#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Jackson's Water Crisis, Black Ala. Pastor Sues For Wrongful Arrest, HBCU Money Games, Gut Health

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

9.12.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Jackson's Water Crisis, Black Ala. Pastor Sues For Wrongful Arrest, HBCU Money Games, Gut Health Jackson, Mississippi's water crisis continues.  Residents have restored pressure, but the water is still unsuitable for consumption.  After the show, I'll join The Poor People's Campaign's Moral Monday virtual town hall called Mississippi Voices.  One of the organizers, a Jackson resident, will update us on what's happening in the state's largest city. Jackson State head football coach Deion Sanders goes in on the money HBCUs are getting for putting their players at risk.  OffScript host, Scottay, will join me in breaking down the point Primetime is trying to make.  There are new "literacy tests" devised to keep poor black people from the polls.  ProPublica just released an article called "The Fight Against an Age-Old Effort to Block Americans From Voting."  I'll have a conversation with one of the reporters about how republicans are really suppressing the right to vote.  The Black pastor in Alabama who ended up behind bars for watering a neighbor's flowers explains why he's suing the city and the officers who arrested him.  A Ms. Veteran America contestant is using her platform to address homeless women veterans because she used to be one.  She'll tell us how she's using the pageant to raise awareness.    DC's Mandarin Oriental Hotel is under new management.  The Salamander Hotels & Resorts is leading a joint venture to take the hotel.  And in tonight's Fit, Live, Win segment, we'll examine how an unhealthy gut can lead to several illnesses. 9.12.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Jackson's Water Crisis, Black Ala. Pastor Sues For Wrongful Arrest, HBCU Money Games, Gut Health Jackson, Mississippi's water crisis continues.  Residents have restored pressure, but the water is still unsuitable for consumption.  After the show, I'll join The Poor People's Campaign's Moral Monday virtual town hall called Mississippi Voices.  One of the organizers, a Jackson resident, will update us on what's happening in the state's largest city. Jackson State head football coach Deion Sanders goes in on the money HBCUs are getting for putting their players at risk.  OffScript host, Scottay, will join me in breaking down the point Primetime is trying to make.  There are new "literacy tests" devised to keep poor black people from the polls.  ProPublica just released an article called "The Fight Against an Age-Old Effort to Block Americans From Voting."  I'll have a conversation with one of the reporters about how republicans are really suppressing the right to vote.  The Black pastor in Alabama who ended up behind bars for watering a neighbor's flowers explains why he's suing the city and the officers who arrested him.  A Ms. Veteran America contestant is using her platform to address homeless women veterans because she used to be one.  She'll tell us how she's using the pageant to raise awareness.    DC's Mandarin Oriental Hotel is under new management.  The Salamander Hotels & Resorts is leading a joint venture to take the hotel.  And in tonight's Fit, Live, Win segment, we'll examine how an unhealthy gut can lead to several illnesses.  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. Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. I'm proud. We support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. I thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland. Stay Black. 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. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home, you dig? Să ne urmăm. Today is Monday, September 12, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. D.C. has its newest black-owned hotel.

Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, announced literally an hour ago the unveiling of the Salamander Hotel, formerly the Mandarin Oriental, here in the nation's capital. We'll show you the announcement and hear from her, Mayor Muriel Bowser, also Jason Reed, president of the Washington Commanders, also on today's show. A year ago, I was on ABC This Week. I called out Governor Chris Christie and Republicans for them making Donald Trump possible, putting

that evil on America. One year later, everything I said, absolutely true. And now he's complaining that, oh, he felt attacked when President Joe Biden hit Republicans for their semi-fascism in supporting MAGA. Yeah, I'm going to break that thing down. Deion Sanders is saying, why in the hell are HBCUs being grossly underpaid for playing major football games? He gave an interview with HBCU Game Day. I'm going to show you that. We'll talk to Offscript about that as well. It's time for HBCUs to step up.

And speaking of HBCUs, why is Fisk University, why have they had seven presidents in 22 years? They just got rid of the new president, Van Newkirk Sr. He was only there two years. What the hell is happening in Nashville? We're going to unpack all of that, other stories as well. Folks, it's a jam-packed show. It's time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the miss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the find. 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, yeah, yeah It's Rollin' Martin Yeah, yeah, yeah

Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martin Now Martin Martin! All right, folks. The governor declared that the water was better in Jackson, Mississippi. Residents say, no, that is not the case.

This is a video that was posted over the weekend of a Jackson resident, Molly Menta. This was posted again three days ago. Mayor Chokwe Lumumba will appear on CBS' Face the Nation Sunday and see if there is some progress handling the city's water woes. We have some level of good news to report that all residents have had water pressure restored to them. They have yet to have the boil water notice lifted, and so there are still concerns around the consumption of that water. Right now, as many repairs and adjustments are taking place in the triage period of where we are at the water treatment facility, there's also investigatory sampling taking place.

And so we believe that it's a matter of days, not weeks before that boil water notice can be lifted. But I would note this, that we have been here before, where we've been able to restore pressure, we've been able to lift boil water notices, but without the significant capital improvements to take place it still is a matter of if not when these things will happen again we have committed the grand majority of our arpa funds towards our infrastructure not only at the water treatment

facility but but distribution lines we've spent eight million dollars on on one pipe alone to south jackson which is disproportionately affected. It is also critical for people to know that the city of Jackson didn't get $42 million at one time. Merely a little over a month ago, we got our second tranche of the funds. We have made a commitment to spend all the remaining dollars. There was some choice to spend some towards public safety issues and so we are committing the lion's share the overwhelming majority of our funds towards this challenge however it is insufficient to meet the great need of 30 years of deferred

maintenance and accumulated challenges and so it will take a coordinated effort on not only the local state but federal levels as well. Now, after tonight's show, I'm going to participate. I'll be interviewing Mayor Lumumba on a live stream along with the Poor People's Campaign. This is taking place tonight. It is the Poor People's Campaign Mississippi Moral Monday Nationwide Speakout. Again, I'll be hosting that. And joining me now is Danielle Holmes, a national organizer for the public was campaign and a Jackson resident. She's been on the front lines on this issue. Danielle, glad to have you here. And you heard what the mayor said there on Face the Nation said, look, you know, we don't we're trying to fix the problem.

But trust me, it's going to happen again until you fix this significant, decrepit infrastructure there in Jackson. And frankly, the state government has financially abandoned Jackson, Mississippi. Absolutely. And, you know, I must say Jackson has been the real hero, you know, of this story, even as the state has withheld resources and watched our infrastructure crumble for decades. We've been resilient and resourceful. We've even committed to paying higher taxes to help fix this problem. We've done more, more than our share. And now the state and federal government, we're demanding them that they must come in and do their share.

And so what are folks doing there to hold the government accountable? I mean, you're in the capital city. Mississippi relies on sales taxes. They get more sales tax money from Jackson than any other city in the state. Absolutely. And what you're seeing here in the city of Jackson, and mainly, as you heard, the mayor said that South Jackson is disproportionately impacted by the water crisis. And we've been on this rodeo more than one time. We've had a fair share of rodeos going around and around and around. And so I will say that even with South Jackson, the largest part of the city, yet it is the poorest part of the city. And that's the city, that's the area of the city where the water, there's a struggle to maintain or get water to the residents because of the elevation.

And so what we're doing here on the grounds is that, number one, we're demanding. We're no longer asking. We're not going to bow down on our knees and plead. But we're demanding that there's representation for our taxation here in the state of Mississippi and in the city of Jackson. And so what are those plans? Because obviously you have the governor now tossing out, hey, we could privatize the control of the water system there in Jackson. So we're going to fight back. We're fighting back on any privatization.

They've tried to take over the airport here in the city of Jackson, and they're trying to privatize our water. At some point, they've even, you know, tried to play a game of extortion. You know, if you give us the airport, we'll commit to fines for infrastructure. You know, these are like political criminals that are sitting in leadership here in the state of Mississippi, and it has to stop. But what we're going to do, number one, we're going to continue to apply pressure, right, on the state level and the federal level. We're going to continue to demand that we meet with EPA Director Reagan. We're going to continue to make sure that our voices are being heard to President Biden. And we're going to double down on our legislators here and the state of Mississippi as well.

Reagan, the EPA administrator, he was actually in Jackson last week. We talked to him on the show. Did you and others have opportunity to talk with him? Absolutely. We met with him on last Wednesday or Thursday, and it was a great meeting in what he gave information to community members, leaders. And one of the things he committed was that the EPA, the federal government, is willing to withhold all funds from the state of Mississippi. I think it was $400 million that will be allocated coming out of this federal infrastructure bill. And so Reagan has committed to withholding all of those funds if the governor refuses to allocate the proper resources to Jackson, to the city of Jackson, to repair its infrastructure. And I dare say— We're going to play it fast to that promise because that is a hard punch.

And I dare say that's the kind of hard ball that has to be applied. Otherwise, the governor and his Republican cronies will keep screwing over Jackson. Absolutely. As they have done over and over and over and not just over Jackson, but over the state of Mississippi. Indeed. Well, look, we look forward to the conversation tonight with the Poor People's Campaign. Again, we'll be live streaming that right after Roland Martin on Filters. So, Dania. We look forward to that. Thanks a lot. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Going to bring my panel now, Dr. Amakongo Dabinga, Professorial Lecturer, School of International

Service, American University. Renita Shannon, Georgia State Representative, again, based there in Georgia. And Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dean, College of Ethnic Studies, California State University, LA. She'll be joining us a little bit later. Representative Shannon, this is a perfect example. Look, you're a state lawmaker, and here you have state lawmakers in Mississippi ignoring Jackson, but they don't mind, but they don't ignore that sales tax money that comes from Jackson, a majority black city. And when the governor had his initial news conference, he didn't even invite the mayor.

How do you not have, I mean, you would think with a water crisis, you put politics aside and you say as the governor, I'm working hand in hand with the mayor, especially when you're the governor and you're sitting in the very city where there's a water problem. Yeah, my heart goes out to the residents of Jackson. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to see across the country, where you have majority white Republican legislatures that work really hard to destroy cities that have black leadership. So what it looks like is denying resources. What it looks like is spending more time trying to destroy cities that are predominantly black. We have the same thing that goes on here in Georgia. And as you mentioned, what it looks like is trying to humiliate the mayor by not even involving him in any type of press conference and showing that you should be working together with the mayor to make things better for the residents of Jackson. They pay taxes just like everybody else. And it's just really unfortunate. I think your guess that you just had hit the nail on the head. It's

political criminals. I mean, because for you to take in everyone I think your guess that you just had hit the nail on the head. It's political criminals. I mean, because for you to take in everyone's tax money and then you just don't care, the cruelty of not caring about certain areas, and we know that that is because of race. It's just completely unbelievable. It's believable, but it's also just completely ridiculous. On the Congo, here you have the state of Mississippi has a billion dollar surplus in the last session. They gave Jackson, Mississippi $0.

Wow. Okay. So that's, that's my second. Wow. Because when I saw the water from the, when you first opened the segment, I mean,

we hear this. It's just, it's, it's, it's sickening, man. And it's literally sickening for our people. So when you go back to what you just talked about in terms of the financial resources that they're not giving to the people of Jackson, this has, first of all, I got to give Mayor Lumumba and all of the, and Ms. Holmes and all of the activists down there who are taking

the fight to the governor, who are taking the fight to the Biden administration by letting the EPA, them at the EPA know what needs to happen and getting them on record saying what they're going to do, because this national strategy of fighting back and drawing this attention, this is going to get them the resources that they need. I firmly believe that as long as people like you and Reverend Barber are out there speaking on this and the rest of us. But it also goes to the point of, I've been thinking about this story all day. And just the fact that Mississippi hasn't had a statewide Black person elected in over 130 years, there also has to be a political action that is added on top of this as it relates to our elections. I'm just thinking of somebody with a Mayor Lumumba type as a senator in Mississippi, right, or leading on some other level.

This should be the wake-up call because he's talking about 30 years, and Representative Shannon talked about this, about this being intentional, this being intentional. How are you going to get all of that money you just mentioned, billions of dollars, and you're going to ignore a city that's paying the most taxes? I am happy to see that people who are not already activist-minded in Jackson are starting to get activist-minded as they get more and more pissed off at what is happening. And like Representative Shannon said, this is all intentional. We need to wake up now and get on that good foot because Jackson could be ignored no more. There is precedent here, Julian. We talk about what residents are requesting from

the Environmental Protection Agency. A lot of people may know nothing about a thing called the Powell Amendment, named after Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. When you had states that refused to follow the Supreme Court edict or Brown v. Board of Education, they slapped the Powell Amendment on any state that refused to follow the directive of the Supreme Court could not receive federal education dollars. They began to apply that to other areas as well.

This is how you get these Republican lawmakers in these states who refuse to cooperate. You withhold the money. For every $1 Mississippi spends in taxes, they get $4 back. Let's be real clear. The taxpayers of America are subsidizing the state of Mississippi. And so Governor Tate Reeves can stand there and talk mess all he wants to, but the federal government, without the federal government, Mississippi is broke as

hell. And that's why, Roland, you're absolutely right. It's time for the federal government to step in. I don't know, I think this might be the fifth show where I've said Mississippi, goddamn, because really that state is disgusting in the way that it treats black people. Mississippi has a highest percentage of black people than any other state in the country. Yet we cannot elect a statewide person. Remember what happened when Mike Espy tried to run for Senate and Cindy Highsmith got votes by saying she would like to attend a lynching. Now, that's not what she called it, but that's pretty much what she said. And so we know this state essentially is oppressing Black people. And we know that all of us, whether you're in California, D.C., Maryland,

Idaho, you're subsidizing this state's racism. And so it's not about Mississippi state ledge. It's about the Congressional Black Caucus stepping up and saying this is untenable, this is impossible, and we will not support this anymore. It has to come from the federal government. And if we believe that this is a nation where everybody is entitled to, you know, what did Dr. King say? Three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, peace and freedom for their spirits. That three meals a day has to include clean water. And here's my other question, though, Roland. So where do those nasty Mississippi legislators bathe? What kind of water are they drinking?

Do they have a separate source of water being piped into them? I'm just asking. I mean, they don't look like they bathe regularly anyway, but I'm just asking. Because basically the legislature meets in Jackson. Absolutely. And so, again, this goes to show you folks how our power must be used. You withhold the money. Trust me, they will buckle. Just like when a black football player said, take that damn Confederate flag, emblem off that flag, or we not gonna

play, they move real quick to get rid of that flag. Because without black football players, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, y'all suck. And we know that. Going to break, we come back and we'll talk about what has been called new literacy test in 2022.

Old fight, new fight. Also, speaking of old fight, Deion Sanders says, start paying HBCUs their fair share for playing against Power 5 schools. We'll show y'all the financial breakdown and what he said, how HBC had seven university presidents in 22 years? Maybe the problem ain't the presidents. Maybe it's the damn board who's picking the presidents. And then running the presidents off. I'll break it down.

I'm Roland Martin, unfiltered, the Black Star Network. Don't forget, download the Black Star Network app on all platforms. Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show. You can contribute with your check or money order to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RM Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM

Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Don't forget, pre-order your book, a copy of White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. The book drops tomorrow, and so you can order your book right now. Ben Bella Books, which is the publisher, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Bookshop, Chapters, Books A Million, Target, or call your favorite Black bookstore and order it through them. We'll be right back. When we invest in ourselves, 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 funding for our HBCUs and against lowering prescription drug costs for our seniors. These Republicans keep trying hard to stand in the way, but President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats won't let them. They are delivering for us. The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising. When we invest in ourselves, we all shine. Together, we are Black Beyond Measure. of this advertising. There's an angry pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial.

This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at every university calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women.

This is white fear. Hi, this is Shira Lee Ralph. Hello, everyone. It's Kiara Sheard. Hey, I'm Taj. I'm Coco. And I'm Lili. And we're SWB. What's up, y'all? It's Ryan Destiny.

And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. conservatives are targeting voters with low literacy skills in an effort to keep them from accessing the ballot the folks folks at ProPublica in partnership with Gray TV published a deep dive into the relationship between literacy and voter turnout. Aaliyah Suave, one of the reporters who wrote the piece, joins us now from Atlanta. Aaliyah, glad to have you on the show. This, again, we hear historically about poll by literacy test and how those were eventually outlawed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But break down your reporting in terms of how Republicans are trying to use sophisticated efforts, again, to target voters who are not who are not strong with their literacy skills.

And they're really targeting poor people, especially poor black people. Right. Yes, you're exactly right with that. I mean, we've looked into the archives, we've looked into the history of this kind of suppression, and it's not so much that it's come back, but it's more that it never went away. You have, you know, conservatives in the 60s talking about voter fraud as a reason why they need to make it harder to vote, the reason why they need to put literacy tests in place in the 60s. And you still see that as a reasoning for adding barriers for certain people. Some of the laws that have been passed in 2021 have made it harder for people to assist voters with lower literacy skills. And again, you just see that kind of mirrored throughout history.

And so, you know, we see how they are have attacked folks in Georgia and Texas and other places. And what we also are seeing, how they're trying to now challenge thousands of people who've already registered to throw them off the polls because they know if you can knock out four or five, 10,000 folks, that's the margin of victory. Right. So there are some states that have put in place what are called exact match or perfect match laws, which means if you accidentally spell your name wrong, if you make a very simple error, that's not because you are trying to mislead people about your identity, but because maybe you struggle to read. So maybe you read a current date and instead you put your birthday, for example. You know, that's a sign that someone may not have understood the instructions. But in some states, that's reason to throw out their vote altogether. And so it's laws like that that are, again, those barriers that mean that it might not

be, you know, specifically saying if you can't read, you can't vote. But in effect, that is what those laws are doing. I want to bring in Representative Renita Shannon here because, look, you know, y'all had you on the front lines and seeing this happen. Absolutely. Yeah. Since 2017, serving in the House of Representatives, I've been on the Governmental Affairs Committee, which deals with election law. And we saw many of these bills come through that put exact match into place. Thankfully, we don't still have that in place in Georgia today. The courts took care of that, as well as a representative, Bee Wynn, who's running for Secretary of State right now. But we've also seen other things. I think the last time that people really understood what was going on in Georgia was when it was in the papers that there were

bills outlawing giving people snacks and water as they stand in line and wait. That's an example of what your guest is talking about, where it's all these things just coming together to make it harder for people to vote. So whether it's giving people felonies because they are assisting people who don't read at a level that they have the full confidence that they are casting their vote for the folks that they want to cast it for. It's that sort of intimidation. It's allowing the FBI to investigate elections for absolutely no reason. It's allowing folks to just challenge an entire swath, thousands and thousands of voters, just, you know, with no sort of evidence or due process or anything, just throwing out large challenges that, you know, folks have to respond to.

And if they don't, then their vote is not counted. And so all of this, at the root of all this, is just a consistent type of voter suppression that is meant to do one thing, and that is to make it so difficult for black and brown voters to keep up with what it takes to vote and keep up with, to toss so many hurdles at black and brown voters that they would just give up and not vote because it becomes a lot, right? People have got jobs to work. They've got families to raise. They do not have time to be experts of government. And with the threat of going to jail for helping your community have their voice heard at the ballot box, as well as all of these additional hurdles that change what feels like practically every year is

having a tremendous impact on making sure that every community's voice, every voter's voice is heard in the same way with equal justice. Aaliyah, the thing that, so what was the, in your reporting, I always talk about this wow factor. What was the one thing that just really jumped out at you and the reporting team as y'all were working through the story? Yeah, I think one thing that really jumped out at us was as we were contacting voters who had been, you know, involved in the investigation against Olivia Coley Pearson, a woman who had helped people to vote who struggled to read, the state did an investigation and they called up people on the phone who, you know,

their forms were not, you know, quite filled out right. And those people really viewed that as a form of intimidation, whether or not that was the intent, that was how it was received. And there were people who said after that, you know, this woman who helps people to vote ended up charged. And, you know, I'm not going to vote. I'm not someone who feels like I can, I'm not a city council person. I'm definitely going to be charged for this. So it's the fact of the intimidation that comes as a result of investigations like these that was a wow factor to me. That is the intent, to scare those voters to say, I'm afraid to go to the polls, so

therefore I don't even want to chance it, I don't want to risk it. I'm just not going to vote. Mm-hmm. Right. So the thing that jumps out at me, Aaliyah, with your reporting, what did officials say how they can fix this, how they can try to combat this? What are groups trying to do to fight this? Yeah. So we've talked to a lot of experts who study this, who study how voting can be made

more accessible for people who struggle with reading. A lot of the things that they say are things to just simplify it that would help really all of us. You know, a lot of us have issues with reading the very, you know, convoluted constitutional amendments or the ballot questions. Making those more simple, written in plainer language would help people with lower literacy skills and everybody to vote. Changing the design is one of the major things that, you know, maybe you don't think about when you go into the voting booth, but the design of a ballot can really be especially challenging for people who struggle with reading. You know, they can be laid out in ways that are very confusing.

They're not sure where to go to get the instructions, where the instructions end and the list of voters begin. So those two things are really major in terms of making the vote more accessible. All right, then. And on the Congo, it's a constant battle. And the problem that we have, this Supreme Court has frankly gutted the Voting Rights Act. And Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, is complaining about how people are criticizing the Supreme Court has frankly gutted the Voting Rights Act. And Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, is complaining about how people are criticizing the Supreme Court. Well, he was the one who led that particular effort. And this is how we got to this particular point. And the moment they did that, Republicans pounced on that and put into place a lot of these onerous laws to do

exactly what Aaliyah and ProRepublica and Great TV's reporting has discovered. And this is why everybody who always says voting doesn't matter, you always have to respond with, if voting doesn't matter, why are people working so hard to prevent us from being able to vote, period, bottom line. When I was reading this article, and thank you, Ms. Swabi, and your team for this incredible article, not even allowing people to get assistance when they're at the polls or filling out the forms, every single step of the way, they are working to block it. And to be quite honest, Roland, this actually ties in with the last segment on Mississippi as it relates to these states that are in poverty as well, because the education programs don't allow for us to have strong

programs in schools as it relates to literacy. So we're talking about an endless cycle where they're not giving us the funding locally in our schools to give us the skills to become literate and the like. They're not funding the community centers that help people gain skills in terms of being able to better themselves. And then you put it in the political system, in the political process, where you can't even get to the booth and be able to get assistance because you don't have the skills to be able to read the ballots. This is a multi-pronged approach. And people think that just because folks are not wearing white sheets to try to prevent us from getting to the ballot booth,

that they are not using Klan-like tactics. The fact of the matter is when Joe Madison talks about James Crow Esquire instead of Jim Crow, this is what they are doing. They are working every single day to create laws from the most basic levels, like these perfect match laws, to even simple things like being able to hand out water, as Representative Shannon said. And so right now, coming into these midterms, we need to understand that many of us have been doing this work for years, and we understand it. Some of us are getting a little bit more sophisticated on it now. But whatever it takes, we need all hands on deck coming into this midterms. And after this midterm, we have to go harder in our community. And I know we go hard, but we got to go harder in our communities and making sure that we're demanding

the resources needed to make sure that we're building a literate electorate, period, bottom line. And so they got this double-edged sword going on where they want to prevent us from voting. And then on the other side, they want to have all of these messages out there. Voting doesn't matter. Voting doesn't change anything. But we are realizing, more people are realizing now that it is now or never. And so with reporting like this getting out there, which isn't being covered by the major networks, the burden is on us. That's what onus means. It's on us to make sure that we're getting this message out and continue to fight. And so shout out to all of the activists out there. Shout out to the reporters who are doing this work. The time was yesterday to get active on

this and we got to keep going. Aliyah, final comment. Yeah. I mean, I think that's exactly right that, you know, this is something that has not been covered very widely. I think the part of that is because there's a huge stigma against not being able to read. And that's really something that is, you know, that needs to be tackled in and of itself in order for this to be an issue that's more on people's radars and where people feel comfortable raising their hands and saying, yes, I struggle to read. Yes. You know, these laws have been stopping me from actually being able to exercise my right. All right. Again, great, great coverage there. Aliyah Swabi, ProPublica in partnership with Gray TV. We appreciate their reporting that partnership. Thanks a lot. Great. Thank you. And folks, if you don't support ProPublica, you should do so. This is amazing work that they do. It's a nonprofit, again, covering a lot of the stories that other people will ignore. And this piece really is

a great one, the fight against an age old effort to block Americans from voting. And really, they're trying to block black folks from voting. Got to go to a break. We come back on Roller Mark Unfiltered, our black and missing for the day. We'll also talk about what's happening with HBCUs. Deion Sanders is saying, why are HBCU football teams getting screwed when they play big money games? Other universities are getting one, $1.5 million. Why are they giving HBCUs half or even a third of what they're giving predominantly white institutions? Also, Fisk University has a new president.

Just fired their president. They've had seven presidents in 22 years. What the hell is going on? Why can't Fisk have stable leadership in the president's office? I'm going to break that thing down on the show as well. A lot of stuff is going to be covering, folks, over the next hour and a half.

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in ourselves 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 funding for our HBCUs and against lowering prescription drug costs for our seniors.

These Republicans keep trying hard to stand in the way, but President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats won't let them. They are delivering for us. The Democratic National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising. Pull up a chair. Take your seat at the Black Tape with me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin,

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15-year-old Katanya Bolden was reported missing from Cleveland on September 4th. Katanya is 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighs 120 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black shirt, black pants, and a black jacket. Katanya has a nose piercing. Anyone with information about Katanya Bolden should call the Cleveland Police Department at 216-623-2755. 216-623-2755.

Folks, a black Alabama pastor arrested for watering his neighbor's lawn has filed a federal lawsuit against Chief Richard McClellan, officers who arrested him in the city of Childersburg, Alabama. Pastor Michael Jennings says he was falsely arrested on Sunday, May 22, when officers questioned what he was doing at his neighbor's home. Jennings explained that his neighbors had asked him to water the plants while they were away. Police had been responding to a report of a suspicious person phoned in by a neighbor. However, that neighbor, who was a friend of Jennings, came out during the interaction and told the officers she had been mistaken.

During Saturday's news conference, Pastor Jennings made it clear why he needed to move forward with the lawsuit. One thing I want to make crystal clear is he needed to move forward with the lawsuit. One thing I wanna make crystal clear that I'm not anti police. We need the police. Without police, we have poor chaos. But there's bad police, there are good police. There are bad preachers, there are good preachers. But what they did that day, they did was impunity. Thinking there'd be no action taken against them. I felt dehumanized. I felt livid. I felt helpless and it hurt me.

When my neighbor came out and told them who I was, they believed her. I would give it to her. She even said, I won't give you my name because you arrested him. And once she came out. My wife came over and humiliated for my wife to come up and almost big and almost clean any man, whether you're white or black, you don't want your woman pleading or begging on your behalf because you're a

man and you want to take responsibility for yourself and it hurt me after that they took me to tillersburg police department where they started looking up my record and they looked at me and said oh you've never been arrested like i'm supposed to be arrested then after that they took me to talladega 15 miles away to talladega where i was booked in i was fingerprinted and later they posted me up on talladega crime busted preachers busted the information that hurt me and then later on my wife had to come and get me they sent her to talladega to bail me out when they know i had to be bailed out from Chilisburg. She had to come back to Chilisburg to get Obama, to come back to Talladega.

What hurt me is my wife cried all the way there and all the way back. She never faced anything like this. She's a pastor's kid herself. If anybody that's a real man, it hurt you when you can't defend your family. It hurt you when you can't help them. I'm here today for there to be some accountability. I'm not here for revenge. I'm here for accountability and for justice.

Wrong is wrong. No matter what your race, color, creed, wrong is wrong. In the lawsuit, Childers alleges that the actions of officers Christopher Smith, Justin Gable, Sergeant Jeremy Brooks, and the city violated the Constitution of Protection against unlawful arrests and is guaranteed of free speech. McCongo, I'm going to start with you. Here's what's interesting when you listen to the video. First of all, this guy used to be a cop. When the cop said, give us your name, he said, I don't have to.

I know the law. They insisted. This is a perfect example of here's an individual who knew the law. And these officers completely ignored that fact and demanded he do something that he was not required to do by law. Absolutely. And another thing he said in an interview I heard, and the reason why he also did not want to give his name is because they can just instantly say, put his name in the system for a quote unquote suspected burglary. And then that's on record as well. So if he ever gets pulled over again, they will see that in the system. And so he knew, because of his background, that it was going to create a deeper profile for him in their system. And so he did everything by the book.

And the fact of the matter is, when his neighbor came out as well, they asked her for her ID. She refused to show it. She didn't get arrested. And then they asked him, Poland, in the interview, when they were questioning him, how do I know that you're watering plants while he's sitting there with a hose in his hand watering the plants, Dr. Malvo?

And I'm like, are you serious? So at every juncture, they were trying to get him riled up, to set him up. And when they realized that he was smarter than them, when they realized that they had no case, they basically put their eagles above everything else and they arrested him. And now the city is going to pay in some way, shape, or form,

probably some non-disclosed amount. But this goes to lack of training. And there's probably some people out there saying, well, he should be glad that he didn't get shot. No, this is not how it works. We're looking for justice every single day at every single turn in every way, shape or form. And these guys let the ego and bravado get in the way and they all need to pay for it. And lastly, the things that he was talking about as it relates to his wife and what

she had to endure, because nowadays, Roland, we all know there's no Sandra Bland, rest in power. There's no guarantee that once you get into that car that your family is never going to see you again. And they made her endure that as well they got to pay. You know, you know Julian again. If we play the video and had him on the weekend. This actually happened and the man is then that one won the weekend this actually happened and the man is thin and one one the grass And he's literally telling the cops and he goes sir. Give us your name. No, I don't have to I'm a former cop

I know the law I do not have to give you my name And so this is what happens all too often where police they think if they can do whatever they want They can demand after your name, demand for your ID. And so here's a man who's saying, no, I have constitutional rights. I don't have to give them up. And what they hope, Julian, they hope they run up against people who don't know the law. So therefore, you will give them consent to search your car, take your name, whatever. And then if something happens, you've given all your rights away because you didn't have to do it.

He knew the law. And guess what? They don't have to pay. They are absolutely going to have to pay. And I hope they pay big time. Eventually, citizens will get tired of these rogue cops who do whatever they want to do just because they can. They can do whatever they want to do, but citizens have the right to sue. The part that hit me the hardest, though, Roland, was the man's wife having to go from one place to the other place, back to another place, running from pillar to post. When they knew, when they knew, when they knew that she was going to have to come back to their station to bail him out and then take the paperwork back to the place where she had gone Talladega in the first place. That makes no sense. It really is about oppressing Black people. And as Oba Congo said, if you were on those Alabama roads, you don't know what's going to

happen after dark. And so basically putting not only him in jeopardy, but his wife in jeopardy. This is a kind of nonsense that black people are having to deal with every day. This is a kind of anti-blackness that is pervasive in our nation. And it's a kind of anti-blackness that simply has to stop. I am so glad this brother, you know, I will say this, a lot of black Southerners don't take it all the way to the mat. A lot of them will say, OK, well, I wasn't hurt. I'm going to leave it alone. I'm so glad this brother, this pastor, is not only standing up for himself and his wife, but showing his church and others an example of why we must fight back. Every time one of these little bitty things happen, people say it's a little bitty thing. No, it's not a little bitty thing. It's systemic

anti-Blackness, and each and every one of us, if you let it go, you're complicit. And that's the thing right there, Representative Shannon. We cannot simply let it go. Yeah, it causes undue strain and stress having to go through this, but folk have to pay

for their racism. Yeah, no, Dr. Malveaux took the words right out of my mouth. I'm so glad this pastor is pressing charges and holding these police officers accountable because usually in these types of situations, I think everybody can agree, you would usually see a pastor saying, oh, let's turn the other cheek and let's do the Christian thing and let's have a sit down together. No, it's time out for all of that. I'm so glad he's pressing charges because you cannot defeat racism by doing nothing about it and trying to have nice white conversations with these people who are rooted in racism. Secondly, it's not about the training. Cause I would ask these police officers,

how many white people did you arrest today for watering plants? The answer is probably zero, probably their entire career. And so this story makes the case as to why people, it's just another example of why people are saying that police officers' budgets are inflated and need to be reduced. Because if you have time to go around and harass people for watering plants, then I would submit that there is too many of you on the streets and you have too much time and your budgets need to be reduced. Omokongo? I think at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, this brother is taking a stand for all of us to see. And the other reason why this is important, because going off of the last two comments that were made as well, a lot of times when we have these interactions with the police, so many of us don't file complaints.

But then when it gets to the point where something like a murder of George Floyd happens or other situations, many of these officers never have anything on file because we never filed reports because we just wanted to go about our business. And so this is, again, another example why we need to continue to stand up, put these guys on blast, put them on record so that the world knows who these people are. And once they pay and hopefully get rid of these officers, we need to also make sure, I know I keep coming back to these midterms as well, but we got to get the political leadership in place so that we can get that George Floyd police reform bill

so guys like these can go on it and never be allowed to work in any police precinct ever again. Indeed, indeed. All right, folks, got to go to break. We come back. We're going to talk about several things with HBCUs. First and foremost, Deion Sanders is going public with his complaints

about how HBCU football teams are being screwed by major universities, how they're doing major payouts, more than a million dollars, schools like Appalachian State and others, yet HBCUs are getting 450,000, $500,000 for the exact same game. I'm going to break that thing down next on Roland Martin Unfiltered with my man Scottie off script TV.

Also, what's the deal at Fish University? Can somebody explain to me how they have had seven presidents in 22 years? They just fired their president, Doctor Van Newkirk Sr. Can somebody explain to me why? And now you have an interim president who used to be the board chair.

Again, it makes no sense, especially when Fortune Forbes just did a huge story on how great things are going at Fisk. Those two things don't match. Also, in our Marketplace segment, we'll show you Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, now has a black-owned hotel, formerly the Mandarin Oriental, here in the nation's capital. I was there for the announcement just a couple of hours ago.

We'll show you that as well. Plus, we lost a great one. Jazz artist Ramsey Lewis passed away today at a Chicago home at the age of 87. We'll pay tribute to him right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Download the app, folks. All platforms, Black Star Network, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, please join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support this show. We need to raise $100,000 this month. That's 2,000 people giving on average $50 each.

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It's real simple. It ain't that hard. Hit the like button. We should be at easily past a thousand. Same thing on Twitch and Instagram, LinkedIn as well. And share your thoughts with us. We'll be right back. When we invest in ourselves, we all shine. Together, we are Black Beyond Measure. I remember being with The View when they said, we want to extend your contract. And I knew God said, it's time to move. It's time to go. And everybody was saying, Sherri, you got a great job.

You're making all of this money. And I said, no, it's time. And they said, you ain't going to be able to. You've been away from Hollywood. And I said, no, it's time. And they said, you ain't going to be able to. You've been away from Hollywood. And I said, it's time to go. And when I didn't, that's when I realized I was about to go through this divorce. And it was going to be expensive. It was going to be a lot.

And I said, I'm going to stay. I said, I'm going to stay for a couple of years. Make this money. See, go ahead. I'm going to make this money. And then I'll get out, Lord. So it was a compromise. I'm going to do what you say, but I'm going to do it on my thing. And he went, really? He went really. And you know when he went really?

They said that we were heavy in contract negotiations. And they came, my manager called, she said, they're not gonna renew your contract. And I went, hey, wait, what? Just yesterday, they was offering me more money. She said, they just decided not to renew your contract. And I remember sitting in front of the mirror at The View and I went, what happened? And it was very clear. God said, I told you it was time to go. When we invest in ourselves, we're investing in what's next for all of us.

Growing. Creating. Making moves. That move us all forward. Together, we are Black Beyond Measure. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Hi, I'm Eric Nolan. I'm Shante Moore.

Hi, my name is Latoya Luckett, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Să ne vedem la următoarea mea rețetă! Thank you. All right, folks. This weekend in Memphis, Tennessee State and Jackson State got together in the Southern Heritage Classic. Jackson State won that game again. Southern University was playing LSU in Baton Rouge. While that was happening, Appalachian State was beating my Texas A&M Aggies in Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. Bethune-Cookman previously had played against Miami.

Why are we laying all these things out? Well, these are called money games, where you have smaller schools who play these major institutions for a big payday. Well, Deion Sanders, head coach of Jackson State, not too particularly pleased with the amount of money HBCUs are getting compared to these other predominantly

white institutions. He talked to HBCU Game Day and broke it down. I'm looking at numbers that they gave me. Marshall got a million two five to play against Notre Dame. Appalachian State got a million five to play against Texas A&M. Georgia Southern got 1.4 to play against Nebraska. Okay. And so forth.

Now let's get to us. Fam U got 450 to play against North Carolina. Southern, thank God. You got 760. I like that. Alabama State, 590.

UCLA, you probably exhausted that in the flight going all the way across the country. But don't cook, but I don't even know what their payout is. We still try to find out that. Alabama A&M, 300,000 as well. The play against UAB. If we're going to get that butt butt kick shouldn't it be worth it how in the world are we settling for the peanuts in the the the little minute droppings that they're giving us when everybody's during their five six hundred thousand should we get together and huddle up as the hbcu

and say we're not playing these beat down games unless we get this. Now, don't go up under. You can negotiate above. But have the level be 750 a million. Have something. Make it work your teams well, because you're going to lose players. You're going to lose pride and dignity when we sit up here telling you we're just as good, but you go out there and show that we're not as good.

We're not nearly as good. And then you're losing three to four players because of the type of beating that you've got. Now you got to lift them and build them back up. The next week, you go right there and say, you could do it this week. Forget about last week, but you could do it this week. I don't understand that. I don't understand how we allow these other schools to get these type of purses to play against the same team that we're playing against. So who's negotiating this? Can we get together, inform a committee or something and say we're not doing it unless we get a million? Negotiate up, but don't negotiate down. And that million should go directly to your football department. They're out there getting their butts kicked.

Not the rest of the school. They're out there getting their butts kicked. They're out there getting abused. They're out there getting hurt. They're out there getting injured. And now you want to spread it out amongst the school? I don't agree with that. If they're out there playing, they should reap the benefits of the

sacrifices that they're making. I just don't like when I'm seeing guys get 1.4, 1.2, 1.7, or whatever, and we getting peanuts. I don't like that. So that means we're not doing well business-wise. I just want to alarm you on that kind of stuff because that's the kind of stuff I think about. That matters to me.

That's the ultimate sellout to me. So I'd rather us get together somebody take the lead i'll be glad to i'm used to being in that position and say you know what we're not doing it well coach brown is easy for y'all to say no no we're in the same financial situation not in a better financial situation than any of the rest of everybody we may do more we're able to work more and we're able to why didn't get we're able to go out there and get more because we got to go get them. But when it comes to selling our kids out,

I can't take it, man. It frustrates me, it angers me, it upsets me wholeheartedly. And I'm sorry, but when I see that kind of stuff and I look at those stats and it makes me mad. It really does. Because we're trying to preach that we're just as good. Then we go out there and get beat down for peanuts.

Don't like it. God bless y'all. Have a wonderful day. All right. Welcome to the show, Scotty, from Offscript TV. Folks, follow my YouTube channel, Scotty. It's a whole deal. I saw no lies there. from Offscript TV. Folks, follow him on his YouTube channel. Scott, his whole deal. I

saw no lies there. I have been saying for months on this show, HBCUs are screwing themselves by having individuals negotiate these deals who, frankly, don't know how to negotiate. I'm seeing bad TV deals,

bad streaming deals. I saw you complain this weekend that the Southern Heritage Classic folks announced they were streaming that game on Facebook and YouTube. Why in the hell are you doing that when you could have actually got paid for the streaming rights? What the hell? Bro, it's so many different levels to this and so many different variables that make this thing even worse than what it is. And you bring it up to Southern Heritage Classic distribution and how they how they shot it. Like if you go back and watch the game, there was no ticker. There was no time. There was no announcers. There were no commercials.

It was literally a PNG of a photo of the Southern Heritage Classic every time there was a commercial break. So there was no commercials for the schools. Tennessee State, nobody had any promotion. It was literally done however the promoter wanted to do it. That's a whole nother bucket. So basically, it couldn't even qualify for us using the word broadcast.

I don't even know. It was just called point and stream. Point and stream. Literally, point and stream. You couldn't even tell what down in distance it was like that's how bad this stream was and i i i anybody out there to go watch that and tell me that's a broadcast for a high level jackson state team when you have two nfl greats on the sideline espn nfl NFL Network would have ate that up. And you have a promoter who literally just put anything on YouTube and Facebook and showed it just because he could.

It's sad. It's pure sad. It's just sad. The thing Deion was talking about there I think is important because what he's saying is, wait a minute, if we out there sacrificing our bodies, how's Appalachian State getting $ 1.5 million from Texas A&M? How are these other schools getting a million plus? And again, University of North Carolina

gives Florida A&M $450,000. Now, granted, he mentioned the Southern guy, $750,000 or so, playing LSU. But when they have money games, other schools are getting a million plus. These HBCUs are playing themselves small. I keep saying this, and people keep saying, man, man, why you dogging the HBCUs? Because let me be real clear, you can't blame this one on white people. These are black folks who are not negotiating the way we should be negotiating. And a part of the problem is, and I'm being real clear because we've experienced with it, there are people who are negotiating deals on behalf of the HBCUs who know nothing about

media rights, who know nothing about marketing, and they're just taking small amounts of money. I'm calling it spare change. It's actually, it's simply athletic sharecropping. It's actually it's simply athletic sharecropping. It's simple, but see what the thing about Deion is, I love what he said, but you have to put a lot of this in different compartments, right? I agree with you whole Harley on media deals, but

all schools aren't created the same. True. So, yeah, Notre Dame can pay a school $1.4 million, but Texas State can't. And if that's the team you're playing, Jackson State, then you're not going to get a million-dollar payout from them. Now, LSU, they can pay $760 million. But if you're playing, you know, if you're playing some team,

if you're playing Marshall, which is an FBS school, if they play them, you think Marshall is going to pay FAMU a million dollars to come up to West Virginia? No. So all schools aren't made the same. And these are the same schools that Deion doesn't want to play. And we all know that most of these

HBCUs, when they go play a money game, there are for budget requirements like, hey, we need that $400,000 or $500,000 to make our budget work. So instead of focusing, this is an appetizer. The dinner is the TV deals. That's where your money comes from. This is just an appetizer to get you through a season, get you through a year.

Well, I'll actually look at it a little bit different. For me, I'm looking at all pots of money. I'm looking at money games. I'm looking at why a lot of these coaches are saying, or he's saying, I don't want to play these classic games, because if I can bring in 50,000 people in Jackson State, in Jackson, Mississippi, but now the key is, are they buying tickets or are you giving away tickets?

That's one. Then I can sell concessions. I got parking. I can sell souvenirs. I can make more money with a home game. That's why a Texas A&M ain't going to play at Appalachian State, because we put $100,000 in Kyle Field, and guess what? They were paying, so you can afford to pay that $1.5 million to an Appalachian State.

That's why you play one of the major institutions. But what this goes to is, again, black folks, us being small, when we're negotiating, to your point, the television contracts, the streaming contracts, all of those different things. And he makes a great point. If the football team is the one out there putting on the line, the money needs to go back to the football department because you and I have seen football teams with horrible locker room conditions, locker rooms not being clean, mold and things along those lines. And if you, for instance, North Carolina, Matt Brown said, y'all got to pay for the band to come up. If you're negotiating that too, make sure the band expense is covered and flying them up versus sticking them on the bus for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours.

All I'm saying is, I keep saying this, I am tired of having surviving conversations regarding HBCUs. I'm talking about having thriving conversations, and that means having better negotiators. Absolutely. And at the end of the day, we all know when PW know when PWI plays, they're coming to see the band. The football is an afterthought. So they're pretty much the main marketer.

So for Mack Brown to say, oh, you got to deal with your band, it's like, why are we even coming if I got to pay for my band, which, you know, everybody in your stadium wants to see? You know, like it doesn't even make any sense. And on top of everything else, to me, it goes, listen, man, I love Dion. I've been a Dionion fan since i mean i was little bandana all that you can't just pick and choose what you want to talk about you got to incorporate everything so it can't just be oh a money game or you know uh names on the jersey you gotta you gotta crush the whole system and you have to talk about the media deals and the contracts and why your commissioner of your conference signed such a horrible deal with HBCU. Go. That needs to be talked about as well. So don't pick and choose.

Listen, I love it because at the end of the day, you have programs like Alcorn State, which went to the celebration twice, got $1.5 million and they can't hire a trainer because the money just disappears and goes into the general fund of the school. So I agree with them on those aspects, but you also got to talk about the lack of negotiating on these media deals, just taking

the pennies of what somebody's offering you, then you sell all your rights away. It doesn't make sense. And you got to have the same accountability on both sides. Julian Malveaux, you were president of Bennett College. And when we talk about, again, when we talk about expertise, and what gets me is I have these folks, they be like, oh, yeah, but you went to the white school, Texas A&M. I'm sorry.

I learned about expertise at my black high school. This ain't got a damn thing to do with me going to Texas A&M. I'm sorry, I learned about expertise at my black high school. This ain't got a damn thing to do with me going to Texas A&M. This is about money. And the bottom line is this here. If I got a TV deal and I got people on my side who don't know a damn thing about negotiating TV deals, they're not going to be negotiating the deals. I love it what Dr. River Floyd Flake once told me. He said that when they first started doing deals with his church in Jamaica, Queens, he said, I would bring some deacons with me. He said, but when I started negotiating 30, 50, and 100 million dollar deals,

I brought people on my side of the table who spoke the same language as the folk on the other side of the table so the folks on the other side of the table knew I wasn't playing around. He said, I ain't bringing no deacons with me who all they can do is pray, who don't know nothing about a $100 million deal. And that's exactly what we are seeing happening, Julian, with these HBCUs who are now getting a level of prominence. They should be asking the question, okay, how much is ESPN? How much is HBCU Go? Hey, who else is out there? Fox Sports is out there. Amazon is out there. Hulu is out there. You got all of these platforms now

who are looking for live sports. And you know what they're also looking for, Julian? Black eyeballs. We watch more TV than anybody else in the country. That's why everybody want to do black right now because we watch content, but the problem we have is the folk negotiating on behalf of our HBCUs, many of them have no idea

what the hell they're doing. Roland, you're absolutely right. It's so absurd that every HBCU has alums who are MBAs, lawyers who do these kind of deals. Why not reach out to your alums who do this kind of thing instead of going to Okie doke? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to freeze you right there because here's the deal. Just because an alum has an MBA don't mean they know how to negotiate a media rights deal. One of the problems that I've discovered talking to various people,

you've got people who are general counsels at HBCUs who say, well, I'm a lawyer. Just because you're a lawyer don't mean you know the TV deal. That's like a real estate lawyer ain't the person you use for bankruptcy court. You need a specialist. And what I'm saying is I want our HBCUs to hire subject matter experts. If you were to head the board of trustees and a president, you should be looking at every contract you got. Food services contract, janitorial contract, housing contract. And if you got people on your side

who do not know what the hell's in the contract, say, excuse my niche, I'll go ahead and leave the room. Let me go bring somebody in who can negotiate the best deal for our school. I agree with you, Roland. I agree that we need subject matter experts, that we don't need to go with the okey-doke, that presidents and trustee presidents

I'm going to leave the Board of Trustees alone for the moment. We can talk about that. Well, we can't do that because they also are part of the damn problem here. But go ahead. They're the big part of the problem because they think that their job is to tell the president what to do. Which is not.

What they're supposed to do is raise money. Their job is to raise money. And to properly evaluate the president. But I'm going to get to that a second when I talk about Fisk. But go ahead. I like what Deion Sanders said.

Yeah, you know, I got something to say about all that. But we'll leave that alone. I like what Deion Sanders said. Yeah, you know, I got something to say about all that, but let me leave that alone. I like what Deion Sanders said, except for one thing. All the money should not go to the football team. I'm sorry. Most of it should a sizable portion of it should. But the football team is part of the college. If there is no college, there is no football team. So to say, I mean, I agree with the brothers and they are raggedy lockers. They got this. They got that. Fix that stuff. But all the money you get, one point four million, even seven hundred thousand. All that money should not go to the football team.

Well, but here's the deal here. I'm bringing in Renita and I'm a Congo. Here's the deal. If my athletic department, for instance, Scotty, what's the number? Florida A&M approved a budget this year. They approved a deficit of $900K. Let me say that again. Florida A&M approved an athletic budget. That's what? $900K deficit. Okay. So if you got a money game, the money your sports make should actually go to the sports

so you're not running a deficit because here's the deal. You're going to have to sit here. If you got a deficit, you're going to have to pay it anyway. So I think that's part of what Dion is saying that remember, most schools on the Congo, football actually funds the whole athletic department. OK, your power five schools. Basketball, you can throw in basketball, too. But those are really the two sports that fund. And that's all because of TV money. You can't sit here, to Scotty's point, have an all-corn state go to the celebration bowl

where the payout is in excess of a million dollars and they literally could not hire a full-time trainer. You can't have no football team and no full-time trainer. Yeah, this is, you know, I really do respect what Deion Sanders is doing. Because really, at the end of the day, all he's asking for, and I hear everything Scott is saying as well, and we're all asking for the same thing, is that we all understand our value and start to assert it at a high level. And there is no better time for HBCUs to start doing that than right now. You see what's happening with Michael Jordan and what he's doing with Howard University,

LeBron James and FAMU as well. People are starting to see the value. And so when all of this attention is starting to be placed on your schools, you've got to have people who come to the table who know exactly what they're talking about. Because really, at the end of the day, you can't. The way Scottie was describing that game from last week, I felt like I could have just pulled out my camera on my phone and just streamed that joint. But you can't do that. We need higher quality people. I remember a few months ago, we were talking about the AME

church and the situation was going on with how the money was being handled as well. And like you said, with your deacon friend, can't be bringing the same people to higher level tables. So at the end of the day, HBCUs, you got a president who's putting money towards the universities. Well, there's no better time right now to get this financial house in order. And one of the other things Deion Sanders said, and these other schools need to take him up on, he said, look, we all need to come to the table. I'll be the leader of it. And maybe he doesn't have to be the leader.

But the fact of the matter is he's calling for the minds to come together. He's calling for people to convene. And I'm sure there are other coaches and other people who have been talking about this as well. Obviously, they don't have the same level of cachet. Use that cachet. Come to the table and start making. He said, let's make agreements where we have a minimum. We're not going.

But this is how we're going to get to that next level. And again, in life, they say you don't get what you deserve. You get what you can negotiate. And that's what needs to happen. Representative Shannon, look, you are a Georgia State representative, and trust me, the public universities in Georgia, they have sports programs. Last thing y'all want for them coming to the state,

asking for some money to cover their losses. They should be able to make money on these programs. Yeah, and they also make sure they have great relationships with lawmakers so that they are supported at all times. I commend Deion Sanders for what he's doing. I stopped watching college football years ago due to the NFL.

It just kind of put a sour taste in my mouth of football in general. But Deion Sanders is breaking these issues down in a way that even if you are not actively watching football, he is letting you know what is going on with the HBCU football team. So it seems like he's doing really important work. I guess, you know, I want to try to give him benefit of the doubt. Are we missing something? Is there a reason that they're not bringing in experts to negotiate these deals? I mean, are we missing something? No, they're not. And I'm telling you, look, look, you got,

Scotty, can tell you this here. This will be the last, look, look, you got Scottie containers here. This be the last point here, Scottie. You got HBCU presidents right now in different conferences who don't even know what they are being paid by the TV deal signed by a conferences right now. Absolutely. It's ridiculous to be in the position of all the media. You're saying, hey, I control this, I control that, and you don't even know what you're getting paid or present as being part of the president's council to approve what your

commissioner does and you haven't even seen your contract, nor have you probably even read your bylaws to know or understand how it gets divvied or broken up or what the commissioner can and cannot do. Listen, I agree with everything your panel is saying, and I agree with Deion simply on the money

games, but when the minimum, when you convene, when you have this convention and you convene, which should happen with the MEAC, SWAC, and CIW, whoever you want to add to it, because remember, people don't want to talk about this. D2 HBCU schools play D1 HBCU schools for money games as well.

So let's not act like it doesn't go back and forth. So that's another aspect you got to throw in there, where D2 play D1 for money games as well. How much are you paying them? But that's neither here nor there. But at the end of the day, like this is my thing. When you convene, it has to be my team expenses are fully paid. We do not leave this state. We do

not go across, we don't cross state lines if we don't have expenses paid for my team and my band. We know what you want to come see. We know what we're the attraction for. It has to be paid. And if that, then we're not going.

So it should be that simple for me. All right, then. Scotty, Allscript TV, y'all be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel. Scotty, always a pleasure, man. Thanks a bunch. Always, Ro. Appreciate you. Thanks a bunch.

All right, folks. Last year, last year, this was in the Nashville, Tennessee headline. The Fisk University officially names Van Newkirk Sr. the school's next president. Look at the date. That was on February 15th, 2021. Okay, that was in their newspaper. This is the headline of the Nashville Tennessean on August 28th, 2022. Fisk University parts ways with President Van Newkirk. All right, so here's the deal. Y'all know last semester I was a scholar in residence, the Rebus Mitchell Scholar in Residence at Fisk University.

I appreciated them bringing me there. My wife, she actually has taken some classes and she enrolled at Fisk online as well. I had a great time lecturing to the students there, talking to the faculty as well. But this is strange to me. And in fact, what happened was I

dropped it. When I was on vacation in the Bahamas, I'd gotten word that they were trying to, they were getting rid of the president. So I then did a video saying this makes no sense to me. And so within about 15, 20 minutes, I get a DM on Instagram from the Fisk University media folks saying that board chair, Frank Sims would like to talk to me. And so I said, great, he can hit me up. So he called me and he hit me up and we emailed and he said, I need to get the

other side of the story. I said, fine. I said, I got a pretty good idea of the story, but feel free to give me a call. Come on the show. Well, we hit them today. We're going back and forth, and because of their agreement with President Newkirk, they can't discuss why he was let go. And I said, okay, that's fine, but I'm going to go ahead and still talk about this because here's the thing that I'm confused by. Now, I just told y'all

what this article, the Tennessean article that you're getting rid of the president at Fisk. On August 26th, this appeared in Forbes. Historically, Black Fisk University how they are improving and how they have an increase in enrollment and then all different things along those lines. Now, first of all, I found it real weird in reading this story. The president wasn't quoted. All throughout, they were quoting the executive vice president, Johns Fredrickson.

Now, when I was at Fisk, we actually had the show. He was actually on the show. That was confusing to me. But so here's what I'm trying to understand. How does Forbes write a story saying Fisk is on the rise and how they were able to weather COVID, money brought in. They're building their first new academic building on the campus since 1960. When I was looking at, and I believe it was the Fisk University Instagram page, I believe they posted that this is the largest freshman class. Let me see if I can find it. Here it is. This year's incoming freshman class marks a major milestone

for Fisk. Come on, go to Instagram, please. As we have welcomed the largest class to our campus in over 40 years. Students from 33 states and five countries have joined the Fisk family for a record-breaking year. Okay, now, I need somebody to explain to me. Now, Julian, you would be President Emeritus at Bennett. This is where I'm confused. How can you be on the rise? How can you welcome your largest freshman class in 40 years?

How can you be building your first new academic building on your campus since 1960? And you get rid of the person who was the president. Now, I'm real confused because I ain't never seen a school where positive things have happened, but the person who was the president somehow had nothing to do with those things, so you get rid of that person. But here's a thing that also troubles me. Fisk has had seven presidents in 22 years. Now, Hazel O'Leary was president for seven of those years. So if you take Hazel O'Leary's seven years out, that means that Fisk has had six presidents in 15 years. That tells me, Julian, the problem ain't who's sitting in the president's office. The problem to me is you got a board of trustees

because if you keep making that many mistakes, you got to then, because if you want to say, well, the problem ain't the board, it's the president, well, that means y'all don't know how to pick folk. If you've had six presidents in 15 years, that's crazy. You cannot have any institution, a HBCU, a business, or anywhere else where you are thriving with six, I'll throw Hazel in. Seven presidents in 22

years. That's an average of three years each. That's crazy. You're absolutely right, Roland, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the boards. I mean, most of these boards, in my opinion, do not know what their job is. Their job is

to raise money and support the president, and when they can't support the president, fire the president. But given all the metrics that Mary Beth Kastman laid out in the Forbes article, given the metrics that we know about with Fisk, largest freshman class in 40 years, come on now. Somebody's doing something right. New academic building, come on now. So what it seems to me is wrong is not just the board, but there's some personal BS going on. The personalities, somebody's not kissing somebody's buddy enough. I mean, there are board chairs who think they're the president, who literally think they're the president, and they're not. And they need to know what their role is and need to adhere

to their role. The alums and other stakeholders need to be basically loud about this. And I'm glad you raised the question when you were there as a scholar, raised the question of, excuse me, but why is there this instability? Because here's the problem. Donors do not like instability. You see, let's take Hazel out of it because she has seven years. So you're talking about six people in 15 years. That is less than three years a person. Less than three years. But donors don't like instability.

When they see a ship that is rudderless, and that's what it seems to be, that's rudderless, they're not going to give their money. Alums look sideways, excuse me. I mean, unless the president is busted, I don't know, having sex with an elephant or something. I mean, there is no reason to turn presidents over like that.

I mean, it's just untenable and unsatisfactory. The average tenure for an HBCU president is between five and ten years. Right. So what's this? This is malfeasance. It's simple malfeasance. And let me say this here, Omokongo, because here's the thing that I think we need to deal with. And I know this for a fact because I've had these conversations.

When Texas Southern University ran off President Austin Lane, it was stupid, fired him. Then they had to pay the contract out when they determined it wasn't because there was no cause to fire him. He was snapped up that quick as the chancellor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Obviously, they had no problem with what he did there. And I'm going to tell you right now, I have heard this from African-Americans who are in academia. And I'm going to say this right now. This is what I've heard.

This is what they've told me point blank. This is what they said. Roland, I will never apply for HBCU president because I am not going to deal with board bullshit. We know for a fact look what happened to the sister. I forgot

her name, Julian, your former Delta president. They ran her out. That was absurd. That was the height of absurdity. They ran her out for no reason whatsoever. Ran her sister out and then put her in a contract where she couldn't have anybody staying over at a president's mansion. What the hell? That kind of bullshit.

That's petty. That's what reports are, petty. You had the sister down at Florida A&M who was the president. She came from Brown. All kind of drama ran her out. I'm telling you, I have had folks say, I am not going to waste my time. So the problem, Omicongo,

is that there is folks who would love to be HBCU presidents, but they are like, I am not going to deal with the petty bullshit. Period. Bottom line. Look, when we talk about six presidents in 15

years, we're talking about leaders who have been there for a shorter amount of time than the students who enter for your program. That's ridiculous. And going back to our last segment i'm glad you connected these two one after the other as the spotlight is being fixated on hbcus right

now this is really the time where people really got to start getting to act together because as dr marvel said alumni and other groups don't like instability and neither do the students enrolling quite honestly as this attention starts to arise right now, I can see situations where the students are going to start getting more involved and more active. As that student body gets bigger and they're going to start to demand more. These boards, there needs to be better scrutiny on them. And the fact of the matter is the only way this is going to come up is that people who are given to these universities start putting more pressure on them, because there's such, and when I hear you and Dr. Melville talk about these different presidents and all of the talent that is wasted,

that is just wasted, there's no other place to look at but the board. And so I don't understand what the process is of restructuring, but what I do understand is that schools will respond to external pressure and external financial pressure as well, and they will respond to student pressure. And so I'm hoping that the students who are there as well are taking heat to what's going on there.

Obviously, they don't know as much of this history if they're coming in, only been a year or two or so. But now that they may start to see this trajectory with a show like this, putting it out there for us to share, they got to start being more savvy too, because if they got a great president, a hot president who was representing them and doing the things that they need to do, they're going to go to bat for that president as well. And there's not going to be much the board can do about it if they don't want that smoke. And so really at the end of the day, now that this light is being put on them,

boys got to get to act together because Fisk deserves better than this. So here's the thing, Representative Shannon. So let's say the Fisk board says to Roland, we had particular reasons why we fired this President Van Newkirk Sr., which we can't reveal to you. Okay.

Can you explain to me the other six, seven? See, that's the point I'm trying to get at. See, it's not specifically about President Newkirk. It's how do you have seven in 22 years? That means, see, show me any Fortune 500 company in America that has had seven CEOs in 22 years, I am going, I can guarantee you, I will show you a grossly dysfunctional company that is struggling. And so when you keep bringing people in, that means new systems, new processes, new leadership.

They bring in their own. They bring it in. And so it's the constant turnover. It's stability. Show me any football team. Okay, the Washington Commanders have been sucking for two decades, cycling through coaches, cycling through coaches. Show me a team that, why have the Pittsburgh Steelers have been one of the most consistent winners in the NFL?

Mike Tomlin has been there for almost 20 years. Bill Belichick, that's called stability. And so, this is what my issue is, and so I'm taking this thing beyond President Newkirk, and what I am saying is, to the Fisk Board of Trustees, what I'm saying is to its alumni, to its students, they need to be asking a different set of questions to their board, and that is, y'all need to explain to us specifically why this president was let go and only was there for two years. What did he do, and who are you looking to replace him?

What are they going to do? Because I'm going to tell you right now, if I was in academia, I would apply to be the president of Fisk. If hell, if they lasted less than three years, almost two years, I'm not uprooting myself from somewhere else to come there with that lack of stability in the president's office. That's just truth. Yeah, I know. This is bad. And like you said, it really says more about the board than it does the presidents that they've been getting because to have that much turnover, it should be really obvious to all of us

why they've had that many. We should be seeing some egregious newspaper articles about all these folks if it was that bad. It sounds like to me that there's a board that cannot be satisfied, and it also sounds like possibly they are getting people to be on the board who maybe don't have experience with being on a board. Like maybe this is their first time being on a board. Because if you've been on a board before, you know that it looks really bad for any organization to get rid of leadership so quickly.

Because like you said, that looks unstable and it's really hard to fundraise. It just decreases confidence for anybody who's thinking about giving their money to the university. And so it sounds to me like they may be having an inexperience. They may be having inexperience. And look, I pulled up their board of trustees. They got some big names on there. But let me be real clear, and I'm going to say this here,

and Julian said it off the top, and that is this here. If you are a member of the board of trustees, I don't care if you're the board chair all the way down to the newest member, you do not run the university. That is not your job. The board of trustees, your job is to ensure that the university is functioning, but you're to be raising money. You're to make sure that folks are doing their jobs

when it comes to accountability. But when you have board members who are so knee deep in conversations that professors are having or whatever. No, it's no different than a city manager. I cover city council. And in Fort Worth, there was a city manager form of government. Do you know how that works?

The city council hires the city manager. The city manager manages the city council staff. If the city council needs something, they don't go to the staffer. The city council goes to the city manager who then gets the information from the staffer, gets the information, they give it to the city manager, he gives it to the council, he or she gives it to the council. And if the city manager ain't doing his job,

guess what the city council does? Fire the city manager. I've been on the board three times, the National Association of Black Journalists. I've been on the executive committee two of those three times. Do you know what our responsibility was? To hire the executive director.

Do you know what the executive director's job is? To run the national office. Rowling ain't out. Now, we had some petty-ass board members on NABJ who were tripping on with so-and-so showing up at work. I said, hey, hey, hey, y'all in the weeds. That ain't your damn job. That's his job.

In fact, we had some board members who were tripping about what a certain staff was being paid. I said, ah, ah, stop. We approved the budget for the executive director. However in the hell he wants to spend that money That's his responsibility. Our job is to evaluate him for the management of the organization I knew what a board members job was we asked but you know what the difference to the point You just make it represent the Shannon

We had some people on our black journalists board who had never been on the board before, who had never run a company before. So guess what? They were power tripping. They were power tripping. And I was like, uh-uh. Just because you ain't never run shit in your personal life don't mean you can come here and think you're going to run the organization.

And I said, that is not your job as a board member. And so all I'm saying is, and the fist folk and the board, look, interim president Sims, yes, you, my alpha brother and my blue leg brother, they ain't got a damn thing to do with this. Ain't got nothing to do with anybody, the Fisk alumni or any other board members. I know some of them. Pastor Marcus Cosby in Houston, my alpha brother. I know some other people as well.

Y'all, this is not specifically about President Newkirk. This is about seven presidents in 22 years, six presidents in 15 years. That's the problem. And my last point, I know the HBCU president who was inside of 90 days and the board had not told him whether they were going to renew his contract. So he took some other calls. He got fired from the university and the board chair said, well, you were out looking for a job. And he said, well, my contract says I'm supposed to know within 90 days whether you're going to renew or not. I got a family. If y'all don't hit me, I got to care about my family. But here's the other deal was so stupid. If you were HBCU president, you should want a president that other schools want that means

you got something they want they fired this brother because he dared apply for a job and they had notified him well they're going to renew his deal and you know what that brother told me never again he said never again will I work at an HBCU. He said, because that's just nonsensical. So the point we're, we are losing great talent because of pettiness in, but by various, by leadership. And that hurts students that hurts the building of our institutions. And we're, and we, if we're losing great black talent who would prefer to work at a predominantly white institution than deal with BS at an HBCU,

then the HBCU should examine their culture and say maybe the president ain't the problem. It's somebody else other than the president. And if you don't like that I had to say it, fine. Go talk to some retired HBCU presidents and then come back and tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait.

Tell it. I'll be right back. When we invest in ourselves our glow our vision our vibe we all shine together we are black beyond measure hatred on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not regret that. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the US Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call

white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at every university calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys.

This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is Whitefield. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple.

I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple.

I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple.

I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. I have a couple. beyond measure. You are watching Roland Martin, and I'm on his show today, and it's... Huh? We should have some cue cards! Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore, and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. Eee! Alright, folks, there are 1.9 million female veterans,

making up almost 10% of the total population. It is estimated that 1 to 2% of all women veterans and 13 to 15% of women veterans are living in poverty. They experience homelessness for more than a year. Veteran women are more than twice as likely as non-veteran women and over three times as likely as non-veteran women living in poverty to experience being homeless. My next guest is competing

in the Miss Veteran America pageant and is a formerly homeless vet. She ensures this issue gets addressed. Terris Garnier joins us from Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Yo, what up? Hi, good evening, how are you? So, all right, so this is the thing. So we often see these stories

that people talk about vets who are homeless, and oftentimes they're showing men. But what you lay out, how many women who have served have been homeless. Walk through your story and what you heard from so many others. So basically how I got started in Miss Veteran America, I was doing some research, and for decades, I've always wanted to build a home for abused women and children because I came from a home where my mother and I were in an abusive situation.

So I always wanted to build a home that could house these kinds of women and their children. And so I was doing some research, and I came across Miss Veteran America, and their mission. And so I was doing some research and I came across Miss Veteran America and their mission aligned completely with mine in the fact that they help various veterans across the country, specifically homeless veteran women and their children. They've helped over 7,000 families since they started in 2010. And so I read into it and I said, wow, this is something I want to be a part of. And as I was doing research and trying to get other people to come out about their experience being homeless, no one wanted to do it. And so for me, I said, well, you know, I'm the kind of person I don't ask people to do something I won't do.

And so basically I said, OK, people don't feel comfortable talking about this. It's embarrassing. There's all different types of reasons why people don't want to talk about this. So I said, well, I'm going to be that guinea pig then. I'm going to talk about my circumstance and my situation, and maybe that'll encourage others to want to come forward about their stories as well. And so for me, I was a network news reporter and I was homeless for a month. I was couch surfing and it was not a fun experience at all. I was living in my car for about a week, and then a friend was kind enough to let me stay in their 350-square-foot studio apartment with my service

dog for a month until I was able to get housing. But in that process, I reached out to the VA. I reached out to various programs in this area, and most of them, one, wouldn't take me because I had a service dog. Two, they only had facilities that were for men and women, so they were co-ed. And most of them, one, wouldn't take me because I had a service dog. Two, they only had facilities that were for men and women. So they were co-ed. And for me, I'm a sexual assault survivor, which that's another point I would like to point out. Most homeless veteran women, 40% are survivors of military sexual assault. So I'm also a survivor. And so for me, I'm like, no, I don't want to be housed with some random man I don't know. And so, you know, there's not a lot of options when it comes to that. And so that's why for me it was so important to join Miss Veteran America and help support and raise awareness.

Because like I tell everyone, if I as a network news reporter can be homeless, it can happen to anyone. And a lot of people and their perceptions of homelessness is, oh, they were addicted to drugs. They're crazy. They're, you know, they got PTSD. They got all these different things, but they never think of the demographic of couch surfing. You know, those living in shelters, those who are living in a basement on a couch, you know, until they can find housing. That is considered homelessness. And I think until we have the conversation and actually go in and define what is homelessness, a lot of people are going to overlook it. Because when we mention that, like you just said, they think of men or they think of the person who's sitting on the corner talking to an invisible person, you know, begging for money. And that's not always the case.

Questions for my panelists. Representative Shan, I'll start with you. Well, thank you for bringing this story. I guess my question would be, what do you think could be done to sort of raise awareness around what's going on with women veterans in particular? So I'll give you an example of something that I'm doing right now. I'm putting together a portrait gallery fundraiser. And the point of putting it together is to, one, get artists who were veterans, and some of them are homeless veterans. So now they get to put on their work.

They're getting support throughout the community by showcasing their work. Also, two, it's building that network. So now we're all getting together. We're all networking with each other. And we're learning about ideas of ways that everyone can make a difference. And also with this gallery, I don't want people to just come and donate or just buy some art, but it's also gonna be there to teach people, the average Joe, what they can do to help homeless veterans.

So I'm gonna give you a perfect example. Almost all the women I know has a closet full of clothes and you probably have a dress or two in there that you've worn once and you haven't worn in years. Perfect example, take that dress and donate it to an organization that helps homeless veterans. Final Salute has a program where they actually do makeovers for women. They will do their hair, their makeup. They'll teach them how to do it themselves.

They'll help them build their resumes. They'll do headshots, and they'll do training on what to do during a, when you're going to do interviews and they give them clothes. So you got your dress, your shoes, everything you need to have a successful interview. So if you're a person that has a couple pairs of shoes you haven't worn, donate them. Donate those couple dresses that are in your closet. You know, if you see someone on the street and you think they're homeless, don't ignore them. That's the worst thing. And

photos that Roland just showed there, I was doing a series where I was trying to show different scenarios of homelessness. Now, I couldn't get anyone to do the photo shoot. So I said, okay, I guess I'll have to sit in and be the model for it. But what I learned while doing that photo shoot, I did it in New York City and I also did it here in D.C. When I was holding that sign up people literally like before that people will walk up and say, Hey, how you doing? Before I had the sign up. And then the second I sat down and put the sign up, it was like a switch clicked. Those same people were instantly like, Oh, and like, you know, started to ignore me and walk past and pretended like I wasn't there. And that's the one thing that you can do that, that you can change. And that's the one thing that you can do that,

that you can change. And that's anybody can do that. Don't ignore them, be polite. I don't care if you think they're crazy or whatever the circumstances may be, you can still be polite and not hold a conversation with them, but be polite. So, you know, donating your clothes, donating your time,

find some local shelters that you can go help serve food. There's different programs where the kids need school supplies. Get some backpacks together. You can get five together, put school supplies in it, and find a shelter that has women and children and ask them if you can donate those things. There's a lot of simple things that people can do, but I feel they don't do it because it doesn't impact them. They don't care. They'll say all day long, oh, I'm patriotic. I support the military. Hoorah. But then when you say, okay, well,

put your money where your mouth is, donate a dollar to help this homeless veteran. It only costs $25 to house her. So her and her child isn't sleeping on the street and you'll hear crickets. I'm a Congo. Veterans, right? I'm a Congo. Ms. Garnier, one of the things I'm wondering is I hear from administration to administration, I'm still hearing about problems with the VA and how it treats veterans. Are you seeing an improvement in the services that you all are getting with this increased spotlight that you're putting on the situation of homelessness? I never hear candidates mention it during debates or anything. Is the attention starting to change? I feel that the attention is starting to change,

especially after Vanessa Guillen and her murder. I feel like a lot of attention was brought on to the military and how they're handling things, the military and the VA, the Department of Defense. So I think because they have a magnifying glass on them, a lot of things have changed and gotten better. I will say that I know they have a lot of programs for homeless women veterans,

as far as like dealing with MST, military sexual trauma, different counseling services. But I also feel like it's just not enough. When you have a woman and a child, now granted, I don't have children, but when you have a woman and a child and she's sleeping in her car, mind you, gas prices are gone up. So she's not running her car to keep it heated, right? She has to go to job interviews, but she has a child. Where does that child go? Okay. So now you have that issue. So you have

these programs, but you have people who need child care. They need somewhere to take their child while they're doing these job interviews. You know, they need someone to lay their head somewhere to lay their head at night where they're safe. I've heard too many stories of women who have gone to shelters and they were co-ed. I'm going to give you an example. There was a woman who went with an 18-month-old baby. And they put her in a shelter in the same room with another man. And he was a registered sex offender. How is that ever acceptable?

And so I do think changes are being made, but I don't think enough is being done because the conversation is not being had. It's kind of like, we'll sweep it under the rug. start opening up about their experience and start speaking up and saying, look, this is a bigger issue than you may think, then that's when real massive change will come about. But it won't start until we open up. And that's why I'm willing to say I was homeless and it was at no fault of my own. I wasn't on drugs. I didn't do anything wrong. But if we haven't learned anything during this pandemic, one thing we should have learned is things can happen that's completely out of your control. And all you can do is roll with the punches. That's what happened with COVID. First of all, thank you for your service, and also thank you for lifting up this issue,

which is a really important issue. You've also talked about what people can do, and you've talked about things like donating in many ways. And I always call those micro solutions as opposed to macro solutions. What should public policy be doing? What kind of laws need to be passed? Or should there be a carve out in the Veterans Affairs budget that says we want to have a carve out for homeless veteran women and women particularly? I'm happy that you mentioned the challenges of co-ed shelters because there are all kind of things that could go on there. But if you were president for the day, what legislation would you propose to help homeless women, homeless veterans? Well, just like you mentioned, the VA, I think they need to have a specific pot specifically for this that needs to focus on women veterans. So if we can get enough money raised and we can have it being offered through the VA, because a lot of these veterans are seeking services through that, that would be a tremendous help.

You know, if the VA could offer services like that, but also to try to get some non-military related organizations to be a part of this as well. Again, it goes back to a lot of people like to claim that they're patriotic and they support the military. So why is it that only veterans or other service members are taking on this fight to help homeless veterans? We served our country. We sacrificed. I'm disabled because I served my country and I'll do it again. But the point I'm making is we're willing to make that sacrifice. Not just service members and not just veterans should be willing to help other service members and other veterans because we're fighting for your freedom. So why can't you make a difference and, you know, donate a dollar or, you know, let's do marches and let's do, you know, protests when female veterans aren't being treated the way they should be as far as treatment,

getting counseling, financial counseling, different services of that nature. We need to start banding together and start protesting these things, because if we don't, again, the conversation won't be started. But we need, and it's so important for people to not be ashamed about what happened to him. They have to start opening up and talking about it. We have to get the conversation going. So if I were president, I would make a whole bucket where the VA would have their own pot to help out homeless veteran women and children.

But I would also want to get other organizations involved that's not military related to also assist with this. And another thing that I've noticed was, has been pretty difficult and I'm new to the whole fundraising scene. So this is all new for me, but you know, I've reached out to different organizations that help veterans and a lot of them don't want to band together for one event, you know, because they're concerned about, Oh,

I'm not going to get the funding I need for my organization and things like that. And for me, I'm like, no, we're all fighting for the same cause. We should be bonding together and doing tons of different projects together because you get more results with mass amounts of people doing it versus individuals trying to do it.

So I think if a lot of organizations do, we'll start bonding together and stop being so concerned about funding and it being taken away from them. If we're all helping each other, it's only going to help us all get more funding. What's your website people can go to? So I have an event, right, that I created for your gallery that I'm putting on and I hope everyone can attend. It's going to have art from different veterans from across the country

showcasing different scenarios of homelessness. So everyone can go on Eventbrite, get their ticket. It's $45. It's a virtual event. So no concerns about COVID or monkeypox or any of those things. And then I also provided like a Venmo barcode that people could scan if they just want to donate. We're also looking for sponsors. If anyone wants to participate, they want to donate their services during that time, during the event. Please reach out to me. I'm looking for sponsors, artists,

and those who just want to partake and come and buy some artwork. All righty. This is where all of your social media there. We appreciate it, Ms. Garnier. Thanks a lot. Good luck with it and raise a bunch of money. Thank you. Thank you. Deuces. Folks,

got to go to a break real quick. We come back, we'll talk about improving your gut health. You know there's also good bacteria and bad bacteria in your gut. We'll discuss it next on Rolling Mark Unfiltered with the Black Star Network is here. Hold 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, Roland.

Stay Black. 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 scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig?

This is Judge Mathis. Hi, I'm Teresa Griffin. Hi, my name is Latoya Luckett, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, y'all. What's good in your gut? What's bad in your gut? There's bacteria and there's things that are in your gut that actually can help you when it comes to a lot of different diseases. Joining us right now is a gastroenterologist,

Dr. Janice Laster. She's an obesity medicine specialist, founder of Gut Theory Health. Glad to have you here. So this idea of good bacteria, bad bacteria in the gut, what does that mean? Thank you so much for having me. Yes, everybody, gut microbiome is sort of the craze that you see everywhere now. Everybody's talking about gut health. And it's been something that's been

around for forever. We've always had bacteria, fungi, yeast that are all in your gut that are all working together for our health. And so the new bit on the block, what everybody is talking about now is sort of how to change your gut microbiome and sort of all of the research that's going into sort of how that's kind of contributing to our health, whether that be your GI health, neurologic health, sort of having chronic pain, sleep issues, acne, the list literally goes on and on and on. And so, you know, we can have these, just like you have up now, these signs of unhealthy guts. We see patients all the time that have all of these issues. They have problems with weight, problems with

abdominal discomfort, changes in their stool. And a lot of it comes, you know, starting right at the gut. And so one of the things that, I mean, I remember having my TV one show. We had a doctor on, had her book. She was talking about the whole gut. And people spend a lot of time doing colonics and all kind of stuff, trying to get rid of stuff from their gut. And she said, y'all, you ain't supposed to get rid of everything because there is a thing called good bacteria.

Prior to COVID, people like she could not stand the people who were always using hand sanitizer. And she said, because there's good bacteria on your skin. And so explain that, because, again, you've got some some health freaks who think, oh, no, get it all out of your body. It's like, no, that's not what you want to do. Oh, my goodness. I'm so glad you mentioned colonics. Please stop with the colonics. We don't need them.

You do need some bacteria in your gut. And so to give people sort of a little bit of an understanding, sort of imagine sort of these trillions of bacteria that are living in your body that sort of help, that are living symbiotically with you. They're helping you to live and survive. They're helping you break down your food. They're helping sort of with everything that goes on in your body, right? And so one of the ways that that imbalance starts is sometimes with medications. So with antibiotics, for example, they're a necessary evil sometimes, but they wipe out the good bacteria that we have. Just like your friend said with the antibacterial sort of hand soap, that's also wiping away a lot of the good bacteria that we have as well.

If you can do some soap, that's much better. Just nice old fashioned soap and water. That's what we sort of prefer. But now sort of with processed foods, a lot of the different medications going in and out of hospitals. We're wiping out a lot of our good bacteria. And so that's the problem with the microbiome now is we're getting this shift where you're having, instead of having the good microbiome, you're having a sort of a more of a diversity of microbiome that's unhealthy, which is why you get to that unhealthy gut symptoms that you had up before. Questions for the panelists. Omokongo, you're up. Thank you for all the great work you're doing. And Dr. Laster, my question is simple. Do you recommend probiotics or are they not really necessary? I knew that was coming. That's the

question I should ask every day. So there's a caveat to that. So the AGA and the ACGs, they just put out some guidelines about probiotics. And despite sort of the probiotic industry blooming and everybody has a probiotic and they make a lot of money, there's no sort of we get there and we can personalize medicine, it's going to be incredible. We see that sort of changes in your microbiome can happen with sort of a week of having a plant-based diet for the better, right? But the problem with probiotics is we don't know, A, which type of strains of bacteria we need in the gut and which ones are necessarily beneficial. We know that people should have a greater diversity of microbiome, but we don't know which exactly which strains people need. B, we don't know when those, when you take those probiotics, we don't know which one of those bacteria are making it to your small bowel. You have to make it through a very acidic stomach to make it there. And so we don't know if it's actually having the effect that you hope that it's going to have. So there's a lot of things we don't know about them. So there's very few population

in which they are actually recommended. My patients ask me about them. I say, if you feel like they are helping and they, you know, helped your symptoms, they're not going to hurt you, but is it worth you going out to spend $150 a month to take those on top of you eating processed foods all day long? probably not the most helpful. Changing your diet is going to be more helpful. And I always joke and say, when you fertilize your grass, do you put Cheetos outside? No, you put actual grass outside. So you can't have Mountain Dew and Cheetos and think of probiotics and wipe it all away.

It's not going to work that way. You have to have real food. Let's see here. Julianne. Okay, my sister doctor, thank you so much for your work and for cracking me up about the Cheetos on the lawn. That was hilarious. I don't care what's

in my gut. I just want the darn thing to go away. In the past couple years, it seems like anything I gain goes right to my belly and I want it to go away. What can I do? You are 80% of my practice and why I started my practice, especially as we get older, your basal metabolic rate decreases, sort of how your body breaks down food also changes. And so the other cool thing about microbiome is sort of we can change sort of by changing your diet, you can change sort of how your body is able to utilize caloric intake. Right. So I get patients to sort of change their diets a little bit.

We sort of step by step talk about sort of what's in your day-to-day life. We sort of do bioimpedance studies to understand what your basal metabolic rate is. We sort of make sure people are getting sort of more plant-based fiber. We're learning about food labels. So all of the stuff that has all of these lovely labels that seem to be so healthy,

they say vegan and plant-based and low sodium and low sugar. You turn it around on the back and there's a bunch of emulsifiers, additives, and processed crap, right? So that's why patients are getting so much of that weight in the midsection, especially since COVID, because we've gotten more sedentary. There's so much more processed foods and eating out. But that's sort of the biggest thing about how many people, how patients have sort of gained weight in that midsection. It's getting people back to eating real food again, really.

Representative Shannon. Yep. Just one real simple question. What do you do to maintain your gut health? Because we get a lot of products thrown at us. We get told to drink kombucha, take probiotics, take leaky gut supplements. What do you do? The funniest thing is patients do not believe it's as simple as what I'm going to tell you right now.

But sleep. I always start with sleep for my patients, giving seven to eight hours of sleep every night. Good old-fashioned water, like your grandmother tells you to do. I'm from Alabama. She always had water. So she's absolutely right. Most patients don't drink water. They're like, well, does tea count?

Does my coffee count? You know, can I have my sparkling water? Hold on. On that water point. OK, because I'm I grab some water. OK, because people are now tripping about the pH balance, alkaline. It needs to be nine point nine. All right. So what's the deal? The funniest thing is they make me do Instagram and all this other fun stuff. And we just got done making a post about this not too long ago. One of my other Spelman sisters. Shout out to Dr. Sarah.

But this pH and water thing, it is just taking you guys money. I tell people if you like how it tastes, it's marketing. These marketers are amazing. I need them. They're really good. They are not changing it at all. So what happens with your pH is your kidneys and your lungs are responsible for maintaining a perfect pH. If your pH was so easily changed by just what you drink, the entire country would be in the ICU right now. That's the ICU doctor's job to keep your pH has to stay between 7.4 and your body works really hard to keep it there so drinking a pH an alkaline water is not going to change that um at all and so it's

always so funny when patients ask me about it like if you like how it tastes and you don't mind how much it costs it's fine if I can get you to drink water I'm happy anyway so so is it changing your pH no so so regular spring water is just fine or if you've used a purifier, that's fine. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, go ahead and finish your point. Other things are sort of reducing stress and reducing, sort of trying to avoid processed meat. Especially in our community, for example, we know that processed meats are associated with colon cancer risk.

So it's harder, you know, easier said than done, but getting patients off of sort of deli meats, bacon, those sorts of things, trying to get more fiber. So no one gets enough fiber in this country. That's why everybody's constipated. And so I'm trying to get people to get more fiber throughout the day, sort of more plant-based protein, reducing the alcohol intake, and sort of seeing your doctor often and telling them what your symptoms actually are. So getting people to exercise often and move around as well, meditation to help with the stress as well.

And so it's really, it's not as hard as people make it. You don't need all of these sort of supplements and all these other things. It's really just getting back to the basics. Oh, that's why I say cuss folks out. Your stress levels will be extremely low. I agree. All right.

For the gut theory health, where do people go to check it out? www.guttheoryhealth.com. Okay. All right, Doc. Well, we appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. And you have saved the people a whole bunch of money who have been spending all that money on them expensive-ass bottles of water.

Exactly. Thank you guys so much for having me. Dr. Janice Lassner, thanks a bunch. All right, y'all. One year ago today, I was on ABC This Week, and they were talking about Chris Christie giving a speech at the Reagan Library. People were lauding and praising it because he was talking about, you know, where the Republican Party needs to go. Now, I haven't been on ABC this week

since then. And here's the deal, y'all. When I was on then, I hadn't been on in 20 months. This is a perfect example why you don't worry about if they're going to invite you back. You say what needs to be said. Why are you there? Because trust me, a year later, Chris Christie still feels the foot that I planted square in his hind parts.

This is what I said last year. Let me just press one other point. Right now, I would argue that the fact that so many Americans can't buy into simple facts is probably the biggest existential threat we face to our democracy. So when somebody speaks up for that, isn't it something to be praised? Facts are critically important. But again, when you support someone who said fake news,

who when you were truthful and then push that, then when you have the networks and the conservative radio talk show host, that whole echo chamber driving that, that's the problem. I am a native of Texas who is still registered there. And I'm dealing with Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, who is consistently lying and making things up. And you're dealing with that. I'm dealing with people who are changing textbooks. And as a, well, here's the deal. I have a very basic principle since I've been a journalist. If you do good, I'll talk about you. If you do bad, I'll talk about you.

At the end of the day, I'll talk about you. Somebody has to say what others are afraid to say. You get the last word. If you want to persuade the half the country that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 to move to your side, then you've got to stop villainizing them. You've got to stop having these conversations where everyone who is not with you is against you. And when someone says that Donald Trump did something wrong, you may want to consider praising that

and trying to use that to persuade the people who are not going to be persuaded by what he said. That is going to have to be the last word just to make it obviously continue. All right, y'all. So that was the second part of the conversation. Because, you know, Chris was a little hot with me.

So let me find the first part because we're still experiencing it. We're watching Republicans right now. You're watching Republican candidates literally campaigning with Republican candidates

who opposed individuals in the primary because they were liars, lying about the election. Now they're campaigning with them in the general election. They're standing by them. And so here's the whole deal. How can you have any principles or integrity when you're unwilling to challenge these folks who lie. This is what started it all. Admit. Sarah,

you have to admit the role that you played in putting the person in leadership who is driving conspiracy theories. It's one thing to condemn them after the fact, but you have to own up to the role that you played in putting the person in power. We both ran campaigns against him. No, no, no. But you have to own up to the role that you played and put in the person in power the time

Anything to you I finished first off I think you in second I ran against Donald Trump You ran against him, but when a person has principles, morals, and values, they do not support them even if you lose. And what they say is, I choose patriotism and the country over party and power. And the problem was, too many Republicans chose power in riding with Donald Trump as opposed

to patriotism in America. I'll sleep fine tonight with you judging my morals. Well, guess what? As a voter who has 13 nieces and nephews, what I also want to see in America are Republicans and Democrats who have the guts to stand up to narcissists, to folks who lie, to folks who sit here and lead a country in the wrong direction. And what that man has unleashed on this country, any Republican who stood with him has to own it and accept

the role that they played. Yeah, well, that's fine. I'll accept the role that I played in the 2016 election running against him. And I'll accept the role. But you let him finish his point now. Let him finish his point. I'll accept the role that I played in my belief that Hillary Clinton was not the right person to be president.

We all get to make choices, Roland, in this democracy. I made my choice. I'm on record of my choice. And I'm not walking away from my choice. But it does not preclude me from being able to be critical when the person that I did support does things that I am against. And so this false choice

that you're trying to set up, it's a false choice and one that the American people are not going to buy either. Roland, let me just press... This is why I made that point because it happens. You've got the Republican governor in New Hampshire Julian who was against

the person in the primary. They win now supporting him. You've got the Republican governor of Mocongo in Arizona who was against the election denier in the primary now supporting Kerry Lake in the general election. Now, I'll give, Renita, I'll give Larry Hogan credit. He refuses to endorse the election denier who won the Maryland

primary. And this is the point I am saying. If you are a Republican with integrity or credibility, you should say, I am not going to stand with this fool who chooses to say the election was stolen. Damn that. It ain't going to happen. But they are picking power over patriotism. And what I said a year ago to Chris Christie is still true today. Representative Shannon. Yeah, no, I mean, it's exactly like you said. And because of white supremacy, when they do have to come back and admit that they were wrong, white supremacy says we'll always find something redeeming about the behavior of white folks when they have acted egregiously. So from where I sit, you don't get credit for running a car in the ditch.

And also, by the way, if you are part of the effort to run the car in the ditch, you're not entitled to be in leadership after. People don't have to vote for you. People don't have to forgive you and vote for you and trust your leadership in the future. Because, by the way, they never do with black folks. And the reality is, in the Congo, there's an election denier who's running for lieutenant governor on the Republican side in Georgia. Brian Kemp, the governor, is campaigning with him. I don't care if he opposed, if he didn't support him in the primary.

He should say, man, I'm not standing next to you. Period, bottom line. And I remember that interview when it first happened, Roland. And everything you said has multiplied since then. I'm seeing the story about Louie Gohmert who gave a convicted insurrectionist American flag that flew at the Capitol. These guys feel like they can do anything because people on their side or in their party are not calling them to task. They're letting Donald Trump not only unleash the racists, but they're also letting him bankrupt the party, and they're also scared of a base that is actually shrinking.

So if these guys—I think Arizona, everybody who's running in some way, shape, or form is an election denier or the majority of them. If they keep going on like this, they're going to continue to support. This is what happened with Hitler, to be quite honest. You know, people who are scared

to challenge him because of some fear of some type of base. History is repeating itself. And kudos to you and everybody out there who's calling these Republicans out who are fearful

because they are part of, just as responsible for running this country to you and everybody out there who's calling these Republicans out who are fearful because they are part of just or just as responsible for running this country into the ground. And they think that if Donald Trump is somehow going to be successful, that they're going to get rewarded. Nope, he's going to screw you too. So you might as well get with the program now. And again, bottom line, Julian, they continue to stand with this evil man and the imps that he has spawned, and this thing has now metastasized,

and it has gotten even more dangerous, and we must challenge them at every turn. Absolutely, at every turn. It's so disgusting, Roland, when we think, just think back 10 years, to, I mean, there was always conflict between Democrats and Republicans, of course. But there was never this kind of animus, rancor, and just downright lying.

I mean, these folks lie, they steal, they cheat, and they don't care. We go back to the first story, the story we were talking about about voting. They don't mind taking away people's right to vote. They don't mind imposing different standards for voting. And when they start doing this stuff, one of the things they forget, when you say literacy tests, white folks can't read either.

So if you're talking, but Roland, it is a disgusting situation. I mean, I think about all the Republican presidents that I told bad jokes about, you know, what the McDonald's and the president have in common. They both have a clown named Ronald. You know, we all had these various jokes, but

at the end of the day, we still allowed that they were the president, that they won, and that we move on. Now you've got these people who are still stuck two years ago denying the election. It's absurd, it's ridiculous, and we have to do something about it.

Nobody is silent. And so here's the deal, folks. Too many people in mainstream media are silent about it. And now Chris Christie was on ABC yesterday saying, oh, he felt he was being targeted by Biden's semi-fascist comment. Well, you supported that fool. Guess what, Chris?

You want him to win in 2020. So suck that thing up. Don't be sitting here all mad and upset. You ran that man's debate prep. You wanted him to win again. And so since you chose to ride with him, ride with his ass today when you take that heat as well.

And so we gonna keep calling him out. And here's the deal. If they never call me back, trust me, he's going to remember September 12, 2021. I guarantee you that. All right. Representative Shannon Julianne Omokongo, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Folks, don't forget to please download the Black Star Network app,

all platforms, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Coming up next, folks, we're going to end the show. I'm going to be hosting the live stream with the Poor People's Campaign, talking about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. And so we will be streaming that on the Black Star Network. And so please support us in that. And don't forget, join our Brina Funk fan club.

Check and money orders go to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal's6 Cash App, Dollar Sign, R.M. Unfiltered PayPal's R. Martin Unfiltered Vidmo's R.M. Unfiltered, Zale, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com, and don't forget tomorrow, my book, White Fear Drops How the Browning of America's Making White

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I speak truth all day, every day, so y'all check it out. Folks, I will see y'all tomorrow. Tomorrow on the show, we recorded today. I'll have for you in my marketplace segment tomorrow. Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET, owner of Salamander Resorts. She takes over, owns the former Mandarin Hotel here in Washington, D.C. I'll have her comments along with Mayor Miro Bowser and also Jason Reed, president of the Washington Commanders. And folks, we'll have that for you tomorrow. That's how we do it. We're always on the spot.

You know how we do it. I'll see you tomorrow. Howl! you This is an iHeart Podcast.