#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Jackson Water Crisis, $325M lawsuit against AT&T, BLM's Future, Blacks & Racism, Jamarion Robinson

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

9.1.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Jackson Water Crisis, $325M lawsuit against AT&T, BLM's Future, Blacks & Racism, Jamarion Robinson The water crisis in Mississippi's state capitol continues. Tonight, Roland talks to Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson, to find out how much longer the city will be with little to no water.   Jamarion Robinson was shot at least 59 times by two Georgia officers in 2016. His mother's initial lawsuit got thrown out. But a federal appeals court ruled a lawsuit against the officers who killed him could move forward because sovereign immunity did not extend to shooting an unconscious suspect. Jamarion's mother and her attorney will give us an update.  AT&T gets hit with a $325 million lawsuit by a Georgia businessman who accuses the media company of stealing his business plan. We'll talk to the two black men who are taking on AT&T. Black Lives Matter Grassroots is looking toward the future. I'll be speaking with one of the organization's leaders who is reclaiming the name and the Black Lives Matter mission.  How much progress have we made when it comes to reducing racism? The Pew Research Center just released a new study, and many Black Americans believe key U.S. institutions need rebuilding to ensure fair treatment. We'll break that down.  And President Joe Biden will be speaking primetime tonight to discuss the "battle for the soul of the nation." Support RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms 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. No punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Black power. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. I thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. I love y'all. 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 scape. You can't be black on media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Thank you. removal Also um Looking for breaking away from the black lives matter. And that's where we're playing. What this all means. Also, I'm a professor at the Research Center at the School of American Studies. And I've been to American universities

and many of their ancestors were not that particular school. President Joe Biden tonight, he was talking about a red-needle democracy. It's time to bring the funk on Roland Martin's culture. Thanks for your time, work. Thank you. Whatever the piss, he's on it Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling, best believe he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics

With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling, yeah, with Uncle Roro, yo. Yeah, yeah, it's rolling, Martin, yeah. Yeah, yeah, rolling with rolling now. Yeah, he's broke, he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's rolling, Martin, now. Roland Martin. Martin. Jamarion Robinson was shot 59 times in 2016 by U.S. Marshals. The initial lawsuit filed by his mother was thrown out.

Now, the appeals court has now said that this can move forward. So the immunity did not extend to the shooting an unconscious suspect. Monteria Robinson and her attorney, Mario Williams, join us now from Atlanta. Glad to have both of you on the show. Explain to us, Mario, exactly what actually happened here. So the first one was thrown out, but now the appeals court said that immunity does not apply to these officers? Yeah, Roland. So in short terms, we were at it in federal court. We filed in district court. I took over the case after a couple of lawyers had been on the case.

We filed what they call summary judgment. The district court judge, who is now actually the chief judge of the district court in Northern District, Georgia, he ruled against us. He said that qualified immunity applied, that there was no tribal issue on constitutional violation. We appealed to the 11th Circuit. On Monday, the 11th Circuit reversed the district court, saying that qualified immunity does not apply and that they should be and they will actually stand a jury trial. This is great news and this is one of the issues that we have often talked about how qualified immunity is to protect police officers. With that being said, this is a great thing.

There we go. Actually, Ms. Robinson, you can start over because we couldn't hear you. Now go ahead. Okay, sure. As you were saying, yes, I'm overjoyed. I'm ecstatic about the ruling. And I always say that a lie never wins. But this case, with this verdict, it does set precedents,

which takes away officers' qualified immunity, you know, which violates a person's Fourth Amendment right. And so I'm grateful and overjoyed that the ruling is now in my favor. Mario, again, this story here was shocking, shot 59 times. And again, it just speaks to the fundamental issue that we have in this country where law enforcement, they operate with impunity. And for the most part, they get away with it. I'll tell you what, Roland, people need to understand the facts of this case. Like, so here's this, unfortunately, Jamarian was suffering from mental illness.

The police were called out there to come get him and help him. They took an entire SWAT team out there. He was up at the top of a landing, about 13 stairs. They were downstairs. They shot at him over about 100 times. About 57 bullets penetrated his body. But here's the issue with the video. After he was lying on the ground at the top landing, they threw a flashbang up there. And so they claimed in an incident report and a supplemental use of force report that once the flashbang went off, he wasn't moving, nothing, and they had the audacity to say they went up

and dragged his body downstairs and tried to save his life. The video that you have on the screen came out. We hear the flashbang, but then we hear rapid gunfire about 20 seconds into the flashbang. The U.S. government, GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigations, reopened the situation, said, hey, look, man, are you sure you didn't fire a gunfire after the flashbang? We know you said that he was lying there motionless. Are you sure? No, no, we didn't do it. Well, the district court said, well, I'm going to believe the officers, basically, just what you said. Even though we hear the gunfire, even though we see the officers

outside the door being startled and looking back in the home, what the 11th Circuit said, absolutely not. There is gunfire after the flashbang. A reasonable jury could believe you executed this young man. And so you're going to not have qualified immunity and you're going to stand trial on this issue. And for that, we're very grateful. That is, again, what is often the case, a lot of parents, they pretty much settle for a settlement as opposed to moving this thing forward. Y'all have not given up and pursued justice. Is that directly to what I mean? No, we have not given up.

And actually, to be honest, I've been beating the pavement aggressively for the past six years. And Mario can tell you that I don't take, you know, you know, no as an answer. You know, if I don't, and I'm not sure too, if you're also aware about earlier part of this month, Roland, we did find out that one of the officers was still employed as a SWAT trainer here in Atlanta, Georgia. So that's another thing that I had to tackle also too this month. And this month was my son's anniversary, August the 5th, 2016, was the date of his death. So, yes, I'm not playing with them.

Yes, I've been kicking and knocking down doors. And now we're here come next week, September the 6th, we'll be in federal court here in Atlanta, the Richard B. Russell building for hearing where the officers have filed a motion to have their case heard in federal court. So that's where we are right now as of today. And Mario, do you expect the federal government to appeal this decision? Well, you know, the process at this point is what they have to do actually, because it was a published opinion, and what that means is it set the law for Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. They would have to ask for the entire 11th Circuit to reconsider this decision, which is highly unlikely. They might do it. They have 45 days to do it because of the government. Normally, it's a shorter amount of time. But, Roe, I do want to touch on something

for people to understand exactly what Ms. Robinson just said. These officers have been indicted. There's a hearing on their criminal charges next week. So you have a situation where officers were indicted in a criminal case on multiple charges, including a violation of oath of office. You can see the indictment. Yeah, there it is. And the district court still denied Ms. Robinson a jury trial. And it took us to go to the 11th Circuit to get a jury trial on these officers. And it is really sad that indicted officers in the United States of America, having murdered a young man just ruthlessly, would still be training SWAT officers on firearm use. I mean, think about that now. Ms. Robinson found out about it, went out there and boycotted. And suddenly the government officials in that county said, OK, well, we're going to pull him off that training site. But this man was

indicted after murdering somebody, and he's still getting paid and training off of SWAT officers, including firearm use. And I would like to add to that, as Mr. Williams stated, these officers were indicted last year, October 26, 21, on 15 counts. It was Eric Hines, Christopher Hustons, and Daniel Dole. And Daniel Dole is the person who died in 2020. But I would like for your listeners to know the 15 counts. So they were, they were indicted on 15 counts, which was two counts of felony murder, burglary, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, two counts of false statements, six counts of violation of oath by public officer and obstruction of law enforcement. And you got to think about, you know, we pay their taxes. Do me and my family want our tax money

going to corrupt officers? No, we do not. Absolutely. Well, we certainly will be watching this case. It's one of the new cases that we often cover that details the kind of conduct that police officers would certainly appreciate it. Ms. Robinson, as well as Mark Williams, thanks a lot. Thank you. Talk certainly appreciate it. Ms. Robinson, as well as Mark Williams. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Indeed, indeed. I'm going to go to my panel now.

Talk a little bit further about this. Recy Colbert, Black Women Views, Dr. Greg Carr, Department of African American Studies at Howard University, and we'll get to it by Eric Savage, founder of the Reframe Brain. Recy, this is precisely why we were fighting for the George Floyd Justice Act. It was and looked at by Eric Savage, founder of the Reframe Brain. Recy, this is precisely why we were fighting for the George Floyd Justice Act.

It was, frankly, the reason it's not law is because of Senator Tim Scott, his failures in terms of moving this bill forward, addressing the issue of qualified immunity. Right. I mean, qualified immunity gives people the right to basically execute citizens without any kind of personal civil liability. I mean, these people are looking at jail time. Hopefully they will get convicted of murder. But the reality is that you got to hit them in their pocketbooks for them to really be deterred from this kind of behavior, because we know that a lot of times these cops do get off of their charges. There's a very high bar to clear in terms of intent for police officers who kill citizens like Jamarion. So, I mean, my heart is with the family. I appreciate how his mother is relentlessly and

tirelessly fighting for justice for her son and keeping her foot on these people's necks, because it is absolutely unconscionable that a person facing murder charges is still training other people to do the very thing that landed his ass a murder charge in the first place. That is absolutely crazy. And it just goes to show that this is not, you know, something that is against the policy. It's actually what they intend to continue to do to black citizens. We see this over and over and over again, Greg, where unfortunately the law is often far too much in favor of police. And the fact that they actually were indicted, but they couldn't go forward with a jury trial,

what the hell is the whole point of being indicted? Well, I mean, as we know, the law works in their favor. And I agree with you, Recy, 100 percent. Kudos to Ms. Robinson. That is a profile. She's giving us a profile on what has to be done at the point of contact. This was an execution. These patirolers were doing what they are trained to do. Of course they were training others, because that's what they're trained to do. You know, it's qualified immunity, technically, but really what it is is qualified impunity. It's qualified impunity. There is an attitude. Len Graham got slapped around today by a federal judge and said he must testify.

He said, in Georgia, in the voting rights case, he said, well, you know, no, I'm a high ranking government official. What the hell is that? You know, that's impunity. In other words, you're acting with impunity. In Florida, one of Trump's appointees is saying that she may allow a special master to come in and look at these documents that were taken. He wants her to decide whether or not to extend some form of executive privilege over these documents. The Department of Justice is saying, wait, no, that is unprecedented for a judge to interfere. Well, guess what? He appointed her to the bench, and he's acting with impunity. These cops are acting the way that this culture trains white people to act when it comes to the law applying to them. The law doesn't apply to me when it comes to black people. The law doesn't apply to me at all if I can get to a certain rank.

So these, you know, again, finally, I agree with you, Reesey. Mrs. Robinson, what she is showing us is how, as we continue to fight to make Senator Tim Mission Accomplished Scott irrelevant and take Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema with you. While we're working on that end, she, having found out that they were still training officers, she didn't call anybody. She didn't go and approach. She went out there. Guess what?

Enough people do that, and this will end. So, yeah, all support for her, and I'm grateful to you for having that conversation with her and her lawyer, because that's what we need to see more of. And, and I'm grateful to you for having that conversation with her and her lawyer, because that's what we need to see more of. And, and this is also why we talk about voting. And again, people, I love these people who keep saying, oh, man, y'all keep beating that dead horse.

Y'all ain't got but a whole bunch of Democratic shields, and all you do is suck up the Democratic Party. Folks, who appoints federal judges? The party in power. Who confirms or declines federal judges? The party that controls the United States Senate. Y'all can sit here, and y'all can call me and call Recy and call Greg and call Erica and call anybody, Democratic Shield, all you want to.

But if you have a lot of people say, ah, man, it's the performance, bye-bye, but with black women and other things, that shit don't mean nothing. It has no impact on my life. Do you now understand the role of federal judges? Y'all, all this stuff is linked. And as long as we continue to give Republicans power over federal judges, these are all lifetime appointments. You better wake up, pay attention.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can call me whatever the hell you want to call me. I call myself a problem solver. And the bottom line is the problem that we have is we have near autonomous, near all white prosecutors. We have almost all white male prosecutors, the same when it comes to judges. And so if you want to transform the way that black people are treated in this country and any measure of justice we can get from the so-called justice system, you have to exercise your power. And a lot of people feel good when they abdicate their power. They feel like that gives them some sort of moral authority over those like us who advocate for the slog and the slow work it is. And it would be

faster if we didn't have so many people trying to get people to not vote of actually transforming the system. So, you know, whatever. That's irrelevant. The bottom line is that we have an opportunity in this election, as we do with every election, to continue the work of making sure that Democrats can do more to change the way that this system works for us. We've seen a lot of changes in a lot of areas. If we get a filibuster proof, whether that means eliminating the filibuster or gaining more seats, we're not going to get 60 seats. But if we gain more seats to make Manchin and Sinema irrelevant, we can see the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act pass if we hold on to the House. And when we talk about the prosecutors, the prosecutors in Fulton County, when you talk about sometimes, like in the Ahmaud Arbery case, where the Attorney

General came in and they appointed a special prosecutor there, that's also coming from Republican leadership. So we have to leave no stone unturned. Republicans leave no stone unturned from school boards to election boards to judges to everything running down the gamut. So we have to have that same energy. And if you're not with that, then go on the hill over there and shut the hill up and let the rest of us do the work that we need to do to continue to try to move this country forward. That's right. Indeed, indeed. Got to go to the break, folks. A lot of stuff, what we're covering, AT&T lawsuit filed by three Black men. We'll talk to the Mitch, you too, by then.

Talk to the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. We're also going to talk about, and I'm very, very excited, two million opportunities on political campaigns this year. Oh, y'all know what they're offering Black-owned media is a big deal. We'll break that thing. You're rolling my gun and go to the Black strategy. When we invest in ourselves,

our glow, our vision, our vibe, we all shine. Our glow. Our vision. Our vibe. We all shine. Together, we are Black Beyond Measure. Can you believe the nerve of these Republicans? They only want to block progress for our community. They talk about cutting Medicare and Social Security. They played politics with Veterans Health Care. They voted against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and

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What's up? I'm Lonnie Wells, and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks. The Georgia businessman was part of AT&T's multi-billion dollar initiative to ensure that more African-Americans became suppliers

working with the company. Instead of that happening, they contend the media company refused to work with the company and stole their business plan. Joining me now from Atlanta is Jerome Epperson. He's the president of EDN Communications and Technology. And from Dallas, Texas, Derek Scott, a black AT&T executive, who said he's a victim of ongoing intimidation tactics and other criminal behavior at AT&T. Glad to have both of you here.

So first and foremost, in terms of what is the basic allegation you're making against AT&T? Well, Roland, first of all, thank you for having us on your show today. And, you know, when we look at technology in our country and bridging the digital divide, you know, from the 9-11 Commission, the U.S. Department of Commerce made a decision to put out an RFP to make sure that never again in this country first responders would ever have to go without communicating. And from that, the Department of Commerce birthed the FirstNet Authority. AT&T won that $9 billion lawsuit and 20-year, $47 billion initiative. EDM Communication, my company's communication and process as being the first black FirstNet-authorized dealer, was to ensure that this technology reached our community and bridged

the digital divide in black community and black law enforcement. And not only did we set out to do that and win every month for an eight-month time period, and I want you to understand and the listeners to understand that this contract only lasted for eight months before it was terminated for convenience. But for that eight-month time period, we were first and second every month in the company putting this technology in black law enforcement with organizations like the City of Dallas, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, Houston. Even when the NFL came to Atlanta, we put over 500 devices for security inside of the NFL to ensure that this technology worked. And all of a sudden, one day I wake up and get with over $25 million in sales for it to an email that says,

you know what? You're growing too big. Your contract is terminated for convenience. And the gentleman that's on the phone with us, Derek Scott, was my AT&T manager who said differently. And I'll let him tell you what happened to him once he began to refute that terrible decision that they made. Derek? I appreciate that. And thanks again for the time today. I think Jerome's absolutely right. This was a nine-month process where Jerome and I didn't know each other before this time and point, and they put us together. And when they did, we started to do exactly what we were asked to do was my job and Jerome to do his job. Once that began to happen, I started to see some anomalies

inside of AT&T that made me question, was this something that was across the board for all people that were in this program and partners in this channel, or was this just specific for the Black entrepreneur that was into this organization? As I dug deeper and started asking questions, that's exactly what I found. So once I found that, I started asking the questions if this is going to be something that's for everyone, or are we treating them differently? Once I started exposing that, there became the issues of the nine months of complete hell for myself individually inside AT&T as an AT&T employee and for Jerome outside. So to answer your question specifically, I'm specifically in a lawsuit with

AT&T for retaliation and for racial discrimination, or for discrimination discrimination. So those are the two things, from my perspective, inside of AT&T that led to this nine-month to one-year retaliation and discrimination lawsuit. Wow. And so where does the suit stand, first of all, and has there been a response, Jerome, from AT&T? Well, no, they haven't responded. We've had to sue them over and over again. You know, Roland, I was the nation's first black Denny's franchise owner. You know, when the NAACP, with the same Department of Commerce, when NAACP settled a fair share agreement with Denny's and found them guilty of discrimination, this is probably larger and bigger than that particular point. And from that point,

I became the nation's first black Denny's franchise owner. And when it comes to supplier development, we begin to put together these different processes to ensure that black people are part of contracts with companies like AT&T, AGO Resources, Home Depot, and companies that my company has helped grow and build. I've been with AT&T for 16 years, helping grow their minority and diverse force. And for them to do this to me, and then for Derek to mention it and retaliate against him at the same time, our goal is to ensure that, number one, this happens to no one else, but also to help everyone understand that every month they're making millions of dollars for technology that we put in black communities and black law enforcement. And we're simply out

of that. And even worse than that, Roland, to go back and to, with organizations like the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement and other relationships that I brought into the AT&T world, and to begin to take my name and my company and destroy my character and my name is even as painful. Because we invest in our community. Just 30 days ago with Butler Street YMCA, I'm sure you're familiar with the historic Butler Street YMCA area. We just launched a Good Trouble John Lewis Memorial Park. And those are the kind of things that companies and black businesses like myself invest in, invest back in our community. So when these things happen, you don't just destroy my company or take from me, you take from the communities, the people and the things that we invest in, you know, just like, you know, companies and different and other small businesses that we support and bring in as sub-suppliers under us. So this is a big thing as it relates to AT&T. And what are they doing

about it? Nothing. We've had to sue them for it. We're in court now. They fought to try to move this case to Dallas. We moved it back to Atlanta. And so we're here in court in Atlanta trying to get me paid. I mean, one thing to get rid of my contract, Roland, but to not pay me and to just say, you've got $25 million in sales force over that. You've got an 85% success ratio. You took me to the Masters because I'm this great, you know, employee of yours. You put me and my wife on a free trip, gave us free money as one of the top performers in your company. And when it got time for you to pay me the money that you owe me, you get rid of me for a word called convenience. We just can't let that happen to a company like that. You know, the

nation's number one telecom. This reminds me of, first of all, there are several things it reminds me of. I think back to, that was Willie Gary representing some brothers who came up with the idea for a sports complex in Florida. They successfully sued Disney, and they won that lawsuit. And when I think about it, look, when I was just talking about going on a break, you know, we got, my company got a call today from a firm that's handling the advertising for several political campaigns. And what they put on the table is an abomination. And I'm not going to name the campaigns yet.

I'm not going to put the amount out there yet. But let me just say, let me just say, I damn near get paid that for to give a speech. Wow. And the thing that's interesting to me is, and I keep saying this to people, if you want to talk about why we are in the condition that we are in, it's because black companies are not allowed to be able to build capacity, be able to grow. We have the numbers. We can show how great we do. Joe Anthony, when he had to

sue DDB Worldwide, said they got a $4 billion media contract from the U.S. Army. He said they helped get it, but then once they got the contract, kicked them to the curb. So then he sued them. And so we see this. And what we're seeing is that, you know, in your case, your executive there, we were frozen out on corporate America for quite some time. But even when we're talking about building our businesses, this is what happens when we even launch businesses. Then they starve us and they enforce us to be able to take pennies on the dollar or refuse to pay us at all. You're exactly right, Roland. And not only that, can you imagine being a poster child? You know, AT&T has me all over the country. We're going to spend three billion dollars, listen to this word, with black suppliers by 2020. And I'm in periodicals across the country and all of that. And within that same year, before they announced

that they spent over $3 billion, they didn't announce that they took my money and terminated my contract for convenience. Look at what happened to Byron Allen. The same thing with AT&T when they bought CNN and Time Warner. They shut Byron out. They just simply took his programs off. What did Byron have to do? He was awarded $50 million and then sued Comcast for over a billion, and that one was settled. We have to speak up. Because if we as business owners will begin to push, just like we did Denny's. Look at the success with Denny's.

Denny's was $27 a share until black people got on Roland Martin's show and said, we're not going to take it. And guess what happened? Those shares went down to $0.07 a share, and I became the nation's first black Denny's franchise owner. It helped other organizations get that. We've got to do the same thing with AT&T and its FirstNet authority, because FirstNet is owned by the U.S. Department of Commerce. This is a Biden administration, and there's a bill that Congresswoman Demings is authoring right now for the renewal of this contract. We need to just call

Congresswoman Demings and our congressional black caucus leaders and say, do not approve this next bill, approve FirstNet again until there is inclusion for black suppliers inside of that. And we need to talk about the dark side of diversity, equity, inclusion. We can't leave the black out of diversity, equity, inclusion, because that's another thing that we're faced with white women, all those different things, nothing against that Roland, but it's just what we face face to face all the time. And then you give us these contracts, you take us from us and we've got all these employees and everyone else that we're embarrassed and we're out here in the relationships because you can take it and no one says anything. Not on my part. I'm going to say this. Don't get me started. DEI is totally BS for me.

It is. Now, Derek, you say you're being targeted. So are you a part of Jerome's lawsuit, or do you have another claim against AT&T? I have a separate claim. So as much as we're talking about outside, it's happening inside as well. The shackles are on inside as well as outside. So I'll give you a few examples of what they've done to me since I've met Jerome and since I've started asking these questions. They've done things like put me on a performance improvement plan, even though I made 110% plan that year of 2018 at that point in time, yeah, 2018, with five of my co-peers of seven that were under 70%

had absolutely zero retaliation against them whatsoever and should have been put on a performance improvement plan. What they did in the opposite is help them get through that point. So that happened through the end of 2018 in conjunction with what they were doing to Jerome. They purposely spent time taking my travel away from me, making me do extra work. I spent an extra 40 to 50 hours a week just explaining my daily job on top of doing my job. And I still performed at that job. And what did they do the following year when it was time for a review time? They gave me a 0% raise out of the 200 plus thousand employees that work for AT&T.

Everyone is required by their own standards to have a performance review every year at a time frame by February and closed out by March and April time frame. They did not do mine at all. I had to end up going to them four or five different times, filing multiple claims to get them to even open my annual review. When my annual review was finally done, it was July. And what they did in that annual review is they let the manager that put me on the performance plan that should have never happened put negative performance on my review that's still there today. They have taken and ruined my reputation. They've ruined my career.

They've ruined my success model. They've ruined my outside reputation within my reputation. They've ruined my career. They've ruined my success model. They've ruined my outside reputation within my company. They've taken money from me, and they continue to do so. And the people that are doing this are still in place. This is a systemic problem within the company that continues to happen. And until we do something about it and say something about it and stop these type of oppressions, it will continue to happen. Now, Roland, if you can take this into perspective, this is a young brother here that fought for me. I had no idea

that he filed an EEOC complaint about how they were treating me differently. I had no idea that when they came after him, he had to file a second EEOC complaint for retaliation. This is unbeknownst to me. I'm thinking they're attacking me, but this young man was in position to be an AT&T officer, you know, and they gave him to me because they said, well, we think Jerome can work better with a black manager. Okay. I did. We were successful at what we were doing. We're number one into the company every month. We're beating companies like Panasonic, Dell. Nobody could compete with us because it's true that if we come together as a community and begin to do business with one another, it was law enforcement. We didn't just deploy Department of Juvenile Justice, which was the first net deployment and the largest. We put AT&T University in there.

We went in here and made sure those kids got—we started Kids That Code, Hackathon, you know, app. We invested into the future of that. They've got years of their partnerships with their own family and so forth and bring them up in the system. But the moment that we, they sent a letter, an email to the city of Dallas saying that, and I'm in the middle of getting paid, Roland, $1.8 million worth of city of Dallas and more. I'm in the middle of getting my first checks on that. They shut it all off and then told the City of Dallas that they don't work with me anymore. The City of Dallas sent an email to them and said, if EDN Communications is not a

part of this deployment, we are not deploying. You know, we hired, you know, the chief of police in the City of Dallas at that time, Chief Renee Hall, had a youth organization. We brought those young mentees from her youth organization. Not only did we teach them technology and bring them into this cutting-edge technology for law enforcement all over the country, all over America, we made sure that when they graduated, if they wanted to get in there, they could get jobs, they could get hired. You're not just terminating me. You're not just getting rid of my company, taking my money, but you're also taking the future of what I stand for and bridging the gap for the digital divide in Black communities. And I can't sleep on that role. And I mean, it hurts me that Derek,

who is in the process of being an officer inside the company, just because he stood up for me, he is now being blackballed and retaliated and trying to force him out just because he stood up for me. He is now being blackballed and retaliated and trying to force him out just because he made the right decision. And we don't even want to have a conversation with the people that they shut down and couldn't even call me, Roland, because this was going on. All right, gentlemen, certainly keep us abreast of what happens with both of your cases. Thanks a lot. We absolutely do. Thank you, Roland. I want to bring my panel back, Erica, Greg, and Recy.

And, Greg, I'll start with you on this one. It's amazing to me, and I post this all the time. I can talk about some bullshit. I can post some bullshit on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And all of a sudden, folk would respond like crazy. And I posted something the other day. I forgot what it was. And I actually, oh, I know what it was.

Folk were talking about, they were talking about Nick Cannon and his children. And I said, well, Nick had 10, Eddie Murphy got 10. And all these folks responded, and what was a trip was, it may have had 5, 6, 700 comments. And I said, you know what, that's real interesting. Because when I post about us not getting access to billions, it's 7, 8, 10. And what I keep saying to black folks, if we are not following the money, that's why we have this segment called Where's Our Money? This is why we are in the situation we're in right now. This is why we are hoping for white philanthropy to give to our HBCUs. This is why our black civil rights organizations are not funded by us.

They're funded by corporate America. This is why they can't be aggressive in going after corporate America in cases like this, because that's who's actually funding them. And so if folk don't understand, if you talking about America and you ain't talking about the money, you ain't talking about America. Roland, I tell you brother, I don't have a good answer. I mean, the capitalist system we live in

is not defined by countries. It's defined by corporations. And these interlocking international corporations that continue to oppress people globally. Now, how that plays out locally is readily apparent. I mean, this lawsuit, you know, having read the complaint, it isn't surprising, it isn't stunning, but it is, I think, a reminder to those of us who can cut through all of this noise to pay attention. It is a reminder of how power works. You're absolutely right.

I mean, to read the complaint and understand that Brother Edmondson avers that AT&T didn't even know what noble was, didn't realize that black law enforcement officials through cities like Dallas and Atlanta control over 50 percent of first responder budgets. And so when AT&T figured out that he had better in than they did, and in a complaint he aversed that his sales force outsold all of AT&T's Lily White sales force, they basically decided to cut his throat. I mean, you talk about a move that we should be up in arms about. It was remarkable to see how these white boys just decided, hell no. And so for Dallas to respond as it did, for him to get the venue, continue to be in Atlanta, you know, I can imagine Jerry Jones picking up the phone, talking to his golf buddies at AT&T and saying, we're going to get this N-word out to paint. I don't give a damn what you will.

And then meanwhile, here we are paying our monthly bills to AT&T, worried about how many kids my friend Nick Cannon has, and we can't get grabbed by the lapels and understand that until we can pull together the one power we do have, if we will actualize it, which is numbers of people, meaning we have to not only support Black news media, we have to listen to what's being said and then think for ourselves. I really don't see a future for the American Negro Roman. I really don't because we're going to be victims.

And Erica, this is when we talk. I was telling someone this earlier. In Dr. King's book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, he said that there are four institutions that are prime position to liberate Black America. He said the Negro church, the Negro press, Negro fraternities and sororities, and Negro professional and business organizations.

And what he said specifically, and the reason I focus on this, obviously because it's media, I focus on this because what he said is that the Negro press cannot fall for the conservative and must maintain its militancy. That's right. Then he talked about professional organizations and fraternities and sororities. What he's talking about, this is the collective mass of black people where you can use your power and your leverage to be able to make a series of demands. And so if all of a sudden, that's what Operation Breadbasket was about. That's what Reverend Leon Sullivan was doing in Philadelphia, who introduced that concept to Dr. King, who adopted it as Operation Breadbasket.

There were plans to create Operation Breadbasket chapters across the country, separate from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As Coretta Scott King said, they killed my Martin when he started talking about the money. And so what I am trying to get these hard-headed black folks today who keep saying,

man, you out here begging a white man for money. Well, fool, you go, what do the robbers say? Why you rob banks? Because that's where the money's at. So part of our deal is we've got to have our institutions,

our black churches, fraternities and sororities, business professional organizations, and black media align asking a question. One check. Iities, business, professional organizations, and black media, a line asking a question. What a check. I know, look, reparation folk, you trying to get the political people to do that. I'm talking about the money that exists right now.

And if we are so fixated, Erica, on bullshit, on housewives, on comedic shows, on laughing and dancing, and how many kids somebody have or whatever, then they sitting here going to the bank cashing checks, and then we still sitting here broke as hell, wondering why we can't afford to build our communities.

And the other thing, you know, a few points, which you made there, when we talk about pillars, the first one that you named, Black folks, the Black church, we are the most philanthropic group in this country. So that's off the top, period. That's where people take their coins, to the church. And we are the most giving, not even talking about the extra tipping that we do to kind of add in the notion that Black people don't tip, which is a complete and utter lie. But then that makes me think about, too, when you talk about those four specific institutions, about the Chamber of Commerce. Now, they're supposed to represent all businesses within a community, but we know that that's

another arm of Republican right-wing ideology and ways to get people riled up and to communicate to those folks that are in Congress. They do it all day, every day. They have an institution whereby members do pay a fee to be a part of the chamber at different levels, and then they communicate their list of demands to their legislators, both at the state level and at the congressional level. So listen, I think, you know, it's a few things we can do housewives, and we can also be about our business at the same time. But we have to do something that I've heard Recy and Greg talk about earlier.

We have to keep our foot on the gas. And I think that we can do that with a real focus, with an understanding that this is something that happens in elections with Republicans all the time. There's always foolishness that we see on their side. But one thing that we know that they have in common is that Republicans lean heavily authoritarian, but they all sing off of one sheet of music. So if we can get people to understand that the policies that are going to help progress us and move us forward and get us to a place where we are able to call our own shots are not with the party that literally wants to see us dead. And that lies heavily within the Republican Party, the chamber and other entities that really are called to make sure that their list of demands are made known and that that legislation and policy does pass through.

See, the reason some people get mad at me, Recy, when I bring up the Housewives is not that it's because people watch. I know you do. I know you watch it. But here's the point that I keep making. It's the fact that we literally watch more than 50 hours of TV per week. So, and we are watching those shows on non-Black networks, but we get mad if a Black network put the same show on, saying that degrades our people, but we still watch the networks. I'm trying to deal with the money. My next guest is the Massachusetts. Why are they in the condition they're in is also the money.

When the white folks left, I'm not with them. When we are deprived of contracts, then guess what? You can't get the money. When we're deprived of city contracts and county contracts and state contracts and federal contracts and corporate contracts and school board contracts, then you literally have no economic infrastructure. So you are left to beg white folks for donations. I dare say this, and this is the thing that I go back to Martin Depp's book on Operation Red Basket. MLK, they couldn't pay their bills with SCLC. They go to Chicago, and he tells Reverend Jackson, let's go visit these black banks who we helped. Reverend Jackson said, let's swing by this house first.

He said, Jesse, I ain't got time for that. He said, Martin, trust me. They go by the house. A group of black businessmen are waiting. They hand out the king of envelope that handled the payroll for the SCLC for the next three months. Now, the king an envelope that handled the payroll for the SCLC for the next three months. Now, the king started crying. He said, this is the first time in our experience this has actually happened. I keep saying to our civil rights groups, if y'all are fighting a good fight on

behalf of Black businesses, you're not going to need a $500,000 corporate donation because somebody Black could give you a million. But that only happens when you free up the contracts. Right. I mean, you know, this story is so layered in terms of the theft of Black labor, in terms of the theft of Black intellectual property, in terms of the theft of Black connections. And we know that it's that much harder for black businesses to even cultivate these kind of networks. And the fact that they're doing that, that this particular company, this small black business, was doing it with taking advantage of networks that are often neglected, like the black police forces or police unions that he was building these relationships with. You know, this is what happens when it comes to larger bullying monopolies like AT&T.

And so first I want to start off by saying I applaud him. I've said it on the show many times. Black people be more litigious, okay? Because even if you don't, even if it don't go to trial, you can maybe get a settlement out of the situation. But then I also want to talk about... But they don't have lawyers. Right. Right. But I also want to talk about the black manager, because this is another thing that we see time and time again last week

on your show. You know, one of the topics last Thursday was black doctors being dismissed at disproportionately higher rates. And we know that across corporate America and when black people are in business, the number one way they try to get at you when it comes to shushing or quieting down or retaliating you against raising disparate treatment is they try to make it a performance issue. They do this performance improvement plans to get Black people out of these positions of power and to try to cover their tracks. And so the reality is, you know, we have to cultivate our own networks. We have to hold on to those networks so that somebody else can't come in and take advantage of it and leverage it and shut us out. And we have to do what the Dallas police force did

in this case, where they said, well, if this company is not part of it, then no deal. We have to stand up for our network, our people, so that people can't take advantage. So there's so many layers to this. But as everyone has said, you know, we got to stick together. We have to take advantage of our power. And then like Erica said, yes, we can do both with the Housewives and with the news, but we got to do more of the news. We got to do more of the political and civic engagement, less of the disinformation, less of the YouTube scholars who lead you astray and pump your head full of non-solutions, but things that might make you feel good because you're not actually out there solving any problems. I'll make this last

point, and I said this. The political campaigns are going to spend $2 billion this year. $2 billion. I can guarantee you Black-owned media will not get 1% of that money. NARAL and Planned Parenthood, they've raised more than $100 million to run ads about reproductive rights. Black women, Black women's organizations, Deltas, AKAs, Sigma Gamma Rho, Zetas, Lynx, Ladies of Distinction, Eastern Star, y'all should be saying how much of that money y'all spending towards Black people. Oh, but y'all want sisters to come out to vote. Of course you ain't gonna spend the money with sisters.

The same should be saying for all the different campaigns. Not just the Black folks running for United States Senate, but the questions should be asked of Sherri Beasley's campaign, Mandela Barnes' campaign,

Raphael Warnock's campaign, Val Deming's campaign, Fetterman's campaign in Pennsylvania, and the others. Who's controlling the money? White ad agencies, white political consultants, and what are Black people getting?

Are we getting the influencer money or are we getting actually the media money? Because I'm telling y'all right now, the media budget is bigger than the influencer budget. What I'm trying to explain to folk is, I'm trying to walk y'all through what the apparatus is, what I am explaining to everyone here. And again, y'all just saw, we ran an ad from the DNC. We just got that ad buy. We appreciate that. Is it a six-figure ad buy? No. Should it be?

Yes. But we hope it's going to be. But this is precisely why we can't hire hundreds of people. This is why there's no—everybody's watching me. I need y'all to understand something. If you break down how many actual news reporters Black-owned media has right now, I guarantee the number ain't 50. I want y'all to think about what I just said.

I'm talking about Blavity, Degrio, Ebony, Essence, Black Enterprise, Urban One, NNPA, Black Star Network. If I threw in a couple of more, let's say I guarantee you who's actually doing news reporting, it ain't 50. Because we can't afford it because we had frozen out. So when y'all hear me talking about calling certain companies out, now you've got to understand the money is what's behind it. And if you don't access the money, then you cannot grow. You cannot build. by all the money.

Roland, I mean, to connect these two things very plainly, as you're talking, I'm thinking about the fact that these white companies see fit to give Charlemagne the God, a minstrel adjacent news ish commentary show. So I'm not one of the Housewives fans for these reasons. Those things are curated to continue to keep our people away from political conversations like this. AT&T is trying to cut out a man who is subsidizing kids that code. And these kind of things, a great deal of this is political. These two things, one of the reasons why we have to fight to subsidize black media is that black media that is doing this kind of work is in direct opposition to these companies. And we have to pay attention to what's going on, not just in the United States, but in the world. While we're here right now, today the African-Caribbean summit began in Barbados. The prime minister of Barbados gave a speech where they are connecting the continent of Africa to the Caribbean for trade, for investment. And it is based on a clear political understanding.

The American Negro, meanwhile, does not even know that it's taking place. And with the Black Star Network, we look inward. These people are playing for keeps, y'all. And that's why, y'all, I mean, y'all can have a new show and Roland Martin can't get a contract. They're curating what they want you to understand. And if we had the resources, if we had the resources, we could send someone there to cover it. And that's the thing, y'all. That's why I went to Liberia.

That's why I went to Liberia. That's why I went to Ghana. Y'all, I'm telling you, y'all, it is by design, and we've got to understand the game. Real quick, I'm going to take a quick break. We come back. We're going to talk with the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. He's dealing with the result of not having the city resources and not getting it from the state. And the federal government will come back with a meal Moomba right here on Roller Mark.

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Everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. Why does Black-owned media matter? It's because we have been covering the story of Jackson, Mississippi, all week. We live-streamed the mayor's news conference on yesterday. We re-ran that whole news conference during yesterday's show. We are not going to operate like mainstream media, give it about 30 seconds or one minute. That's why we're staying focused on it. Jackson, Mississippi is the majority Black city, 80-plus percent. The mayor is Chokwe Lumumba. He joins us right now. He has been on the forefront keeping his residents abreast of what's happening there. Mayor, always good to see you. Glad to have you here. You had to correct the governor with your news conference on

yesterday. He pretty much threw you and the city under the bus, but you have to make it clear what the actual facts are regarding the water condition there in Jackson. Yeah. Well, first and foremost, it's always good to speak with you, my brother, and thank you for lifting up the issues that our people have been suffering under. We've been lifting this up for more than two years. It has been a part of every legislative agenda that my administration has had. And I've been in office, I'm in my sixth year now. And so, you know, we've been met with that resistance and we've continued to sound the alarm, letting it be known that it's not a matter of if

these systems will fail, but when these systems will fail. And we have the receipts for that. Now, you know, I have been unapologetic. You know, I have been, you know, less, I have not been bashful in sharing why those reasons are. And at this moment, when the state came into my office on Monday and shared that they were going to bring some resources, I told them, well, you know, we open our arms to that. And so we need far more. We have to make certain that when the cameras go away, that that is not where the effort ends. And we have to make certain that it's not just about stabilizing the system in this

moment, but building a sustainable, dependable, and an equitable system. And I say equity because not only do we have a system that fails on many occasions, we have a system that, you know, has a disproportionate effect on the blackest and brownest parts of our city. In South Jackson, the areas that are the furthest away from the water treatment facility and at the highest elevation, people have recognized that inequity. And the reality is, is that we don't have a lever that distributes water from North Jackson to South Jackson. But what reality is, is that we don't have a lever that distributes water from North Jackson to South Jackson. But what we do know is that when values are established on properties, those things are considered. And so we have to better understand things like

city and urban regional planning and how it affects our communities and the disproportionate effect that it provides on our families and the exploitation of Black bodies and Black families. So this is quite interesting. As you were talking, conservative Eric Erickson hosts a radio show out of Georgia. And he literally sent this tweet three minutes ago. He said, and I'm reading this quote. He was responding to a Washington Post story about what's happening in Jackson. He says, quote, this is getting really fucking ridiculous. The Jackson water problem is not a climate change issue.

It is a government failing to collect payments, losing money, and failing to maintain and upgrade infrastructure problem. The climate stuff is cult-like? Well, first and foremost, in terms of the history of this problem, to be very clear, my family moved to Jackson in 1988. In 89, as a little boy, I remember the crash of our system, the inability to use water for prolonged periods of time. And it's happened so many times in the course of my life, it is very difficult to reflect on exactly how frequent it has been. I've listened to package after package of residents in Jackson that say that it's just a part of our lives. And so let's be clear on that. And so that was before some challenges

that the city did have. You know, I am an introspective person. I think we have to be an introspective city. And one of the things my administration has attempted to correct is the exploitation of an international corporation that came into Jackson before I took office and installed meters that didn't work and stranded bills and further crippled the financial conditions. And so it's just not, you know, this picture of incompetence that is attempted to be displayed. It is the exploitation of black communities time and time again, which is part and parcel of what we're talking about.

When we talk about, you know, what has had and what has led to this system, there certainly is a role for climate change has played a significant role in this. We're experiencing hotter summers, colder winters, and more annual precipitation. What that has led to is issues of a flood that is bringing in water of a different chemistry that complicates the treatment process of our water treatment facility, such as what has happened today. It has led in the summer when we're dealing with Mississippi heat clumping in the soda ash that we must distribute into our system and unevenly falling into the system and a need to weatherize it. Two Februaries ago, when it made international

news that Jackson was in this situation at that time, when we suffered a winter storm that debilitated our system, it froze raw water screens. We had an inability to get water in the plant. Therefore, we had an inability to get treated water out of the plant. These are things that we have the receipts on. These are the things that I've been screaming for years. I said that Jackson is actually the poster child for the infrastructure needs of our country, and it's far past time that we invest in

it. Questions from our panel. I'll start with you, Recy, for the mayor. Hi, Mayor. Thank you so much for being with us. You know, I've been hearing some rumblings about part of the reason that funding is kind of being withheld or kind of held in limbo from the state is because of trying to get leverage for taking control over the airport in Jackson. Do you believe that that has any kind of bearing on the lack of funding that has gone your way from the infrastructure package? Or do you think, you know, what do you think should be done in terms of those negotiations? Yeah. So I will say that there has been an ongoing fight for us to maintain control of our airport, an airport that our city invested in, an airport that largely our decision of where it was located at the time it was built has worked to the

benefit of surrounding communities. In fact, we housed our airport in an area right outside of Jackson called Rankin County, whereas conventional wisdom at that time would have said that we should have put it between Jackson and Vicksburg because those were the more densely populated areas. And so as the surrounding communities have grown, they now look in a vile way towards Jackson and talk about how they want to build around it. The effort to take over the airport has nothing to do with the facility or how it runs.

In fact, Jackson is enjoying record service at our airport. We are one of the only cities that are offering more flights or more carriers since the pandemic than prior to the pandemic. And so it's largely led by a nearly all-Black commission that is doing an amazing job that took the airport out of the red and brought it into the Black. These are the narratives that aren't being told. And so there has been an effort to take over the airport, not only for the contracts and things that we certainly know that an airport can provide, but because the purchase of land that the Jackson Airport sits on is pristine land that can be developed, some of which is incorporated as a city of Jackson, we can benefit from tax revenue, some of which is either unincorporated

or incorporated in surrounding cities, but are certainly areas where we can have long-term leases that work towards the benefit of our airport. We certainly know the story of the Atlanta airport and how black wealth was built upon that airport. We want to take advantage of that, too. And so, yes, this has been a fight that we've been a part of. Yes, I have had struggles with certain state leadership that have offered to buy our airport for $40 million. And my recommendation or my statement to that was, if I were to do that, I must be dumb and cheap. And so I'm neither. And so we're going to protect our institutional assets. But at the same time, you know, my primary focus over the last couple of days has been centered around how we restore water.

And I have been working in a coalition because the time demands that coalition. But there are longer standing questions about how we maintain control of our water system and all of the resources. I'll say this last is that the principle by which I guide my life and the principle by which I govern is one of self-determination. And so we want to make certain that we control our resources for ourselves and for the benefit of our communities. And can I just say, the reason I asked that too is because I just want to be clear, and I'm glad you clarified it, that this is not a matter of trading one for the other, because I don't want anybody to blame you or the leadership in Jackson for what's happening

with the water treatment plant because of, you know, whatever kind of shady business is going on. So thank you for clarifying that. No, thank you. Thank you for asking the question. Let's go to next, Greg Carr. Greg Carr, Thank you, Roland. And hey, Brother Mayer, it's always good to see you, brother. Love and strength to you and the family and everyone there in Jackson. And of course, looking forward to this being remedied. Although one thing I can't say, though, is wishing Jackson State good luck. And so, on September 10th, when we meet y'all in Memphis from Tennessee State, we got to get that Southern Heritage classic.

But, you know, brother, one of the things that came up, there was a New York Times article today that talked about, you know, the $50 billion in the Biden administration has set aside for climate work. And I know that you I want to ask you based on that article was this. It's saying that applying for some of this money might require a special staff person coming out of the city of Jackson to apply. And there were a couple of federal programs that the Times notes. It isn't clear whether or not the city of Jackson applied. is this. Are you being blocked by this governor, this legislature when it comes to applying, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, the same people that are claiming they're trying to give you help now, have they been helpful in the city of Jackson trying to apply for some of the money that is available, even in the infrastructure legislation that passed? And again, brother, best of luck, and we're all supporting you in anything we can do.

It's always good to know that you're on the case. Well, I appreciate it, brother. The feeling is mutual. It's always good to see you and talk to you. Well, first and foremost, there are many layers to that question. And the answer is in like response. So first and foremost, in terms of the federal dollars that have come through the state, we have not received any of that money. The portal, in order to apply for ARPA funding that was sent to the state, literally just opened today. And so

we've been pushing back on narratives saying that, well, Jackson hasn't applied. Well, our legislative requests have always been consistent that we're asking for that federal money. Federal money, you know, that I might add that when I'm talking to Administrator Regan of the EPA, even when I talk to former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the czar of the infrastructure bill, or even, you know, as many times as I've heard the president mention Jackson, they have all indicated to me that the money that was sent to Jackson, the money that was sent to the state of Mississippi, they had Jackson in mind. In fact, you know, I remember or recall a phone call that I was on with the president where he talked about exactly what the allocation was to Mississippi and that he hoped to see

Jackson get that money, get its equitable share. But what we have is, you know, not a firm commitment to any dollar, that cities have to apply, all cities have to apply through MDEQ, that's the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, and put our projects forward. And then after you apply through MDEQ, Jackson and Jackson alone has a duplicitous process where we then have to submit an application to DFA, the Department of Finance and Administration. And certainly that concerns me. There is no justification for Jackson

to have that duplicitous process. It's another hurdle for us to have that duplicitous process. It's another hurdle for us to climb, and it's another delay for people who are in need of relief now. Now, we are going after competitive federal funds. We are working and talking with the EPA. We are working and talking with, you know, agencies that are helping us, you know, map out a very precise and accurate request for our money, such as the U.S.

Water Alliance, through the support of the Kellogg Foundation. And so we have the expertise in the House. We're looking at BRIC funding, which is a federal grant that can provide large competitive but large sums of money to help repair infrastructure and help in resiliency. We are looking at a ward of funds. We're looking under every pot. And of course, we're looking at the Justice 40 initiative of the EPA, a piece of legislation that was authored that, you know, was tailor-made for Jackson. As you read that and read, you know, the qualifications, the prerequisites for a city to apply, it speaks to a city like Jackson like no other legislation does. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Erica. Hi, Mayor. I'm so glad that you can be with us today and I echo the sentiments of

my colleagues around thinking about Jackson, Mississippi, and really praying for quick remedies. My question is around you. You know, we've read and seen and you've shared with us that Jackson, Mississippi is 80 percent, about 80 percent Black. And this month, September, is Suicide Awareness Month. And just thinking about the brain being 80 percent water, our bodies being about 60 to 75 percent water. Water is an essential element within us and around us. So with this environmental racism, I would say that you and your constituents are facing, do you have the necessary support in place? And has your law enforcement, your teams, have they been briefed that, you know, if they see some activity around people who may be

suffering with mental illnesses, to not be so quick to use force because of what you all are experiencing right now, which is a water crisis? Well, the simple answer is no. We do not have all of the resources to contend with the challenges that our families and communities are dealing with. These are cycles of humiliation that cities like Jackson find themselves in. Yes, our police department does receive training in terms of how to deal and de-escalate

mental health issues. Is it sufficient? No, absolutely not. We're talking about an occupational culture that that's a difficult thing to break. And the reality is, is that our response to these challenges should not merely just be a punitive response, should not be exclusively a policing response. What we are attempting to create in our city is under the office of the mayor is an office of violence prevention and trauma recovery.

In that office, not only are we looking to coordinate with violence interrupters and incredible messengers and the like. But also, we want to see a one-to-one. For every new officer we bring in, we want to bring in social workers. We want to bring in mental health professionals. When we talk about the sharpest increase in our violence in our city,

in Jackson, that picture looks like, looks among our youngest demographics. We believe that as we have had to make the choice between a bad decision and a worse decision in the midst of a pandemic, we have often taken young people out of the institutions in which they thrive. And that has resulted in some negative consequences and negative relationships and young people taking permanent solutions to temporary problems. Instead of just making that a police response and substituting policing for parenting, what

we're trying to do is also lift up curfew centers, centers where, you know, when we see a young person that is out past a time that is a threat to them or a threat to community in some other way, instead of arresting them when often criminal activity has not ensued, let's take them to a place where we can remediate what is the actual root cause that has them wandering on the street in the first place. Those are the type of holistic responses that I think that we have to incorporate in our communities. And that's what we're trying to do in Jackson. And I thank you for sharing that, Mayor,

because I just wanted to tie the current crisis in with also mental health as well. So thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Mayor, we certainly appreciate it. I am here in Houston. Your fellow mayor, my alpha brother, Sylvester Turner, they're having a water drive tomorrow for the folks in

Jackson. It's taking place from 7 to 12. And so, I'm sure there are other mayors across the country who are doing their part to help you and the folks in Jackson, Mississippi. Well, I appreciate it, brother. I like how you slipped in that Alpha Brother thing.

I'd like to say shout out to the Capas as well. That's one. I didn't miss that in that alpha brother thing. I'd like to say shout out to the Capas as well. That's one. I didn't miss that earlier comment about Jackson State. You know, so, you know, we're no longer even going by Jackson State. You can just call us Jackson. Y'all know who we are when we're coming, right? Just keep in mind, man, you talking to an alpha there as well. So, as always, Capas.

Good seeing you, my brother. Good seeing you. Thank you very much. All right, folks. Got to go to a break. We appreciate the mayor joining us. And let me say this here, y'all. What you just witnessed is why black on media?

That was a two or three minute conversation. We wanted to give the mayor of the space to be able to talk about it. Yesterday's news conference was 28 minutes. We ran all of that. And so this is why Black-owned media matters. This is why you all gotta download the Blackstaff Network app. It's why you gotta tell your friends and family.

Something to tell y'all right now. Mainstreaming ain't covering none of this. You're not going to see the AT&T story. You're not going to see that Javon Robinson story. You're not going to see that kind of conversation with the mayor and even the rest that we got here on the show. And so that's why we do this two hours a day. We go

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Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Black-ish, and you're watching... Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Thank you. Folks, the Black Lives Matter organization has been in a state of flux over the last couple of years. From the moment they announced the $90 million they had received in the wake of the death of George Floyd, they have been under intense criticism. Folks have been criticizing former co-founder Patrice Cullors for the purchase of personal homes for her, but also a home for the organization. You've had the Black Lives Matter global network,

a whole back and forth over their board of directors, who's controlling the group, who's controlling the money. Well, today, the Black Lives Matter grassroots announced, in essence, that they are separating themselves. To fully explain this, this is their first interview. They had a live stream earlier. This is their first interview explaining this. It's Malina Abdullah. She, of course, leads Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. Malina, always glad to have you. So explain to folks what y'all have decided, because when you look at that press release, that statement, it sounded very contentious

in blasting the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the foundation, if you will, for a number of things when it comes to what you label and impressionably is self-dealing. Absolutely. So not only are we publicly making sure that people understand or doing what we can to make sure that people understand that the Global Network Foundation is in the hands of a highly paid consultant who earned, according to their own reports, I won't say earned, I should say given himself contracts, according to his own reporting, of $2.2 million at the beginning of 2020 alone, right? So we want to make sure that we distinguish ourselves from them, that we distinguish ourselves from them, that we are separate from them, but we're also suing them.

We filed a lawsuit this morning. We know that when people donated to Black Lives Matter very generously in 2020 especially, but also through the last three years, that they were donating in order to contribute to the work that's being done on the ground, to the work that's being done to end qualified immunity and the work that's being done to build a black infrastructure in cities like Buffalo, to the work that's being done in the names of our stolen loved ones to topple unjust political systems and systems like prisons and policing. And so those dollars should rightfully belong to those who birthed, built, and are fueling the movement, as well as our platforms.

So people might notice a shift in what they see on Black Lives Matter social media. That's because in March of this year, again, a usurper, one of these highly paid consultants named Shalomia Bowers, logged us out of our own social media and is now using consultants to post on the platforms that we built over the last nine years. The BLK Lives Matter platforms are in the hands of someone who is not Black Lives Matter, who in fact is a consultant that never had their boots on the ground, who never has been in the streets, who's never put their lives and their careers and their bodies on the line, but is using our work and the names of our loved ones to enrich himself? So, even when Patrice was on my show last year, maybe it was in 2020, I was still just totally confused who did what, who was what, and it was all over the place. And so, as a part of what took place today, she released a statement.

This is part of it. She says, when I stepped down from the BLM Global Network Foundation in May 2021, I left a transition plan meant to ensure that grassroots retain the social media accounts as the forward-facing body of BLM, be handed the financial assets to advance the movement and continue to be the body that represents Black Lives Matter. I mean, isn't part of this situation where we're in right now is because it was convoluted in the first place in terms of who was doing what, who was over what. And so now you're left at a place where the money was going to the foundation. The foundation was supposed to disperse it to these various entities. And now she leaves and now, you know, someone else takes over. And so

now it's sort of like all over the place. But you didn't have a continuity of leadership because even when she left, you didn't actually have a team that was left in place. Like it was, it was hell for me just to even find out who he had to talk to. That's right. That's right. And so there were, were two people who were very trusted that were named to be the senior executives of the Global Network Foundation. That's Makani Temba and Monifa Bandele. Unfortunately, the same political consultant refused to open up the books to them. So they said, I don't want that mess. And they were actually never onboarded to lead the Global Network Foundation through this transition. Listen, when Black Lives Matter was born in 2013, when it came out of our collective rage, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon

Martin, we were all just stepping into our sacred duty. We were building what we said was a movement, not a moment, right? And it took some time to develop structure. I was fully committed, and many of us were fully committed to continuing as a movement, not a moment. But this global network foundation was kind of formed to receive these resources. And it was important that the boots on the ground also had a name and an umbrella. the 2020 uprisings, we decided to assemble ourselves as a collective of chapters under the banner of BLM grassroots because there had been another consultant who we thought was misrepresenting Black Lives Matter, and we wanted to draw that distinction. When Patrice took the helm back after the 2020 uprisings commenced, there was kind of some better coordination and clearer vision.

But then when she stepped down again in 2021, it caused an additional mess and opened up the way for, again, this usurper to seize control because he seeks to enrich himself. So y'all are suing them. You're suing them to gain what? We're suing them for the dollars. We're suing them for the social media platform, which were actually built and maintained far long before there was a Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, right? BLK Lives Matter on Twitter and Instagram started very early in our work, 2013, 2014. We start gaining followers. So we built up these platforms. I was the main one who posted to our BLK Lives

Matter Instagram, which has 4 million followers, right, who are looking for the work that we do on the ground. So we're suing for the return of those platforms and we're suing for the return of our name. So they need to stop representing themselves as Black Lives Matter. They're really damaging our reputation. They're saying things that are harmful and hurtful and contribute more to the trauma of families. And this is not who Black Lives Matter is. So we're suing for, again, the dollars, the social media platforms, and our good name. I have questions for my panel. Let's see. I'll start with Erica. Thank you so much for connecting with us this evening.

And I saw that there was a piece that Black Lives Matter, the global foundation had, I guess, done an inside philanthropy on yesterday. So just really interested in seeing, you know, they're posting like it seems like every two or three hours via Sprout Social. So my question for you would be, you say you're suing to get that capital that you yourself have sweat equity into. Those consultants that are posting out of curiosity? Are those white folks? Are you all familiar with them? And how much are they being paid to do what they're doing currently? So I've never been on the inside, and thank you for that question. I've never been on the inside of the Global Network Foundation. I don't really know with certainty how much folks are being paid and who the folks are. I can say that the board is populated by three people, and the person who for some time maintained

individual control, sole control over the board, is someone named Shalomia Bowers. He is not white. He is a black person who practices Judaism and does not really connect with black community. In fact, when we were in a more cordial relationship, he shared with me that he'd never even been to a protest. So this is who's kind of at the helm. You'll see that his firm, Bowers Consulting, is the number one expenditure from Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. I don't know who the other folks are. I do know that there was some time when most of their consultants were in fact white. I don't

know if that continues to be the case because I'm not on the inside and I don't have a friendly relationship right now. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you, Melina, for being here. I do recall, and Roland probably remembers this, that these board members were on the show, specific entity, for instance, with the Black Lives Matter grassroots versus the foundation. It seemed like at the time back in May, this was done to create more transparency, but it seems like it's created more confusion. So I guess, let me ask you, going back to the initial kind of reforms that were announced, the quote-unquote transparency center that they put out there. Were you in agreement at that time with the reforms that were made?

And then the other question I have is just, where is the paperwork? I see the website, but I just wonder if there's some sort of legal paperwork behind this that kind of could help square some of this away? Or is that what the purpose of the lawsuit is, is to try to establish that kind of documents beyond just what's on a website? Right. So that is the purpose of the lawsuit. And thank you for that question. Let me say that the Global Network Foundation can't even spell transparency, like quite literally. If you go to the Black Lives Matter Instagram, they have a post now that says transparency, and transparency is literally misspelled. So the idea that they're being transparent in itself is a lie.

The last thing that they reported was as of June 30, 2020. We don't know what Bowers has paid himself since June 30, 2020. We know that first reporting period was $2.2 million. We know that there's many other expenditures that went to, again, these highly paid consultants, but we don't know where those dollars have gone. The lawsuit will be helpful in demanding information. There we go. Misspelled transparency. Yes. Greg.

Thank you, Roland. And it's good to see you, Doc. Good to see you, sis. And good to see you, Dr. Carr. Always, always. And I'm sorry about this. I mean, we're seeing the influence of foundations in the reparations movement, for example. All of a sudden, here come the money, and we know when the money comes, the problems are soon behind. You got forces trying to shape this. You know, my question is really around how you imagine this might possibly be and could be resolved in terms of this for me beyond beyond, obviously, litigation. Matter Global Network Foundation, alleging that the grassroots organization got a $7

million budget and there were $10,000 a month stipends put in. And of course, these numbers begin to pile up. And the simple fact of the matter seems to be that once money is involved like that, then you can almost predict what's going to happen next. How? And of course, Alicia Garza has been here in the last month talking about the work that they're doing, the census, the Black Census Project and all that kind of thing. How, and you know, given your long experience as an organizer, as a thinker, as an academic,

as a sister in the street doing this struggle work, what would be the best case scenario in terms of trying to figure out a way to achieve some form of operational unity? Is this a matter of one or two people that just need to be taken out of the process in your mind? I mean, I don't know. I'm asking. So when we talk about operational unity, Dr. Carr, you know this better than anybody, right? You have to start with people who are aligned basically in terms of vision. The people who are in charge of the Global Network Foundation right now have no interest in advancing black liberation.

What they have an interest in is lining their pockets. And so we absolutely have to move them out of the picture. Best case scenario, we're able to move the three of them out of the picture and create a board that really is grounded in community. I think it's a phenomenal idea to have a well-funded foundation, right, that is led by people who we trust. We were on our way there. When you talk about people like Makani Tamba and Monifa Bandele, these are people with decades of work put into Black liberation, right? I think it's a phenomenal idea for them to have charge of dollars that can be used for Black liberation. They can do that work. We can set up a foundation in a way that's self-sustaining, right, where you give a percentage of the foundation away, you grant it out, you grant some of it to Black Lives Matter chapters, and you grant some of it to other Black liberation organizations every year, sustainably, right? And then I think it's wonderful to have, you know, a sister organization that is the boots on the ground,

like Black Lives Matter grassroots. The issue is they don't share our vision for black liberation and are moving based on some interest. So best case scenario, they will be moved out. Best case scenario, scenario, people who are in best case scenario, they will voluntarily say, you know, we're going to return these resources. Well, again, struggle for it. And by saying this, I think that their statement is meant to put targets on the backs of activists. They know very well what they're doing when they name me, right? This is not a fight between Malina Abdullah and Shalomia Bowers, right? This is a fight between those who are boots on the ground that include me, but are not only me. They're the hundreds and thousands of activists

who put in work every day versus, again, highly paid consultants who line their pockets based on the work that we put in. And standing with us today during the press conference were dozens of families, the family of Stephon Clark, the family of Andrew Joseph III, the family of Grishari Omak, all stand with us. The family of Jacob Blake and Breonna Taylor stand with us. And they're demanding that the people who they know who struggle alongside them have the resources restored, have the Black Lives Global Network, which is the funding conduit. If people want to give,

they weren't giving to Black Lives Matter grassroots. They were going to the Global Network Foundation, correct? That's right. The Global Network Foundation is basically a fiscal agent. And so their responsibility was to dole out money to grassroots or to other

organizations, correct? That's right. So the chapters, y'all have officially 26 Black Lives Matter chapters aligned with Black Lives Matter grassroots, correct? That's right. For the folks who don't know, because the name took off, they could not actually trademark the name. That's why there are Black Lives Matter organizations all around America that are actually not affiliated with the official Black Lives Matter entity, Global Network or grassroots, correct? That's right. Okay, so here's where I'm still now confused.

Because if the people who are on the black line, if y'all are successful in getting them moved out, well, who the hell then picks a new board? You got to have an operational entity that's over a foundation. So who then picks a new board? So here's two options, Roland. Either there could be a board of people that are trusted and we could help identify those people, or, which is the one that was the original demand and the original plan, actually, before Patrisse Cullors stepped down, the Global Network Foundation could shut down

and just grant out all its money to the Black Lives Matter grassroots fund. Right. Got it. Okay. Can I ask a question? So I'll actually hold tight one second. So the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation board of directors, they issued a response to you. They said, we face yet again another round of struggle for control of one organization,

this time people who say they love black people and center abolitionist values, but whose action are furthest from movement principles of courageous conversations, reconciliation, and finding pathways for peace and understanding. And then it says, as the newly assembled Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation board of directors, we were onboarded to bring the organization into compliance along the way. We have done our due diligence to honor the vision the founders left behind uh they said we the board have zero interest in taking significant time away from our work towards building the solid trust foundation we'll focus on the future uh and then they uh they said the foundation board requested on over 10 occasions private mediation or meetings with malina abdullah andM Grassroots, including and regarding social media policies.

We did so in order to stay true to the principles of abolition, but Malina and BLMGR ignored and refused our offers. Is that true? No, that's a blatant lie. And in fact, we have a letter requesting that of them. So this is a classic case of gaslighting. We have receipts that can demonstrate that as early as March, we said, return the social medias and we can mediate everything else.

That was written by our attorney of record at the time, George Fothery, and it went unresponded to. And there are many, many subsequent requests to do that. They say that you take issue with, quote, not being given control of all financial assets and the social media accounts. They also say since Patrice's departure, quote, Melina Abdullah and BLM grassroots have sent threatening letters and attacked the livelihood of BLMGNF's board members directly. Not only have they demanded the resignation of current BLMGNF leadership, it ever since seized the financial resources of BLM GMO member from her job community. Right. Yeah, that's another blatant lie. We did absolutely engage, and this is part of the calling in, right? We did engage in a movement letter that remained private, right?

A hundred black leaders signed onto a letter saying that Shalomia Bowers needs to step down. And so we have that letter. We've now released it publicly. But it's signed by a hundred movement leaders, including Makani Temba, including Monifa Bandela, including people like Ashley Woodard Henderson and Rukia Lumumba and Pete White and movement elders like Hank Jones. And so we did that privately. It became public today, but until then was not public. So what they're saying is a blatant lie. Just two more. They said, lastly, BLMGR and Malina Abdullah read a press statement claiming that Patrice Cullors created a transition plan giving all of BLMGNF's assets to BLM grassroots.

That is absolutely false. In fact, that statement in the press release was recanted by Patrice and her team. No such plan exists or ever has. She said, in fact, when Patrice Cullors stepped down from being the sole decision-maker, executive director, and sole board member of BLMGNF in June 2021, she appointed a five-person leadership council. So she did appoint a five-person leadership council. That part is true. It is true that they did not want the statement that was approved by Patrice yesterday morning released. And part of that is because of her legal fears. There is a transition memo, which I have a copy of. And so, again, we have receipts. And so,

you know, at no time, my mother and my grandmother always say, if you lie, you'll steal. If you steal, you'll kill. Right. So it scares me away from lying. And so most people, even my enemies, will say she doesn't lie. So there are no lies. But those who steal probably lied first. And so I want to be very clear that there was a transition memo and there is a transition memo and we have copies of it. Last one here. They say, Bill, that your grassroots has received seven million dollars this year. And that also they said founders in the decision not to transfer further assets of BLMGNF was reinforced when BLMGNF learned that BLMGR, which is your entity, grassroots leaders, were giving themselves $10,000 monthly stipends while

claiming they were volunteer leaders instead of allotting those resources to either further developing their grassroots infrastructure or redirecting those funds to local organizers. Is that true or false that Black Lives Matter grassroots leaders were giving themselves $10,000 monthly stipends? That's an absolute fabrication. I don't even know where they get that from. So that's absolutely untrue. Okay. All right. Well, I certainly had said before to Shalima actually follows me on Twitter.

I sent him a DM a few months ago. I've told him there are people I still would love to have them on because I still am absolutely confused. Recy asked the question. I'm still confused by the whole infrastructure. It is sort of all over the place. I'm still trying by the whole infrastructure. It is sort of all over the place. I'm still quite understanding. I got a guess that's been holding for quite some time. But really real quick with your question. Oh, my question just real quick is, is there an actual structure, organizational structure with some sort of bylaws, some sort of articles of incorporation for the grassroots side that is in the position to take over for the funding and the things that are kind of in dispute? So the Global Network Foundation claims transparency, but again, they can't even spell transparency. So I don't know what they have. I can say that Black Lives Matter grassroots absolutely has. Melina, her question was for you, for grassroots.

Do y'all have established hierarchy, who's at the top, who's number two, number three, bylaws, all that governs Black Lives Matter grassroots? We do. We do have bylaws. I want to pose also, I'm sorry. Is that published? It should be because we just filed for a legal status in California, which makes everything public. So I'm happy to share those bylaws with you.

Okay. Okay. All right. I want to say, though, Roland, I want to just offer, I want to be clear about what they've done by using the platform that we built in order to attack us and what that means that with active threats that they're very well aware of on my life, and you've reported on this, that when they do that, when they have millions of followers, they're opening us up to physical danger. Our names shouldn't be put out for targeting without their names, without them also being on the line. So people should investigate who is Shalomia Bowers, who is Cecily Gay, who filed for bankruptcy three or four times and wears shirts that say things like, I'm billing you for this conversation? Who is Dejanay Parker, who is, you know, you can look at her Instagram and see that she's basically a lingerie model, right? And what qualifies these people to be the leaders, the so-called leaders of the largest

racial justice movement of our lifetime and perhaps in history. All right. Melaina Abdullah, leader of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles with the Black Lives Matter grassroots. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Wow. It is certainly unfortunate that all of this is going down. And, you know, this is one of the things I said early on, early on when it was going on. I will never forget. There were a lot of people that were talking about, you know, you know, you know, equal decision making and, you know, no hierarchy. And I kept saying, y'all, you cannot show me a successful entity that does not have a flow chart, a hierarchy where someone is making decisions. You have you got to have those things. In many ways, they were trying to build an entity on the fly. They were always sort of like running behind, trying to catch up and grab the tail because this thing took off. And there were numerous times where I told other activists privately, hey, focus on your infrastructure because you can rip the NAACP and the Urban League and all these other black groups. You can say they're

not doing anything, but there's a reason they still exist. It's because they had infrastructure. They had rules. They had a hierarchy. They had processes and procedures. Doesn't mean they didn't go through problems. Doesn't mean you haven't had lawsuits and things along those lines, but this is why you have to have infrastructure.

And, Greg, take us to the break. What does Stokely Carmichael say? You have never seen a Black person achieve anything as an individual. It was always through group dynamics. Always through organization. And we have to understand, we do have real enemies in the world. When we look at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a great deal of those funds were generated after the organization was founded and put together.

Ella Baker was very clear they should have that infrastructure, and they did that. But we know that those funds dried up once they came out against Vietnam. And we know that foundation money always gets us in trouble. And unfortunately, in this letter from 100 activists, and many of those names are folks that I know and know pretty well, including Chokwe Lumumba's sister, Antar's sister, Rukia, who you heard

her mention. That gives a great deal of credibility to what Dr. Abdullah has said. And I'll end with this. When you have long-distance runners in a struggle who have been doing it without compensation, they've been doing it, putting their lives on the line. When people all of a sudden flood a movement with money, always question their motives. This is what I'm thinking about when I mentioned the reparations movement at this point, where people are starting to be spokespeople and out here talking about reparations.

But there are a lot of people still in prison. There are political prisoners. There are a lot of folks who have suffered as a result of being in the movement. When things start getting subsidized, you better, A, have your paperwork straight, as you say, and B, always operate as if this money will go away because movements aren't funded and subsidized. And again, I mean, thank you again, Roland. Black media, not just black media. What did you say, Roland? You can't be black media and be scared? There's a particular type of black media.

This is not a conversation for MSNBC or CNN, and this is why all kind of support has to come to the Black Star Network because nobody can subsidize our liberation. And there's no other black, and I can't say this, and this is not personal, but the reality is there's no other black and I can't see it this and I this is not personal But the reality is there's no other black owned media company that actually has a daily show doing what we're doing Folks gotta go to quick break gonna come back to drop his new study

reparations asking black people They know they believe their ancestors were enslaved. Some interesting answers. I got lots of questions. We'll have those next. Roland Martin on the Black Star Network. When we invest in ourselves, our glow,

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It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. All right, folks, a new Pew Research Center report explores differences in how Black Americans view social status of the U.S. Black population, assessments of racial inequality, visions for institutional and social change, and the outlook on the chances that these improvements are going to be made. Kiana Cox is a research associate from the Pew Research Center. She joins us right now to break down these findings. Kiana, glad to have you here. So I'm in this group chat with a lot of black journalists and media folks. And earlier then, they were like, we sort of got an issue with how some of these questions were parsed, how they were raised. The whole issue of Black people, 57 percent

of Black folks saying their ancestors were enslaved, 34 percent said they didn't know, 8 percent said they were not. I saw Nicole Hannah-Jones tweeting about this as well. So just let's start there with how that question was raised and what did you see and what jumps out at you with this research, with these responses from African-Americans? Sure. So that question about knowledge about ancestors came from a report that we published back in April, which looked at how Black Americans viewed their personal identity and also how much they felt they knew about both U.S. black history and their ancestral history.

So the question was phrased in terms of, as much as they know about their own history, to what extent do they know whether their ancestors were enslaved at all, be that in the United States or in another country. And we also gave them the option of saying, well, I'm not sure. So that question was, it was for them to evaluate their own knowledge in terms of their ancestral history. Gotcha. All right. So just give us the top line of this survey. What jumps out for you the most? What jumps out?

Sure. So in this new report, the thing that we felt was most important to communicate in terms of how black Americans view their position in the country is that they are, on the one hand, have very clear critiques about U.S. institutions. They also have very clear ideas about pathways toward inequality. But at the same time, there exists this very broad skepticism that U.S. society can change, that any of those institutions will change, and that they will ultimately reach equality in the country at all. So there's this sort of this twofold view that comes out of this, that there are clear ideas about what's needed to be done, but also broad pessimism that any of it will actually happen. Okay. Reparations, one of the questions y'all asked about? Yes. So we found that nearly 80 percent of Black adults felt that descendants of and financial assistance for homes and businesses would be extremely or very helpful forms of reparations. We also found that about 60 percent

of Black adults said that cash payments would be extremely helpful for them. So those were some of the questions that we asked. We also wanted to know, in their opinion, who bore the most responsibility for paying out those reparations. And nearly 80 percent of black adults said that the federal government bore all or most of the responsibility for them. Let's see here. I know my panel has some questions. Greg, you go first. Thank you, Roland, and thank you for your work. I mean, when I saw the percentages related to the institutional overhauls, and perhaps I need to read it in some detail, I saw prison system, policing, courts, judicial process, political economic system, health care system. Was education an option, the educational system?

We did not have an evaluation of education as an institution in that question, although about 40 percent of Black adults did say that the quality of K-12 schooling is an extremely big problem for Black Americans today. Thank you. Recy? Thank you for your work. Can you talk a little bit about how, even though there was a lot of pessimism, rightfully so, in terms of systemic change that's going to drastically lead to equality for Black Americans, there was still a high level of Black people who responded that still believed in the importance of voting and, you know, being civically engaged.

Can you talk a little bit about those findings? Sure. So we wanted to, our approach to understanding Black Americans' visions for social change went in a few different directions. So we asked these questions about civic pathways to equality, how important, how effective of a strategy is voting, protesting, contacting your elected officials, or volunteering for organizations that are dedicated to Black equality, and also to what extent is supporting Black businesses effective. And out of all of those particular questions that we asked, about 60 percent of Black adults said that voting would be an extremely or very effective tactic for moving black communities forward. In fact, out of all of the civic approaches that we talked about, both

those that I just mentioned and also ones that are more aligned with black nationalist approaches, such as all of the businesses and black communities being owned by black people, the establishment of a national black political party, or all of the elected officials in a neighborhood, in a black neighborhood being black, out of all of those approaches, voting certainly rose to the top. Erica. Yeah, thank you so much for this reporting. And what I found to be very interesting was the Black Democrats,

Black Republicans. And so there were some differences there, but it seemed that no matter the party affiliation, the question that you all posed around funding for police department was pretty close

with Democrats and Republicans. Funding for police departments in their communities should be decreased. It seems like there was an equitable response there. Can you talk a little bit about if there were any follow-up questions around that, especially since given party affiliation, that both groups seem to be pretty much in lockstep with saying that, yes, they do believe that funding should be decreased in communities for police departments? Sure. So there's actually quite a bit of uniformity around views on police funding that we found in our survey. So about 35 percent of black adults thought that funding for police

departments in their community should be increased. About 40 percent said that funding should remain the same. And about 23 percent said that funding should decrease. And we did ask a follow-up question to those who said they wanted funding to decrease. We said, okay, if you want funding to decrease, what should be the top priority for those reappropriated funds? And 40% of Black adults said that those reappropriated funds should go to medical services, mental health services, and social services. But to your point, there is very little variation in how those results parse out across all demographics of Black Americans that we surveyed. There's very little variation in terms of the majority of Black Americans want funding

to stay the same or increase, and only about a quarter say that it should decrease. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Anybody got a follow-up? Yeah, I'll ask a quick follow-up. This whole crafting of this reparations question around those being enslaved in the United States being, I am firmly against this lineage-based argument, although I understand legally why it would be perhaps the best strategy, even as it would probably even fail legally in terms of legal challenge.

But I'm wondering, in terms of remedy, how do you contrast this question around lineage-based reparations with the idea of institutional remedies, i.e., scholarships? Is your sense that the same people who might say that people who are descended from Africans who are enslaved in the United States should be getting reparations exclusively would want to preclude other Black people from receiving benefits, say, for example, like educational scholarships? Well, we, in this particular survey, we don't have data on whether or not people should be excluded from reparations programs. What we really wanted to measure was support for reparations overall. We also wanted to measure the extent to which people thought various forms would be effective

and who bore responsibility. And we also, the final question that we asked in that reparations set of questions was about the likelihood that you would see reparations in your lifetime, and very few black adults thought that they would. So we did not ask questions about exclusion or inclusion criteria for reparations, only support and forms and responsibility. I appreciate that. Thank you. All right, then. Well, Kim,

we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Where can people at go to read the full report? Sure. If you want to check out our full report, you can go to pewresearch.org slash Black Voices Politics, and you'll be able to read the full report and also look at some of our other work on Black Americans. All righty. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks, real quick here. Ohio police officer is out of a job, but she was being caught using the N-word. Officer Rose Valentino says she directed it at a teen who allegedly flipped her off at a local high school. She claimed that music and hearing others use the N-word desensitized her to raise this language.

Well, this was not the first racially motivated incident for Valentino. In 2018, she and two other officers were involved in a racial discrimination lawsuit. Now, her punk ass has no job. All right, folks, this story out of Georgia is crazy. A black Georgia man shot and killed a white teen claiming self-defense under the state's stay-at-your-ground law, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Mark Wilson got convicted of killing a white 17-year-old girl when he fired at a truck full of teens who Wilson says yelled racial slurs and tried to run him and his white girlfriend off the road in Statesboro, Georgia, in June 2020. The jury found Wilson was not justified in using his legal gun when he felt

threatened by the white teens. Wilson was acquitted of the more severe charges of murder and aggravated assault. The involuntary manslaughter conviction carries up to 10 years in prison. He'll be sentenced on September 20th. This is the thing here, Erica, when we talk about, you know, staying your ground laws, you know, he said he was trying to run me off the road. I'm trying to figure out, like, what the hell? Are you supposed to get run off? Yeah, you know, staying your ground is very much so applicable to a specific group of people. And it's certainly sad that someone had to lose their life in this. You know, Statesboro is pretty much, you know, lily white.

They do have a college there, but I'm quite sure Rose Valentino would fit in, driving while black and just remembering the same laws that do apply to some don't largely apply to all. So that he did not have that, but that he's been jailed and he's going to have to remain jailed until his September 20th sentencing. It's going to be really interesting to see how much time he gets, particularly that since this crime didn't happen in really white states, rural Georgia. Greg, I got the sense you wanted to say something. No, I mean, shout out to his white girlfriend, Emma, what's her name, Rigan, who said she didn't hear anything, although she was scared of the truck trying to run him off the road.

I'm saying, damn, you can't back your mans up? Damn. Oh, shit. Even his own girls. I'm like, wow, boy, what you going to learn out there, chief? Your girl said she didn't hear nothing. Damn. Good point.

In Michigan, four law enforcement officers face charges of beating a handcuffed black man. Police pulled over Vance D. Martin on suspicion of drunken driving. The video recorded by a nearby civilian showed state troopers Bram Schroeder and Zachary Tobito and Saginaw police officers Jordan Englehart and Dominique Vasquez trying to arrest Martin. He was punched repeatedly during the traffic stop by Schroeder and was knocked unconscious during the March traffic stop. Schroeder is facing charges including aggravated assault. Tobito, Englehart, and Vasquez are charged with willful neglect of duty and misdemeanor for not intervening in the beating. This right here, Reesey, is thank goodness video was recorded.

That's why in Arizona, you know, they passed that law. You cannot record cops within this eight feet range. Probably based on that law, they couldn't have got this video. I mean, if it's not the video, we don't know about a lot of these cases. And these cops, you know, they continue to be on the force. Right. I mean, videos, body cams, one of the things, one of the reasons why Valentino was fired was because she made the comment on her body cam before she even realized that she used the N-word and shut off her body cam. So yeah,

unfortunately, we're still in a day and age where you have to have footage in order for you to be believed, even if you have injuries like what this gentleman sustained. So yeah, lock all their asses up. Period. Absolutely. All right, folks, that is it for us. Let me thank Erica, Greg, and Recy for joining

us. Really busy day. Sorry, folks, we got started off late. We had major technical issues. Our Skype machine crashed. I lied to you we got started off late. We had major technical issues. Our Skype machine crashed. I couldn't connect. So the devil was busy, but we still got it done. Folks, we'll be back tomorrow for a long-lasting weekend. Labor Day is on Monday. And shout out to the unions that created the workers in. And we'll be back on Tuesday. We brought you from New Orleans. Hey, join me on Saturday. I'll be joining you across the state of D.C.

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