#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Juneteenth; Tulsa massacre; Cop in Breonna Taylor case to be fired; Africa and Racism in the US

Episode Date: June 21, 2020

6.19.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Juneteenth observed across the country; Senators proposed a bill today to make Juneteenth a federal holiday; Tulsa massacre 99 years later; 1 of 3 cops in Breonna Taylor case to be fired; Should the United States be treated like a racist pariah state? African nations back off their call for the U.N.'s top human rights body to launch its most intense scrutiny of police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartcinunfiltered #RolandMartinUnfiltered Partner: Ceek Be the first to own the world's first 4D, 360 Audio Headphones and mobile VR Headset. Check it out on www.ceek.com and use the promo code RMVIP2020 - The Roland S. Martin YouTube channel is a news reporting site covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. self. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, folks, today is Friday, Juneeteenth Day, June 19th, 2020, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Protests taking place all across the country, including here in Washington, D.C.

I, of course, have been observing a lot of this, and so we'll talk about that on today's show. I'll be joined by Congresswoman Gwen Moore as we discuss not only Juneteenth, but also police reform that's needed in this country. Folks, also, Donald Trump administration, a top official in the State Department, resigns because she's sick of their views when it comes to race, when it comes to protest. And she says, I got to go. Also on today's show, one of the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor

has been fired in Louisville, Kentucky. We'll discuss that. And one of the Never Trump who killed brenda taylor has been fired in louisville kentucky we'll discuss that and one of the never trumpers his wife uh one of the never trumpers is in hot water over a confederate water cooler but his wife also made a derogatory comment about me in a tweet nine years ago i will explain exactly what happened also on today's show we'll talk with Opal Lee as well as Sam Collins. They're out of Texas. Their efforts to make Juneteenth a national holiday and a group of senators, including Senator Kamala Harris, opposing to make

Juneteenth a national holiday. Jam-packed show for you. It's time to bring the funk Juneteenth style. I'm Roland Martin on thetered. Let's go. Thank you. Hey, folks, Roland Martin here. Yes, I'm actually driving around Washington, D.C. The extent of the security perimeter, again, because of the protest taking place, four simultaneous marches took place today, different parts of Washington, D.C.,

and they converged on Freedom Plaza. And so people are out and about. Folks are still protesting. We have a combination of celebrating Juneteenth as well as folks who are protesting, not only here in the nation's capital, but all across the country as well. And again, things are happening in Tulsa,

of course, my native Texas, which is the home of Juneteenth. It was on this day in 1865 when General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas with the word that slaves in Confederate territories were free. Now, a lot of these people across America, a lot of these news media people who frankly have ignored Juneteenth all of these years. They've been getting it wrong all day. They keep saying that, oh, this was the day slaves were freed. No, this was the day slaves in Texas found

out two years later that they were free. Texas became the first state in the union to make Juneteenth a state holiday. That was, of course, led by and champion of the late state representative Al Edwards, 1966 class graduate of Texas Southern University. And so also an alpha frat brother of mine. I knew him quite well from my days in Houston. Now, while we are talking about Juneteenth, while all these companies, while these networks, all of a sudden, America is now focused on Juneteenth, there still is a focus, a need for police reform in this country. Joining me right now is Congresswoman Gwen Moore out of Wisconsin. She herself is in the car, returning from a Juneteenth march celebration there.

Congresswoman Moore, glad to have you back on Rollerball Unfiltered. Well, hello. Congresswoman, can you hear me? You got me? No matter what we say, and that is freedom ain't free. Right. That, you know, our having gotten free cost us a great deal because, you know, that very first June 10th day in 18 proposed that famous equal protection clause that we use for just about everything in our society commercially and everything that equal protection clause was designed so that black people could have equal protection uh in the

pursuit of their life and liberty in pursuit of happiness really it was to protect black people and so if we are going if juneteenth is ever going to be if we're ever truly going to be free it's going we're going to be at a point in time where we realize the 14th amendment not just the physical freeing of our of from slavery, but the equal protection under the law? Well, I think one of the things that, I mean, you look at just the timing of what's going on, Congresswoman. Of course, the death of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, then George Floyd, Juneteenth, now coming almost four weeks after the death of George Floyd. Rayshard Brooks

was just last weekend. These forces are converging and really, and I keep making this point, I'm loving to get your thoughts on this, this is, we are truly operating in what I am calling the third reconstruction. In terms of what we're looking, and

that's what people, i think people have to begin to think about it that way i mean that is absolutely what is happening because we saw after we were freed in 1863 you know 1865 that first civil rights bill i mean we had black senators black congressmen and freedoms. And the backlash started immediately with murdering black men. We had another reconstruction, as it were, I think after we won the civil rights bills and we had a total realignment of the parties. This is perfect. This is the third reconstruction. And this is a backlash from electing Barack Obama. This is the price. I mean, the rise of white supremacy and white nationalism is what the irrational, I mean, you know, the irrational election of Donald John Trump.

And with the death of Breonna Taylor, especially George Floyd, hopefully this is a transformational point so that the good white folk in America, our fellow Americans who witnessed, who were eyewitnesses to a lynching, finally had an aha moment and they really get it. I just, I'm in a car now, just left a protest. More white folks in it than black folks. You know, black lives matter all over every sign, all over their body, because finally, and it's okay, you know, because, you know, we've had every we've had Emmett Till, you know, I'm only 69.

So the first person I remember is Emmett Till, you know. And so here we are, maybe at that point. And so, you know, as a member of Congress, I am really proud to have been engaged, Roland, with putting that Justice and Policing Act together. I mean, it does some common sense things like, you know, stopping, you know, stopping racial profiling, stopping warrantless searches to kill Breonna Taylor, stopping the chokeholds. But more importantly, it tries to make police accountable. You know, we try to reform the police. Looks like we lost the... They have to willfully.

Right. This willful act with a standard where DAs will feel that they can actually prosecute these cases and win judgments against these police. And also to reform the qualified immunity clauses, such that when police violate people's civil rights, when they do that, that they will be able to sue them for violating their constitutional rights. I put the de-escalation piece in because I was inspired by what happened with Dontre Hamilton right here in Milwaukee, where he was asleep on a public park bench, not bothering

anybody. You know, two white women said, oh, my God, there's a black man lying on the bench come police and the police came saw that he wasn't causing any problem saw that he wasn't bothering anybody left and so these women called the police officer whose number they had whose cell phone number they had and he came in that's right and here this man was sleeping on a park bench and ended up being shot 14 times to death. And so I was inspired. Yeah, I was going to my office on my 16th and K.

Right. To put the de-escalation piece in and because surely, we just can't figure out how Dontre ended up dead. Mr. Brooks in Atlanta ended up dead. How do you go from being asleep, drunk, to being dead? And so if we get this justice and policing bill across the finish line, Roland, we need a president who will sign that bill.

So I want people to know that we're doing our part. Y'all got to do y'all part. Y'all got to help us get rid of this food. Gotcha, gotcha. Congresswoman Gwen Moore, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Folks, we're going to do this here. I'm going to take a real quick break.

I am here, actually parked in front of our building, and I'm about to actually go to Black Lives Matter Plaza to give you all a sense of what's happening down here as well. So I'm going to take a break and then we'll be out of the car in just a second. Be with you guys in just a moment. Right here, Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Texas, June 19th, 1865. Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, the last enslaved African-Americans were given notice of their freedom. But a long road lay ahead from emancipation to equity. Black Americans emerged from slavery

with no voting rights, no land rights, no access to their due share of opportunity in the land of the free. White supremacists barred us from using white-owned banks, so we created our own. They burned down Black Wall Street, but we built new businesses and thriving communities. They forced us to the back of the bus, so we boycotted for justice and won in the Supreme Court. They silenced our voices and blocked our votes, so we marched for a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act. They held us back from the halls of power, so we organized and elected the nation's first black president.

No matter how hard they tried to stop us, we pressed on. We kept on fighting. 155 years since that first step in Galveston, and we're still on that long road to equity. We're still fighting for that full share of respect, opportunity, and freedom in the fullest sense. Juneteenth reminds us of America's capacity to change, but it will not change without us.

We are resilient, we are strong, and we will never stop building, marching, speaking, voting, organizing, protesting, and fighting until the promise of this nation is fulfilled. All right, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't know. Robby don't have one on.

Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares. I don't like even the silk ones. And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago, and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square. This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect. So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down, it took me a year to find a company that did it and so they basically about 47 different colors and so I love them because again as men we don't have many accessories to wear so we don't have many options and so this

is really a pretty cool pocket screen and what I love about this here is you saw when it's in in the pocket you know it gives you that flower effect like that but if I wanted to also unlike other because if i flip it and turn it over it actually gives me a different type of texture so therefore it gives me a different look so there you go so if you actually want to uh get one of these shibori pocket squares we have them in 47 different colors all you got to do is go to rolling this martin.com forward slash pocket squares so it's rolling thisartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So it's rollingthismartin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you who are members of our Bring the Funk fan

club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool. So if you want to jazz your look up, you can do that. In addition, y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares. My sister was a designer. She actually makes these. They're all custom made.

So when you also go to the website, you can also order one of the customized feather pocket squares right there at rollingestmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So please do so. And, of course, that goes to support the show. And, again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. The men who followed this flag 150 years ago knew what it meant. Treason against their country.

The death of the United States. America defeated the men who followed that flag. Those with honor surrendered and cast it aside forever. So why does it keep showing up today at events supporting Donald Trump? And why does he call the folks who carry it very fine people? I think there's blame on both sides, but you also had people that were very fine people. What does it say that they're all in for Trump? What does it say that he won't condemn a flag of hate, division, and losers. Will not replace us! For us, it says this is a time for choosing America

or Trump. Texas, June 19, 1865. Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, the last enslaved African Americans were given notice of their freedom. But a long road lay ahead from emancipation to equity. Black Americans emerged from slavery with no voting rights, no land rights, no access to their due share of opportunity in the land of the free. White supremacists barred us from using

white-owned banks, so we created our own. They burned down Black Wall Street, but we built new businesses and thriving communities. They forced us to the back of the bus, so we boycotted for justice and won in the Supreme Court. They silenced our voices and blocked our votes, so we marched for a Civil Rights Act and a Voting Rights Act. They held us back from the halls of power, so we organized and elected

the nation's first black president. No matter how hard they tried to stop us, we pressed on, we kept on fighting. 155 years since that first step in Galveston, and we're still on that long road to equity. We're still fighting for that full share of respect, opportunity, and freedom in the fullest sense. Juneteenth reminds us of America's capacity to change, but it will not change without us. We are resilient, we are strong, and we will never stop building, marching, speaking, voting, organizing,

protesting, and fighting until the promise of this nation is fulfilled. Hey, folks, Roland Martin here. So I'm here in Washington, D.C., here along what is called Black Lives, Black Lives Matter Plaza. Let me turn this camera around. As you see what the police have done, they've completely blocked off K Street here in D.C. And so all the way down, so no traffic is coming down here. And as you see, you've got boarded up buildings.

You've got folks in spray painted over here, investing in black communities. And then, of course, you have all of these vendors out here. I'm going to walk down here so you actually see what's going on, what's taking place. Lots of vendors. You got entertainment out here. This is, of course, at 16th and K Street. You see the Washington Monument back there.

Also, straight ahead is the White House. And so that's what you see here. So like I say, there's people out here on this Juneteenth. I'm going to go back over here. I'm going to go back over here. Hey, we have, we was told that, Roller Martin, my brother, come on over here, give him a round over here. You got number one fans of the Black Panther Party right here. You definitely need this, brother. How you doing, y'all good?

Roller Martin, how you doing? How you doing? I just want to give y'all a sense of what this looks like out here. One second. What's in a man so sweet? Little girls got some concrete. Sometimes we got it wrong. But it's all right. The more we can see the change. How you doing? Sir, I'm live on the air.

Hi. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. I appreciate it, bro. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. All right, folks.

We're going to walk on down this way. As you see, folks. What's up, bro? Actually, I'm live on the air right now, so I'll come back down. So you see folks down here who are walking. Like I say, normally our offices are not far from here, folks, and this is the most vendors that you've seen out here since this whole thing started. As you see, you see of course on the street here, well they have Black Lives Matter written on the street. This has become a gathering place every single day. As you see again,

you got folks out here selling art. You got that happening over here. And so as we walk further down here, you got other people who are also selling stuff. You got other artists out here who are singing. Now, as somebody who's a native of Houston, Texas, we've seen these sort of celebrations all over the country. This is how we often have it in Texas So we're going to go through here. All right.

And like I say, so you got entertainment here. Then, of course, you have the protests here. Now, everybody who's watching, this is the AFL-CIO building right here. So you see right here. Hold on, bro. Hold on, bro. Sorry. You see the AFL-CIO building.

And so they're right here. They've got Black Lives Matter signs all over. And so what's up, bro. Sorry. You see the FLCL building? And so they're right here. They've got Black Lives Matter signs all over. And so what's up, bro? How you doing, bro? So you've got, again, different... Hold up. Let's go over here. All right. Now you got folks. Now you know

Black folks love a team team event that will be... All right, folks. So I'm about to walk forward here. Y'all can still hear me. You're going to go this way. All right. All right, here we go.

Come this way. Now, you were seeing the distance there. Sorry, guys. We're approaching Lafayette Park. The White House, as you see, is right behind. So you see this massive sign over here, the AFLCL building. You got drummers out here. Hey, how you doing? You got drummers out here. So I'm going to go of this. All right, so I'm going to go further down here. Now, just so everybody understands what you're watching,

you got different scenes here, but the main protest area actually happens right here, where we're going forward right now. And what you'll see again, you'll see all the signage here. This is St. John's Church where, of course, Trump made his

little silly display. That's what he did right here. So, what's up, bro? So, that's what he did right here. So what's up, bro? So that's what he made right here. And so I'm going to come down this way. And what you'll see down here, you'll see folks who are always gathered here.

The security perimeter has been taken down. That massive fence used to be actually all right here, but they've taken it down so you now can go back into Lafayette Park. You got some folks out here. Let me see what he's doing over here. What's up, bro?

What's up, bro? How you doing? All good. Good. All good. So again, some folks you see. Just send me the picture of Mike Brown like that day. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Remember he was on TV once, News 1 Now, and he did a piece of Mike Brown. So I'm gonna go over here where you have some of the folks out here who are still protesting. As you can see, again folks, when we were here last week, this fence, this, the fence was erected. You see remnants of it over there surrounding that so the fence is still up here but now it has been moved back and so now you can actually go back into Lafayette Park and so I'm gonna walk towards here all this was closed off uh really the last uh couple of weeks when you had the police, when you had all of the different National Guard folks who are out here.

And so what they've done is they've erected fences out in Lafayette Park around all of these statues to keep people from defacing the statue. And so you can see right there in the background, that's the White House. And so this has long been the gathering place for many protests for Donald Trump. Of course, I do not want folks getting to the White House. They see the perimeter. And so I'm walking closer towards the White House where folks are gathered in front. And so I want to be able to show you a little bit of that. And then we got some guests coming up.

I'm going to get to those guests in a second, but I wanted for you all to be able to see what's happening right now in Washington, D.C. Folks are all along, of course, this street from this point here all the way back.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to unplug my headphones so I can actually raise this camera so you can above the crowd. And again, you can see everything that's taking place. And what they've done is, I'm trying to see, is there a new security perimeter? Normally, you're able to go up to the lights there.

So let me give you a taste of this. Let me unplug the headphones and get here. normally you're able to go up to the lights there. So let me give you a taste of this. Let me unplug the headphones and get here. All right, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't know. Robert don't have one on. Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares. I don't like even the silk ones. Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house!

Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Our house! Black lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!

Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! We are the jailers! We are the Taylor! We are the Taylor! We are the Taylor! Say who's next? George Floyd!

Say who's next? George Floyd! Say who's next? George Floyd! Say who's next? George Floyd! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter!

Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA! No Trump! No KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.

No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No KKK, no fascist USA. No KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.

No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA. All right, folks, right now I want to bring in our panel.

We have a Rock Richardson who joins us right now. We also have Dr. Neon B. Carter, who's with us, and also commentator Amisha Cross. Rob, I want to start with you again. As a native of Houston, I've seen numerous June 2 celebrations all over the Texas. But this is, and this thing is spread across the country, but certainly what has happened to George Floyd and Grandma Taylor and

Ahmaud Arbery, so many others, has truly taken June 2 to a whole new level in the fight for freedom and equality. Absolutely, and I'm happy that all of us are embracing it like you do in Texas and many others have. And I do think this is a moment for us to make there that, OK, go out, get your own, as we've tried to do. All we want to have is to make sure people stand out, actually stand out of our way and let us do that. The 14th Amendment was supposed to do that. But as you know, Roland, the 14th Amendment was used to actually roll back protections.

It was it was used to get rid of affirmative action. The same thing that was supposed to help us was used against us. So we constantly have to come, constantly supposed to help us was used against us. So we constantly have to come, constantly have to organize, constantly have to fight. And so let us at this moment not forget Juneteenth ever going forward. So I do support making it a national holiday because it's something that should be ingrained in America to let them understand what actually happened. Like you said, the news reports are getting it wrong. The fact is that people, the slave owners were trying to make sure people never learned about it and they weren't going to do it until the troops got there.

That's often been the case with America and it really needs to end. Dr. Carter, first of all, I'm showing you guys, I'm walking back towards down the street. I want to give you just another view, of course, what's happening out here. Dr. Carter, this is, this moment we're in, this is really the combining of so many things together. And and I keep like I said to the Congresswoman, we need to be looking at this from the perspective of a third reconstruction. And the third reconstruction was not just about one thing. It was a multitude of things. I think what needs to be happening is this is not just a moment to talk about what do you do about police? What do you do about police? What do you do about corporate

America? What do you do about other policies? And so please share with the folks out there who really don't have any idea about the first or even the second reconstruction and what it really meant. Well, I mean, I think, you know, as Rob has already pointed out, these were moments when we actually had an opportunity to do something different as a nation. We could have let black people actually be the full citizens that they were promised, you know, once the civil, civil war amendments were passed with 13th, 14th and 15th.

Or we could have taken the road we did eventually take, which was to wrest power away from Black people once they got it. And it wasn't just political power. It was also our entrepreneurial spirit that was attempted, that was crushed many times in all of this. So Blacks were talking about things like land ownership. They were building institutions like banks and hospitals, educational facilities, all of these things Black people were doing for themselves. And every time you had a government that had less of a spine than Black folks had, right? I mean, the government had a very, the federal government had a very real opportunity here to actually invest and protect black citizens. And they every time they had an opportunity to do so, they walked away from it.

So when we're looking at this moment right now, yes, a national holiday is great, but we can't stop with a national holiday. As you said, it's not just about policing. It's about access to health care. It's about access to education equity. I mean, it's about jailing and the way we do criminal justice. Right. And I'm using justice very loosely here. There is a whole array of things that we have to do to achieve equity, not just equality. It's not just about treating people the same, but it's also recognizing what it's going to take to get black people on the same footing as the majority of citizens in this country. And that's going to take a lot of investment financially. But it's also going to take an emotional and spiritual investment that this country has never shown that it wanted to to to to make. And it certainly hasn't had the courage to make it. And this is that moment again.

And it is, you know, if history is a teacher, you know, we should all be holding our breath because what we've seen is that the federal government has backed away from offering more protection when it was needed. And this moment may not be any different. We're hoping it's different, but it may not be. Amisha Cross, again, we must expand this beyond the simple narrative. Again, I think folks in corporate America must be looking at this, folks in politics, all the different areas, because it's not just police reform. Go ahead, talk about that. So while you're talking, I've got to take this selfie. Go ahead. You're absolutely correct. It's far beyond police brutality and police reform.

Although that was one of the pinnacle issues that brought people to the streets, we also have to be reminded that the streets are talking, and the streets are talking loudly, and they're calling for economic changes. They're calling for, as Dr. Carter spoke of, they're calling for equity and parity. They're calling for changes in the way we produce loans and banking specifically for home ownership. We're talking about small business expansion and entrepreneurship growth. We're talking about the systems that have proven time and time again to disservice us in health care, in education, in the institutions that our nation was founded on.

All of these things that have consistently diminished Black people and the quality of life for African-Americans. So this is beyond a fight for life specifically as we relate it to police brutality. It is a lot more than that. We are in the streets for the same things we've been fighting in the streets for for generations at this point. We're fighting for voting rights and access. We're fighting for health care accessibility. We're fighting for education parity. We're fighting for home ownership. We're fighting for economic development. We're fighting for those things that make American life the fullest, those things that have been guaranteed to populations outside of the

African-American population for generations. We're also fighting to make sure that incremental change is not the only thing that we get. Because what we've seen throughout history is that there have been small changes and piecemeal processes to basically appease an African-American community, to sit you down and make you quiet. And then two, three, four years later, we see the rollbacks in those very things. We have never seen the large scale developments that are necessary to get African-Americans on that equity footing, but also on that parity footing that makes sense in this country. Because as a black person, we can say, and as Black people, we can say that there are so many avenues that we could walk into and have success in. It's not for lack of talent. It's not for

lack of focus. It's not for lack of ability. It is surely because we have a system that has been designed to dismantle and to discredit the efforts of African-Americans and to ensure that African-Americans remain in a subjugated space and one that we're treated as second-class citizens. We have reached a point in 2020 where people are saying, we are done. We want to move forward. And we're forcing the hand of those in power. We're forcing the hand for the 2020 election. We're forcing the hand not only for the presidency, but all of the down ballot races. We're also looking at our local leaders. We're looking at those who are in the corporate space. And yes, a lot of them are, you know, arguing to take back these emblems of racism, of a lot of things around an era that they would like to forget because those are easy things. It's easy to change the cream of wheat. It's easy to change Aunt Jemima.

It is not easy to change these structural systems themselves that permeate throughout our culture and continue to keep black people back. So in my view, I think that black people should continue to push forward, not be satisfied with a Juneteenth remembrance or a recognition from the national government. We should have had that decades ago. We need to move beyond symbolism towards actually ensuring that our generation and the generations beyond us are going to be secure, that they actually have a fighting chance, that they have everything that they need to be competitive, that they have everything that they need to take a slice of the American pie that has been denied us for over 400 years.

Here's the deal, though. The reality is, Rob, you can't think small. The reality is this is not a time where you must go small with it. And again, it's amazing to me, I think for a lot of black folks, they have gotten so used to asking for a small thing. But I'm saying, no, this is a moment

where you actually go big. This is where you ask, you make the demand that you've always been afraid to make. And I've said that to many organizations I'm involved in. You can't go small. This is where the reconstruction, the first reconstruction, the second reconstruction

was not about going small. And so the word reconstruction means to reconstruct. That's called rebuild. And that's not small, Rob. No, we need the same level of effort that went into oppressing us that we're going to need to change the system. So when I hear people complain about affirmative action, anything like that, I said, OK, it is nothing compared to what we've had to go through.

So we need the same level of effort that was put into opposing us into actually making sure that we have equity. So I agree. And we have to reclaim and claim our own power in the process and not be satisfied with the crumbs. They're going to hope that we move on from the symbolism. I do think it's important to recognize the history and make sure that we actually go through not only having a national holiday, but actually talk about the painful past. Because what they want to do, to to Amisha's point is they just want to say, okay, let's just bring up Juneteenth and then make the black people happy. Let's, you know, there was, there was one place in Cincinnati. You won't believe this. They actually gave out free barbecue. And like, that was something black people are going to be care about. Like we're going to get free barbecue.

Like, really? Like, no, we need a lot more than that. And you look at their staff, was their staff even black? Probably not. We need to make sure that all these boards that are taught, all these tech companies that are here giving out money that a lot of times people never see, that's neither here nor there. What does their boardroom look like? What does the contracts look like that they're giving out? Like, that's real. There's other stuff that's going to pass. It's going to be a time when people aren't talking about Juneteenth anymore. That's all fine and well. What does your board look like? What does your contracts look like? This goes across the board. And we need to, we definitely need to think big. We don't need to think in millions. We need to think in billions. Right. And that's, and that's really the key there. Again, Dr.

Carter, I think there's so many people in this country, again, folks, I'm here in Black Lives Matter Plaza. And then of course, there's so many people who are out here, streets are blocked off. Folks have been coming here all day. So Dr. Carter, I think part of this is also so many people have no clue even what the hell the Reconstruction period was. I remember after the election, even in 2012, I did an event here

in D.C. There was a whole bunch of, I don't know, three black folks in a room, a whole bunch of smart white folks. I asked about Reconstruction. The only people who heard about it were the black folks in the room. Yeah, I mean, I think that happens a lot in part because I think the United States doesn't want us to think about the reconstruction because it's such a failure of leadership in that moment. I mean, you simply had the government say, okay, let's capitulate to the South, right?

Let's bring these old Confederates back in and let them do whatever they want, you know, to black folks. And this is something that we find over and over again, as Amisha and Rob have already pointed out. I mean, what the United States government does is the thing that is the easiest thing to do, which is the remembrance, which is the heroic tale. They don't also want to tell you about the harrowing tales, Right. They don't want to talk about the fact that all of those folks in Tulsa that lost their businesses, that lost their loved ones, never got any kind of compensation for those losses. That those survivors that had tried into their 80s and 90s died trying to get justice for their families and for their loved ones and for those communities. We don't call what that was. That was land theft, right? I mean, those communities weren't just ravaged. They were ravaged and somebody took over those

spaces and those spaces weren't occupied by Black people. And we see this in Wilmington, where these communities that Black people had built that are destroyed, never to be rebuilt again. And again, the federal government has had ample opportunity to defend the rights of black people over and over and over again. And every time they capitulate to white people and their violence, quite frankly. And state governments, too, by the way. State governments participated in this. As you said, the federal government didn't didn't help. And the state government worked as an agent against us. That's what that's what happened in Tulsa. That's what happened all across the country. And you make a really good point that they use this, they often use the excuse of making up something like in Tulsa, like it always is. Some Black man allegedly

attacked a white woman. They use that as an excuse of violence. And it's not about the violence itself. It's about taking money and taking resources. That's what this is about. And that needs to be the conversation. I mean, people like John Hope Franklin's father lost everything in Tulsa, right? I mean, he fought, I mean, I had the pleasure of meeting him when I was a graduate student, but this man was in his 80s, you know, trying to fight to recover something that was lost, you know, decades prior and couldn't, I mean, it took forever to get the state of Oklahoma to even admit that something had gone terribly wrong in Tulsa. And this is what black people face all the time. And the federal government is just as complicit, just as complicit as the state government.

Because again, the only feelings that we seem to heed in this country are those of angry white men and whether it's, you know, Tulsa or the coronavirus, right? We see that angry white people get the government to shrink away from what they know is the right thing. So the government lacks that fortitude and that confidence in doing the right thing, particularly when it comes to Black people. And so I agree that if you're going to negotiate, and this is a negotiation, you start high. You don't start from the floor. Start asking for what you think you can get, because if somebody thinks they can give you 20 instead of 50, they're going to give you the 20 and say, be happy with it. So this is not the time to just ask for millions and billions. It might be time to ask for trillions, because that is quite frankly, this is more of a hostage situation than I would argue a negotiation negotiation because America doesn't have a pulse on black people regularly. This is one of those times where America is looking towards black people and asking us what it is that we want.

A lot of that is appeasement. They just want us to say something that they can throw together very easily. But it's not only America that's watching. The entire globe is watching. So this is a moment where black America can really take hold. And like I said, have a hostage type situation. Hold them until you get what you need. Do not ease up the pressure because the hope is that we'll take a few things and then we'll go back home and sit down and live our daily lives until somebody else gets killed by the cops, until we lose more footing in terms of home ownership, until we lose more footing in terms of our economic development and jobs crisis. The hope is that they will give us a few things. They will throw out some symbols

and black people will go back, be nice, cordial and sit down. And now is not the time to do any of that, because if we do, if we ease up the pressure, the moment will be lost. We have to keep fighting and keep pushing harder because this is our moment. Preach. Hold tight one second, folks. We come back. We're going to talk with Opal Lee, 93-year-old black woman who is walking across the country trying to get Juneteenth to be a national holiday. We'll talk to Sam Collins, a brother out of Texas, who also is trying to elevate what Juneteenth is.

Going to a break on this Juneteenth day, 2020. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered. Back in a moment. I work with a lot of different people in St. Louis County, including some of our most vulnerable people. We knew we needed to have a strong earned sick and sleep time ordinance passed for workers to be able to have the right

to take this much needed time off. I work for Miami-Dade County. I've been working-Dade County. I've been working now for 19 years. Our last contract negotiation was during the economic crisis that we were going through. There were some county commissioners that were not on our side. Philly is an interesting city. It's a blue collar city.

For almost six years we didn't have a contract. Our working conditions were poor, but people still took pride in the job they did every day. I've worked for the University of California for the past 11 years. Outsourcing is a real problem everywhere, especially here in California. We were watching our jobs disappear, and it was getting worse every year. In 2015, six of the nine seats were up for election, so we knew it was crucial that we elected city councilors who would stand with us in support of all workers. I realized if we don't go out and fight and push for our own candidates, eventually we will have no rights at all.

I started organizing. We knocked on doors. We flagged down cars. And once we started talking, we saw how similar we were and how many things we had in common. I started going to the Capitol to meet with our legislators. And from there, I would educate them about what's going on in the university. And I asked them to support our Budget Act. We were able to get five of the six AFSCME-endorsed city councilor candidates elected.

And the majority of them are really strong advocates for earn sick and save time. That person that we were supporting to unseat an incumbent won. The next day after that win in the election, they gave us everything we asked for. After we got our candidate in office and 18 years I've been a City of Philadelphia employee, it was the quickest contract negotiation. Every promise that was made as far as having direct, personal, honest negotiations upheld. It was a long fight, but we won state legislature language basically saying that the university can't use taxpayer money to contract out our jobs. And it was

a very important victory. We're still fighting, but we wouldn't be where we are without getting city councilors elected who support our work, our work and the people program was crucial in making this happen. People program has taught me what it is to give back, what it is to be involved, what it is to be active, but also what it is to be a leader. The ask me people program allows us to be strong politically and push for laws to support all working people. At the end of the day, supporting the people program is not just about having security for your job, but also for your community and having a say in what goes on in your community. Ask Me's people program is democracy at work.

Who followed this flag 150 years ago knew what it meant. Treason against their country. The death of the United States. America defeated the men who followed that flag. Those with honor surrendered and cast it aside forever. So why does it keep showing up today at events supporting Donald Trump? And why does he call the folks who carry it very fine people? I think there's blame on both sides.

But you also had people that were very fine people. What does it say that they're all in for Trump? What does it say that he won't condemn a flag of hate, division, and losers. Do not replace us! For us, it says this is a time for choosing America or Trump. Folks, that particular ad there was put out by the folks at the Lincoln Project. This morning when I woke up, I woke up to a Google alert with regards to an issue that's been going on between the Trump campaign and one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, a never-Trumper.

He's been a huge critic of Donald Trump his entire presidency. And they've been criticizing Rick Wilson because of photos that were on his Instagram page several years ago where there was a Confederate flag on a water cooler. Rick Wilson came out and said that it was that was he said that was nothing that him or his family supported nor endorsed, but that it was a girlfriend who was interested in his son, who brought that as a gift to his son. And then he said after that boat trip, it was immediately disposed of. And he's tweeted and talked about that. But what involved me this morning was a particular tweet that was sent in 2011 by Rick's wife, Molly Wilson. In that particular tweet, the word Negro was used. I'm trying to pull it up.

Literally, I just walked into our building after being out on the streets, and so let me just pull this up. And it was very similar to a particular tweet that was sent out that was by Roger Stone, of course, who was a huge Trump supporter, one of the biggest racists and thugs out there, who, of course, is awaiting to be sent to federal prison. And so in this particular, so what happened was Donald Trump Jr. sent out a tweet last night saying, hey, Rick Wilson, do you and your wife usually use the term Negro to describe black Americans?

Trump Jr. tweeted, perhaps while sitting on your South will rise again Confederate flag cooler. Not very woke racist Rick Wilson. He couldn't spell Wilson. So what happened was there was a particular tweet that was sent out by his wife. Let me know, team, if you're all able to see this here. Hold on one second. I'm trying to pull it up there. So let's see. Let me know, team, if you're able to see this here. Hold on one second. I'm trying to pull it up there. So let's see. Let me know if you have it now. And so somebody sent out a tweet, said just ran into a near NASCAR hero, a Bass Pro Roland Martin. He says, hi. Well, Molly Wilson tweeted famed angler or corpulent CNN Negro gas bag, Roland Martin. I assume the former. Well, that was the tweet that Donald Trump Jr. was referring to.

I saw the story, was not aware of it. Then, of course, reach out to Rick Wilson. And then Molly Wilson called me. She called me to personally apologize for that particular tweet that was sent out. She said in our conversation, she called me this afternoon. She said she had no excuse for it. That is absolutely not the kind of thing that I say. She called it stupid, flippant, cruel and inappropriate joke. She says, I'm not that person. It was ugly and it was awful and I regret it. It was just mean and I was being a smart ass and saying it was certainly a lack of judgment because she said, I didn't realize how awful it was. I regret it. I absolutely regret it. So I certainly appreciate Molly Wilson for

calling me personally to apologize for that tweet. Now, when Roger Stone used similar language, he apologized to a reporter, but he didn't have the guts to actually tweet me or excuse me, to call me personally. And so I appreciate Molly picking the phone up once this story got out there to call me personally to apologize. But what's interesting about all of this here, you have Donald Trump Jr. who is criticizing Rick Wilson for this particular image of a Confederate flag. Yet this is the same Donald Trump Jr. who is the son of the man who made it perfectly clear he is not going to rename Confederate monuments named after army bases. This is the same person. I've never seen them really condemn the flying of those Confederate flags all throughout the South and other places next to Trump signs. See, so it's real interesting when you have Donald Trump Jr. who is attacking Rick Wilson. Let me be perfectly clear. I don't support anybody waving the Confederate flag. I believe Mississippi should

get rid of that flag as well. And speaking of that, here you have the SEC who denounced today that they are not going to hold any championships in Mississippi unless that flag, that Confederate flag is off their state flag. The NCAA already has that in place. So here's what I want to see. I want to see Donald Trump Jr. call out the state of Mississippi. And I want to see Donald Trump Jr. call on his dad to tell Mississippi, take down that Confederate flag. See, it's real easy. It's real easy if you're Donald Trump Jr. and you want to condemn Rick Wilson and condemn his wife for a photo of a Confederate flag on a water cooler that was on their Instagram page. That was several years ago. That's real easy. But Donald Trump Jr., you can address the Confederate flag today. You can address it today. Will Donald Trump Jr.

and Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump and Laura Trump and that birth of Melania Trump? And yes, their daddy and husband, Donald Trump Sr. Will they have the courage to say no to the Confederate flag? Will they tell Mississippi take down that flag? Will they tell Mississippi take down that flag? Will they say remove those Confederate statues from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol? See, so Donald Trump Jr., since you chose to use me as a part of your attack against Rick Wilson, I'm challenging you

to step up. I'm challenging you to step up. I'm challenging you to say something and condemn what we see across this country. Do you have those guts? See, it's real simple to criticize one of your critics. But I want to know, do you have the courage to challenge your own supporters? I want to know, Donald Trump Jr., will you send out a statement saying no Confederate flags at any time near at Trump rallies? And in fact, don't you dare wave a Confederate flag wearing a MAGA hat. Donald Trump Jr., I'll await your tweet. Molly Wilson called me. Rick Wilson called me.

Let's see you show some leadership, Donald Trump Jr. Real quick, I want to go right now to my next guest. She has been traveling around the country trying to get this nation to endorse making Juneteenth a national holiday. He has been someone who also has been making this issue as well. Opal Lee joins us from Fort Worth, Texas and we also have Sam Collins who joins us as well. Opal, how you doing? I'm alive and kicking! So you have been really pushing this nation to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Why?

Because I see Juneteenth as a unifier. I see if we would use all of our energy to get to address the atrocities that are happening to us that we could get so much more done. And Juneteenth is that vehicle to address housing, to address that prison complex thing, to address education and health. There's so much we could do if we just glued together.

And you know I'm advocating having the celebration from the 19th of June to the 4th of July. Remember, slaves weren't free on the 4th of July. Sam Collins, I'm going to bring you in here. I've spoken at your event in Galveston, Texas. For the people who have no idea, and look, you have some media people out here who are saying, hey, Juneteenth is the day slaves were freed. No, it was when General the day slaves were freed. No,

it was when General Granger arrived in Texas. Okay. That was a two-year process. And so give folks the background. Those of us from Houston or Texas, we're familiar with this because we've grown up with it. Texas was the first state to actually make Juneteenth a state holiday. So just explain to people, because you hear, well, he came off of a ship, he said it on the beach, or he addressed folks over here. Really what happened? Well, what we first have to understand is that the Union had control of the island in October of 1862. So what then happened is that the Confederacy recaptured the island January 1st, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was supposed to go into effect.

So the story that the enslaved people didn't know, news had already come to the area with the Union forces, and it was in 125 publications, newspaper publications, between 1862, at least that many, and 1865. So when Gordon Granger arrived, he came with thousands of troops and he also had United States colored troops with him. So my grandmother has a friend, Miss Attorney Faye Williams, that said her grandfather told her the story. It wasn't the piece of paper that freed the man or freed the people. It was the men with the guns. So when the Union soldiers showed up and those United States colored

troops got off of those ships and started walking the streets of Galveston, they made sure that General Order No. 3 was enforced. That's obviously important because the South was not trying to give up very easily. And it was when those Union troops were installed in state capitals in cities in the South to ensure that order was there and that those Southern Confederates did not retaliate against those newly freed slaves. That is correct. It was the man with the guns. They enforced it. And when they heard in General Order No. 3 that this involves absolute equality, that's what they expected. So those former enslaved people started to build their lives.

They got elected positions. They bought land. They built houses, churches. I'm sitting in a church, Reedy Chapel, that was established in 1848. And every year they have a march from the courthouse to the church. And they're doing it right now. They started at six o'clock and they're outside and making their way to the church now. Opal, now you have Senator Kamala Harris and others who have introduced legislation to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

And I'm grateful. And I'm hearing that our senator has changed what he has been presenting, the legislature he's been presenting, that it's just a Texas affair and something for the Southwest. He is changing his bill to read a national holiday. And so is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. We all are on the same page needing Juneteenth to be a national holiday. That obviously would be a huge deal. And, you know, I had somebody who called me today and they were like, well, you know, we shouldn't be celebrating this day. But Sam, the reality is this here. This is the only day, the only day where slavery is actually acknowledged in this country. Absolutely. In 48 states now, and Ms. Opal did come to Galveston and do one of her walks. So she's been leading us on this campaign.

And the thing about this, we have to understand the 13th Amendment had a clause in it. The document that Lincoln signed on June 19th, 1862 had a clause in it. Most people don't even know about that act to free people from 1862. But the general order number three says the enslaved people were free and that this involves absolute equality. I don't think there's another document that says we should have absolute equality. So individuals need to celebrate that. It's not something that we should be ashamed of. The former enslaved individuals had something happen to them. They were not slaves, but they were enslaved.

So it's important that we understand and take pride. I explain like birthdays. I have a different birthday than you. I got a different birthday than my children. July 4th is a freedom birthday for somebody else, And June 19th was a freedom birthday for us. So as Ms. Opal has said previously, we could celebrate freedom from June 19th to July 4th. And if you go to the July 4th party, you definitely should be coming to the June 19th party. Opal, last question. Opal, last question for you, and that is, what do you want white Americans to do on Juneteenth?

I mean, again, I'm from Houston, Texas, and for the most part, black folks celebrated Juneteenth. I was just out there, and there were a number of white faces and Asians and Latinos as well. And so should Juneteenth be a black thing or should it be an american thing an american thing it's not a black thing it's not a white thing we know that the free the slaves didn't free themselves it took quakers and john Brown and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and Garrison and I don't know how many, the Underground Railroad. We need to admit and celebrate those who helped slaves to get free. I am so glad, I shouldn't be, but the protesters, they aren't all black. Those young people have come together to demand that some attention be given to the brutality, the police

and what they are doing. It's not just some black people or some white people. And why can't we do this to address the atrocities that are happening to us every day? Our health care system needs some help. Our education system needs help. The prison population, the stuff that's going on in prisons, all these things need to be addressed. And when we come together to do that, we have arrived.

And I see Juneteenth being that catalyst. All right. Opal Lee, Sam Collins, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, then. Thank you very much. And we look forward to these things happening.

Go back to our panel here, Dr. Carter. Again, you see this. It is real. It's real interesting to watch the reaction by elected officials. All of a sudden, all these corporations have discovered Juneteenth. Cable networks have discovered Juneteenth this thing has been celebrated for 150 plus years this ain't new to us well they discovered they could make a dollar off of it is what they discovered i mean let's be clear none of this is just altruistic there's money to be made here and they recognize this i I mean, even Nike has like a Black History Month sneaker. So everybody recognizes there is something to capitalize on here. And I always say if they're in it, they're in to make a dollar. And so I think we

have to be cautious. Like you said, this is a holiday that's been celebrated for a century, right? And so if these people are just finding out about something that has been freely available and well-known and celebrated by Black people all across this country, particularly in the South and Southwest, but across this country for decades, then why are they all of a sudden now paying attention? Because they want a virtue signal and they also want to make money in the process. So I think we have to be very careful about who these partners all of a sudden come to be and how, you know, great Juneteenth comes to be to so many people. And look, and this is not to say that you should be penalized for not knowing. You don't know what you don't know. At the same time, though, when it turns into this way

to commercialize and make a buck, then yes, we should look sideways or think twice about this and use this again. If you have to spend money anywhere for Juneteenth, make sure you do that with Black owners. Make sure you do that with Black businesses. Make sure that we're spending those monies in our communities and that we're supporting and uplifting our institutions because there are plenty of folks out here, and as you had on the show last week that are hurting because of all the things that are happening economically right now. So this is a moment to reflect and think of ways to support our communities, because that's always been what Juneteenth is about in the way that Ms. Lee was just talking about in supporting our communities and uplifting and highlighting our communities in all domains. So, again, beware the person come, you know, with this gift of a holiday that also comes with a side of purchase.

But that's where, Rob, that's where we say, and I think black employees and companies just say, oh, since y'all want to benefit off of Juneteenth, turn over all sales from Juneteenth to black organizations, to give it to HBCUs, give it. I mean, see, see that again. This is where the challenge, Rob, has to be far more aggressive. And like I'm a firm believer in this here. These companies that are out here, if you're an engineering company. OK, I want to know. Forget you say, oh, we're going to give 10 million dollars to NAACP or LDF, which I certainly support. I want to have companies tie their dollars directly to the HBCUs that are graduating those students. And so what's the top nursing school? What's the top engineering school? What's the top political science school?

What's the top aerospace school? What's the top communication schools? And so if you're a media company, Comcast announced they were giving one hundred million dollars to various social organizations. No, damn that. What are the top five journalism schools at HBCUs? And Comcast should say, all right, we're going to give twenty million dollars each to each one of those schools. The average HBCUs endowment. Listen to me, y'all. The average HBCU endowment is less than 20 million. So corporate America could double the actual endowment of HBCUs writing that check. That's how we should be responding. I ain't just getting mad if you want to sell some stuff.

Sell it, but give it back. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I will say two things. One, we should control more of the narrative too, because if you look at, if you look at the Holocaust, Jewish are very clear about controlling their narrative, making sure that the full story is told to the extreme level of brutality as it should be. We need the same thing with Juneteenth. It wasn't just a day, like we need to talk about the fact that Juneteenth, the reason why it happened is because people were, like you already previously mentioned, guns had to be brought there in order to make sure people

were free. People were still being tricked. People were still being taken advantage of. People were still being violated. And of course, that happened over again and again and again. We need to control that narrative to the part about making sure that the money is given back, absolutely. Historically by colleges, I will also say I'm an electrical engineering graduate. It was a great program at the University of Cincinnati that's dedicated to black and brown engineers. They can also give to other universities. They can also make sure that they're hiring, interning. Lots can be done. So we don't want to just settle for something that sounds like a big number. And at the end of the day, when you look and open up the car and you see there's not much there, there needs to be real results, real changes.

Otherwise, it's just talk. Amisha, again, I think when we were seeing what is happening and I've seen some folks on Twitter like, oh, my goodness, you know, are they going Cinco de Mayo Juneteenth? Here's the deal. Here's the deal. Chances are high. No, but here's the deal. Here's the deal. Chances are high. No, but here's the deal. We can protect this. We can protect this. What I'm saying is protect it. No, and I absolutely agree with you. I think that there's so much in the African-American community in terms of richness of history and the fact that most blacks across this country have been celebrating Juneteenth for decades. It's very interesting to see nationwide that now it's finally getting the recognition that it deserves. But I think that, to your point, Roland, there needs to be some parameters in

place. Because what we don't want it to become is some hokey holiday that now white people have decided they're going to start Columbus-ing, almost-like and say, okay, well, we made it important. We want to ensure that the true history is shown. To Rob's point, we want to make sure the true history is shown. A lot of it is brutal. A lot of it is heartbreaking, but it's also a story of a lot of resilience. African-Americans are some of the most resilient people and the most resilient people in this country, considering everything that we've been through and everything that we still have to do to rise above. So I think that this is a time in which we should demand from a lot of those corporations who are willing to sign checks right now to anything that has a black name in it to do more. It is a time where we should get them to participate in donating to HBCUs. And I agree with you. As somebody who

graduated from two PWIs, I donate to four HBCUs every year, one of which is Jackson State University, because my family is from Jackson, Mississippi. And I strongly believe that there are HBCUs that aren't necessarily always even in the conversation for Black people if they aren't Morehouse, if they aren't Howard, if they aren't if they aren't howard if they aren't spellman trust me black people there are hbcus that exist out of those three so we also need to give them love as well beyond that looking at small businesses small businesses are the engine of america black small businesses are the engine of the black community let's not only push to go to and invest our cash in those businesses, let's make sure that a lot of

these ultra-rich companies are also paying attention to those businesses, that we know who's on their boards, that they're opening that for us, that we know what their employees look like, that we are holding them accountable. Juneteenth shouldn't only be a holiday. It should be one that is a holiday that showcases what the priorities happen to be for Black people. We have to ask for more, and this is our time. Folks, today, Mayor Greg Fisher of Louisville announced that Metro Police officer, the Metro Police, they're firing Officer Brett Hankinson, one of the three officers to fire weapons on March 13th at Breonna Taylor's apartment and killing her. Hankinson is accused by the

department's interim chief, Robert Schroeder, of blindly firing 10 rounds into Taylor's apartment, creating a substantial danger of death and serious injury. Schroeder wrote in a letter to Hankinson laying out the charges against him, saying, quote, I find your conduct a shock to the conscience. I am alarmed and stunned you use deadly force in this fashion. He continued, the result of your actions seriously impedes the department's goal of providing the citizens of our city with the most professional law enforcement agency possible. I cannot tolerate this type of conduct by any member of the Louisville Metro Police Department. Your conduct demands your termination.

Now, keep in mind, there were three officers. Only one has been terminated. Attorney Ben Crump, who represents Breonna Taylor's family, has been calling for all three to be fired and for them to be charged. The other thing, Hankerson never turned on his body camera. In fact, none of the officers who stormed into that apartment had their body cameras on. So we don't actually see what took place. That's also why the previous chief was forced out by the mayor.

Folks, a senior State Department official who has served in the Trump administration since the beginning has chosen to resign after his recent handling of racial tension in the nation, stating that his action goes against her core values and convictions. This black woman, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, turned in her five-par five paragraph resignation letter on Thursday. Now, this, folks, is a huge deal here that that's in. Here's the interesting thing here, Dr. Carter. All of these other folks, all these folks out here, John Kelly, Mattis and all the rest of these people,

they sat there and they waited and they waited and they waited. They tolerated this. This black woman, the one who led the Supreme Court nominees, she led 400 some appointees through that process. She said, I simply cannot stand for this. I quit. That needs to be celebrated because again, she could have easily chosen to stay quiet and just kept going along and say, well, you know, that's what they do. She said, no, this simply is I can't tolerate it. Well, I mean, she had been there through Charlottesville and these other moments of terrible decision making by this administration. But I do think it says something that this person decided that this moment.

I don't know what her thought process was, but she said, you know, it was following her conscience. She was following her conscience and she couldn't sit by any longer in this position. And so she resigned. I do think it's going to require people to do more of that rather than less of it. I think far too often what we've seen is that people are happy to leave, but people aren't really willing to say why they're leaving. They're not really to put a name to it.

And the fact that she said something changed for her, I think speaks to the power, to what Rob and Amisha were talking about, about narrative and images and why they matter. Because something happened. I mean, this, again, this administration has been racially divisive from the beginning before he even took office.

He made it clear that he had no care for people who were non-white, quite frankly. But she worked with him. She worked under him for years. And now she said, no, Moss, I don't know what her moment of clarity was. I don't know why it was this moment. But I think anybody who works in an administration knows that at some point, continuing to work with this person, work with these people, is rubber stamping what they're doing. You are giving it a veneer of credibility by continuing to go. And listen, people have real lives. People have bills. People have things that they have to take care of. So I don't begrudge anybody the real sort of everydayness of the decisions we make about employment. But working under this particular administration, I think particularly for someone like her who is not a regular government employee to step down and step down with a five paragraph letter of resignation does say something. Absolutely. Again, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, she has resigned from the State Department.

Folks, in a recent article for The Nation, Justice Correspondent Ellie Vista wrote, the United States needs to be treated like the racist pariah state that it is. Hmm. He joins us right now. Ellie, what's up? That was a heck of a time. So, yeah, you sort of just cut right to the chase here. So it's interesting because Senator Tim Scott the other day said that, you know, that he doesn't believe in systemic racism in America, but he said there are pockets of racism in America. Yeah, he's wrong. I think he knows he's wrong in his heart. Of course, this country experiences systemic racism. This is a racist country. I don't see any, no honest person I don't think can look at how this country operates and how it's operated for,

you know, 400 years. Hold on, that's like a huge clicking sound as you talk. It's like a constant clicking. Okay. So it might be your headphones. So let's just do this here. Sorry. Is this a little bit better? No, it's still clicking. It's still clicking. So let's, all right. So I have no idea why is that clicking? So let's do this here. Are you talking through the Bluetooth on the headphones? I am not. I am talking through my computer mic. OK, so let's do this. All right, guys, let me know what we should do. How about you take the headphones off and talk and let me see if that fixes the problem.

Let's go and talk. So I want to make sure that we hear you now. Go ahead and talk. All right. Can you hear me? Clicking has gone away. Go ahead. I just can't. Now the problem is that I can't hear you very well. Oh, don't don't worry about it. You just talk. So do this here. OK, do this here. You go ahead and talk. And then when you finish talking, I'll ask you the next question. All right, let's do that. OK, so that's real. That's better right there. That's whatever you just bad. That's better right there. That's whatever you just did there. That's better. I put it for the, for the article was

go ahead for the article was simple. Um, I, I, I was trying to really hone in on the fact that the world has seen this kind of country before, right? We are not the first racist country. We unfortunately will not be the last racist country. The world, when it realizes that a country has really kind of like gone, fallen away from the pack, the world tends to have a response to that. We saw it with South Africa, right? We saw it in most of our lifetimes. We saw the international moral suasion brought to bear on the racist apartheid state of South Africa. South Africa is free now, mainly because of the tireless work of black South Africans who refuse to let their dignity be stripped from them. But it's also because of the moral suasion of the international community. It's also because South Africa was banned from the

damn Olympics, right? Also because South Africa was economically divested from. It's also because people boycotted companies who did business in South Africa. And at a moment where we see George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests springing up, sparking up all over the world, if the world gets to the point where it's willing to divest from America the way the world was once willing to divest from South Africa, that could be, that's the special sauce. That could be the nitro to the Black Lives Matter movement really getting structural change happening in this country. Well, so that particular point is important. And the problem is, in fact, in just a moment, the next guest, I'm going to talk about how the United States has gone, used back channels to get these African nations to back off of their call for the U.N.'s top human rights body to launch a scrutiny to the United States.

Here's the reality. In this country, we want everybody else to get their stuff together. But America has never liked when somebody looked at us. I remember when one of the Chinese presidents came here and he met with President George W. Bush and he was highly critical of race in the United States. He basically was saying, how in the hell y'all going to call us out for our human rights violations when how you treated black folks for all of these years in America? One of the big differences I think with Donald Trump is that he has pulled back the curtain on just how racist this country is. Previous presidents, certainly all the presidents in my lifetime, and I think you can go all the way back pretty much to Eisenhower with this, they talk the good game on the international stage. You can make a case that most of our

presidents have been racist at some level. But when they talk on the international stage, they talk about freedom, they talk about healing, they talk about togetherness. They hold America up as this beacon. If you go around the world, there are Africans, black people around the world who think that America is the place where you can have your best shot, where you can have your most honest chance at success. Black Americans know that ain't true. Black Americans know what this country is about. Black Americans know what this country does to us and our children, the kind of racism and brutality that our people face. But American presidents never show that face to the world. Donald Trump shows that face.

You cannot be a world citizen. You cannot watch the BBC and miss the fact that the American president is an idiot, is a bigot, and right now currently is threatening to turn the world's most lethal military against his own people. We know what the world thinks about people who gas their own people, right? That is the line that Donald Trump is getting very close to. And so I think that when you see what Trump is really about, and the fact that he still fundamentally has the support of a majority of white Americans, that makes us look, I think, very different on the world stage. And on that particular point, I think that, again, this is the problem this country has.

America did not want Malcolm X to go to the United Nations to confront racism. Then you had Avery Brundage, an absolute racist who was just so offended at Tommy Smith and John Carlos, expelled them from the Olympic Games and sent them home because they dared to actually raise their fist and take off their shoes on that gold medal stand. And that has been part of the deal here. Mark Thiessen writes a column today in the Washington Post saying, oh, it's smart for Trump to go to Tulsa in his outreach to blacks. And I responded on Twitter. I said, first of all, how in the hell are you having an outreach to blacks by giving a speech in Tulsa on tomorrow in an auditorium full of white folks? Donald Trump ain't talking to black

people. Donald Trump is talking to white people. Except for the ones he paid for on Craigslist. Trump is a ridiculous anathema. And just to go back to the Mary Elizabeth Taylor woman from your previous segment, one of the reasons why I respect what she did is that she's a young person. She's a young person, and young people have a lot to lose in this economy because we are about to hit a recession, right? Technically, we are already in a recession. That's going to be the story kind of going forward. And one thing that we know during recessions is that black people get it worse. We're the first ones fired. We're the last ones rehired.

All these corporations talking about making Juneteenth contributions to people. I wish they would give some jobs to people. I wish they would commit to protecting African-American jobs in this coming round of layoffs that we're gonna see all across the country. But I tie that through to Donald Trump's speech because while he talks about black unemployment all the time as if he did something about that, those are Obama's accomplishments that he is, I don't wanna say wearing blackface, but he's those are Obama's accomplishments that he is. I don't want to say wearing blackface, but he's he's he's putting on Obama's accomplishments on his own skin. He never talks about any kind of economic protection from black people from the store.

But here's the deal, though. Black unemployment, it went down to its lowest. But what you will not hear him say is that it has gone up every month since October before coronavirus. They don't want to talk about that. Never, never, right? So it's all interconnected. Trump does not have an agenda for the African-American community. He never has. The Republicans don't have an agenda for the African American community. Republicans long ago stopped trying to persuade me to vote for them and started trying simply to suppress my vote, right? That is the game on that side of the aisle. And that's why just no matter what, no matter, like whenever we talk about black liberation and black emancipation,

whenever we talk about police violence and police brutality, to me it all comes back, you have to vote. You have to vote in your local elections. I live in New York. New York has a primary on Tuesday. There are local candidates who care about these issues and there are local candidates who don't. And you have to know the difference and you have to vote like that. If people voted in local primaries and local elections,

like they vote in presidential elections, our entire daily lives would be different. And then if everybody voted in the presidential election, people like Trump could never win. And so we have to remember that and everything we have to do, we do, has to be tied into some reminder that people need to go and vote and use this franchise that so many of our people fought and died for. Ellie Mishtim with The Nation. We certainly appreciate it, man.

Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Folks, to continue this conversation, African countries, as I said on Thursday, backed off their call for the UN's top human rights body to launch its most intense scrutiny of police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. It's believed that American officials led back-channel talks to air opposition to the idea. Pull my panel back in.

In a moment, I'm going to talk to Johanna LeBlanc. She's the national security and foreign affairs legal analyst. Let me know, folks, when she's on. Amisha, this is what the United States has always done. America does not want anybody looking at our stuff. Amisha, go ahead. Can you hear me, Michelle? Okay, we can't hear Amisha, folks. Oh, I'm sorry. I was on mute.

There we go. Go ahead. No, America has always had a habit of policing every other nation. We are the police of the world when it comes to humanitarianism, when it comes to human rights violations, when it comes to overzealous leaders or leaders who we just wanted to depose of, even if they weren't overzealous. However, we have a huge problem with seeing tragedy, seeing human rights violations within our own backyard. The issue with the UN coming in, I think it's extremely smart to elevate and raise awareness and have the UN be able to cite a lot of the issues that are particularly affected African-Americans when it comes to human rights violations and immense brutality that has occurred within this country.

This isn't the first time, though, that the UN has been a part of and a parcel of moving the African-American community forward, specifically when it comes to violations of our own government against us. And I think that right now, considering the place that we are at in history, it's extremely vital that we look towards organizations or multinational organizations because what we have in America right now is a president that is not only a nationalist, and by nationalist is not just America, he is white America, let's not be confused in any way. He is also populist America. And what we know about populism is that it has never worked in the favor of minorities, specifically black people.

And the UN has a very strong, not only rhetorician around this, but they also fully understand what their leadership role is in elevating and pointing out a lot of the institutional biases, a lot of the major treading upon that has happened with African Americans over generations here, but also looking at the effects of police brutality and how our government has ignored it time and time again. And I think that right now we are at a point where that type of report would get the level of attention that we need, but also elevate this to where America can no longer hide behind itself. America can no longer ignore the crisis within its own backyard. And America can no longer be seen as this country that really serves democracy and should be the beacon

for all other nations. When to be honest, we've never been a democratic nation for a huge segment of people that actually live in this country. I want to bring in Jahan LeBlanc. She joins us right now. Jahan, this is one of those moments where these African nations could have said to the United States, no. But the reality is, I'm quite sure the United States dangled the dollars. Well, Roland, how these cases are usually handled is whenever there's things like this, the African Union ambassadors here in D.C. and at the AU and the Secretary Mike Pompeo or someone else in the leadership usually will make a phone call and say, hey, I hear there's an inquiry going on at this level. And do you understand the seriousness of this?

And obviously, as a member of state, you are entitled, you are legally, you can pursue with this. But I think after the conversation with either Secretary Michael Pompeo or someone else from the leadership within the State Department, the African Union nations took a step back. But another point I want to make is that in the midst of this crisis, the conversation is now, does the United States have the moral authority to judge other nations' human rights conducts? For example, every year, the United States State Department in particular, the Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights, publishes a report for each nation that receives funding from the United States to see how they're governing themselves in terms of human rights,

right? So now, with all of this that is happening, is the United States the right nation to be leading the way for how other nations should conduct themselves. But one last note I would like to make, Roland, is that I do believe that the African nations, initially they were very vocal as it relates to their stance. And Zimbabwe, in fact, sent a letter to the U.S. ambassador in Zimbabwe indicating how concerned Zimbabwe was as it relates to the protesting and the killing of George Floyd in the United States. So they do understand the severity of this matter. But as I said earlier, these human rights reports, when they're published, they have a negative implication on these nations.

And sometimes it could lead up to international sanctions on individuals. In fact, just recently, in 2017, the president, the former president of The Gambia, was slapped with a sanction under the Magnitsky Act for human rights violations in his country. And that act, what it did to the foreign president of the Gambia is that it revoked his U.S. passport and also blocked all of his assets here in the United States. But again, I do think that countries understand the severity of this, because I think COVID-19 also taught us that we're all in this together. My liberation is tied to the liberation of my sisters and brothers in South Africa, in COVID-19 in Wuhan, China,

how it had led to a complete stop to a global economy and the death of countless Americans and others all across the world. So now they're backing off. So what are they going to do? Go light? Are they saying don't investigate at all? What are they going to say? Well, to be frank with you, Roland, the resolutions that usually come out

of the UN usually have no teeth. Now, the commission, the UN Security Council, is the place where resolutions that are adopted are binding. So other actions that happen through the U.N. usually is just a way to just tell other states, we're watching you.

We look at there are so many states where the United Nations have passed resolutions and they don't adhere to those resolutions because they're not legally binding. They have no legal teeth. So the U.N. Security Council is the route to take. But the problem is the U.S. Security Council, United States has if the United States vetoes it. Guess what? There's no resolution. Obviously, yes, you're right. You have France, you have the UK, you have Russia, the superpowers, right? So it's very challenging to get something done against the United States, one of the most powerful nations in this world. But I think that the United States can do right by Americans here in this country and cannot maintain its moral authority. This is the moment where America has to do the right thing.

Mere executive orders are not sufficient. Even laws passed through Congress, I will say, are not sufficient. One of the things that I learned my second year in law school was that laws are great. They are a piece of instrument that you can take to court to be redressed for your harm. However, I do believe that the hearts of men must change. And as citizens of this country and wherever you are in the world, you have a duty to check your implicit biases and really ask yourself, how is that bias may impede someone's ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness? And until we're able to have these frank conversations with ourselves, with our family members, I

don't care what kind of laws we have on the books. People are still going to violate the law. Our heart, the hearts of men must be changed. And it is something that no society can legislate. Jahan LeBlanc, Michelle, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Dr. Codd, I want to go to you on this. I mean, this is part of the problem.

Part of the problem is that when things happen around the world, we can protest. We can come to the aid of other countries. For black people and other people in this country, the reality is this here, and this is why it's sad what those African nations have done, is that we don't have a home country. This is it. So it would bring, just like when you had those black workers at Polaroid and other African-Americans before them who were highly critical of South Africa. And then African-Americans rallied to stand with those South Africans to seek their freedom. Same in Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. Same thing when Ghana got independent.

Same thing with other African nationsan nations uh this is where international pressure is needed we need also those white prime ministers to also call out this country when it comes to racism because america should be taken to task and not be hypocritical and question everyone else but not itself but this is what america always does i mean when the league of nations was formed woodrow Wilson, probably one of the most racist American presidents to ever exist, just single handedly bounced a principle, a treaty that Japanese government wanted to add, acknowledging the principles of racial equality for the League of Nations, which would become the U.N. Right. You had the Civil Rights Congress in 1951 try to go to the U.N. to lodge the complaints about the murders of black Americans by the government and other state sanctioned actors. Right. So this is a part and parcel. I mean, the United States, even though it signed on to the International Criminal Court and was happy to see people like

Gaddafi and others be sued internationally and brought up on charges won't allow those same courts to actually have prosecutorial authority over Americans, right, who break international law. So this is what we do. We use our military, the fact that we have one of the largest militaries in the world, the largest in the world, to bully other nations. We use the threat of withholding funds. America does not like to be called out on the carpet internationally. And this is, again, another moment where America has been caught with its pants down and everybody can see, yet it'll pretend that they're wearing undergarments, right? So I understand the

pressure that these nations face to back off, because if you're out the only person out here and you do need folks like China and other nations to come forward and support you, it is a very lonely and a very difficult place because the United States is an international bully. shooing any kind of greater scrutiny into how it treats its Black citizens. And so I'm not surprised that these nations have softened their stance with respect to the United States and these international organizations. Rob, America hates being called out, but getting called out is necessary. Yeah, America is the worst when it comes to self-awareness of its own deeds. Just like Dr. Martin Luther King, his whole focus was just making sure that America lived up to what it said on paper. Just do what you say on paper. We want your rhetoric to match your reality. And we have the greatest of ideals, but we have so much room to go in order to actually make sure that particularly African-Americans are given all those rights.

So it's so interesting to see the rage that a lot of Americans and American officials get when people call them out on their racism. Look, I want them to get just as upset about being called out about racism as actually being racist. Then we can actually make some progress. What's interesting, as I want to talk about this here i mentioned this the other day uh the sec southeastern conference has made it clear unless mississippi takes the confederate flag off of its state flag there will be no sec championships taking place

on any campus in mississippi um that is essentially a divestment practice. That's what it is. South Carolina, it happened. NAACP did it in South Carolina. The NCAA and others followed through with that. And when that flag came down, the NCAA said, okay, fine, then we can return. We're seeing this here. I keep telling people, we can have all this talk we want to. If you want to affect America, you must deal with money. Money. All these people, all these folk,

all of a sudden, all these folks who are saying, oh my goodness, all these changes, let's be real clear. When shit started burning, when buildings started burning, they were like, oh damn, we got to do something. They ain't got no problem with you marching. And look, I do not endorse any of that, but I keep telling people,

every single so-called riot in the 60s was preceded by police brutality. And when shit started getting burned, buildings and cities put up in flames they're like man we gotta do something america america understands two things violence and money absolutely absolutely and to your point about the sec i i grew up in mississippi mississippi is sec country i have 16 cousins who all played sec football in the state of mississippi When you think about Ole Miss, when you think about the University of Southern Mississippi, when you think about all of those schools, Mississippi State, for a state that has always had the Confederate flag in its state flag, when you stand up to do the Pledge of Allegiance anywhere in Mississippi, you also have to pledge because they have it right next to

the American flag, the state flag with the Confederate flag in it. You're also pledging to that at the same time. This is a huge watershed moment for the state of Mississippi, who has battled against removing this emblem from the flag since before my grandmother was born. This is one of those moments where when you're talking SEC country, you're talking a breed and a heritage. You're also looking at, and I've seen some of the message boards today since that announcement came out, and white Mississippians are largely pissed right now that this is happening. Of course. They feel that this is a part of their heritage that is being stripped away, that the SEC has no right to do it. And they are extremely upset and are about to start their own

counter-protest about why this emblem should remain there. So, you know, I definitely want people to know that this is not something that is a small, this is not small pickings for a state that has, by and large, fought time and time again against every legislator who has moved forward different types of legislation to try to get this taken down for the past 60 plus years. And let me say, it's not as deep as Mississippi, but I can tell you in Ohio, they believe in the Confederate flag in a whole lot of places too. And there was some legislation

that was trying to be put forward to get rid of it and all these county fairs went down so quickly, it didn't even go up. But let me tell you, just a reminder to these people that think that it is their heritage, the Confederacy lasted for five years. It's not, and they came back, I know everybody here knows this.

They came back just to intimidate black people after Reconstruction, after the federal troops left, in order to intimidate and put white supremacy back in place. So you are not celebrating your heritage. You are celebrating white supremacy. And we're not celebrating that. We're not allowing for that anymore. They know exactly what they're celebrating. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. No, no, no. um i've seen i know exactly they know exactly what they're celebrating and they know exactly what they're celebrating i gotta say this here um rarely do you see folk going

after idris elba but uh go to my ipad idris posted this shirt uh take my art, culture, fashion, music, science, and he crossed out life. Folk like, hell no, don't take none of that. It's interesting to see him trending on Twitter. Folks are not particularly giving Idris any room here, Amisha, at all. They're like, no, bruh. In fact, Matthew Chair, the director,

tweeted, this ain't it. This is one of those moments where being black and British kind of crosses over into something else because we want to have, first of all, all of those things have already been taken from us. Let's not be unclear here. When it comes to assimilation, African-Americans have been forced to assimilate, beaten to assimilate. A lot of our culture, a lot of our history, a lot of our art, a lot of our everything has not been something that has been celebrated in this country. And quite frankly, a lot of that that originated in Africa was pilfered and stolen by European settlers anyway. So to see a shirt like that is quite frankly offensive, but it also goes to show again that there is a huge disconnect between the African-American experience and those people who may be our same skin tone, but do not come from that same background as we do in this nation.

I'm telling you, Doc, look, look, sisters loves of Idris. He getting lit up. He getting lit up on Twitter. I mean, just because you're good looking doesn't mean you're smart. And I mean, there is a difference. And I think what Amisha is talking about and what this shirt misses is that all of those things that you take strip away people's humanity. So it's easier to take their life. All of these things are prelude to our murder, whether it's your physical body or your soul. So all of these things are part and parcel of the same kind of disregard for Black humanity. So I get where the shirt is potentially trying to go, but I think it's, again, it's tone deaf and it doesn't really acknowledge that all of these things, culture, language, art, music, are all a part of the experience of what it means to be a people taking those things away is an attempt to take away our humanity and those things lead to death

of one kind or another right so even if people aren't dead physically they're dead spiritually because the taking often comes at our expenses so i i don't know why he would choose to make this message maybe he was being deep i don't know but again this missed the mark totally but he's still good looking right rob go ahead rob go ahead rob you know but listen i'll just you know he was um not only does only does it is it even if you try to get to the point where he's trying to say don't take our life. People are they have taken our art and they're taking profits or taking finances or taking away things that we have created. And we're not getting the value of the things we have created. That is also led to the systematic exclusion.

So, like, he didn't understand that. I agree to Amisha's point all the way. I think the brother's good. I just think he has a disconnect because he doesn't have the same experience or the same understanding of what it means to be an African-American here. So he took that trying to be deep and totally missed the mark. Alright, folks. That is it for us.

Let me also, first of all, I gotta find her name. Let me find her name. So y'all might be wondering where I got this shirt from. So I actually ordered it uh off of etsy uh and is this it is this it um yes uh agape creations with a z agape creation z and so uh man what is the sister's name uh markeia markeia she's owner of agape creation z uh in atlanta so i got this off of um um i got it off so you'll see here let me stand up give a microphone you'll see juneteenth breaking every chain since 1865 and so uh i want to uh thank her for that uh for yeah i paid for

the shirt y'all uh and so uh for for designing the shirt so i certainly appreciate it uh rob amicia niambi thanks a lot for being on our panel. Thank you so very much. Enjoy your Juneteenth day and weekend. Happy Juneteenth, y'all. All right, folks. Last night, I told y'all, I said, man, if 60 of our folks could give 50 bucks each, we could actually get this new app, which will allow us to be able to send to people.

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Y'all want to support the show. All of you watch on YouTube. Again, y'all, we do this show to give you support you're not going to get anywhere else. We want you to join our Bring the Funk fan club my man keenan sent me we have 8 000 8 000 i want to get the number let's see um uh let's see here give me one second y'all uh two two two two keen 8 254. So here's the deal. If we hit our goal of 20,000 people by the end of the year, the show is completely funded. And so every dollar you give goes to support this show. Our goal, of course, is to give you the kind of news you're not going to get anywhere else.

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All the rest of these folk who have suddenly discovered Juneteenth, we do Juneteenth every day. We break chains every day. We break chains every day. Henry, give me a wide shot.

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for black people, targeting black people, covering the news. That's why we do what we do every single day. We need your help. Here's the deal. We don't have any corporate folks supporting us. We have been bootstrapping this thing, y'all. I'm telling y'all, I have not been paying myself from the show for a number of months.

But the reality is, y'all have been so supportive in your giving. We appreciate that. And so, please, we need you to stand with us. Cash App is dollar sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal.me forward slash RMartinUnfiltered. Venmo.com forward slash rmartin unfiltered venmo.com forward slash rm unfiltered you can send a money order uh folks or cashier's check to and make it out to new vision media please new vision media inc 1625 k street northwest suite 400 washington dc 2006 we want you to

support what we do we got some great things uh coming up and again i want to thank all of y'all for making that app possible and so i'm gonna do this here and so i'm gonna show y'all actually so a couple of things that we're doing i'm not gonna show you today so what's happening is uh henry give me a wide shot but i'm gonna do it again we're trying to make look we want this show to look great and i'm telling y'all right now ain't nobody else doing any black digital show look as good as this show y'all know i ain't lying uh you put this suck up on the big screen y'all know we popping that's right i broke all that english y'all know we popping so what i'm doing is as a brother he owns a lighting company we're coming in and we're putting in a whole new lighting grid here and it's gonna and look i'm just gonna be honest about it's

gonna cost seven thousand dollars it's gonna cost seven thousand dollars we're also doing and i'm gonna show y'all one day, I'm just going to shoot, I may do it live or they just shoot it. We're completely going to redo our control room because we want to be able to take in more feeds, have more people who are live, fix our audio. And so all these different things that we're doing, we, first of all, Matt Thacker,

don't sit here and try to talk about what this set looks like. I will block you on YouTube just letting you know. Don't act a fool. I see everything. So what we're doing is our goal is for this to be a high quality show giving you the kind of information. We did 350 hours of content in our first year. We're going to do 700 hours of content in our second year.

Y'all know, and I'll show you the numbers, folks, we crossed the 500,000 threshold of subscribers in our YouTube channel on June 4th. We've actually, and I can get the last number here, we can get the last number, we've actually added in the last, since June 4th, that's in 15 days, we've added 500, excuse me, we've added 36,810 new subscribers

to our youtube channel and so man we are making this thing happen it's because of what y'all do and so please go to rollermarkunfiltered.com give up give on uh youtube uh give on cash app venmo pull up again paypal you can send it in because y'all the election is in november and trust me we've got some stuff we want to be in battleground states once we return to traveling we want to be able on the ground covering the stories covering these various things and that's why we make it possible and so please support us you can buy our products at rolandmartin uh on filter.com and y'all might have y'all might have seen last thing here. Y'all might have seen my girl Soledad when she talked about she talked about when somebody at CNN told her that I wasn't the right kind of black. I wasn't the right kind of black to put on the show. That's that's that's what they said uh i wasn't the right kind of black so since

that's the case y'all know how i do y'all can do this here if y'all go to rollermarkunfiltered.com right now mine is on the way y'all can order your own shirt yeah go ahead and show it henry go ahead and show it these shirts right here not, Not the Right Kind of Black. Drop the Cash app so they can see the bottom. So you'll see at the top, we got the name of the show, and then we got the show right here. And so here's another design we did. And here's another design we did right here. So we got three different designs.

So if you working, you know, some of us, we Not the Right Kind of Black, yeah, we went ahead and put it on a shirt. And so y'all can get that. Y'all can get Bring the Funk shirts as well or Roller Martin Unfiltered. Y'all, we are trying to build something here. I'm not asking these networks to cover us. I'm not asking these networks to tell our story.

The nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, March of 1827 said, we wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We speak for ourselves here at Roller Martin Unfiltered. I'm going to have another announcement real soon. That actually will be the announcing of going from a single show to launching a black digital news and information network.

Yeah, you wanna wait for that announcement. I already have the name, I already have the logo, just wait for the announcement. Y'all have a great weekend. Hold up, hold up, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up. Shout out to my sister Kenya. Today is her birthday, it's on Juneteenth. She was born in 1975. So Kenya Martin, happy birthday. I didn't have time for a photo, but it we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov brought to you by the U S department of health and human services and the ad council. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Sure. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war.

This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.