also a budget blueprint for MAGA narrowly passes because two Democrats

died in the last couple of months, making it easy for Republicans to pass that particular bill. And HBCU in Alabama is on the rebound. Will talk to the interim president, my friend brother, Dr. Walter Kimbrough. How he is bringing back Talladega College from financial disaster.

Also, the Black Voters Matter cofunnels will be joined by to Walter Kimbrough how he is bringing back Talladega College from financial disaster. Also, the Black Voters Matter co-founders will be joining us, talking about a crowdfund they're doing for a documentary that they have been working on for the past five years called Love, Joy, and Power, Tools for Liberation. Plus, we'll introduce you to the two co-hosts of our new Black Star Network show, The Other Side of Change, to talk about how they want to speak to millennials in Gen Z

about making deposits in what I call that black bank of justice. It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland McDonnell Filch on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got 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 rollin' Best belief he's knowin' Puttin' it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rollin' Yeah, yeah It's on go-go-go-yo

Yeah, yeah It's rollin' Martin Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's rollin' Martin Now You know he's rolling Martel now Martel

Two big votes in the U.S. House today. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE Act, is a major voter suppression measure that, if it becomes law, will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters and badly undermine U.S. democracy. A lot of women are not happy at all about that particular bill as well. Plus, Republicans, they are able to battle their own members when it comes to this other particular bill that deals with the budget. Democrats like Stacey Plaskett, they say some $7 billion is going to be added to the deficit as a result of this bill.

They are challenging Republicans as well on how much this bill is going to impact regular, ordinary Americans. Now, let's just be real clear. Let's deal with the SAVE Act first. how much this bill is going to impact regular ordinary Americans. Now, let's just be real clear. Let's deal with the SAVE Act first. Married women are really upset about this particular bill because of the impact on them. Republicans keep claiming with no proof whatsoever, voter fraud, voter fraud. You got an idiot in the White House who believes in voter fraud as well,

that he got cheated out of the election, but the other Republicans who were on the same ballot, somehow that worked, but these fools, it didn't. So this bill is going to change how we register to vote. So the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act require documentary proof of citizenship before you can register or update your video voter info. Now, on surface surface that may sound real, but let's talk about what that really means, especially for black folks, women, young folks, rural communities, and anyone who's ever had to jump through hoops just to get basic paperwork. If this bill becomes law, you will need to show a passport, which will cost you money, a birth certificate, or something like a real ID, just to register to vote in person.

That means no more online sign-ups, no more registration drives at churches or barbershops, no more signing up by mail. It also means if you get married and change your name, women, you could be blocked from voting unless you track down your marriage license. And that ain't easy. Check this out.

Non-citizens already can't legally vote in federal elections. It's a crime. But big penalties like prison time and deportation. But according to Republicans like Chip Roy of Texas, who introduced the bill, this is going to stop voter fraud, except actual cases of voter fraud are essentially non-existentistent, like smaller than that. The bill passed the House with full Republican support and even four Democrats. Now it goes over to the United States Senate. Let's talk to our panel. Dr. Nola Haynes, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service out of D.C.

Dr. Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard University, Recy Colbert. She is the host of the Recy Colbert Show on Sirius XM Radio, joining us from D.C. as well. So, Recy, you're married. I'll deal with you first. I was on my way here and I was talking to a frat brother of mine and he was like, yeah, bruh, my wife is really pissed about that particular bill. So I said, I think we'll be talking about it. He was like, yeah, bro, my wife is really pissed about that particular bill. He said, so I said, I think we'll be talking about it. He was just saying how she was just going off. This is the latest BS from these Republicans.

And when we talk about this, how this means, I remember, so I have TSA pre and I have clear. Well, for the longest, my wife didn't have TSA Pre. I'm like, yo, what in the hell? What is taking so long? Well, she needed the marriage license for TSA Pre. And it was taking forever. And she had to get it when we went back to Texas because not only what they say what they need,

they also want a certain type. So this is all about shrinking the electorate. Yeah, it is. And, you know, I don't think it's a good idea to piss off a bunch of married women because at the end of the day, people are going to do what they got to do. Most people are going to do what they got to do. But it just feels like an attack. You you know you already took away abortion rights you already took away all kind of other stuff and now you're going after our ability to vote um

i think this is actually gonna hurt men more because people are gonna women gonna be like fuck it i'm not taking your last name i gotta do all. I got to do 15 things now just to have your last name. Sorry. Not sorry. I'm going to be my maiden name forever. So maybe if women did that, then maybe men would think twice about forcing women to have to jump through hoop after hoop

after hoop after hoop just to do things that are within our right as citizens. So it's really, really, really jacked up. Um, but you know what? Cheat now, cheat now, let us know what you're going to do. Pull out all those tricks now, pull out all the stops. Now give us time to prepare real ideas going into effect in may everybody get your documentation together, especially black people. I'm not saying that alone will save you because these people don't give a damn about the law.

But the more documentation that you have, I'm not justifying what these people are doing, but I'm saying for our survival purposes, the more documentation that we have, the more ducks in a row that we have, the more readily access we have to our birth certificate, social security, passport, real ID, all that stuff, then maybe, maybe, if I'm being optimistic, that might save us a little bit of a headache elsewhere. So I'm trying to see the silver lining here in the fact that this is just another way that it's showing us that we got to get ready to go to war in this country. But it's not just married women, Nola. Janessa Goldbeck is the CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation. And this here was a video that Vote Vets posted. I'm sorry, that Vet Voice Foundation posted on their Twitter feed because this bill is going to impact the military. Listen. Hi, I'm Janessa Goldbeck,

Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation. In the Marines, one of my billets was voting assistance officer, helping troops and their families vote no matter where they were stationed. And that's why I want to talk to you today about a dangerous bill Congress will vote on this week, the SAVE Act, which will make it much harder for people in uniform to vote. The SAVE Act would require any American registering to vote or re-registering to prove their citizenship first in person at a government office using a passport or birth certificate. A driver's license doesn't count, and military IDs don't count either. Here's the problem, less than half of American adults have a valid passport. Millions don't have easy access to a birth

certificate. And if you're deployed overseas or stationed somewhere remote, how are you supposed to show up in person at an office in the U.S. with your birth certificate? You're not. So let's be clear. Every state already has strong safeguards to ensure only eligible citizens vote. Our elections are secure and run locally by bipartisan officials. Essentially, the SAVE Act would strip voting access from millions of American citizens, especially troops, disabled veterans, and military families stationed overseas. It's red tape designed to silence the very people who risk everything for this country. At FedVoice Foundation, we represent nearly two million veterans and military families,

and we're telling Congress absolutely not on the SAVE Act. If you care about protecting your vote, speak up. Call or tag your representatives and tell them, please stand up for our men and women in uniform. Please stand up for disabled veterans and vote no on the SAVE Act. So that's what they posted. Oh, by the way, if you're actually trying to get a passport for first-time users, NOLA, for first-time, it's $165, which includes a $130 application fee plus a $35 execution fee. If you're renewing your passport, it's $130. So Republicans are saying you're going to pay a tax. This is essentially a

poll tax. Absolutely. And, you know, it's also a tax to get your birth certificate. I recently had to go through all of that as someone who has two last names. You know, it's I had to get all of my documentation, my passport, my birth certificate from New Orleans. Like it was a whole thing. And it cost a few coins. This is yet another blatant attempt. It is what it is on its face. It is what it is on its face. It is voter suppression. And it's also designed to, you know, make people all of these things, all of these things that's chipping away at our rights, at our liberties, is designed to fatigue us, right? Because it's going to be more of this. It's going to be more of jumping through hoops.

It's going to be a higher cost to pay to dissent and to participate. And all of this is part of the authoritarian playbook. And I know that we are fatigued, especially as women, like Recy mentioned earlier, you know, this started, this started last year. Well, even before then, you know, we can go all the way that Republicans keep chipping away at women. It's as if we don't have a... 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.

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Because when you hear, you know, when the cult hears something like the SAVE Act, the first thing they think of is that, oh, Donald Trump is coming in, you know, to save us again from something. And the whole thing just irritates me. The vote irritated me. The way that they're messing with women, like literally all of it. Well, here's irritating. Well, here's the thing here, Greg.

I mean, I get Nola's point, but guess what? That's what branding is all about. That's what they do. They actually do that far more effective than Democrats. And so it's them trying to control the narrative. The issue for me is, like, I'm sitting here. I'm going on. So if y'all need to, you know, go to my iPad.

So I see Eric Swalwell posted a video 51 minutes ago. Here's a video. Democratic Women's Caucus posted 21 hours ago. Something from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar six hours ago. Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs nine hours ago. Congressman Morgan McGarvey five hours ago. Vet Voice Foundation five hours ago. Vet Voice Foundation, five hours ago. And I would look at others.

I go down here. This is Congresswoman Nakima Williams, seven hours ago. Let's see here. This is, so I'm going here. So here's the question that I would have for a lot of these Democrats, where was the narrative forming over the past two weeks? Again, I can tell you, Greg, if I pull up, let me just see again,

so if I type in my email, save act, and type that in, I do not see many statements going back before this week about the save act. See, this is one of those things that if you're trying to rally opposition, you kind of got to do it, not the day of or the day before. I don't know about Recy, but I don't know a lot of content creators they were pushing this out to. No.

And while this is clearly an error, a tactical error, I don't think it's a fatal error for this reason. History, if it doesn't teach us anything else, history teaches us that our species, Homo sapiens, it's pretty predictable. When pushed against a wall, we react. The first law of nature, as folk often like to say, so much so that it becomes almost a truism, is self-preservation. What does political self-preservation look like in a white criminal enterprise like the United States of America, which was rooted in the criminal enterprise of settler colonialism. It looks like what we're experiencing today. For those who read the novel, Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Handmaid's Tale,

or saw the Hulu television series, the men who are really at the center of this, little men, little men like Mike Johnson, the MAGA Muppet, little men like Junior Varsity Vance and even Donald John Trump. It's almost like they were all cast. These are very deeply insecure human beings driven by fear, hatred, and out this hate-filled vision, because they're not being fully developed in terms of their own social function. They will attempt to craft a society in which they are in control. But the historical reality has been that they are never in control. Sometimes little men, like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, can cause a lot of damage.

And there's a lot of blood in the streets as a result of their choices. Other times, little men, like Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms, little men like George Wallace, these little men like Ronald Reagan, these little men like Donald Trump, they will affect a political crisis, Richard Nixon. And what you find is that people push back. Finally, what we faced here with this SAVE Act is the largest—in fact, some legal scholars are calling it the first federal voter suppression bill. You know, I would probably go so far as to go back to the Fugitive Slave Act or even to the Constitution if we start talking about incorporating us, because they're not talking about us. But what is the reaction?

Well, there are a couple of things that will happen. And actually, Greg, to your point, the CEO of the Brennan Center, Michael Wallman, said the House has just passed one of the worst pieces of voter legislation in American history. The Senate must stop it. The Save Act would put voting out of reach for millions of American citizens. And he's saying one of the worst in American history. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I will stop just short, not quite, but just short of embracing this legislation for this reason. One of these days, we're going to figure out

that our vision of an America where everybody is included is diametrically opposed to the white supremacist vision that is literally hardwired into the founding documents of this criminal enterprise. And I think we're getting to the point where we're finally beginning to realize that. What happens in the wake of that? This SAVE Act is going to disfranchise millions of the hillbilly horde in the flyover states, those who have very few resources in the so-called blue states. We have an opportunity here.

Let's say the legislation passes—it's passed the House. Let's say it passes the Senate and it goes on to the clown's desk to sign. And now it's the law. I agree with you, Nona, you know, and Recy. We now then marshal our resources, and with a shrunken electorate, we make sure that those who are eligible to vote overwhelm the ones that are not. This is going to cut the throats of millions of their hillbilly horde who will show up unable to vote. That means that we have shrunken the field of combat. And it will take us coming to power again to reverse this.

But if this indeed becomes the law, I'm not only ready for it, I embrace it. I embrace it for this reason. When the pain is so great that they turn on each other, we need to stand back and not only watch that violence, but take advantage of that political violence, because that's what's going to happen. The MAGA Muppet could lose his seat in Louisiana, because his own constituents will not have the documents to be able to vote for him. Meanwhile, the black people who live in his district and the non-blacks who are fully

human, not the white supremacists, We can marshal our resources and ensure that they have the $200 to get the passport, to retrieve the documents, if the documents are irretrievable, to figure out workarounds and other ways to make sure that they can patch that together. We can fight and do many things at once. I'm not saying that this is a loss yet. I'm saying we have to now be very clear about where we are and how to move forward. Finally, I know you saw the news today that actually just broke that these devils are going to try to take the Social Security numbers of legal immigrants to this country and file them under what they call the death master file in Social Security, where people who are dead shouldn't get benefits and won't get benefits anymore. They want to put living people in the death file so they can strip them of social security numbers so they can't get bank accounts or credit cards or things like that. They are going to continue in their hate field, insecure, insecurity driven

campaign until they have created enough people who will fight them in the courts, fight them in the, in the voting booth, fight them in the legislature, and fight them in the streets. And I'm telling you, they're not ready for that. Yeah. In addition to that, they passed this huge budget bill. We're going to talk about that next. So go to break. We'll talk about this bill. And trust me, this is all about giving money to rich folks. They are desperately trying to whack as much money from Medicaid and other programs

to give rich folks a tax break. We're going to talk about that on today's show. Plus, we're going to talk about our HBCU Connect segment, how things are changing for Talladega College in Alabama. And one of the ways that they are fixing their problems cutting non-revenue producing sports and I've been saying that for the longest we'll talk with that interim president next rolling my unfiltered on the Black Sun Network this week on the other side of change the attacks on education book fans and what it means for us our guests Aaliyah Logan who will join us talking about what are the implications for the lack of investment in education,

both locally and internationally, and what this will mean for future generations. Fighting back against any of the administration's attempt to essentially make sure that people are uneducated and destroy history and make sure you forget history and historical things that have happened. Check us out on the other side of change, only on the Black Star Network. This is Tamela Mayne.

And this is David Mann. And you're watching Roland Martin. I'm filter. Folks, last year there were huge problems at Talladega College. They could not meet their payroll, and so they announced the hiring of interim president Dr. Walter Kimbrough. He's worked at numerous other HBCUs, two-time president. And when I saw the announcement, I called him. He's my alpha brother.

And they wanted him to come there in August. He's like, no, no. He was literally driving to Talladega. He was like, no, no, no, no, no. I need to see the books right now. I need to see how bad the problem is right now so we can fix this issue. They saw almost a 25% drop in student enrollment. They had significant expenses and so they had a major financial problem and so he went under the hood and began to make the very

difficult decisions on how to fix the problem. Now y'all know we've covered many of these stories beforehand. We've covered what's happening at Bethune-Cookman. Tomorrow we're going to be in Raleigh, North Carolina for our town hall for St. Augustine's University. Alumni wants to talk about what's going on there. Students as well. They're having financial issues. You name all of that, we're going to be at Martin Street Baptist Church. And here's the problem. We've reached out to the administration.

We've reached out to the president. We've reached out to the president. We've reached out to the chairman of the board of trustees and the whole board of trustees. They don't want to appear at the town hall. They don't want to answer any questions. They don't want to anything. Now, they're pleading for the public's help to save them, but you ain't trying to sit here and actually talk about it where people can help you save this HBCU. Last week at Talladega, they actually live streamed their news conference announcing what they have been doing. We carried that and we streamed it on the Black Star Network. President Kimbrough joins us right now.

And glad to have you back, Fred. Before we get into what you all have done, the first thing is, please talk about why. Why is it so important for HBCU leadership to not bury their head in the sand, to run from people, to go, oh, no, we don't want, it's our business. We don't want our dirty laundry in the streets when it's already in the streets

when you can't pay vendors, when you got lawsuits being filed against you, when students are calling you out on social media, when they don't have folks on campus because your dormitories are all screwed up. Talk about why it is important to be transparent with the public about the problem and how you're trying to fix it. Yeah. So and first of all, thank you for having me. And hello to all of your panelists as well. There is a very simple concept called taking out your own trash. You have issues. You talk about them. As you indicated, they called me in mid-June, said, hey, we have an opening.

You know, can you come? My wife is a graduate of Talladega. I looked at her. She said, that's my school. And she kicked me out of the house. And I started driving. I mean, it was really quick like that. It was like I was on my way because I realized I knew it was bad because they had missed payroll.

But just having been around, you know, the HBCU presidency for 20 years, I knew it was worse than that. So I got there and started to realize there were a lot of issues. So we had our initial press conference in September to say, look, there are a lot of problems here. We're going to be working on it. And then we decided to have a follow-up to say, we've gotten this $15 million loan. That's going to help us. We still have a lot of work to do. It is by no means solved. But you have to let people know. I also went around the country. I went to about 14 different cities meeting with alums to say, this is what's going on. Here is an accurate picture of where we are and why we need your help. So I understand your frustration

because it frustrates me, too, that we have to get out there and say, when there is a problem, we have to just say transparently, here is a problem. This is what we didn't do well. This is what we've done well. And this is how we're going to fix it. But it's a very simple concept. I believe in it. And we tried to practice that at Talladega, which, you know, people have responded well. So we can say we made progress. It still isn't perfect yet because the hole was so deep. It's going to take us several years to really get out the hole. But we want to keep giving people updates. We've done this now. We've done this. I think that's the way to go about doing it. And my bad. I said Talladega is Talladega. So I appreciate that.

And the thing here, the other piece is this. And I was having this conversation with the sister who was the board chair at Alabama State. You have got to have a board chair who chooses to work with the president and not work against the president. And you've got to have a board chair who knows how to, frankly, keep their board in line where their ego and their personal interests are not being put in front of the interests of the university and student faculty and staff. Right. No, absolutely.

I'm actually finishing a book I'm reading by Joseph Jones. He was president of Arkansas Baptist College for about a year and a half. And in that book, I mean, it's just a really hard take on HBCUs. And he talks about board boards and board interference. And there has been a lot of that, unfortunately, at our institutions. I'm actually here in Princeton, New Jersey, for aspiring people who want to be presidents. And we're going to have sessions tomorrow to talk about board and president relations. But that's already an underlying theme, is that you watch presidencies get undermined by board members when they do those kinds of things. I've been fortunate at

Talladega to work closely with the board chair. We can laugh about when there are hard times. We can laugh together and cry together, too. And you have to have that kind of relationship when it's tough like that. So, I mean, I really appreciate her. But we have to have more people who are going to interact like that, because when they don't, they create these problems that you end up having to talk about. And then they create the problems. And then, like you said, you ask them to come on and explain it. It's an opportunity to say what we're doing. And then they run from you. So I have never been like that. I don't understand it, but we've got to do better. So you go in, you look at it, you assess. You don't walk in and just start firing people.

You don't walk in and just start. But there were some people who also left. So you did that. Then how long did it take for you to assess and then begin to say, Hey, we got to start making some changes. So I started on Wednesday, June 26th. I started to get some data before I got there. I spent that first weekend just combing through all the data. Then on Monday, July the 1st, I had a meeting with all faculty and staff and said, this is what I found. And here's just the short summary is we had a 24%

drop in enrollment over a three-year period of time. We saw our discount rate, meaning this is tuition that we don't collect. You say it's a scholarship, but there aren't real dollars for that scholarship. So that discount rate went from under 40%, which is reasonable, to almost 60%. Wow. And then we increased our payroll by almost 70%. So you increased payroll by 70%, but your income and revenue was down. And so I showed everybody, I just showed them the math. I said, I went to a math and science high school. So I'm like, I do know math. I'm like, this math is why you have these issues. And so when you don't do those kinds of things, you have vendors. And particularly all during the fall, I'm trying to manage all these vendors who are saying, hey, y'all owe us some money. Y'all owe us some money. When are we going to get paid? Because we overspent for a year and a half. So, you know, when you overspend like that, you can't pay the vendors. You're lucky if you can pay your faculty

and staff, but then you can't pay the vendors. So those are the kind of challenges. So when you presented it, I mean, it was tough pill for people on campus to hear, but they said, you know, we appreciate the transparency and we know the kinds of things that we're going to have to do. And even people on campus had to make a sacrifice where we had to do a tiered payroll reduction. People who made the most had the highest percentage taken off as much as 20%. Those like under $50,000 didn't have any taken away. So there were lots of sacrifices. Contracts that they had with people who had never stepped foot on campus, they actually got started getting rentals before I got there, which was great. But those are the kinds of things we just were just

spending money left and right. And we didn't have the student base or the tuition base to support that. And that created problems. Did you also, did you also look at, because this is a problem that I keep seeing when folk have issues, they're getting sued left and right. Now you've got outside law firms. Now you're spending all that kind of different money. You know, we did a story the other day talking about St. Augustine's. And there were two, in the last two weeks, two tech companies filed lawsuits against the university, one seeking $18 million in unpaid bills. Another one sued them saying they had early termination fees for defaulting on a contract after one year.

Another vendor claimed they were owed $1.3 million for IT infrastructure services. When those vendors were like, y'all, we're getting paid, you go to them and say, hey, here's the deal. I wasn't here. I'm new. I've assessed it. Here's a deal. Don't sue us. Work with me so I can get you paid. Did you do that? We had to. Absolutely.

It was just, you know, part of it. So when you're coming in new, you can say, I'm sorry. I mean, Roland, I have done more apologizing than I've ever done in my entire presidential career because it's just like, this is, it's just outrageous people who are saying, you know, this bill hasn't been paid in over a year. There is an event company out of Atlanta, a sound company. 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. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This has 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 man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

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. since I was a kid. And I kept teasing the alums. I said, he's going to text me one day and people who know me and my dad will call me by my middle name. I said, he's going to say, Mark Kimbrough, where's my money? And when he texted me that day and I called him, we was just screaming on the

phone laughing because we knew this was coming. I was like, this, I'm like, this is somebody I grew up with and y'all haven't paid him in almost a year. So it was a lot of that. But I mean, you had people who are threatening to say, we might have to take legal action, but we have been able to avoid that. And they did have some previous lawsuits that we were even able to settle and then pay those out as well as a settlement. So that was good. But I have apologized to just so many people because it's just unconscionable for us to

have done what we did. So I did a lot of that. The reason I know this well and it sounds similar, I've run three black newspapers. And when I took over the Chicago Defender, what you were describing is exactly what I had to deal with. And it was hard for some people. But my whole deal is the paper had lost. The Chicago Defender had lost money 20 consecutive years. And all these people are running around talking about how important it was and how valuable it was. And I was like,

y'all broke. I'm like, so what? Y'all acting like y'all the New York Times. You're not. You're broke. And it was hard for people to deal with. But you did something, and this is where egos come in. You said, y'all,

we can't afford these sports. Walk, walk, walk us through that. So my first week there, actually, our gymnastics coach reached out to me and she said, I'm just sort of shaky about what's going to happen. And Roland, I spent a month learning all the ins and outs of gymnastics. And so by the end of my first month, the end of July, we had a Zoom meeting, a board chair with the gymnastics students and parents, and said, we're ending gymnastics. And there were several reasons why. First of all, it's a non-revenue-generating sport.

And between coaches, between student scholarships, both athletic and academic, we didn't have a facility to practice in, so they were driving to Birmingham three times a week, which is an hour away. Wow. We're an NAI school. NAI got rid of gymnastics as a conference in the mid-1980s. So we had to compete against NCAA Division III schools, and those gymnastics programs were in the Midwest and in the Northeast,

which meant any time they competed, they had to fly, except there was one meet at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. Every other time, you had to fly. So for 16 people, we're spending over $300,000 in a non-revenue-generating sport. We couldn't handle that. The example I started using with alums is that the University of Alabama has a very good gymnastics team that loses $1.9 million a year. But nobody cares because every Saturday in the fall, we watch the football team on CBS, and they're making a ton of money. They pay for all

the non-revenue-generating sports. We don't have anything like that. So we started with gymnastics, and then we looked at others that our conference, the HBCU athletic conference didn't sponsor. Our conference doesn't sponsor golf. So for us to have a golf, a golf team, you're paying the cost and you're paying to be in another conference. We don't have a men's volleyball in HBCU athletic conference. We were in another conference for that. We got rid of that. It's just, we had to do things that made sense and not just add all kinds of things. It's not to say that at some point in time, they can go back to that, but they just added these things. There was no strategic plan. There was no feasibility study. So, you know, you find out one day it's like, we're going to add gymnastics and nobody, the board doesn't even know. You just add, it became a vanity type

thing. Like, oh, look, we can get, we want to get, you know, publicity like this guy. That wasn't smart. And that hurt us. So we just had to come in, and like I said, there were a lot of people upset that, oh, I can't believe y'all did that. I looked at just the numbers, and when you add everything together, it did not make sense. It's cool and everything, and actually one of the students who's done very well, she went to Temple, and she's gone viral. It's been a blessing for her not to be there, and I'm happy for her.

She's doing very well. But we don't have the resources that Temple has to do gymnastics. So, you know, for me, it's just common sense. So you cut gymnastics. You cut golf. Didn't you cut some other sports? So golf will start. The rest of them will start in the fall.

So golf, indoor track, which we can always bring back, particularly if our athletic conference does. I mean, it's just additional meat. So that could come back. Men's volleyball, and then they had a tumbling team. So those are the ones that will be cut in terms of our program. So we want to focus on the sports that our athletic conference sponsors. Those are the sports that we should have. All these extra sports, we don't have it like that,

that we can just spend money adding sports. What does that save you per month? I saw a story. It said it saved you three to four hundred grand a month. Well, that was that was based on our payroll. So we were able to reduce our payroll three to four hundred thousand dollars a month. That's how much it ballooned. I mean, so you're talking about saving, you know, over $3 million a year on payroll alone. That was the biggest, I mean, so athletes were part of it, but the biggest increase was payroll. You just, you can't increase your payroll over a three-year period by almost 70% when you have fewer students and you're collecting less tuition. It's just, it's just simple math. It doesn't make sense. So we had to start with that. That was just the low-hanging fruit.

Like, you got too many people. You got people on contract that aren't here. We just can't do that anymore. Questions for our panel. Greg, call you first. Thank you. Thank you, Roland. Good to see you, Brother President.

Yes, sir. Yeah, man, I just finished Jones' book, too, Black, Not Historically Black. I'm glad to know you know that, sir. Yeah, man, I just finished Jones's book to black, not historically black. I'm glad to know, you know, that, brother, I would like to see the two of you all talking about those things and that he raises in his book. And in fact, that will be the question I would ask you generally. You know, our HBCUs, we have identities. We have, you know, the the allure, the culture, the nurturing. You going and doing this heavy lifting, this hard work of kind of pruning, what elements of Talladega would you say to folks who are watching this who might consider Talladega, those high school seniors and juniors and folks who come on your campus for college tours, what would you say now are the strengths of Talladega in terms of curriculum,

in terms of teaching and learning that students can look at now and perhaps even see more clearly, given the fact that you're doing this hard work of kind of pruning so that the rest of it can grow? Yeah, there are some opportunities. Talladega is one of those small liberal arts HBCUs that over time, I think, really struggle post-integration. You know, in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, if you were a graduate of Talladega, you could go to graduate school at the University of Chicago without taking any kind of exam because it's like, oh, you went to Talladega, you're good. And so we got away from a lot of that. And so we're at a period right now, which I keep telling people, the new president that comes in is going to really have to refine what that is because I think we've gotten away from that. in is going to really have to refine what that is,

because I think we've gotten away from that. I mean, we still have a pretty significant footprint in the STEM areas. Historically, we've had some of your major civil rights attorneys in the state of Alabama have come out of Talladega. But a lot of those are things that we can talk about from days, you know, gone by and not necessarily right now. So, you know, as we start to prune and figure out and, you know, scale it back, we need to say what are going to be our centers of excellence and build on those. There have been some historically, but at this point, because we've been all over the place, like a lot of places, when you start to struggle for students, you just start throwing everything at the wall. Let's add a band. We added a band in 2012. We do all these other kinds of things that you sort of get away from what we have been known for.

So we got to dig deep into the DNA of the institution again. And that's where, I mean, we've had this conversation. We have to have leaders of HBCUs that value HBCU culture. And it can't just be people who come in and just say, I want to be a president. Because when you come in and you don't value HBCU culture, you do damage to that. Jones talks about it in his book. I see it just in real time now on so many campuses that people, you know, I just want to be a president. It doesn't matter where. And if you don't value HBCU culture, you end up doing damage to those institutions. Thank you, brother. Recy.

Recy. I love that if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense. So it's a little unpopular. But I'm curious, what role are alumni playing or have they factored into kind of your strategy around maybe getting more money? I saw that collections were a part of the strategy, but I'm wondering if alumni giving is something that you all are pursuing more heavily. Yeah, absolutely. So that was one of the things that I did. And it was interesting, Recy, because when I first got to Talladega, you know, I said, I got to go out and tell alums what's happening. And people just said, well, let's just have a Zoom and do it.

I was like, no, there are some conversations you need to have face-to-face. And so then you have people questioning to say, well, you know, the school's got financial problems. Why are you spending money going to New York and New Jersey and Chicago and Los Angeles? I said, because I think this is important. And secondly, I'm paying for it. So you can't tell me what to do with my money if I'm trying to tell you what's going on. And people understood that. And it was like, so I'm not just somebody who is here for a year doing this. When I do this kind of work at our schools, I'm in 100 percent. I give back a certain percentage of the salary that I get, even when it was offered to me. I cut it down because I was like, first of all, what they were paying the previous president was more than I was

making that dealer. And I was just like, that doesn't make any sense. How are you going to make more in Talladega, Alabama than you are in New Orleans? I said, so cut that down. And secondly, I'm giving back a percentage to the institution. Plus all the travel that I've been doing, when I go to meetings and those things, I've been paying for that. So I want people to know that I'm in, I'm not just here to collect a check. I'm in to try to help this institution to tell alums that they've got to be involved too. So we've seen an increase in alumni giving. That's been good. We have alumni reunion weekend coming up.

We're going to really push them to keep doing that. But it still is a hard lift because some, you know, they feel like they got burned. You know, last May they were told everything's good, we got money, and then they see us in the news saying we can't make payroll. So people are just like, are we going to make it? And I understand that, and you get some donor fatigue. But you have to tell them, like, y'all have to stay with it. We're the, we can't wait for somebody to come save us. It's not going to be Oprah. It's not going to be Robert Smith. It's going to be us. So we have to own

that and say, this is our school and we're going to save our school period. Period. You, they, you, they got, uh, they got the right person for the job. It's too bad you enter them. Nola. Um, thank you so much. This clearly is your ministry. Thank you so much for doing this work. And growing up in New Orleans and growing up in the HBCU city, I definitely understand a lot of these conversations that continue to persist. So my question is around near-term and long-term strategy. I'm very close to Recy's question. I mean, you know, two of the three schools that I went to have huge endowments. One of them have the largest endowment and still

have a hard time getting alumni, you know, to give back. So I know that that can't just be, you know, the strategy to sustain Talladega, you know, surviving and thriving. So I'm very curious. What are some of those? You've definitely talked about those immediate fixes, you know, like taking, you know, with faculty and staff and athletics. But what about near-term and long-term? What is that looking like? Yeah, so that's a good question.

So I think there's still multiple strategies. You know, this goes back to, you know, what Greg was talking about. You have to have those centers of excellence that people say, I want to invest in that so that I can help this institution. A lot of times, you know, HBCUs, we get in a trouble. We just say, well, just give us some money and help us out. And people just don't want to give to that. You want to say, I have a great program in this, and I want you to invest in this program. We started cybersecurity. We've got to have more investment in that to grow that program. I think that that's very important for us to do.

So we have to identify those kinds of centers of excellence that are very important for us to have. But, you know, it is a part of alumni and understanding that building the endowment is a part of your permanence as an institution. This is a historical fact that I found out. Around 1930, Talladega College had an endowment of a million dollars. It was one of the seven richest HBCUs in the country in 1930 with a million dollars. Today, our endowment is less than $3 million, which makes us now one of the poorest HBCUs. So some of the problems are not just recent history. There has been 90 years of challenges in terms of us building an endowment to really have permanence. That endowment helps you, like when I need to give scholarships,

I'm not just discounting. I have real money that I can take a draw from my endowment legally to pay those scholarships. So we have to start. And that's the long game. I mean, you talk about long term. Long term, you have to build out your endowment to really have permits. And then you don't get caught in situations like this where you're so fragile. That's very important. But this is, like I said, when I looked at it historically, I was like, man, how can

our endowment only be like less than $3 million when it was one of the richest in 1930? So those are the kinds of things. So short term, you have to grow your enrollment because you need the tuition. You have to create programs that are exciting for students and for donors. You have to, you know, increase alumni giving has got to be 20%, 30%, those kinds of things. You have to have some wins in that. But you also have to start figuring out how are we going to develop fund long term. We're actually a part of a pooled endowment program that UNCF is doing where we'll raise $5 million. They'll match it with $5 million. And that'll be $10 million to our

endowment, which if we can do that in the next five years, that's big for us. So UNCF is helping us to do those kinds of things. And that's part of the strategy. So there is a short term, but the long game has to be endowments. That very important great do you have something else oh no i just wanted to ask roland i was sharing with roland uh brother walter this amazing sister dr virginia newell man i saw this uh message she do you mind speaking something just in closing about her i was blown away by this sister story story. Yeah, so she died recently. Her funeral is tomorrow. She was 107 years old.

And so she was a scholar. I think she taught math at Winston-Salem State University. She's in North Carolina. Actually, one of the things I found out, Greg, her maiden name is Kimbrough. So I'm trying to figure out if we people, you know what I'm saying? I was excited when I read about her. But, yeah, was like just reading and that's Talladega has just jewels of people like this to say, I mean, she ran for a public office in North Carolina. I think she was one of the first black people to have public office there taught at Winston-Salem state,

you know, math, all of that. So, but yeah, she died at 107 and her funeral is tomorrow actually. So, uh, yeah, just, you know, just one of those gems from the HBCU world that Talladega's had one of them as well. Thank you, brother. Thank you, Ron. You said something I think is critically important when you say when you come in and you assess and you look at what the spending is. I have engaged in lots of conversations with people over the years. I've talked to numerous presidents. I think I said to share with somebody there are 107 HBCUs, and I've personally been to 60 of them. And when I've sat down with many presidents and when I talk to them, I always ask, what do you do well?

What I mean by that is your majors. Why should someone come to your school? And when folks go, oh, we do this and this and this and this. No, no, no, no. I say, I'm not asking you to name all of your degree programs. What do you do well? The reality is when you're small, when you have finite resources, and I was having this discussion the other day because

somebody was asking me about my 22-inch carry-on and because I did a demonstration of what's in it. I said, I first start with my limitations. And they were like, I said, my goal was I needed to pack a portable studio in a 22-inch suitcase. So that's my limitation. So everything that I pick has to all fit like a puzzle in this 22-inch case. I said so I have to confront my limitation. In these conversations, I've said to HBCU presidents and board members and others, you have to accept what your limitation is. You're not an SEC school. So stop trying to have a big football team. Stop sitting here. And I said, if you're not, I said, understand, I get football, I get basketball,

I get all the sports. But if you're constantly losing money and going in the hole, I see that there is a graduate, and that graduate is sitting there going, I got $100,000 to give to my HBCU. I said, what's more valuable? And I challenge every president on this. I said, what would you

rather have? If I gave you $100,000, would you rather me give it to your school of communication, or would you rather give it to I gave you $100,000, would you rather me give it to your school of communication, or would you rather give it to me to your football program? And they want to say football, but they know it's going to go a lot longer

to the school. And that's just one of those things where you have to, I think, what you are saying to the Talladega community, we can't do everything, but let's do these three, four, five things really, really well and make ourselves known for that. And that's where our resources have to go. No, absolutely. So, I mean, I, you know, I lean on my experience at Dillard and I was president there for 10 years and we want to have. Before that, you

were at Flander. I was at Flander Smith before that for seven and a half years. Go ahead. Hold on, hold on. Wait, wait, wait. You had Morehouse after you left Dillard. Right. I spent a year at Morehouse launching the Black Men's Research Institute. And you were at, was it Albany State? I was VP for Student Affairs

at Albany State for five years. Gotcha. The only reason I'm saying, so people, so those are the, because any of the HPC you were at? And that's Talladega, so that's my favorite. Gotcha. The only reason I'm saying, so people, so those are the, because any other HBCUs you're at? And that's Talladega, so that's my favorite. Gotcha. So people need to understand the basis of your knowledge

is that you were the president at two HBCUs, you worked at two other ones, and so you're bringing four different institutions of different sizes, that perspective, to Talladega.

Go ahead. Right. So, yeah, so, but, so at Dillard, one of the things we said is that we need to have these signature academic programs that we're going to, because we don't have football, but we are in New Orleans. That's always a draw. And so, we had the oldest nursing program in the state of Louisiana, all institutions. I said, that's great. We need to make sure it's the best. We redid the nursing program. They've added a master's degree for that program. There's

a great need for nurses. That makes sense. When I got there, I learned that we were number two in the country for producing African-Americans with undergraduate degrees in physics. All is leaning into that. We're in New Orleans, Hollywood South. We're going to lean into our film program. My first year there, Spike Lee was filming a movie on campus. We had a conversation out on the yard for an hour just talking about HBCUs as a whole. So we started to lean into that. And then we realized, hey, one of the precursor institutions for Dillard had a law school. Let's start a pre-law program. We went

from sending two kids to law school every year to about 12 to 14. And that didn't cost us a lot of money because we were able to get grants and do some great things. So we didn't have to do a million things. We had like, you know, three, four or five things we did really well. And just, and the other things you want to be really good at those too, but those are the things that you could just rattle off. And that's what I keep telling people at Talladega, what are your signature programs? So if I go out there and say, we, you know, there are some metrics, we're number one in this, or we have a top rank this. So they've got to really work to develop that. That's going to be the fun part of the job for the new president, but it's critical because if you don't have those kinds of things, then

you're just sort of out there doing like you said, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks and you just say, oh, we got a great this and a great that. And really none of it's great. So we got to get out of that habit. So I agree with you. You pick a few things and you lean into those and you want your overall program to be strong. But there has to be some things that you're known for that you can say this outside agency has said this is greater. We have the metrics on this. That's very important to do. Last point, there are people, there are thousands who are watching. There are people who are listening. What do you want from our audience? How could they help? Right. So, you know, for our institution particularly,

and there are lots of opportunities you can go to our website to give, we really want support for Talladega College. There has been a lot of work that's done. One of the things that I keep saying is that when we hire a new president, we're actually going to have interviews on campus in the next couple of weeks. I want to really try to give them with as many resources as they can to really start with a fresh start to keep making the changes. So you can go to our website, talladega.edu. There's a link that says click to give and support our institution. Everything helps. I've met some amazing students at Talladega who are doing some great things. One of our graduating seniors, he's the SGA president. He's a part of a program that's launched in the city

of Birmingham for entrepreneurs. For two years, he'll be an intern entrepreneur. He's a part of a program that's launched in the city of Birmingham for entrepreneurs. For two years, he'll be an intern entrepreneur. He has his own business, and they're going to give him $120,000 for his business. So those are the kinds of young people who are at that campus, like all HBCUs. We have wonderful students. But I want more resources for this new president to be able to come in and not just have to have the experience I had, because this has been, it's definitely been the greatest challenge in my professional career with some of the issues that we've seen on a campus. So anything that people can give us to support the institution would be tremendous. I really want to give them a cushion to start the work that they need to do.

And you committed to serve, what was the period of time when you said you will only serve at the interim capacity? Yes, until June 30th. So hopefully we'll have a president announced by the end of April, early May, and then we have time to transition. And of course, I'll be around to be able to help. So they know I'm not going anywhere that, you know, wherever I am, I'm just going to be able to help out that person. But I committed that year. So I'll be there until June 30th.

And then we'll have a smooth transition with the new president. So I think what is important here that year. So I'll be there until June the 30th. And then we'll have a smooth transition with the new president. So I think what is important here that people. 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 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 man. 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. 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 podcast. You understand that there are people who want to commit themselves to black institutions. But what is required, what is required is other people to listen to folk who bring expertise, who know how to fix the problem as opposed to get in their way. The only way you've been able to do these things is because, again, you had a board chair and a board that did not get in your way. You did not have a faculty senate, do no confidence votes,

and all sorts of stuff like that. But you also went to all the stakeholders and were up front with them to explain to them what the problem was. And I think that's what people want. And so every time we got people hit me up and people hit me privately about this black church or this HBCU, I'm always looking at leadership going, why are you not being free and open and communicating with people and explain the problem? And then laying out the plan of action to fix the problem. Hiding is not the way. And hopefully the people who lead St. Augustine's will realize I'm not coming to Raleigh tomorrow

to destroy folks. We are there because we believe in saving black institutions. But you don't save black institutions by ignoring people who can help. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. but you don't save black institutions by ignoring people who can help. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And people, Roland, I'll tell you, I've had so many people on campus that just, you know, it's a hard pill to swallow, but people are thankful that you sat down, you talked to people individually. I've tried to keep some distance with students because you don't want them to get too used to you being there. But just to have students just say, man, I wish you would stay. That's really, I mean, I feel good about that because they realize that I put a lot into it,

that the institution is important to me as well, and alums have been very supportive. So, I mean, it's a great community of people, and we just need to continue to have support, but we have to have leadership that believes in what we do, and they, you know, you're not there for a title. You're there to do the work to continue the legacy of the institution. That's what's required. Folks, the website is Talladega, T-A-L-L-A-D-E-G-A. Y'all, come on. Thank you. Come on.

T-A-L-L-A-D-E-G-A dot E-D-U. T-A-L-L-A-D-E-G-A dot E-D-U. And if you want to support, please do so. Dr. Walter Kimball, Fred, always appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Anytime. Appreciate y'all. Thank you. Alright, folks. Going to a break. We come back.

We're going to talk with co-founders of Black Voters Matter about a documentary they've been working on for the last five years and that they are working on crowdfunding as well about that. You're watching Rolling Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Support the work that we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Again, here's the thing right here, folks. This is why it's important that we support black-owned media. That conversation right there, who was it? Washington Post or was it New York Times? Which one of them did a big old story

about the problems with black men on college campus? I think it was the New York Times. Which one of them did a big old story about the problems with black men on college campuses? I think it was the New York Times. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS, all these digital folks and other black-owned media, they're not going to spend that much time on a small black college in Alabama. But all these stories are important. So when you support this show and you support this network, this is the kind of content that you're giving. I had a conversation today. I can't wait till we

shoot the pilot of a weekly black business financial show we're going to launch. We're talking about a health show as well. We are trying to build out different verticals of news and information. I already told y'all, I don't give a shit about gossip. I'm not sitting here talking about an Usher concert and who was eating some cherries. We ain't doing all that. If that's what y'all want, y'all can go somewhere else. But there has to be a place where black people are getting real credible.

Matter of fact, because the sister called me today, and this is the only time y'all ever going to hear me talk about this here. That story's been going around that the sister who was eating the cherries at the Usher concert, her husband filed for divorce. Even that story's bullshit. I saw somebody post it and I went, this is about the fifth time I saw this on Instagram, but I never saw a name tied to the story. Well, I didn't even realize the sister is Jimalita Tillman out of Chicago who I knew when I worked there. She called me today because she

saw a comment on somebody's page where I called the story bullshit and said it was fake and it actually was fake. So all these folks, I mean, that's right. He should have filed for divorce. The story is a lie. This is what I'm talking about. All of these other gossip folk, they just run stuff.

They don't fact check nothing. So we got to have black news and information. So y'all want to support what we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. The goal is to get 20,000 people contributing on average 50 bucks each year. $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day. You can't do that. Give less.

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not Uncle Roro, not Roland Martin Unfiltered. Make it out to Roland Martin Unfiltered. Makes it easy for the bank, y'all. A bunch of y'all also sent me in seven weeks ago. A bunch of y'all sent me

checks. No, actually, no, four weeks ago. Y'all, the postal service is slow as hell. We sent it to Chicago. It's been sitting in a processing center for 10 days. So just letting y'all know it ain't on us, but we're trying to get it to the bank. The check and money order, go to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 2003-710196. PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered, Venmo, RM Unfiltered.

ZL, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's wealth coach. I'm sure you've heard that saying that the only thing guaranteed is death and taxes. The truth is that the wealthy get wealthier by understanding tax strategy. And that's exactly the conversation that we're going to have on the next Get Wealthy, where you're going to learn wealth hacks that help you turn your wages

into wealth. Taxes is one of the largest expenses you ever have. You really got to know how to manage that thing and get that under control so that you can do well. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. How you doing? My name is Mark Curran, and you're watching Roland Martin. Unfiltered, deep into it, like pasteurized milk. Without the 2%, we getting deep.

You want to turn that shit off? We're doing an interview, motherfucker. Since its founding, the Black Voters Matter Fund has been empowering African Americans traveling the nation, speaking about the importance of mobilizing and organizing black voters, speaking to them and touching them not just in cities, but in rural

parts of the country as well, not just in cities, but in rural parts of the country as well, not just in large places, but also in rural towns as well. Since 2020, they played a crucial role in flipping Georgia. That's what paved the way for Biden and Harris to win that state, for Raphael Warnock and Ossoff to win in 2020, and then for Warnock to come back because they were talking to regular and ordinary voters. And so while they have been doing that, they also have been working on a documentary about the work that they do. Here's a sneak peek. The bus is here! The bus is here!

I'm back and I'm walking on down! In spite of coronavirus, in spite of economic challenges, in spite of racism and police violence, in spite of everything that we are facing, here you are! Still standing! If you don't know nothing else, know this. You matter, you are loved, and you got power.

Well, members of the Black Voters Matter Fund are making stops in 14 states. It's a national outreach initiative all about encouraging people to get out and vote. You can't miss it. The blackest bus in America. Spread the word. When we say the blackest bus in America, we wanted it to be the bus that affirmed Black people. We wanted it to be the bus that got Black folks excited, right? How y'all doing, Montgomery? We gonna vote in record numbers. People break down in song and dance. We the man's a champ! People will break out in song and dance.

People break down crying because of just the imagery that's on the bus. Their goal, to bring a message of power and hope to minority communities in smaller cities and towns, which can many times be ignored by political parties. They also work to fight what organizers call voter suppression. We have the kind of power that is merged with love.

We're talking about righteous power. We need that kind of power. We deserve that kind of power. And I'm going to tell you one other thing. We got that kind of power. Darkness cannot survive if light comes in the room. And so we've got to be enlightened to the world. We're traveling through the states that are essentially the former

Confederacy, what arguably still is hostile territory. We've been through a lot. People are tired. People are sick. People are literally dying. We got attacks on the Postal Service. The moving of polling places. The restrictions and the photo ID. What the fuck?

There is no reason in the middle of this rain for that house to catch fire. No, no, they need to come get us. You're not staying here. So that's what we're gonna have to do. We're gonna staying here. So that's what we're going to have to do. We're going to have to save them high-level hotels. They're used to seeing high-level folks that they got security. So that's what we're going to have to go to.

Because a bus can be secure. Any number of people saw the blackest bus in America pull up and drop a couple people off at this house. What we do is not a joke. It's just not a joke. You know, they put the fire out, they sent the arson team, they're still investigating. You know, the primary purpose was intimidation and fear. They were trying to send a message.

Racism is damn traumatic. I mean just damn traumatic. Like, why the hell we gotta go through this, right? I'm mad. Um, just damn traumatic. Like, why the hell we got to go through this, right? I'm mad. I'm scared. And I feel determined, too. I mean, we ain't about to go nowhere. We can't stop, won't stop.

So we ain't about to stop. Now, folks, they are working to finish that documentary. And they're doing a crowdfund to do so. This is where you can go to. It shows information in terms of where you can give to do that. They're using the fundraising platform ActBlue, so we're going to have that on our website as well. Joining us right now is LaTosha Brown, one of the co-founders also. We're going to be chatting with Cliff Albright, co-founder as well.

A lot of this, we saw a lot of that video of Latasha was in 2020. COVID hit. And I remember being in Georgia at the end of Georgia, those five weeks. And it was rough when you're talking about having these events and these rallies and, you know, how you spaced out and everything. It was it was a challenge to organize and mobilize folks to vote. It was absolutely rough. It was a interesting time for our people. You know, at one point, Georgia, particularly South Georgia, had the highest number of hospitalizations related to COVID per capita in the country. And so it was a very serious time, a serious time in terms of our health, but it was also a serious time we felt for our communities.

And that's why we made sure that we got out there. And so part of that's part of the reason why we want to lift up the film in this moment. You know, in this moment, we want to tell the story not just based on what happened in 2020, but we want to remind people of a couple of things. One, we want to remind people that we beat Trump, that sometimes what winds up happening, this idea that he is unbeatable or invincible. No, they can be beat, but it's going to take organizing. It's going to take strategy. It's going to take strategy. It's going to take us doing work together collectively. And we do have to do some things different because we're in a different moment. One of the reasons when we're talking about from black history, you know,

what we know is that there's this attack and it's a racial black history. And I think part of the time we're not recognizing that that attack on black history is not just because people like we're just going to attack black history as is random. No, what I really believe it is, is that they want us to forget our wins. They want us to forget our victories, that even in the midst of all the things that have happened to us and the midst of voter suppression, of the racism, all of those things, that ultimately when black people work together, we can win. And so I think that is important.

We want to lift that message up around this is a moment for us to be, we should be anchored in this idea of building black power. We should be thinking of ourselves as a nation within a nation, that we have to organize ourselves, that we can't constantly be in a space that we're only responding to those who are seeking to press us, but that we are also, as we are building and organizing, we also have to really be set in the context of how will we protect our communities, how will we fortify ourselves, and how will we move forward? Cliff, this is a photo of us in 2020. That was four and a half years ago

and this probably was about 20 pounds ago. So if all of us could get back to that size, that would be great. That was a photo we took. I forgot we were in Warner Robins. That was December 6, 2020. That's LaTosha with the Santa cap, Tiffany Lofton, myself, and you.

And, you know, it was, you know, car rallies. It was all sorts of different things. about that moment, black folks were lit in Georgia. The opportunity to elect the first black Democratic senator from the South. The first black senator since Reconstruction was Edward Brook in Massachusetts. Then, of course, that was Tim, that other dude in South Carolina. And so you had that going on. But then you had the opportunity to elect a second Democratic senator who was all about black values. And this is the thing that I think is important. I had these two fools, these two trolls on my Instagram page. See, he wanted them Democratic shields. I'm like, no, folk were looking at who supported the stuff black folks wanted. And in that race, it was Perdue or Loeffler or Warnock and Ossoff, and it wasn't even a close race. That's what I keep trying to tell these folks. This is not

about, this is not about, well, I'm trying to elect a Democrat or Republican. No, it was about who is going to represent black interests, who's going to represent Warner Robins and Albany and Savannah and those those rural towns in the United States Senate. Yeah, you're exactly right, Roland. You know, you could go back and listen to a lot of the video footage that we took during that whole tour that night that we were with you and Warner Robins and throughout this documentary. And you'll hear us consistently saying, especially in that runoff part, that, look, this is about our health care, right? This is about COVID in particular, but this is about our health care. This is about voting rights. This is about police violence.

We were hit those issues consistently everywhere we went. And why were we hitting those issues? Because, as you say, those were the issues that people were talking about. Those were the issues that people were most concerned about. Those were the issues, especially police violence, that had people in the streets throughout the summer and fall of 2020. And so part of the purpose of this documentary is to show the power of that. Right. It's to show what happens when you're speaking to the issues and speaking to the issues in a way that people resonate with, right? It's about showing, you know, the title of this documentary is about love, joy, and power, right?

And so it's about showing the ways that love and joy is not just a vibe, but the way that you actually incorporate that into your organizing work, right? And so there's a whole lot of lessons that we want to come out of showing this documentary, showing the way the work that is done, showing the bridge that we believe. Look, Latasha and I say it all the time. We consider ourselves students of the civil rights movement. That doesn't mean that we only do things just the way they did it in the 50s and 60s, but it does mean that we ground our work in that methodology, in that science of organizing. And we need that now this year more than ever. Right.

That's part of the reason, you know, I've been talking about looking at the letter from Birmingham jail. So that's what we want to come out of this documentary for folks to understand the way that the organizing takes place, the way that voters get mobilized, the way that we have to ground this work in this history, that history that, as Latasha said, that they're trying to take away, we believe that there's some fundamental lessons from that 2020 and 2021 experience that can get us out of these times that we're in right now. You know, and the thing that was interesting to me when these things were happening, this was a rally that was in Savannah, Georgia, that y'all did. It was common. Kiki Palmer, well, this was before he lost his mind. Waka

Flocka and Tammy Rivera. Waka Flocka now is a big-time Trump person. And the thing here is that what people did not understand and why all this was so important is because black folk were allowing their power to remain on the couch. So you had you had folk who did not want to organize the state, who did not want to spend the resources on the state. They didn't want to do any of that. And so people talk about Stacey Abrams group, all folks who did that here. But even after that, you still had the folk who were going door to door. Y'all were sitting here. Who came up with the idea to hand out some greens? The Collard Green Caucus.

And black bell peas and cornbread mix. That's right. 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.

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. 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. So, yeah, you know, it's literally we were on a call and we were talking about the talking about the Georgia runoff and about how we need to try to find ways to get people to come back out. You know, people were already tired from the November election. So, you know, we were dealing with the holidays. Right. Because we like not only do we have to get people to come back out, but we got to do all this work in the midst of the holidays, in the midst of Christmas, in the midst of New Year's. So we said, well, you know, how do we incorporate the culture? And we said, look, what are people going to be doing naturally? What are people going to be looking for naturally? We know that for New Year's, what do we do? We

cook up some collard greens and some black-eyed peas. So what if we did something where we were able to do three things? One, that we were able to get people a concrete need. Our people needed some food at that time. This is still in the middle of COVID, right? So how do we get people a concrete need? How do we create an opportunity to mobilize people to get them information about the early vote? Because that was taking place during the early vote period. And then the third issue, and people lose sight of this, but it's important, especially right now, our farmers were going through hell. Black farmers were going through hell. And so this was a way for us to connect to them to find an outlet for them to bring their produce.

And so we were meeting three very specific needs all in one program. We called the Collard Green Caucus. So the idea of the program, you know, we came up with collectively. I think I may have suggested it on a call. But the name, I have to give a shout out to Wanda Mosley, who was our national field director at the time. She came up with the name Collard Green Caucus, and we've been doing it ever since. So it was birthed in this emergency situation, but it's become a regular part of our work, which means regularly we are supporting black farmers, regularly we are feeding our people, and regularly we are using it as a tool to organize our communities. And I've got to say this, Roel, I've to say this real quick because I'm looking at this footage.

You know, you might have, other than the documentary crew, I think you might have more footage of us from 2020 and 2021 than anybody else. Yo, so I was, just so folks know, I was literally, let me close this out. So, y'all, now go to my computer. Like literally I'm sitting here going, that was the rally in Columbus, Georgia. I pulled up the Savannah rally. Here was another rally. That was the rallies y'all had. And this, I see Albany, Georgia right here.

That was a rally y'all had in D.C. This is another one we had in Georgia. So, yeah, we were, we were, we basically moved, that year we basically moved, we basically moved to, matter of fact, let's see, here's another one right here. Let me pull this one up. Y'all can see. We had the drone, we had the drone action uh going uh there as well uh for these rallies and so it was like like we were we were there out there on the ground

not playing around and what was interesting to me matter of fact hold up let me go ahead because some of y'all may think i'm joking so uh here is Latasha and Cliff. Give me a second. I'm going to pull up in action. So yeah, we got lots of stuff. So we got stuff. Matter of fact, pull the audio up. See, the reason I remember that, the audio person who they brought in wasn't doing his job, and we were really pissed off that it was over-modulated. And it was like, this is no lie. Y'all think I'm lying. That was one of the reasons why we said we buying our own audio equipment,

because we can't depend on, because I'll never forget. And then y'all like, man, you didn't get the audio straight. It was somebody somebody else brought in that y'all didn't bring in. But, yeah, we got lots of stuff. But that's what people need to understand. That was the only way our folk could find out what was going on. So the networks were not covering it. So when y'all hit me and also y'all financially supported us that year,

and what happened was the networks, they were showing a little stuff, but because of streaming, what happened was y'all were like, all right, we're going to be in this place, this place, this place. We said, great, we're going to be there, have the Roro Mobile. We're streaming it. And we were able to talk directly to our people. And there were people who were in those towns who were like, yo, I couldn't make it to to your rally. But we saw the stream. And that's why black organizers working with black on media is so important because we were both helping each other out. Absolutely. Roland, like I'm just going I just got to lift you up in this moment. The truth of the matter is you have been the platform and the voice for the black community. We are so grateful for you. We have never asked you for support or help or to cover, but you've been in these streets, too. And you've been in these streets with us. And so we are really so grateful to be in partnership with you. And I am hoping that people know in this moment that, like, literally we have to support black media. So while we are really in this space and we want to be able to lift up these stories,

we also need these platforms like your platform so that we can continue to share our stories, that we continue to share the unfiltered truth, that we can continue to connect our people. Because we really got to know what time it is. We're not in the same space that we were before November 5th. We are in a different reality. America, the idea of America as we know it, that's over with, y'all. There may be some elements of that that are still, but the truth of the matter is we've got to think differently. We've got to organize differently. We've got to act differently. We're watching the networks fire black journalists,

credible, powerful black journalists who actually have high ratings, not because of any other thing but this attack on anti-blackness right now. We are watching these networks capitulate, right? All of the major networks have been capitulating to this new administration and what is this administration and what's happening. Black people have always had to have institutions to protect their interests. That is why right after slavery ended, black folks were creating and building banks because we knew we couldn't go bank with other folks and they were going to do right balance. We had to create hospitals because we knew that we needed care for ourselves and we may go to other hospitals and

they would not take care of us. We educated ourselves. Public education in this country, in this nation right now is because of black people, that if people are thinking about really around the new deal, that the new deal was actually shaped. Folks don't know what we give credit to FDR, but the truth of the matter is it was the black cabinet, right, who really, or many of the things that were in the New Deal, it was black folks that came out of black innovation, that when we're thinking about even the modern-day domestic workers and labor movement, that was black folks. And so we have to really—and my thought is we've got to get back in this space that we are imagining, that we are dreaming, that we are creating, that we are building, that we see ourselves building. And part of our offering around this film—this isn't a film that we commissioned.

The filmmakers came to us and said they wanted to follow us. We didn't know what to expect. They just followed us for—they went everywhere we went. They came into our homes. They saw the conflicts that we were working through. They saw when we engaged. And a lot of that is captured in this film. And so it's important for us to tell our stories so we don't forget. We don't forget we have power and we don't forget that like that is organizing that has always been the best tool we've had to beat against and push up against oppression. This was I think this was I think this is that black caucus. I was talking with you and Clayola Brown.

And that's what I do remember because I had to give that artist a lesson. We were in the middle of a live interview and he was taking his art down. I was like, say, doll, aren't you trying to make some money? You might want to leave the art up because you're getting free publicity. He was like, say, dog, aren't you trying to make some money? You might want to leave the art up because you're getting free publicity. He was like, oh, my bad. You're right, you're right. You sure you ain't got something coming at you?

I was like, dude, what you doing? The thing, Cliff, I'm going to ask you this question before I go to my panel with their questions. The thing here is this here. We've seen successive elections where the black turnout has gone down. It was a high 2008 election of Obama. This is the thing that I keep, it keeps driving me crazy. I keep saying black people,

if we showed what happens when we maximize our vote, if I'm correct, if I'm correct, I'm trying to remember, the black turnout in 2008 was higher than the white turnout, was by percentage. There are more white people in America, but in terms of turnout, we were, I think we were almost at 70%. I keep saying if we, in places where our numbers are significant, if we get to 70% turnout of our capacity, we win elections statewide. And so we just saw what happened in Louisiana. 37% of the people who voted early, black. We saw what happened when we don't turn out. The white candidate in St. Louis wins 64-36 over the black female incumbent mayor.

So in your perspective, what does it take for us to understand that the couch cannot be an option? And if we say these are the things that we want, turnout and voting is a part of that, making that happen. Yeah, definitely. And that's the conversation that we have all the time when we're in these streets and talking to people. It's trying to convince them of that. And some people, that's an easier conversation, right? It takes less convincing than others. It's a function of several things though right there's there's what has to take place on like internally within our community within our mindset to believe in that right sometimes that's also a function just in all honestly it's also a function

of like what have the results been um after we do that right and so like if we if we do all this galvanizing and black folks come out in record numbers and then the folks that we put in office, you know, do crazy stuff that will block the progress because they know that once you block the progress, that makes the people that had just been mobilized feel like, oh, I wasted my time. I'm not getting the results. But that takes a complicated conversation in our communities that has got to take place 365 days a year. That's why Black Star Network is so important. Your shows are so important because we got to drive that message home consistently. We got to drive the message home about the connection between the elections and policy and some of the systemic barriers. We got to have that conversation consistently.

We know that our turnout matters. That's why right here on this show, you all were just talking about the SAVE Act, right, that the House just passed, and how that is a direct attack against the freedom to vote, against our voting rights, and it's rooted in anti-Blackness. Truth be told, we tried to tell people for years that if you, you know, if you continue to say, well, what's wrong with voter ID? What's the big deal about voter ID? And what we would always say is voter ID is just an on-ramp to them doing a whole bunch of other things to try to make it harder for people to register and harder for people to vote. And now here we are, right? And

so all of that is a part of the mix. But you are absolutely right that we have got to continue to have this conversation to get people to understand that we have the power. If we turn out in those numbers, there's not an election, local, even state, I would say, especially in the South, especially places like Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama. If we consistently were to turn out at 70 percent, then we can win these things. Absolutely. Questions. I'll start with Recy first. First, thank you all for your leadership. It is so invaluable and so appreciated. I'm just curious—it's a little off-topic, but have you all been engaged at all in what's happening in North Carolina?

And if not specifically in North Carolina, helping black people understand kind of the next salvo of disenfranchisement and the war against Black voters that's coming up in 2026 and in 2025, because there are critical elections this year as well. Yeah. So I'll start, and Cliff, and you can add in. So the truth of the matter, even in the film, I lift up the film, in the documentary, I think North Carolina is one of the places that we're in because it's one of the states that we're committed to. We have states that are our core target states that we always work in, 365 days out of the year. And our model of how we work is, as an organization, we work with grassroots groups. We do three things. We move money to grassroots groups, black-led grassroots groups that are doing power-building work, not necessarily just

electoral work, but work to power-build. And it may be around a reparations agenda. It may be around a police brutality issue. And it may be around an election. And so we have partners in each of our states, like in North Carolina. We're ongoing working anywhere between 20 to 100 grassroots black-led groups that oftentimes it's not just around us, the message that we have, but there are people that are capable organizers that are indigenous to those communities that have been doing the work, that all they need is some resources, a little support, and really helping with lifting up their message. And so we work with those folks as well. And so we have been working in North Carolina from the gerrymandering issue all the way up to now. We are ongoing working with them. And I'll turn it off the clip so he can share as well some of our current stuff. Yeah, I mean, just to be

clear on this specific issue, you know, we have been involved, our state team in North Carolina has been involved, our partners and a lot of the organizing. Hell, I was there in North Carolina on election day, right? A lot of people were focused on Georgia and some other places, but I was in North Carolina on election day because I knew how important those elections were. But we've been engaged ever since that election day, making sure that all the votes got counted, making sure that all the votes got counted, making sure that all those recounts were done, you know, in a way that wouldn't disenfranchise our folks. And throughout this battle over these 60-something thousand votes that they're trying to throw out, we've been involved, our staff and our partners. I got to give a shout out to

folks like Advance Carolina and the Blueprint Table in North Carolina. We've been at the Capitol, you know, at many of these sessions and many of these courts and all of that. And so we've been involved at that stage, and we're involved right now. We've already sent out a text campaign to black voters matching the list that's available saying, hey, check this list. If you're on this list, you know, this is what you need to do to get accrued. If you're not on this list, don't just call it a day. Go on and forward this message to five of your friends so that they can look and see if they're on the list. So we've been involved in

a lot of the outreach efforts directly related to curing these ballots so that these 60-something thousand don't get thrown away. Nola? Thank you. Thank you so much for all that you do, for you both. And I'm just so excited about this documentary. And LaTosha, my question is more around messaging. I know that we are in the Persist group, or at least in a group chat. And I'm talking about how excited I've been to talk to you all day. Because you know, as you mentioned, we are in a very different time. All the old, you know, toolkits thrown out the window, the way that we used to do business,

the way that we used to talk about politics, all of that has changed. And so I'm very curious, if you've all been testing in the field, national messages that have been landing and local messages that have been landing. And if there's some, you know, if they're parallel, it's the same message, you know, because as the Dems have been dinged a lot, even before going into this election, that it's always kind of not so much a messaging problem more than it's like a branding problem. Like we were talking about the SAVE Act earlier and how irritated I am that it's called the SAVE Act because it's anything but. But Republicans know how to brand. So I'm very curious, what have you all been finding success with out in the field regarding messaging?

You know, it's interesting that you say that, and I'm really excited. Thank you for that question. First thing I'll say is I don't know if people always say that the Republicans are good at messaging. I don't know if I think that. I think they're good at lying. Like, if I can lie and make something up, I got some amazing stories that I could share. Like, if I can just create stuff, yeah, you might be entertained with my work, too, right? But ultimately, you know, I think that the messaging has to really be able, not just around sensationalizing, but really it has to be rooted in truth. And so part of what—but to your point, the Democrats have not been good

messengers, particularly to black people, right? One of the reasons why that's like a core strategy for us around messaging is because oftentimes that we don't hear messages that are really related to us. And sometimes it's not that you got to shift and come up with the best sensational message. Part of why we've heard that over and over again with all of the ads of the $7 billion that the Democrats spent on the last election cycle, that much of that went back to these communications firms that convinced them that they need to be on television, that they need to be on traditional network TV so that they could get these messages out and these advertisement pieces out.

And ultimately what wound up happening is there were messages that didn't land, and many of us weren't there. That what we're finding is when we're talking to our people, like many of our young folks are getting, they're getting their information from the internet, from YouTube. They're listening to shows on TikTok, on social media, just as if this platform, like social media, I think network TV is really in a downward decline in this moment.

And so it really is key around us having a message of what we found that has always worked, that always having a message of hope. You've got to, one, you always got to be authentic. You have to have an authentic message that is not just about you telling people what they need to believe and think. Now, oftentimes folks always want to come in our community and tell us what we need to do. They always tell us like, we ain't smart. Like, I don't know what I need, right? That part of, I think the process of even shaping your message is having the humility, having the organizing and the infrastructure to actually listen to people so that you can really listen. 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 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 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. 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 podcast listen to what what's landing on them and so oftentimes without organizing it's not about just the message that we're trying to put on them like an advertisement it is literally our message is being shaped by what they're telling us that the message that we're trying to put on them like an advertisement. It is literally the message is being shaped by what they're telling us, that the message in Alabama, there may be a message in Alabama or something going on in Alabama that can ignite people

that is distinctively different from North Carolina. I think the foundation and the base that black folks want what everybody else wants. We want quality education, and much of that hasn't changed. We want quality education. We want to get paid. We want quality education. We want to get paid. We want economic equity. We want to make sure that we actually are able to build our communities, that we have safety and security and economic security, those things. We often work with folks who are pollsters and getting data to make sure that we're really in tune with what the message is. But the truth of the matter is, the way we actually get our messages is we're really in tune with what the message is. But the truth of the matter is the way we actually get our messages is we

out on these streets and we talk to our people and we hear from them. What is it that you care about? And part of the reason why I think that's been really why our messaging has been really successful, not just in a Brandon and a Brandon game, because I want you to know who I am, but in a space that we're actually using this platform that God has given us this platform that we've actually built over time to really be able to integrate Black voices,

be in relationship with Black communities 365 days out of the year so that we're getting real-time information so we can tailor our messages to our people. Greg? Thank you, Roland, and thank you, Cliff and Natasha. As always, you all, more than inspiration, which you certainly do, you instruct. And you instruct through your actions. And not only am I always inspired by you, I'm always instructed by you as well in terms of how to do this. And thank you, Natasha, for saying that. I could have seen you a couple weeks ago at the 14th Amendment Center.

You really weighed in, as always. I just donated. I see that you all posted the trailer on the YouTube channel, which also has the link. So before you all go, I know Roland's going to reiterate this, you know, tell people where to go so we can all support making this documentary. And you both mentioned the SAVE Act, as you heard earlier, as Roland kind of opened the show with it. If this act passes, particularly, LaTosha, since you've been kind of really taking a clear-eyed view as to what this country is

and who we are and how we have always intervened to protect our interests, regardless of what they were doing, any advice on how we should be moving now in terms of preparing ourselves in the wake of all these executive boards and these bills, but particularly to say that, I mean, you know, should people be trying to get their

documents, their birth certificates, maybe a passport? I mean, any insight on that? And again, thank you both for just incredible work. Thank you, brother. And we appreciate you because we are always inspired by you. Like I think black scholarship and reminding us. And I'm really serious about that. I do believe that part of this attack on our history is to make us forget our victories and to make us forget that we win, that we have when we win and how we've won in terms of it has been our distance that has led to the outcomes that we have. It has not been our capitulated to we going to get along. That ain't never got us nowhere.

It has never gotten us anywhere. It has actually been our organizing, having a clear vision, leadership that really is courageous, and for us to stand in a space that we are not really surrendering. And so as it relates to the SAVE Act, I think it's important in this moment—there's a couple of things. In this moment, I do believe that as it passes, as we've been telling people, we do have to get—we've got to get some things lined up to make sure that you do have your ID, do everything that you can within your power to make sure that you can actually maintain voting, right? Because we don't even know how long that voting system is going to be up, to be honest.

We don't even know how long we're going to have in the elections. But why it's really particularly national, but why it's particularly important, is because why voting is important, particularly on the local and the state level. That what we need people to do, we need to be relentless about taking power. If black folks

are the majority, it should not be, it is inexcusable that we're not running that city, that state, that county, whatever, right? We have to make sure that we are leaning into taking out, using every tool that is available to us to be a power. I'm the first to say, even though my entire adult life, I've done voting work. I'm the first person to say that I do not believe that voting is the only tool that we're going to use to actually get our liberation. But what I do believe is that voting, that when you are at war, when people are fighting your community, you have to be relentless about power.

Wherever you can find it, wherever you can get it, wherever you can leverage it, you have to leverage it for a couple of ways. One, you've got to use it and you've got to vote so you can actually reduce the harm happening to your community. The second thing is you've got to send a message. When people come for you, there has to be consequences. When people are coming against our community, we have to create what I call a blacklist and hold them accountable. I think it's also really important that we're documenting that in this moment, that if the SAVE Act passes, all of us need to be prepared. Now, we don't need to just wait for then. We need to really be able to fortify organizations that are doing this work, fortify your own self and your own household to make sure that you've got IDs and you've got the

requirements so that you can make sure and to check your status. It's important for you to check your status. What they're planning in the state of Georgia currently right now is to do the largest purge this summer. They're talking about doing the largest voter purge in the state of Georgia this summer in the history of this country. That's over 500,000 people that they're seeing. So what we really need to do, we have to use voting as a vehicle, as one of our tools, of our many tools that we can use to build power and be relentless with that, which means we need to be prepared in terms of getting our information together. We need to be fortified. And I think part of the way that you fortify organizations, whether it's NAACP, whether it's Black Voters Matter, whether it's Georgia Stand Up, whether it's a national coalition on black civil participation.

This is the moment, y'all, that you need to make sure that black organizations that are on the front lines doing this work, that they are supported, that you are fortifying them, that you are sending resources, that you are volunteering, that you are tuning in. That is another part of that. And then we've got to be ready to do what we need to do, whether that means as we organize. You know, I'm thinking about in Mississippi, I've been thinking a lot about in Mississippi with the formation of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. We also got to create some alternatives to let folks know that we are not going to be, our life is not going to be dependent on the whimsical nature of a political party, a candidate, or white people. We're just not doing that no more. And so what we've got to do is fortify ourselves, use the tools that are available while they

are available, but also build as we are doing that. We've got to build this context. And so with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, when they were not allowed to vote in the, quote, regular election, they had their own elections. Over 80,000 people participated in the election. They organized themselves, created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, sent a delegation led by Sister Fannie Lou Hamer, right, and turned it out and shut it. In many ways, they changed and opened up the space for black folks within

that context because they were, they did, they dared to be different. That they actually used their power and organized themselves. And so I think in this moment, we need to be thinking like that as well. Alright, folks, if you want to support the documentary, okay, so here's what we need to, we gotta do.

Where do folk go, Cliff and Natasha, because, alright, so here's the deal. I do. Where do folk go, Cliff and Natasha? Because. All right. So here's the deal. I went to at blue dot com. All right. So then I typed in. Go to my iPad. I typed in Black Voters Matter. Also, some people in the chat were asking me, does Black Voters Matter have a PAC? I said they do. So you'll see right here they have Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute. They have Black Voters Matter Fund, Black Voters Matter Action Pack. Here's the problem. When I type in your name, this doesn't come

up. This is the actual place where you give for the documentary. I typed in Black Voters Matter in Act Blue's search box. This page doesn't come up. I typed in love, joy, and power. It doesn't come up. Where do we send people

to donate, to give, to finish the documentary? Where do they go? What's the easy place for them to go? Yeah, so there's a couple of places they can go. The easiest is if they have the direct link, and I think that we've got it in the comments on our page. It's a bit.ly

slash loveandpower. But is it on your site, what's the easiest? Like if I tell somebody, yo, go to black social media. No, no, no. But it's on your website. Black voters matter dot com. Yes, it's on our website and it's on any one of our social media. So if they go to our Twitter or X or Facebook or IG or

whatever threads, all of them are the same handle, Black Voters MTR, Black Voters MTR, and you'll see a post on there that's got the trailer and it has the donation link. Or you just go straight to our website, Black Voters Matter Fund, Black Voters Matter Fund, with a D at the end,

.org. Okay. All right. Okay. So hold up. I'm on Black Voters Matter Fund.org. All right. This is it right here.

What am I clicking? Like, what am I specifically for the doc? Because I'm looking. I see show your support. I got that. I see stay informed. I got that. There's a donate button up top.

What does that go to? That is in the news section. OK. All right. Roland, I just went to the Black Voters Matters Fund YouTube channel. Y'all got it. Y'all got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I got that. Follow follow what I'm saying. If I'm if I'm in Raleigh tomorrow, if I mention I want to be able to give a – just go to this website to give. The problem – go to the YouTube channel. I've got to find it. So I would just say, hey, I would just put a button on the website, on your main website, that take them to the doc.

I try to make it as easy as possible where I can send somebody to go there to support the dock. I thought if I said, hey, go to actblue.com, type in Black Voters Matter, it doesn't come up. That's why I did it. Just so maybe y'all let ActBlue folks know that people didn't be able to type in Black Voters Matter. I'll just show y'all. No, that's not it.

Like right here. If you type in Black Voters Matter. I'll just show y'all. No, that's not it. Like right here. If you type in Black Voters Matter in the directory, you type that in, you hit return, it should be one of the ones that come up for the doc. It should come up on that search box. Just let them know. There's a lot

easier for folk to be able to get to donate. Okay? Definitely. We'll add that onto the website, but definitely go to any one of the social media channels and you'll be able to find it pretty easy as well. But thank you, Roland, for lifting that up. And I just, one last thing, you know, because the fundraising is important, but one last thing on that SAVE Act and to Professor Carr's question. We got to try to block, right, the current legislation because it's not a done deal. I think I heard Professor Carr say that earlier. It's not. It's not a done deal. As long as the Democrats in the Senate don't do what four of them did in the House,

that's a whole other story that we need to come back to. Yeah, I need to find who those four were. I need to find their names. Yeah, and I think a couple of them were the same ones that voted against Representative Greene on that censure votes. So they just got a history of running them up. So we got to block. We also got to litigate. We good for suing folks. Right. And so Black Voters Matter has been a bunch of lawsuits.

We might be a lawsuit over the SAVE Act. We got to prepare in the ways that Latasha was explaining. Right. In terms of like getting our documents and all that good stuff. But the fourth thing is critically important, because we've got to understand, and we've all made this point, these are not normal times. This is not just a matter of a policy difference. This is a matter of them trying to install a dictatorship and one-party rule. And at some point, I've said before, we are going to have to hit the streets, right? Right now, right now it's the white folks, and most of us are chilling and learning the boots on the ground and all that. But we got to be clear, we are going to have to hit the streets

because they are not playing about trying to install a dictatorship. All right, so y'all know I don't waste no time. So here y'all go. The four Democrats that voted for the save act, Jared Golden, Marie Glucenkamp-Perez, Henry Cuellar down in Texas, and Ed Case. Golden tweeted that some claim that requiring proof of citizenship is too onerous a burden or that it will disenfranchise those whose names have changed for reasons like marriage.

The truth is the Save Act assures name changes will not prevent anyone from registering to vote. You know they're lying. All right, folks. I appreciate it. Cliff and Latasha, thank you so very much. Keep up the good work. Thank you. All right.

I got to talk about this with our panel. It was a lot of stuff we were talking about. A federal judge has ruled that a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump by the Central Park Five, now known as the Exonerated Five, can move forward. Now, remember, five black and Latino teens, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, Corey Wise, were wrongfully convicted in 1989 when a white jogger said she was attacked in Central Park. They were blamed.

They went to jail. They were later exonerated. It was a $40 million settlement with the city of New York City, and Michael Bloomberg did not want to do that settlement. Let's just be real clear. Donald Trump took out a full-page ad saying that they should have gotten a death penalty if that was the case in New York state. He was asked in 2020 as well in 2016 presidential campaign and in the

2024 campaign about it. And guess what? He wrongfully claimed they pled guilty and that someone was killed during the attack. None of that was true. Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled that Trump's statements could be proven false and that it's possible he knew they were false when he said it. This is what should happen. Keep that pressure on, Greg, and, yeah, hold his ass accountable for lying. Absolutely. It's a victory. Absolutely.

Because the judge did dismiss the intentional infliction of emotional distress and a defamation by implication theory, but the core argument was upheld, and, yes, they're going to keep going forward. He's beginning to lose in the courts. Talking with Cliff and Latasha, it reminds us. We saw, while we've been on the air, the Supreme Court said, hey, they upheld the district court ruling. It says you got to bring that guy you sent out of the country back. They sent it back to the district court to determine what that process might be. There's some language that needs

to be worked out. But all these sensationalist headlines in the white media, Trump wins the Supreme Court, Trump wins the Supreme Court. They have not ruled on the merits on any of these cases. This is the first one they ruled on the merits and they said, you got to bring him back. We've got to fight exactly what Cliff and Latasha said, Roland. Absolutely. This is why you cannot give up. To Greg's point, Supreme Court required the Trump administration to facilitate the release of immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And this was family members speaking outside of Supreme Court. It's been 28 days since I lost all my husband. Since his children hugged him.

Since his mother kissed him. Since his brother has hugged him, since his mother kissed him, since his brother has talked to him. Court ruled that indeed this should have never happened. The rule that my life partner, Kilmar, should have returned home 50 hours ago. But here I am again today, standing before you, pleading that you continue to uplift his story and remember his name because the Trump administration and the Bukele administration continues to delay the reunification of my family.

Thugs. These thugs, what they did, that's, again, the court ruled there. And, Recy, I want the exonerated five to keep that pressure on his behind. I want them to hold him accountable and I want a jury to, because the judge said, now it goes to a jury to rule against him and force him to pay

fees because he knew he was lying. He knew he was full of shit. And guess what? They win, just like E.G. and Carol, every time he defames them, take his ass back to court. Yeah. Well, you know, Donald Trump has been very litigious if anybody says anything about him.

So absolutely keep that same energy. As soon as he open up his mouth and fix his mouth to say something that's a lie, sue his ass. I'm actually very much relieved that this court is allowing this to move forward simply because it seems as though many of the rulings have been that Trump can do whatever the hell he wants to do to whoever he wants to do it. Ain't nobody going to check and vote. So I think this is a huge win, regardless of what the ultimate outcome is. I don't know. 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 Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Dr 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 is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. 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. If Trump has paid off anybody, he done been marking manipulation and meme-corm and all kind of shit, so you would think he would have had the money by now to pay other people off,

and whatever they can get from him, get every single last penny. On the subject though of the Maryland father, this is a situation where this administration knew that he should not have been deported, fought tooth and nail to keep a man that they knew should not have been deported, imprisoned in shithole conditions in a country

that they kidnapped and deported him to. And not only that, they fired or they reassigned the attorney that admitted the truth in court, which is that this person should not have been deported. It was an error. And so my message has to be, because I'm sure, Rowling, you see this all the time with the trolls. They're not foundational Black Americans. They're not. This ain't got nothing to do with us. When this administration knows that you have a legal right to be in this country, be it whether you're a citizen, whether you have a green card,

which they're revoking left and right, whatever your status is, if they know that you have every right to be here and will still haul your ass in a plane to a fucking colony and say, too bad, so sad, that's something that impacts us. Because these people don't have any sense of duty to getting their actions right because no humans involved is what they see. Unless you—you don't see no white men with blonde hair, blue eyes getting this treatment. Well, actually, they are messing with some of these Russians and other people, all other Europeans. But I'm just saying the moral of the story is that they have already signaled that they will love to deport American citizens in prisons. Oh, we're going to get the worst of the worst and all kinds of stuff.

But when they're doing these things that they're supposedly doing out of safety, they don't have any, any, any sense of, of, of carefulness in who goes. So it could be you, it could be your daddy, it could be your nephew, it could be your brother. They can't get us all, but it could still be you. Absolutely. And listen, he wants to sue Nola, guess what? You fire right back and haul his ass into court and hold him accountable. And we already know he is a twice impeached, criminally convicted felon in chief. Let's add, like we already know, a lying asshole to it.

Absolutely. in chief let's add like we already know a lying asshole to it absolutely and you know what even if even if scotus did this out of self-preservation because they understood that he was coming for their power and it was nine to zero it was a nine to zero ruling go ahead nine to zero so even if this was done out of self-preservation, I think this is going to be a seminal case when we look back at this time through history, because if they would have ruled on the side of Trump, that would have been carte blanche. I mean, he already sits there with that little pen scribbling his name, you know, and those little photo shoots they hook up for him with him not knowing what he's signing. But that kind of unilateral power, that dictatorial rule by, you know, edict, all of those things, the Supreme

Court today, they kind of snatch back a little bit of their power by saying, no, you cannot unilaterally do anything that you want to do. And you have to also follow the law and just snatching people up just because they have melanin. And that seems to bother you even going all the way back to the central park five. I mean, these are faceless human beings for Donald Trump and his ilk, you know, they could care less about this woman, you know, pleading to the country about, you know, her partner being gone for 28 days. They could care less. I even want to say that I saw, you know, some footage of them basically kind of shrugging it off, like, well, it's kind of collateral damage. Oh, well, these people, they don't see, they don't distinguish between, you know, melanin and non-melanin. We are not

human beings. We are not people, you know, so they could easily round this man up. They could easily make up, make up some stuff and say, you know, all of us sitting here that, you know, send us back to Africa or to the Caribbean or, you know what I'm saying? Like that FBA, all that stuff that does not guarantee your safety at all. You know, so I am really happy that the Supreme Court adjudicated the way that they did because it sends a loud message that you cannot rule unilaterally. Folks, you might be seeing promos of

a new show here in the Black Star Network, The Other Side of Change. Check it out. This week on The Other Side of Change. We're going to examine how foreign policy impacts domestic policy and how domestic policy impacts foreign policy. We are all intertwined and we're going to have Hannah Reed help us break down that topic. We should not want our country to be the big bad wolf of the globe because that puts us in a really vulnerable position safety

wise as well. Only on the other side of change on the Black Star Network. All right, folks, joining us right now, the host of that show, Jameer Burley, Bria Baker. Glad to have both of you here. So whose idea was it for this show? Well, obviously, I put the word out that I wanted two millennials hosting the show, so that's what started. But how did y'all connect to say, hey, let's do this thing together? I don't know.

We were riffing off of one another. We've been friends and working in and around the same spaces for such a long time. And we were feeling very frustrated at who the main talking heads are and the fact that there are some in media who are just not really getting it right. And so we've been talking about it for a while. I think it was you, Jameera, though, who came up with the other side of change as a topic and was like, okay, I feel like we need to not go to traditional spaces and we need to hit up folks like Roland because you're doing the real work and real talk. Yeah. And I think we really wanted to get at the intersectionality between it's not enough to just talk about the news.

We wanted to also talk about what are the real solutions that are being implemented around the country and who are the young people who are leading that change, whether it be within systems or outside of systems and helping to redefine how young people can play a role in systematic and sustainable change. Yeah. And I'm glad, Roland, that you were really open to having two millennial women because, you know, young people get dismissed, but then are like kind of baited and shamed and showing up. And it's like, we have to be real stakeholders at the table. Millennials and Gen Zers are becoming a major voting bloc. Millennials have a huge share of shopping power and buying power and are proving that our values really guide the way that we

spend our money, the way that we spend our time and what we give our attention to. And a lot of young people are not tuning in to the major, you know, networks because they don't feel seen and heard. And so having a voice here, but also in an intergenerational space where, Robin, you have such a major platform, one of the fastest growing platforms in progressive media. And so it was just so important to have like two young black women on that space. So what was interesting,

I had put the call out there and Jamiro was like, I'm interested. And then let's say she didn't send me anything. So, um, I was like, so, uh, so a bunch of other people, uh, where people were posting on social, they were sending me emails and here was the problem that I had. And I've said this earlier in the show, nearly every person who was hitting me up,

they were trying to do entertainment. And they were coming from entertainment backgrounds. The pitch was entertainment. And I didn't even respond. So to all those folks, it's nothing personal, but I was very clear. I did not want an entertainment show. My deal is if you want to do entertainment, you can go somewhere else.

I got no problem with that. I remember me and Kevin Frazier were talking with the NBA All-Star game. He was moderating this event at Nike. He was like, well, Roy, you got to have a little. I got no problem with that. I remember me and Kevin Frazier were talking with the NBA All-Star game. He was moderating this event at Nike. He was like, well, Roy, you got to have a little. I said, no. I said, they can go. He's like, well, they already come to us.

I said, dude, I'm fine with that. I said, because I said, that's the problem. And I said, the problem is when you open that entertainment door is what happened with BET. All of a sudden, you become 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 95% entertainment because you start chasing the clicks and you fall in love with the clicks. And I said, I can't do that. And so that's why for me, because I fundamentally believe that and when I look at the numbers, and I've got no problem saying it, when I look at our analytics over the last 28 days,

and you're talking about 25 to 30 million views, when I click audience, this really is the issue that we have. 13 to 17, 0%. 18 to 24, 1%. 25, 34, 4.1%. 35, 44, 10.5%. 45 to 65 plus accounts for 81% of our audience. Now, these are people who are seeking out news and information.

I get TikTok. I get Instagram. But the issue that I have, and I just personally believe that too many millennials in Gen Z and now Gen Alpha are being fed lots of stuff that's misinformation, that's not factual, that's not deep, that's not impactful. And that makes it harder when you're battling misinformation, disinformation. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, as someone who regularly uses TikTok and mostly to convey the news, it's not a place where you can have a holistic conversation about what's really going on. It's normally just soundbites.

And I think too many people take that as gospel and they run with it instead of actually examining and doing their own research. Exactly. That's a huge issue. And as you said, Roland too, it's like we're being over entertained. And I think the goal is, you know, we've seen so much incredible youth organizing over the last five to 10 years. Um, and the challenge is that that organizing doesn't happen because you watched a 60 second video that organizing happens because you opened a book that organizing happens because you listen to a conversation. So in depth and you got resources. That's why every single episode of ours ends with read this, follow this person for more on this topic, because it's like, we want to go deep, but also it's still a starting

point. In 45 to 60 minutes, we can't give everything, but it's definitely more than what you're going to get in a 60 second to three minute video on TikTok. And so I think the challenge is that those platforms are supposed to be introductions, like getting someone's feet wet and getting you excited to go deeper. But if you stay mindlessly scrolling, you never get to go deeper. And as you said, there's so much deep fake content, there's so much misinformation, there's so much AI content, and the platforms are not mandating that that content be flagged as AI produced or as deep fake or as just not real. And so it's hard to parse out what is real from what is not.

But those platforms, I mean, listen, Black Lives Matter movement was really spawned through Twitter. The Arab Springs are really spawned through YouTube and Facebook. There's so much movement work that gets seeded on those platforms, but it can't end there. We have to have somewhere real and be able to talk to real people. And unfortunately, you know, no shade, no tea, but like MSNBC, CNN are not investing in these folks either. They're not investing in our

voices. But every election cycle, they're going to wonder how and why millennials and gender are voting, but they're not investing in talking to us. So again, I really appreciate you making that. And see, this is, before I go to panel, this is the thing, and I'm going to go to Recy first because this ties into what I'm about to say.

You got about, and people need to understand, this ain't about being arrogant, cocky, or bragging, but as Joe Namath said, it ain't bragging when you can do it. It's about 40-plus people you see on all of these networks who are black who came through me. They came through my TV one show, Washington Watch. They came through News One Now. I put them on Tom Joyner. I need people to understand that was deliberate. I was deliberate and intentional in seeking out

black voices that I knew white executives, white producers, white bookers were never going to call. And when I put the word out, I said, I need, I said, I want a show hosted by millennials. I want a, right now, I want a show host who is Gen Z. Because the mistake that I saw when I was in my 20s and 30s is that there were African Americans who had platforms who were not being intentional. They only wanted to be about them. And the problem is they did not create, they did not build an ecosystem. For me and people, there were people who came, I'll never forget 2008, 2000, no, 2012 election. Maybe it was 16. It was 16, it was 16.

And so CNN hired like 6 or 7 people and the brother was like yo bro man do people gonna take all your panelists I was like I'm good I said they can hire every single panelist on my show and I'm gonna go get a whole new crew and then they can go hire

all of them and I'm gonna get a whole new crew cause what that for me was you're expanded the ecosystem. So people with platforms, it doesn't do anything if it's all about you and you don't create spaces. You now then are taking it away. People literally said to me, why are you putting that cussing ass woman Reesey on?

And I'm going to tell her, when I go to Reesey, she's going to get that question. Here's what happened. So Reesey comes on the show and this is Reesey when she comes on. So she's talking like everyone else. I'm looking at her like, I ain't booked your ass to sound like everybody else. I need

you to do you like you sound because that's what do you. So I was like, Risa, let me holler at you. That ain't what I call you to do. And I need the artists to understand, I don't know what Jameera and Bria talk about. I don't text them or email them.

I don't know who they booking because people have to have the freedom to have their conversation. So if y'all get mad, whatever they say, don't call me because I didn't talk to them about it. But Risa, go ahead with your question.

Roland gonna tell that story. It's been five years. But it's true. It's true. Risa was like being very much, I'm on television. I'm here on the rolling show. So therefore, I was like, baby, I need you to do you. She was like, oh, hell, OK. All right then.

But again. Because we just be needing permission to be on. Because there's so many spaces where we're on the leash. And where you learn to code switch for survival. And it takes a space saying no when i say i'm really about unapologetic i really mean that but people will say that and then you act your authentic self and they do what they did to joanne reed and they do what they did to tiffany cross and they do what they did to so many people and so they did to roland right

what they tried to do the roland right what they tried to do the rolling. Right. What they tried to do to Mark Lamont Hill, like they try to do this to us. And so it takes really learning like, OK, this is actually a space where I can be unfiltered. So I hear you. I hear you. Well, thank you, Roland. I mean, Roland Martin unfiltered, Risa Culbertson unfiltered and the other side of change, I'm sure,'s very much unfiltered, but to Roland's lead in, my question is, you know, how are you approaching curating your topics and your guests, knowing that the same people do tend to get past the mic on these topics and really expanding that ecosystem that Roland pointed out and ensuring that not the same people that everybody has seen everywhere are who your audience gets to tap into?

Yeah. Well, first I will say regarding the topics, we really take topics that are in the top, what young people are already discussing on other social media platforms that we know that they're curious about, they're interested in. And then the way we find speakers is we don't find people who talk for a living, right? Like anyone can yap a little bit. We find people who are actually doing the work, meaning they're working in organizations, they're considered activists, they're working for nonprofits,

they're elected officials. And these are young people, so between the ages of millennials and Gen Zers who are actively in the spaces, who can talk about these conversations from a more nuanced way and not just from talking points that they're getting through chat GPT. Yeah, Kurt.

Absolutely. Nola. Well, first of all, I am so happy and so proud of you both. And I wanna ask you more of a personal question, you know, like, so people can like see your personalities and, and, and, you know, y'all do hard hitting stuff, but I mean, like, what, what is the energy like working between the two of y'all? Like, is it symbiotic where y'all just kind of click and vibe

off each other or, you know, like, do, does one do one thing better than the other? Like, I'm just very curious about the working relationship. Which one of y'all don't know nothing about Philadelphia music? Wow, the heavy shade is so quick to come. Wow. And to thought I was here honoring my elders. Just FYI,

his favorite thing to do. So can y'all please answer the question? Look, Nola, listen, I ain't been petted with you in two weeks, so... Listen, listen, to answer your question, I do think it's very symbiotic. Jameerah is my sister. We know that, I mean, on most of these topics,

we're very aligned. It's rare that we're bringing something forward that we strongly disagree on. But we also have unique experiences where it's like, I have almost exclusively been from the outside protesting, and let's dismantle this thing and recreate it and renew it. And Jameer has, I mean, also done that,

but also worked from the inside saying, like, how can we change these systems from the inside? And seeing the power, but also the will to change from that inside and, like, adding but also the will to change from that inside and like adding in that nuance of like, listen, not everybody is our enemy, not everybody is a villain. 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 One, 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 thing 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. And I think that that's important because we can come to the table with the energy and the righteous anger that a lot of young people have, but also the like, but let's channel that into a productive place. So I think that's what works. But also we work so well together that it kind of trades off. There's weeks where I'm like, I know exactly what our next few topics should be. And let me like get us cooking and let's get started. And then there's weeks where Jameer is like, girl, we need to talk about this. And I'm like, OK, great. Like, listen, who should we be bringing up?

So I think that we we learn to like take space, leave space when one of us is like, i'm very passionate about what's coming up um we're also very mindful because we're we both come from activists and advocacy spaces we're also mindful of just like what are our people on the ground feeling like is not being talked about so sometimes it's something that's not really trending but should be is not getting the space that it deserves or is is trending in group chats and side channels and, you know, apps that young people are on, but that like are not being covered in traditional spaces. And so then that becomes really important. But yeah, I love what you said as far as like the people that we bring in are not just figureheads or talking just to talk. We bring people in and a lot of the people

that we have brought on as guests are like, I don't think, I've never done this before. So are you sure it should be me? And we're like, yes, you, that's exactly why. And also it's hard sometimes because I am from the greatest city in the world and, you know, I'm from Philadelphia, the best city in the world, the birthplace of a nation. And, you know, sometimes I have to convey to other people that because of that we have oftentimes the best perspective so but yeah it's it's a feeding off of each other um you know i love it okay all right all right just don't ask her who gamble and huff i know who it is now greg don't ask her who gamble and huff is and what the Philly sound is.

I know what the Philly sound is. Because her ass had to go Google it. It's Will Smith in Fresh Prince. I know what it is now. Greg, go ahead. I ain't even. She going to make me cuss. As an adopted Philadelphian from 48th and Pine who lived there.

Double graduate of Temple University. I must say that there is no Philadelphian who doesn't know the sound of Philadelphia. So now I got to get up in the city. I just want to know, West, North, Mount Airy, were you up Germantown Avenue? Were you down South? Were you where?

What part of Philly are you from? I'm a city of the people. I went to Overbrook High School in West Philly, and I graduated from Temple University. But Philly, yeah, I call all Philly home. Well, when you said Overbrook, then I know that's why you're going to leave with Will Smith, because if you came out to Castle, then I absolutely understand. She Philly, she Philly rolling.

That's just how it works. But first of all, congratulations to both of you, Jameria and Bria. I mean, great show, great dialogue. I'm having a challenge, certainly with my students and with many others, in terms of this question of literacy and reading. We're in a post-literate generation. Given the fact that you all use as a point of entry these very important, salient topics and things that really aren't covered, as you say, in white stream media and things that are coming out of that, this target demographic. Any advice on how we engage younger people around the challenge of deeper study? Once they watch your show, how do we push them to then go on and pursue looking deeper

into these issues on their own? Yeah. I mean, what a part of me wants to say that meeting young people where they are is oftentimes the best way possible. And so finding ways to create content or to share information that is digestible that can pique their interest. So, for instance, a few weeks ago on TikTok, you had a professor who opened up her classroom to a wide range of folks to talk about black history because we saw how black history was being removed from schools across the country. And she had thousands of people online pour in to want to be a part of this class and actually participate. And that led to her then creating content offline where it was a syllabus and books referencing the content she was sharing on her TikTok. Now, not everyone is a TikTok expert, but that being said, I think finding

the spaces where young people are tapping into the topics that they already care about and expanding their knowledge on those topics by then introducing articles and books and even referencing music. were discussed at a period of time by those who were considered cultural leaders. So whether it was rappers or poets or writers, how they saw the world through those lens, I think can really help to bring young people who oftentimes see themselves as creatives to be able to identify with those folks. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think part of meeting young people where they're out, it doesn't need to stay in digital spaces, you know, book clubs and film screenings, but just with content that is culturally relevant and always tying it back to how it affects, you know, like, I think there are some young people for whom they hear the conversation right now around 401ks and social security.

And they're like, I don't even have a savings, let alone a retirement plan. So this doesn't feel relevant to me, but reminding them that their grandparents do the ones who raise them, who are still raising them, who they still depend on for that $20 to get through the week. And it's going to affect their quality of life. That matters so, so much. I think those are the ways that we bridge the divides. But I think when we kind of talk over young people's head and just expect that every topic is going to feel relevant, you're going to have young people who are saying exactly what

the Black Panthers were saying in their time. Like, I can't focus on that. My people are dying. I can't focus on that. I'm hungry. I can't focus on that. I got student loan debts that are going delinquent after I was told that they were being forgiven and my credit score is 10. I can't even talk about home ownership because I can't even get an apartment that's affordable in the city that I work in. So I think we just have to acknowledge that like young people have real issues. It's not that young people are like sitting somewhere and just like in a fairytale land. Young people are dealing with, I mean, they're dealing with the same

problems as adults. They're dealing with the same problem as adults. They just lack the same resources and recourse as many of their, their parents and grandparents generation. Exactly. 1 million percent. So we just got to bring it to where they're at. There's so many great documentaries out there, like Jameer said. Also, just music is a really great connection. I think of what Tupac did for a generation. I think of what Kendrick Lamar is still doing for our generation. And I think that the more that we can make those ties and connections, the more the young

people will be like, oh, yeah, this does matter to me, and I want to stay engaged. All right right then. So folks, here's the deal. There are multiple ways you can check out the other side of change. First of all,

if you go to my iPad, if you go to the app, we have all of the shows listed, including new episodes, praise the Lord, of The Black Table. They're coming. They're coming, bro.

They're coming. He's been saying that. I have been saying bro. They're coming. He's been saying that. I have been saying that. It's true. He's been saying that for four months. So if you go to the app on the side of the chain,

you will see all of the episodes here. Okay? Also, that's on the app. But then also, there are two places if you go to the YouTube channel.

So if you click live, if you go to our YouTube channel and click live, you'll see the episodes here. The first one there was a month ago. You'll see that the debut episode, where is it? It's down here somewhere headed. Not Abolition and

Reform. That was the second one. So if you go, if you just, so two places. So the premiere right there. So if you go to the YouTube channel, you can click live and check it out. So you'll see all of the episodes there on live. And then also you'll see right

there, you'll see the color scheme right there with Bria and Jameera. Oh, you can also click videos. We've also been posting clips from their show on all different social media channels as well. So click that.

Check it out. Spread the word. Let folks know because I don't know. I mean, it's a bunch of people out there talking. I'm not sure if there's another show like that out here that's having the kind of conversations y'all are having. They're not. No. Because as you said, said you know your network is

unfiltered and so we get to be so unfiltered there are some networks that are trying to talk about these topics but they're not doing it in an unfiltered way so it's not going to reach young people and it's accessible you know like we'll be mid-conversation and your mirror will be like actually define that word that you just use let's not talk over people's heads let's not use big words just for the sake of sounding grandiose and fancy and like like you don't need i am fancy though but yes i mean listen we gonna be bougie but like you don't need your degree to listen to this and you will always always this is like a curriculum you always get resources to who you can follow on social media, what books you can read, what articles,

and, like, following the groups who are doing real work on the ground. Like, it's real talk over there. Absolutely. So, folks, please spread the word. The other side of change. We drop it every – where is it Thursday? Thursday. Every Thursday.

Every Thursday. Okay, every Thursday we drop the episode. And so what we do is we stream it in the morning around 11 o'clock and then, of course, after my show as well. So, y'all, be sure to check it out. Spread the word. Jameer, Bria, we do is we stream it in the morning around 11 o'clock, and then, of course, after my show as well. So y'all, be sure to check it out. Spread the word. Jameer, Bria, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Have a good night. Thanks, Nola. Thank you. Let me thank Nola, Greg, and Recy for being on today's show. Great conversation.

First and foremost, Recy, you come here every week and we say your show. When is your show? So for folk who ain't got no clue, when is your show? Jail, my show is on year three on Sirius XM Urban View Channel, 126 Saturdays. It's live from 2 to 4 p.m. You can call in. It's on the same channel as the great Dr. Carr, who's on Urban View Mornings multiple times a week. So, yes, do tune in and call in, too. Okay? All right, Kim. And, Roland, a lot of people call into my show saying that they watch Roland, Martin Unfiltered.

Everybody at the NAN convention was saying that they love us on Roland. So, yes, it's definitely a lot of crossover between my show and the wonderful Roland Martin and Filter Black Star Network audience. Well, it's great. And so somebody was like, Roland, you know, Reese, this is where you got the show. Reese is going to show on SiriusXM. I'm like, good.

I'm like, that's what we need. We have to have more voices on multiple platforms driving the message. That's what's critical. Just like what Greg started doing with Karen. So they do. That's important. Nola's still trying to figure out what she want to do. So I'm still waiting.

I'm still waiting for an adequate, detailed proposal from Nola. You are? Yeah, the initial one that you sent me was not satisfactory. Oh, I see. So your feedback is telepathic. Got it. No, no, I told you that. But see, since I had not been petty in two weeks,

and since you invited me to be petty and shady, I just went ahead and obliged. Of course. Of course. Of course. That door was slightly open, and you just had to come in and push it all the way open. Oh, yes.

I will sling that door open quickly. And, yes, that's what we did. And so the weather is still cold in D.C. and I still have yet to see any gumbo. All right, that's it. So let me... Thanks a lot, folks. I appreciate it. Hey, folks, tomorrow we will not be in studio.

We are packing up. In fact, we're about to go pack up right now. Our gear tomorrow we will be broadcasting live from Martin Street Baptist Church, their fellowship hall in Raleigh, North Carolina. We want to see all of y'all there. Doors open at 5 p.m. We're live at 6 p.m. Eastern. We're having a citywide town hall talking about what is happening with St. Augustine's University.

They are having significant financial issues. They're having, you know, the attorney general is investigating them over a land deal they tried to broker. They have enrollment issues. Students are not on campus. It's just all sorts of drama and we want to give the community, students, faculty, staff, administration, board trustees who refuses to hit us back. I mean, sorry, who refuses to participate. And I'm sorry, that was something you had shown. You need to put that in group me for Carol so I can zoom in here. Whatever, I think I had something from the university. So the thing is, let me be perfectly clear.

We have repeatedly invited the administration of St. Augustine's. We have repeatedly invited the Board of Trustees. They have opted not to be involved. In fact, they asked us to take off their logo off of our graphic. I said no. And we made it clear we're coming. We made it clear we're going to be there. We made it clear that we were going to have this conversation.

I'm real clear. This is not about destroying an HBCU, but this is about being able to share. And you can't ask black people for support for your university. Then if you are unwilling to actually engage to talk about it, there's no other black news platform. And let me tell you that that's like us. Let me tell you something right now. They get there's a lot of people who've done stories on them or the media. This ain't about sitting here knocking anybody out, anything along those lines. So let me read this. I'm a read this now and I'm a read it again tomorrow.

But this is what they sent out. Dear alumni and friends of St. Augustine's University, we extend heartfelt appreciation to each of you for your continued support, advocacy, and belief in St. Augustine's University. In light of the scheduled town hall hosted by the Roland Martin Show on Friday, April 11th in Raleigh, we would like to respectfully clarify that this event is not sponsored by SAU. Neither the Board of Trustees, the University Administration, nor the National Alumni Association president will be in attendance. We fully understand the concerns expressed by many within the SAU family and we remain committed to providing accurate information and meaningful updates at the appropriate time. Right now, our priority is focused on maintaining our accreditation through the SACSCOC arbitration process, securing essential funding to demonstrate our financial sustainability,

supporting our students, especially those on the path to graduation on May 3rd. We appreciate your enduring love for our university. We ask for the continued unity, patience, and positive support as we take these critical steps forward. This is a defining time in SAU's history, and with your strength beside us, we will continue to fight for our legacy, our mission, and our future. Thank you for believing in SAU. With Falcon Pride, Dr. Marcus H. Burgess, Interim President, St. Augustine's University.

So that's what they sent us. I'll wait until tomorrow to respond to that post. I got a few things to say about that post. I got a few things to say about that post, but you hear that tomorrow. We'll be live at 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern. Again, we're going to be there at Martin Street Baptist Church. This is the address, Fellowship Hall, East Martin Street in Raleigh.

Again, doors open at 5 p.m. We want to pack the house out because when they say we want positive support, our support is positive but is also conditional on transparency and truth. So that's why we're going. That's why it's important for us to shed light on what's happening. Folks, support the work that we do by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. If you want to support us via Cash App, the QR code is right there. If you're listening, go to BlackstarNetwork.com.

Click the Cash App button to continue to contribute. Checks and money orders, make it out to Roland Martin Unfiltered. Not Roland Martin, not Uncle Roro, not Unfiltered, not Blackstar Network. Please make your checks and money orders out to roland martin unfiltered p.o box 57196 washington dc 20037-0196 paypal is r martin unfiltered bin mo is rm unfiltered zale roland at roland s martin.com roland at roland martin unfiltered.com be sure of course download the black star network Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung, Smart TV. You can also, of course, get my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, available at bookstores nationwide. Also, folks, do me a favor.

We are, our numbers are building. We're moving close to 2 million. So do me a favor. We're at right now 1,788,156 subscribers. We're on our way to 2 million. If you are not a subscriber to our YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button. Y'all, it ain't that hard. Just simply go to YouTube.com forward slash Rilliness Martin.

Type my name in the YouTube search box. It comes right up. We want to hit 2 million subscribers. Share our videos. Let folks know what's going on. You see what we've done. This has just been, in the past week, the kind of content that we have. What we do here, nobody else is doing, y'all.

Nobody else in black-owned media. So we absolutely are speaking truth to power every single day and covering a wide variety of topics that you're interested in. And so again, youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. Get our gear. If you want to get our merchandise, we got our new shirt. I told y'all we saw that. We saw that quote from Anthony Scaramucci. I loved it too much. And that new shirt says MAGA chose between woke or broke. They chose broke. So that's our new shirt. Get the other shirt. Hashtag we to tell you, FAFO2025. Also, don't blame me. I voted for the black woman. Get those shirts at rolandmartin.creator-spring.com. The Cura code is there as well. Let's see here.

Also, download the app Fanbase. Of course, you get that app. We want to get a million subscribers, a million followers. Also, you want to invest. $11.4 million has been raised. Another commercial we have is $8.6 million. That was like a month ago. It's now up to $11.4 million. The goal is $17 million. Go to startengine.com, startengine.com forward slash fan base, startengine.com forward slash fan base. And do not forget, folks, we want to support that documentary for Black Star Network.

So if you go to blackvotersmatterfund.org, you can also go to their Capacity Building Institute. You can donate. This is on ActBlue as well, their target goal. Matter of fact,

they had $750 that was raised. They just launched this. They're up to $1,655. You see that number increasing. And so we want to help them hit their goal of $200,000. They want to finish the production of this documentary. And then they want to then distribute it all across the country so people can see

the amazing work that they've been doing. And so that's where you can check it out or go to their YouTube channel as well. Again, I will see you guys tomorrow. I'm leaving out in the morning, flying there. Got lots of media that we're doing. And so we're going to be on the road, taking Roller Mark Unfiltered on the road, broadcasting tomorrow in Raleigh, North Carolina,

talking about what's happening at St. Augustine University. Nope, wrong. There we go. Thank you very much. So we're going to see you guys at Martin Street Baptist Church tomorrow. Until then. Out!

Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punch! A real revolutionary 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? This is an iHeart Podcast.