#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Maryland's 1st Black Governor, TX HISD Takeover, BWR 12th Annual Women of Power National Summit

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

3.16.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Maryland's 1st Black Governor, TX HISD Takeover, BWR 12th Annual Women of Power National Summit Maryland made history by electing the state's first black governor Wes Moore.Governor Moore will join me to discuss his aggressive plan to combat climate change and how he plans to help close Maryland's wealth gap. Texas State Commissioner of Education will appoint a new Houston Independent School District superintendent and board of education trustees because of a new law that allows the state to remove the board of districts with schools failing to meet specific state standards. To explain how this is impacting minority schools, we have Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson to discuss. A Kentucky federal jury convicts a white woman for mailing threats to her neighbors.We will explain how the woman mailed multiple threats of violence through the United States Postal Service. The 12th Annual Black Women's Roundtable "Women of Power" National Summit is happening now to celebrate Women's History Month at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor. We will show you all this year's annual gathering that brings together a diverse group of over 1,000 Black women & girls and allies. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Today is Thursday, March 16th, 2023. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. He's the third African-American governor elected since Reconstruction. We're chatting with Governor Westmore of Maryland. The Texas Education Agency has taken over the Houston Independent School District. Black elected officials are not happy about that at all. We'll discuss all that and more today on the 196th anniversary of the founding

of the first black newspaper, Freedom Journal. It is time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the miss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the find. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling.

Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. It's on go, go, go, yo. Yeah, yeah. It's rolling, Martin, yeah. Yeah, yeah. yeah It's Roland Martin Yeah, yeah, yeah Rolling with Roland now

Yeah, yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Roland Martin Now Come straight to me Martin Folks, he is the third African-American elected governor in the United States since Reconstruction. Wes Moore is the new governor of Maryland. And, of course, he also is a proud man of Alpha Phi Alpha.

Glad to have you on the show, Fred. How you doing? It's good to see you, Fred. How you doing? I'm doing great. You have had quite a time thus far since your inauguration. Folks there in the state of Maryland are quite happy, but obviously it's also about getting down to business. What is your focus in your first year?

Well, our focus in the first year is what we said the whole focus is the entire administration. It's about creating pathways for work, wages, and wealth. How are we making sure that all families have an opportunity to be able to have employment that pays them a fair wage and that allows them to create generational wealth for them and their families? And I think you've seen from the very first days of our administration, that has been the push, whether it has been being able to enhance options for people to be able to enter into the workforce, being able to create a service year option for all high school graduates to have a year of service to the state of Maryland, making sure we're pushing for a $15 minimum wage,

and ensuring that people are not working, in some cases working multiple jobs and still living below a poverty line, and then also focusing on things like educational supports, business supports, being able to address the eight to one racial wealth gap. This is about work, wages and wealth. And that's going to be the push of our administration. One of the things that I have often talked about also is that the need to expand contracts, African-Americans being able to be a part of the economic advancement in this country. And all too often, we have not seen that. Your focus there in Maryland on that particular issue as well. Yes. And I tell you, we're proud of the fact that we're leading on this, where in my first days, I signed an executive order that is requiring all of our agencies, all of our departments,

to be able to give us a plan as to how they plan on hitting the 29% goal that Maryland has when it comes to MBE participation, but that Maryland has come nowhere near hitting. Far too often in the state of Maryland, we allow ourselves to give away these free waivers, or we allow business to be given out by simply saying, well, we made a good faith effort to find MBE participation, and we couldn't find it. Those days have come to an end. And so I actually signed a historic executive order, actually ensuring that all of our departments are actually hitting the target of 29 percent MBE participation and ensuring that the entire state of Maryland is going to be one that is going to not just hit those targets, but also exceeding those targets as well. And again, contracts is one thing, but building capacity is another. Obviously,

when you talk about that in places like Baltimore, that, of course, major city in the state of Maryland has some significant issues. How are you looking to work with the mayor there, Brandon Scott, and other elected officials to improve the plight of African-Americans and others in that city? Yes. I mean, I think about some of the core reasons why I ran in the first place. And, you know, this issue is personal to me because, you know, I'm a Baltimorean, and I take this, and I have not just a deep sense of pride in Baltimore, I take personally the idea that you cannot have a thriving state of Maryland if you do not have a healthy city of Baltimore. And so that's why you see we make significant investments within the city of Baltimore, earmarked parts of our budget that focuses exclusively on things like downtown and Harbor Place

and also the infrastructure that we have within the city of Baltimore, but also ensuring that we can focus on things like safety, that people have a right to feel safe in their own communities, in their own homes, and in their own skin, that we have record historic investments in public education. We're literally made the largest investment in public education of any governor in the history of the state of Maryland, and also focusing on transportation assets, because we've got to be able to move people from where they live to where opportunity lies. And so in order for Maryland to thrive, it means we have to have a city of Baltimore, its largest city, that's going to help lead the charge. So many folks, so many Democrats are scared to death of being tagged as being soft on

crime. The previous governor often would have the attorney general try to take over cases from the state attorney there, Marilyn Mosby. We've got elections next year as well. And again, it's crime, crime, crime. But what I keep saying to folks is you cannot have a conversation about crime if you don't have a conversation about what actually leads to crime. And that is lack of jobs, lack of opportunities and education as well. And so how are you how are you going to make that case to folks in the state that don't just simply say, let's throw more money at cops to deal with crime, but let's confront the root condition of crime and poverty? First of all, you're absolutely right. And the thing that we have to do is and where I tell people,

I am data driven and heart led where I tell people, I am data-driven and heart-led, where I tell people, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I acknowledge that, but I know this, data matters, and I don't move without data. And the thing that we do know is this, you are never going to incarcerate or militarize your way out of a larger public safety challenge. And so that means, yes, do we have to make sure that we are fixing our parole and probation system and our Department of Corrections because we have massive vacancies in the state of Maryland when it comes to—we have over 10,000 vacancies in the state of Maryland amongst state jobs to include things like parole and probation and Department of Corrections. Absolutely. though, is this. If you are not investing in an education system, if you are not creating pipelines for young people to be able to have second chances, if you still have situations where people cannot drink from the water fountains because of the lead poisoning, or people do not have transportation assets that can get them from where they live to where opportunity lies,

then you will consistently find yourself just cleaning up the debris that comes from broken systems. We can't do this. And being able to make sure that we have a police force that moves with appropriate intensity and absolute integrity and full accountability is important. But this is not about the police exclusively. You've got to deal with the root causes of why we continue watching people feeling less safe in their own neighborhoods and in their own communities. And are you also making that case to other Democrats across the country who are running for reelection next year, including the president? Because, again, in my estimation, it's so much. They are so scared to death of the phrase defund the police.

When what really people are talking about is how do you reimagine policing? How do you put its resources into mental health? How do you deal with cases like that? How do you also get officers to stop beating folks that's also costing cities millions and millions and millions of dollars that are going to waste because of police brutality? And I think what we have to do and what we're doing here in Maryland is we're leading by example. And we're showing folks that, you know, we have been offered a bunch of false choices. And we've been offered a bunch of false choices that simply tells us that it's one way or the other. And so what we've shown here in the state of Maryland is that we can actually support and make sure that local law enforcement are getting the training and the

recruiting that they need. It's part of the reason why we put, you know, we put forth $122 million in supporting the training and the mechanisms for local law enforcement. But at the same time, we have to address the fact that Maryland incarcerates more Black boys between the ages of 18 and 25 than anywhere else in this country. Number two is Mississippi. But it's not a choice. We have to be able to do both. And that's the thing that we want to be able to push in on for and how we're going to lead by example here in the state of Maryland that yes we want to make sure that we're supporting local communities and ensuring that law enforcement have have that we're having we're recruiting proper and well-trained and ethical and transparent law enforcement and at the same time knowing that our solution is never going to

be just lock up more children that's not going to be the answer. Education. We've got a couple of minutes left. I know you have to go. We do want to deal with education. The governor, after repeated pressure and the legislature overruling him, Governor Hogan was overruled, signed the historic settlement for HBCUs, money that they were owed, but you also still have to deal with future investment. So let's talk about your education priorities from HBCUs, but then also, of course, K-12, because really the counties are at the end of the line. What happens, K-12 is really critically important when it comes to your future workforce.

That's exactly right. And you're right. I mean, we're coming from a situation here in the state of Maryland. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

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

Our HBCUs had to sue the state in order to get money that was owed to them. And so if you look at our budget and our first proposed budget, we invested, and I mean a historic investment of $421 million going towards Maryland's HBCUs, a historic number. But in addition to that, you're absolutely right. We made a historic investment in our K-12 public education system. Because for everything that we're looking to accomplish, it's going to be because education is going to help to lead the way. And when you think about the type of assets that we have here in the state of Maryland, the fact that we have four of the top HBCUs in America here in the state of Maryland, every single pipeline that we're looking to fill from nurses, from nursing to education, to cyber technology, to life sciences,

the genius of our state is being produced in our HBCUs and our K-12 system every single day. But if we're not investing in that, that genius will never show itself. And so that's why you see we have made it unparalleled, unparalleled investments in ensuring that our students and our children are on the proper pathway to work wages and wealth. Indeed. Well, Governor Moore, glad to have you on the show. Look forward to having you back. And good luck with a very tough job. It's not easy being in the top spot, but I think you were trained appropriately for it.

Yes, sir. You know I was. You know I was. God bless you. I appreciate it, Frat. Take care. All right, folks, got to go to break. We'll be back right here, Roland Martin, unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Coming up on the next Black Tape, a conversation with Professor Howard W. French on his new book, Born in Blackness,

covering 600 years of global African history and helping us understand how the world we know today is a gift from black people. There could have been no West without Africa and Africa. That's on the next Black Table with me, Greg Carr, only on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene,

a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn minds there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital we're about to see the rise of what i call white minority resistance we have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys.

America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women.

This is white people. I'm Bill Duke. This is Deala Riddle, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Stay woke. All right, folks. I want to bring my panel right now. Glad to have them here. Recy Colbert, host of the Recy Colbert Show.

Crystal Knight, she's a Democratic strategist and will be joined by Greg Carr, Department of African American Studies at Howard University. Recy, I'll start with you. The job, again, the top job of a governor, huge responsibility. Governor Westmore is now, folks are calling him, you know, the next star. And I always say this all the time, and it's not just about him, it's about anybody. I say let them do their job first before folks start trying to anoint them for the next job. OK, there were people he hadn't even been inaugurated yet. And folks are saying he should run for president 2024. I was like, y'all, will y'all breathe? You kind of got to get inaugurated first. And that's all. That's the advice I would give any African-American who's elected to a new job, don't fall for the

media hype of you're the next star. Focus on the job and then build from there. That is true. But I will say that Governor Westmore is a superstar. I think that he is incredibly dynamic, incredibly charismatic, but most importantly, he has his head in the right place when it comes to policy. And what we're seeing in Maryland is what happens when you have Democrats in control of both the legislature and the executive branch, in terms of the appointments that he's made and with the emphasis on diversity and in terms of working with the Democratic legislature to undo a lot of the damage that Governor Larry Hogan did. I mean, he got a lot of credit for being a never-Trumper and for being on the moderate side when you compare him to the

likes of Tate Reeves or Greg Abbott. But the reality was that he was an obstructionist to a lot of the more progressive things that the Democratic legislature tried to do. So I think with Governor Moore in charge, and then we have Anthony Brown as the attorney general, and we have a number of people in really high positions that I think are going to turn Maryland into a state to really watch in terms of being on the forefront of progressive values on the East Coast. Crystal, the reason I make that point about just sort of tempering expectations is because, again, if people get so locked into the media hype and not on, I mean, like, for a perfect example,

Artur Davis, oh, my God, all of these people were saying he was going to be the next Obama. Well, what ended up happening? He runs for governor. He loses. He screws over Obama, supports Mitt Romney, bounces back as a Republican Democrat, Republican Democrat. And where is he right now? And that's why I tell people, listen, let people do their jobs first. Let them build from there and not all of a sudden just start trying to call other things. Let him be the governor of Maryland. And guess what? When he kills it, then it's all right. You know, what's next? And so that's just that's just

one of the things that I'm just always want to caution people on, because media jumps out there real quick in trying to label folks and then they don't let them do the work. Absolutely. I think, you know, the media is powerful in that it's able to paint a narrative about anyone, quite frankly. And if you play the same story over, if you play the same narrative over and over, then people begin to believe that because people, unfortunately, don't always read or go back and do the background and the history on, you know, things that they see and hear in different media sources. But I agree with you. I think Westmore just got elected. do the background and the history on, you know, things that they see and hear in different

media sources. But I agree with you. I think Westmore just got elected. I mean, it's not been a full year of his term. And so we need to see him actually lead these policies that he just spoke about. Will those actually come into fruition? It sounds very ambitious and aggressive, and I'm wishing him the best, but absolutely, he needs to have a record of things that he's done before he's able to move on to the next

role or to the next thing. I think the other thing that's really interesting here is that as people continue to speculate that he should run for president in the future, they're skipping over a number of different other governors or senators or just other candidates who could be out there. But I think the bottom line for me is that the Democratic Party, which is our party, my party, we need to do a better job of building the bench. If we build a really solid bench, we have a good number of people that we can pick from so that any new shiny candidate like Wes Moore who comes

about, we're not all grabbing, hoping that he will be the next great hope, hoping that he will be the next person to save this party. When we have the time right now to really cultivate leadership, cultivate new leaders all across this country so that when it's time to pick new leadership, we have people who are credible, who are tested, and who have real results that they can point to as they think about ascending to run for president. One of the things that he's dealing with here, Recy, Democrats control the House and the Senate, now the governor's mansion. But also the top two, four positions in Maryland are African-American. You're talking about the governor. You're talking about the governor.

You're talking about the attorney general. And, of course, leadership in the House and the Senate. The thing here is he has something that very few Democrats have in terms of where they're able to control all forms of government. That's also why it's going to be critical in terms of that agenda, really putting something forward that speaks for the people. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's plenty of evidence that that's happening. I mean, his priorities are passing in the legislature right now, or in the different phases of it. The legislative calendar is almost up in Maryland, so it will be not long before we see the actual results of what he can get through the legislature and his priorities. But I definitely think that

he's incredibly well positioned. And I just want to clarify, stars are not only presidents in this party. I mean, we used to have where we recognized governors as stars, where we recognized senators as stars. And it wasn't just that everybody needs to be president. We recognize the power of these offices and the fact that he is the only black governor in the country, one of the few black governors to ever have been elected in this country. I think that's significant in and of itself without even looking later on down the pipeline. Crystal, I think also when you mentioned the whole issue of the bench and look, he ran a very effective race. And I think when you look at, now granted, Maryland is a different state than others. But we've got to go back just four years.

I mean, Ben Jealous, when he ran for governor against Larry Hogan. And so the groundwork had been laid, if you will, for Wes Moore. And in terms of the people that were in place, there were a number of African-Americans who were trying to ascend to the governor's mansion who fell short. But I do think black candidates across the country should look at how he ran this race in terms of when they are seeking statewide office in other states around the country. Absolutely. You know, and I also think we have to remember that Anthony Brown, who's now the attorney general, he also ran as well, and he was unsuccessful.

So even before Ben Jealous, there was other work or groundwork, as you say, that had been done to prepare the land for a Westmore to actually become governor. But I agree with you. You know, there are many other candidates across this country that deserve, you know, to ascend to whatever position, quite frankly, that they desire within their respective states. And it just depends on what the nature of the state is. As you stated, Maryland is different in that they, you know, it's generally and traditionally been a Democratic state, although Larry Hogan was able to serve eight years under the gubernatorial ship. But, you know, Westmore, I am excited about his candidacy.

I'm excited about his governorship. But I also would like to see the things that he has planned for the state. And I hope that he's able to accomplish those things. I do want to talk about this here. And I'll try to pull it up here. I got a kick. So there was comments that were made by actress Amanda Seals with regards to Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's just say that Recy wasn't too particularly happy with her comments

uh and uh and yeah yeah come on now you know i pay attention to everything uh and so uh this is what uh seals had had to say uh about uh vice president uh harrison i want to get uh you commenting i'm gonna put in dr gray car when Kamala said this ain't a racist country, she lost me. And she ain't got me back yet. We have a country that was 1,000% built on the foundation of racism that now legislators

are trying to pretend didn't happen and are getting that through and doing it on an education level and on a DEI level. You cannot, as the second in line to the highest form of office in this country, you can't get in there in that position and then make such an egregiously false statement. When Kamala said this ain't a racist country, she lost me. So she said an egregiously false statement.

I was on The Breakfast Club yesterday. It was the day before. We taped it on Tuesday. It aired yesterday. And I made this comment to Charlamagne and DJ Envy Reesey where I said, there's a difference between offering a critique, offering criticism, and being reckless. And what I meant by reckless is when you don't tell the whole story. When you tell partial story.

You put a video out and you were critical of Amanda's comments by saying she didn't tell the whole story. Oh, I thought you were going to play the video. Okay. No, no, no. I don't need to play it. You're right play the video. Okay, yeah. No, no, no. I don't need to play it. You're right here. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, no, no.

Well, and see, this is, that's exactly my problem. I think what happens is we live in a headline culture. We live in a meme culture where one sentence can get plastered on because you can have it in 60-size font and have all kinds of colors on it. And people take that and run with it. The reality is if you're looking for a person to humor you and speak the exact words in the exact manner that you want them to, you're never going to be satisfied with anybody under those circumstances. But if you're looking for a person who does the work and if you're looking for the policy, the action and the leadership, then that's a standard that I can get behind. Because the reality is, yes, Kamala Harris did say, no, I do not think that America

is a racist country, but we do have to recognize the history of racism and its existence today, and so on and so on and so forth. And so if you're a person who malfunctions after one sentence is like five words too much, and you only want to harp on the first five seconds, I don't know what I can do for you. I don't know if there's any kind of intellectual argument that we can have here. But the reality is, if you're concerned about her erasing racism and its existence, clearly she acknowledged that. If you're concerned about the fact that we have a domestic terrorism problem fueled by white supremacy, in the same exact interview, she pointed out that, and I will add that when she was a senator, she got up Christopher

Wray's ass over what the FBI was doing to combat white domestic extremist terrorism specifically, which nobody said a boo about then. So it's important to have context. It's important to recognize that the soundbite may not be satisfactory to you, but the policy and what she's been getting done in 2021 was the worst year for Black maternal deaths in history. It's 10 times, you're 10 times more likely to die in this country from childbirth than you are in Japan and other advanced nations. And that is something that Vice President Kamala Harris has put the full weight of the White House behind. And Crystal, here's your deal. That's what I'm talking about. And Crystal, here's your deal. Those of us who've been covering this

for a very long time, if Vice President Kamala Harris had said America is a racist country, nothing, she said, after that would be replayed. The reality is this. When you're in certain positions of elect... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer

will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. office when 71 percent of the total electorate are white in the 2020 election there are things you probably think probably know but you can't say it's called politics called politics i totally agree and amanda knows this. And I don't understand this whole Kamala Harris hate train. There's been several articles that have come out, and even Donna Brazile wrote something in the New York Times just this week about really

understanding the position of power that the vice president is in and her ability to do things and get things done, but also the positioning for 2024. If we're really serious about reelecting President Biden and Vice President Harris, then having these kinds of comments going on these, you know, talk shows or podcasts or whatever you want to call them, and making these kind of just blanket statements, they're not helpful. They're not helpful to the cause at large. And I'm so thankful for Recy, and I commented on her post, and I shared it as well, about really calling out just

incorrect, you know, commentary. And listen, everyone is a commentary. I mean, everyone is a pundit these days. Everyone is able, because they have a cell phone, to really share their personal opinion about a number of topics. But what we're not all entitled to are the truth. We're not all entitled to the facts as they are. So I appreciate this rebuttal in which every single thing that she said, Recy was able to go back, find video, archive video, and really refute those claims and those statements. But unfortunately, I'm just not surprised that this is coming from Amanda.

She's done this before, and unfortunately, she'll do it again. See, this is why, Greg, I have, and again, in a previous interview when I was on The Breakfast Club, I said this. When I said, respect this.

You have to respect the microphone. You have to respect the microphone. You have to understand when you are the host of a show, I don't give a damn who comes on, that there are people who are listening to you. They're listening to a guest and they don't have access to the same facts. They don't have access to the data. And so there's a reason why if somebody comes on my show and says something like that or something else, I'm going to immediately fact check them because I don't want anybody listening to go away and say, well, they didn't say anything, so it must be correct. And then what happens is a clip gets played.

It gets picked up. It gets amplified. And so when you try it, what RECD or others try to come back and then explain it, well, it doesn't get the same amount of heat as the original comment. And so, therefore, the misinformation then gets sent around and folks believe that that's why i'm always saying don't play around with the microphone and the medium because it has power that's right no absolutely wrong but i mean we live in an idiocracy lowest common denominator is what rules of course america the united states States of America is a racist country. It's racist to its core. It's a damn settler colonial

state. It was built with anti-blackness as the core composite of, well, really, whiteness, meaning anything that wasn't white, indigenous people, Africans, others, even many people who would now be considered white, from the Irish to the Italians. You know, the whole thing is organized around race. And of course, Kamala Harris

can never say that. So the simple fact of the matter is Amanda Seale has a brand. That brand is feeding with a brand like Brother Lenard McKelvey, who named himself after someone who actually was over the Holy Roman Empire. Although if you put a gun to the head of every one of his listeners, they would all have their brains blown out if you asked them to explain the provenance of the phrase Charlemagne, the God. But at any rate, when you go in a space like that, Roland, you have to balance. And you, again, conducted a class.

And Recy, thank you again for walking through the facts. I agree with what Crystal said, laying out the facts. When you go in a space like that, you know that the listeners could give a damn about facts. They're there for branding. They're there for entertainment. they're there for the gloss. And as Crystal said, you can't win a federal election for president or vice president. The closest you could get to call America a racist country and say we have a spiritual malaise is a Jimmy Carter, perhaps. You see how they then reelected Donald Trump I, also known as Ronald Reagan, because he was trying to talk even a little bit of truth

and he was a white man. The closest you can get to America a racist country is probably Lyndon Baines Johnson, and them days is gone. So at the end of the day, you go into a space with a guy who calls himself Charlemagne the God, and you're trying to teach your audience, you did what you always do. Instead of just

plastering the facts and coming with the data, since that doesn't matter in an idiocracy, you gave them three simple words to sort into categories, the last of which was very basic, and say that you can't go out there talking reckless. At that point, the people who are there for the entertainment can grasp it. And that's all you can do in a space like that, because, hell, Charlemagne be the damn president before long, because this ain't about facts. This is about visibility and branding. Folks, again, so

the Amanda Seals interview, that was with Jason Lee that was on Revolt. If you missed my Breakfast Club breakdown, just simply go to their YouTube channel. You can actually see it again. It was on yesterday. And look, it was all about breaking these things down and walking people through again, politics, stuff along those lines.

But I'm going to say it again. You can offer a critique. You can have criticism. But you can't be reckless with comments because you have to understand that somebody's listening. Got to go to break. We come back. We're going to talk about the takeover of the Houston Independent School District by the state of Texas. Black elected officials are not happy at all.

You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle, but when someone comes around and is making other money, you know,

they don't wanna push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible

until someone does it. On the next A Balanced Life with me dr jackie re-entry anxiety a lot of us are having trouble transitioning in this post-pandemic society and don't even realize it we are literally stuck between two worlds in purgatory how to get out of purgatory and regain your footing and balance. What emotions they're feeling and being able to label them, because as soon as you label an emotion, it's easier to self-regulate. It's easier to manage that emotion. The next A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know. So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. I'm Chrisette Michelle.

Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Folks, the Texas Education Agency is now taking over the Houston Independent School District, which means they will be running all of the district's affairs, replacing the school superintendent, putting monitors in place of the Houston Independent School District Board. This has been talked about for a number of years, and the trigger was pulled this week. Black elected officials are not happy about that. Mayor Sylvester Turner and others have spoken out against it. My next guest, Representative Jarvis Johnson, also is one of those folks as well.

Glad to have you back on the show. Here's the thing here, Jarvis, that a lot of people who are not aware. First of all, this thing had been building for quite some time. Many people are saying, oh, this is Governor Greg Abbott taking it over. But a lot of this also went far back as when you had this schism on the board between Latino board members and black board members, when Granita Latham was a superintendent. Frankly, she should have been named superintendent, but the Hispanic board members did not want her in the job. They tried to hire a previous Hispanic superintendent. They had illegal board meetings, and that level of dysfunction really is what invited the TEA into this deal,

and then a lot of those same board members lost. So this thing has been very convoluted and has been building over a number of years. Well, that is very true. But while there has been a rift between board members and while there have been problems with the board, I will say this. That board was duly elected by the people of the state of Texas, of the city of Houston. And because they were duly elected, it is the responsibility of those voters to then vote them out. And I think that is exactly what happened when they realized the mistake that was made. And so changes were made.

But since then, before then, the governor didn't have a problem. And since then, the governor didn't have a problem. And since then, the governor didn't have a problem. But now this year, the governor has a problem and the governor wants to use this opportunity to push his agenda to create vouchers and to destroy public education in the state of Texas. So what then is next? Because obviously, I mean, you're talking about a district that's majority black and brown. And now we're talking about complete control. Also, this board was talking about a bond election coming up soon as well. But other districts have been taken over. The Wilmer Hutchins School District years ago was taken over, no longer even exists in the Dallas area because of just

rampant board dysfunction and academics there as well? The board, TEA taking over a board has never been effective, ever. It has never worked. And currently right now, HISD has a B plus rating, has no financial problems, has no fraud involved. The school that actually triggered this takeover was Phyllis Wheatley High School. Since that time, a bill was actually put in place back in 2021 that gave a one-year time period by which Wheatley can come out of IR, which is an unacceptable rating. And if they did, then that would stop the takeover. Well, Wheatley did that. They came out.

They have a C-plus rating, and have done everything that they're supposed to do. TEA is proposing to take over HISD at the end of the year, which means there's a whole nother year of grading that will come out. And we obviously anticipate the school's doing well again. So the question has to be, what are you taking over and for what purpose? Because if you're saying that you're here for the protection of the students of HISD, well, the school is doing well. It's a B plus rated school district. And when you look at HISD versus all of the other larger school districts, HISD does better than all of the other major,

larger districts in the state. So the question has to be, what are you trying to do? And the answer is only simple. This is used as a scapegoat, and this is used as a test dummy for vouchers. This is used to make sure that they continue to attack Harris County, continue to attack the city of Houston, which are all democratically led city and ISD as well as county. So this is nothing more than a simple usurp of government, usurp of law by simply saying we're going to do what we want to do. And yesterday, and I will quote Mike Morath, who happens to be your frat brother, I digress. But I will say this. He said the law is different when it comes to Houston.

And I asked for an explanation, but there was no explanation given. That's the problem with the state of Texas. They usurp the law. They're creating different laws for different people. And we see this over and over again. And this is going to put the state of Texas in peril. I think this is obviously going to put HISD in peril. And this is going to certainly hurt all of our students and our business community,

because who wants to relocate to a city that does not have effectiveness? And let me just say this last thing about HISD. Superintendent House, that has gotten here a little over a year ago, was nominated as superintendent of the year, not in Texas, but the entire United States because of the turnaround that he has put in place for HSD, taking 50 schools from a D rating to a C or above rating. And of those schools, we only have seven schools that are in an unacceptable rating at this time. That's a tremendous turnaround.

And so they're on the right track. But the state of Texas wants to come in. TEA wants to come in and totally tear it down. And then they're going to point the finger and say, see, I told you Democrats don't know what they're doing. And now they're coming back to us and saying, well, who do you want to nominate to be on for board of managers? And again, these board of managers don't have to have any experience, don't have to have any knowledge, don't have to be involved or engaged, just simply be donors or political operatives for the Republican Party. So in terms of, OK, so they're going to then take it over.

Then what is now then going to be the response of black elected folks there in Houston? What is going to be the response of parents? How are people going to be engaged? Because, again, if they're doing it, then there has to be a counter response to it. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. ...response that I have said to all of my constituents, that I have said to the Texas Legislative Black Caucus that we have to ask, we have to have meetings with our parents, with our students, with our business community to all stand tall.

Because at the end of the day, without a plan, because there is no plan, there's been no mention of what will be done in the event that this takeover happens. There is not one plan that says this is what we're going to do. And so I'm asking and I'm demanding parents ask the question. And if that is the case, then they must stand tall and stand strong and stand on the line and say, I can't go to school unless, and I think this has to be across the board, I can't go to school unless I know what's happening. Teachers are worried. We're already in a position where we're losing teachers at an unusual rate. Teachers are so uncertain. The administration is uncertain. The police department is uncertain. And so we have

to demand, and I think the only way we have to demand is that we stand on the line and say, there won't be any school. There won't be much learning going on unless they give a true plan for what is going to be done with this school. This school is already on, the district is already on the right trajectory. And so there shouldn't be any interruption in that. But unfortunately, there is. I've talked with Aretha Thomas with HESP, which is the custodial workers, bus drivers, and so forth, and so on. They're ready to stand up. We're talking with the teachers. Teachers really want to stand up, but unfortunately, the state of Texas law prohibits them from boycotting or standing up the way they want to.

But that doesn't stop them from wanting to do what I think is necessary to protect their jobs. And I've met with a lot of parents, and they're also saying the same thing, that it is time that they do something about this, because they can't just sit by and watch as their children are doing better and watch the school district fall apart. So I think you're going to see a mass exodus versus people wanting to stand for the uncertainty of what's going to happen to HISD. But I think that's by design. That's also by design, that they want this mass exodus because right now the governor is talking nothing but about vouchers. He's talking nothing about, oh, we want to make sure that children have an opportunity of going to schools, good schools. Well, the voucher is only $6,000, potentially $7,000.

So there's no private schools in Houston that's $7,000. So where is the parent going to find the additional $10,000 to $20,000 to meet that gap? They won't find it unless they're already affluent enough to go to private schools. So this is nothing more than a money grab for the affluent. Representative Johnson, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you, brother. This point right here, Crystal, is

what I've been sounding the alarm of this show, not just with this, but also Moms for Liberty winning school board seats all across the South, taking over those school boards, firing superintendents. When we are asleep at the wheel in school board races, we don't understand the power of who controls curriculum, who's controlling hiring, who's controlling these bond elections. People love spending so much time on the presidential or U.S. Senate race, but that school board is just as important.

Absolutely. I mean, if this hasn't shown us anything, it shows that every single election matters. Local elections matter. And it also matters who's in our schools, who's teaching our kids, who are the principals, who are the superintendents. And the thing that really struck me about what he just said was that the new superintendent has turned around the school district. And the way that, you know, Greg Abbott has rewarded, you know, his efforts is by really coming in and having this overreach by the state government. And that's something that is really hard. It was hard to listen to the interview, although it was very informative, because really, when

you have a superintendent who's able to come in, turn around failing schools, bring them and uplift them, then all of a sudden it becomes an issue and there's this need for overreach. And when he talked about the $7,000 school voucher, I agree with him. That's not enough to send a child to any private school and get a quote-unquote better education. But again, this is something that, you know, the underlining premise is, you know, Greg Abbott and the state want control over this district, which is majority minority. Seventy-seven percent of the students there are Latino or identify as Latino. Twenty-two percent are African-American, 4% Asian, 11% white. And so why are they focusing on this one school district across the entire state, which happens to be the largest, is because they want to control what students and what teachers are able to teach and what

students are being taught in the schools. Hold on one second. I got to go to break. We come back. We'll get Reese and Grace comments on this. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial.

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

This is white fear. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1,

Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Coming up on the next Black Tape, a conversation with Professor Howard W. French on his new book, Born in Blackness, covering 600 years of global African history and helping us understand how the world we know today is a gift from black people.

There could have been no West without Africa and Africa. That's on the next Black Table with me, Greg Carr, only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm B.B. Winans. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to hit that like button, folks, as you're watching the show.

Greg, education, education, education. For anybody who doesn't have any understanding, black folks historically have understood this. That's one of the reasons why those free people of African descent, when they got in the South Carolina legislature, they put it in the Constitution for there to be publicly financed education. And then when the white folks took over after the Great Compromise of 1877, they threw all the advances out, but they kept that one in. And so education has always been paramount to us. And the reason I keep making this point about voting and what we do, this is the result of what happens. The last election, when Beto O'Rourke

was running against Greg Abbott, 75% of young voters in Texas did not vote in the election. African Americans in Texas, Texas is 60% minority. 60% minority, yet 60% of people

who vote in Texas are white. And so if anybody wants to talk about why there's a takeover, you have to understand those who are in power wield power. That's right. That's right. It reminds me of Cliff of LaTosha and all those hours you spend on the road. You know, these battles are won door by door, life by life. Black and brown people got together and put together in Texas state legislature the 10 percent plan that allowed the top 10 percent of any high school student and the top 10 percent of their class anywhere in the state of Texas to attend one of the public universities in Texas.

And they also did that with poor white legislators. That's because it was in everybody's mutual interest, what Derrick Bell calls interest conversion but convergence. But what we see here is not just, and Crystal nailed this, of course, this is about a majority non-white school district overwhelming the majority white, non-white, but this shovel-mouth bastard governor of Texas, Abbott, is after that budget as well. So I agree with Representative Johnson. What's the budget in the school district, Houston Independent School District, about $2.2 billion, I think. Oh, over $2 billion, yeah. So this comes down to this. See, I worked for the School District of Philadelphia when it was

taken over by the state of Pennsylvania, when Tom Ridge was the governor. This was 1998. And they engaged in a game of chicken with the mayor of Philadelphia at the time, John Street, a black man, and the soft takeover was something called the School Reform Commission. They were able then to get their hands on the budget of the school district of Philadelphia, at that time the fifth largest school district in the country, and they tried to privatize it. They put Edison schools in. The folks, we all protested and organized. Jersey City, I think, was taken over by the state of New Jersey back in 1989. It just got control back in 2017.

So it does happen. But I'll end with this. It's really disaster capitalism. Paul Vallis, who's running for mayor of Chicago, he went down to New Orleans in 2007 because after Katrina, they turned the whole city of New Orleans school district into a charter school district. And that's when you can get at who buys the toilet paper, who puts the light bulbs in, who's got the budgets. This is a grab for the budget of the school district of Houston. And it is made easier, as Crystal said, because those children are other people's children.

But make no mistake about it. These white boys after the money. Crystal? I'm sorry, Recy. Recy. I'm sorry, Recy. You know, what I'm also thinking about, too, is connecting the dots between the Republican power grabs around the country. If we look at what's happening with Tate Reeves down in Mississippi trying to take over the courts for Jackson, also obstructing federal money going

to fix the lead water issue in Jackson. When we look at Brian Kemp in Georgia trying to take the airport away from the city of Atlanta, if we look across the country, what we're seeing is Republicans trying to strip away the power and the Democratic enclaves of these Republican trifecta states. And so this is just a sample of what we have to look forward to as long as Republicans have power and as long as they understand that as soon as Democrats exercise the capacity they have to vote, that they're going to be out on their ass. They're going to try to see how much they can get away with, how much they can

peel away from the Democrats in the state, and then how they can take this nationwide. So I think that people should really be paying attention to how these Republicans are wielding power at the state level, but particularly how they're trying to strip your power away from you at the local level. And I'm going to keep saying this. And again, I don't understand why people are not getting it. When we are not maximizing our voting numbers, we are putting our fate in somebody else's hands. We cannot continue in these elections voting at 38, 40, 42, 45, 48 percent. I don't have much time left, but Crystal, if, and I keep saying this, I kept saying this on The Breakfast Club. If we are voting at 60, 65, 70 and 75 percent of our registered voters, we will be sweeping elections statewide.

Mm hmm. Absolutely. We you know, every single advocacy group, organization, anyone who just cares about democracy or the black electorate, for that now, there are so many people in this country who just don't vote. And then when things like this happen, then they're like, oh, shoulda, coulda, woulda. I don't understand. This is what they do. You know, you hear these, you know, the rhetoric, the talking points about why people don't vote, because they don't feel that people who are in elected office have their best interest in mind. But absolutely, in a city or in a county like Harris County, where 77 percent of the children that go to attend those school districts are minority, really, it's over 77 percent.

It's more like 80-something percent. There should be that many people voting. And I wish I had the perfect answer on how we increase the amounts of people who vote. But until these kinds of things continue to happen more, I don't know that people will really realize that this is something that is systematically designed. The less you vote, the less power you have. And the more that we see white people voting, the more power that we're really just giving away to them to make these kind of crazy and drastic decisions. And again, before I go, folks, again, quickly go to my iPad. Voting turnout for black people in North Carolina was up 4% in 2020. It was 68%. Here was the problem, folks. In 2018, Sherry Beasley lost the chief Supreme Court justice seat by 400 votes. 400 votes. Now,

why does that matter? Democrats could have had a six to one majority on the state Supreme Court. She loses. They had a four to three majority. In 2022, there was an election. Democrat lost. Republicans now have regained control of the state Supreme Court. Six months ago, the Supreme Court made a couple of rulings on racial voter IDs and racial gerrymandering. Now the Republicans now control it. They're going to rehear those cases. So folks, again, 400 votes. If she had won 400 votes, so go back to it. It says black voter turnout was up 4%, which means it was 64% in 2016, 68%. But if we actually, if it wasn't 64% in 2018, she wins. It's a different ball game. I just keep telling folks, that's the way this whole thing goes. We have a shortened show because I'm actually

headed over to the black women's round table, their conference there. I'm going headed over to the Black Women's Roundtable. They're conferenced there. I'm going to be in conversation with Melanie Campbell in 30 minutes. And so I'm headed over there now. Let me thank Crystal, Recy, and Greg for being on today's show. What's going to happen, folks, we're going to go live from there at 730. And so we'll be carrying that. So they've been meeting for the last couple of days. We've been streaming it on the Black Star Network. You can see those restreams by going to our app or simply going to our 24-hour streaming channel as well.

So, again, Crystal, Reesey, and Greg, thank you so very much. Y'all be sure to check out Reesey's show on SiriusXM on Saturday. I think she's going to have a couple more things to say about Amanda Seals and Vice President Kamala Harris. All right, folks. Don't forget to watch The Black Table with Greg Carr as well. All right, folks. Thanks a bunch. I'll see you all in 30 minutes right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives, and we're going to talk about it every day, right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. -♪ -♪ A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff

push Black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle, but when someone comes around and is making other, oh, we don't, you know, they don't wanna push it or put money into it.

So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ball player, you can be a country singer, you know, they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does it. We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture.

We're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people powered movement. A lot of stuff that we're not getting, you get it and you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media. Your dollars matter.

We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month. Waits $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Y'all money makes this possible.

Checks and money orders go to Peel Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle rmartin unfiltered. Venmo is rm unfiltered. Zelle is rolling at rollingsmartin.com. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. The family of former NFL cornerback Stanley Wilson Jr. believes law enforcement beat him before he died at a California mental hospital. Wilson, a former Detroit Lion, died on February 1st after officials initially reported that he collapsed and fell from a chair. The family filed three wrongful death claims against Los Angeles County, one on behalf of each of his parents, Stanley Wilson Sr. and Dr. Pulang Lucas,

and another on behalf of his estate, asking for $45 million in damages. Wilson's family revealed photos of his body showing marks on his head that appear to show he was stomped and scars on his hands and wrists that indicate that he was handcuffed. Wilson was admitted to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in August after he was declared incompetent to stand trial on vandalism charges. Wilson's family believed he may have suffered from CTE. Autopsy results have not been released. I'm going to go back to the panel on this. Dr. Carr is still with us, as well as Crystal Knight. You know what is so crazy about all about this story is that this kind of stemmed from vandalism charges.

And so we had a person who was suffering for some kind of mental health issues in a facility that's not just a regular mental health hospital, but actually like an incarceration mental health facility. And this is the fallout. Dr. Carr, what do you have to say about how this has escalated from the point of vandalism charges to his ultimate death? Well, we know, we know, sisters, that, you know, being Black in this country is, we're born at risk. And this is just another example of violence. And one of the reasons I was a little late today, my students helped me over up at Howard. My friend Jelani Cobb just published an article in The New Yorker on the 50-year anniversary of hip-hop. And he talks about the fact that while everybody loves hip-hop, black people are out in the streets dying. And he says the simple fact of the matter is that all of our culture speaks to this desire to live just a little bit longer because we are

going to die. This brother was a professional athlete trying to make a way for his family, trying to make a better life for himself, and had a career-ending injury and ends up a victim of state violence. Now, whether it's high blood pressure, diabetes, or any number of things that take our lives, infant mortality, any things that take our lives, or in this case, abuse by the state after abuse by the sport you're playing just to get ahead. This is another example of the risks of being black in America and trying to extend your life a little bit longer. And this is sometimes what happens too often. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, if you think about it, the mental health facility is where you're supposed to heal, not where you're supposed to actually die.

So the circumstances surrounding this, being in handcuffs, being stomped, which is brutality, it's just inexcusable. Crystal, what's your take on this one? Yeah, this story is sad. I mean, it's sad to hear. I hope that, you know, more of the details surrounding his death actually come out. But, you know, I agree with what Dr. Carr said. You know, black men are not living to see 60. I mean, probably even less than that, you know, just thinking about all of the black death that we've seen over the last couple of years. And again, if this is someone who was crying out for help, who needed help to seek it, get treated and then die, the circumstances surrounding that are very murky at best. And I, you know, I want answers for it. I think his family deserves to understand exactly what happened. And ultimately, I want people in our hospitals, care facilities, police officers to see black bodies as worthy, because when they do, they won't take, you know, actions that ultimately will lead to our demise. And that's actually, that's what I'm guessing,

that's what happened, is that people don't see Black bodies as valuable in this country. And so when something happens that's negative or something that is life-altering happens, instead of helping, people just continue to exacerbate the problem to the point of death.

You're so right. And we've seen cases, we've covered it on the show, where, for instance, with Tyree Nichols, where he was not administered the proper medical care. We've seen it with other cases where the paramedics show up and they don't do what they're supposed to do. You know, what's very interesting, though, is when we talk about police brutality, when we talk about the criminal justice system, often the mental health hospitals, mental health professionals are put up as an alternative to policing itself as though that would make us safer. And here is a case where we see that if you inject any kind of carceral aspect to it, it seems to have the same result. What do you think, Dr. Carr? No, I agree. Absolutely.

I mean, again, I mean, the fact that this was a junior, you know, meaning his parents, his father has to I mean, you know, it just I mean, it's just the way that Crystal, I think the way you laid it out again is there. We are not human. And, you know, the fact that you sustain the type of injury that could shorten your life anyway, and then you call out for help. And as you said, Racy, this is supposed to provide mental health facilities, it's supposed to provide help. And they do for human beings. But if you're not a human, then you won't receive anything other than brutality there. So, I mean, again, our fundamental problem is the challenge, and this is for men, women, children, all of us as African people.

Sandra Bland, after all, in a cell where they say she killed herself, why, she should never have been halted in the first place. Our challenge is to navigate this funky place that we're in. It cannot be saved in its current form. It's going to have to be remade because it has never seen us as human, and it will never see us as human. We're going to have to win that respect by first respecting ourselves enough. Maybe we need some more black mental health facilities

and some more elected officials to run management over the ones that treat our people like this. Right, right. Well, we have to go to a break in a second. But one thing I just want to say is what's interesting is the CTE aspect. And so autopsy has not been performed yet. I'm interested to see when that is performed, if that played any kind of role in it. But we have to take a break.

We'll be right back with more Roland Martin Unfiltered here on the Black Star Network. -♪ People that are running stuff push Black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in,

and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle. But when someone comes around and is making other, oh, we don't, you know, they don't wanna push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too,

is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize that it's possible until someone does. When you talk about blackness

and what happens in black culture, we're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for

it. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month. Waits $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Y'all money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196.

The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. This is Judge Matthews. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time.

Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. What's going on, everybody? It's your boy, Mack Wiles, and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. A former activist is blasting San Francisco's reparations plan as gaslighting Black Americans. Xavier DeRosso, who claims to be an ex-BLM supporter, appeared on Fox News'

The Ingram Angle to discuss how the plan falsely promotes systemic racism after San Francisco's Board of Supervisors embraced 111 recommendations made by a city-appointed reparations committee. Now is Xavier DeRosso, a former BLM activist turned PragerU personality. Xavier, great to see you tonight. You have an interesting perspective on this debate. Explain. Yes, I think it's important that, first of all, we call this exactly what it is. This is 111 ways to gaslight black Americans into thinking that we need to be dependent on a system of handouts in order to be successful. Black Americans have been indoctrinated with these lies for far too long, and I used to fall for the lies until I took a deep dive into the videos on PragerU.com

and realized how easily debunked these fraudulent narratives surrounding systemic racism actually are. The plan included lump sum payments of $5 million to every eligible Black citizen, guaranteed incomes of $97,000 per year for 250 years, elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, and homes for just $1. The San Francisco Reparations Committee will continue to deliberate recommendations. Its final report is due to the legislature on July 1st. Now, I have thoughts about this program, these recommendations. First of all, financially, I just don't even see how it's feasible at all. So I would tend to agree with the idea of gaslighting in the sense that it's probably never going to happen. But Xavier made a quite different point. Dr. Carr, what is your take on this reparations plan?

Well, we can start with Dennis Prager's scam, also known as Prager University, an unaccredited place that shows videos. And so I think that anything after that, as soon as she had announced him and identified him as affiliated with Prager University, the next thing should have been as he started talking. Oh, wait, oh, you couldn't hear me. No, it's in the mute should have gone on at that point. But let's be talking about this. Uh, and in an instance, it reminds me of something Minister Farrakhan back in the 80s, he gave a, he went on tour around the country when they were engendering this notion of selling products, lotion. And so it's called Power It Lasts Forever. And in Atlanta, he gave a speech where the refrain he kept returning to was, figure it up, count it up. And he started

saying, they took the whole country, count that up. Okay. Then they murdered all the Native Americans, count that up. Then they brought us over here by the millions, count that up. And then he kept going, everybody, and finally in, he said, if you figure it up, you'll find out that they owe us the whole damn country, and we're not even asking for that. See, the exercise of making this concrete, whether you ever get a dime or not, is to describe the enormity of the debt, whether you ever get a penny or not. Now, what this fool is doing, YASA, talking to this white nationalist who has no problem engendering all kind of propaganda from her perch as she tweets her and texts her buddies over there, fellow anchors saying,

I know they crazy as hell, but we can't mess with the money and the ratings. We have to understand that this is a propaganda war. This is a propaganda war. San Francisco ain't got the kind of money to cut that kind of check. But when you think of the enormity of the harm, it can in many ways remind us that not only are we old, but we are at the foundation of this thing called the United States of America. And, of course, when it comes back, they can adjust any of the 111. There are going to be things on there that they probably will pass. Well, genius, of course, when it comes back, they can adjust any of the 111. There are going to be things on there that they probably will pass. Well, genius, of course, and a whole sermon there, Dr. Carr. I think you make such a great point about the at least moral victory of putting such a high number on something that's really invaluable or priceless. But Crystal, what's your take, though, in terms of if you want to move

beyond a moral victory into actual payments, into actual tangible results? Do you think that the numbers being put out there is something that puts us closer to that? Or do you think that's something that kind of blows it out of the water as anything being feasible? Well, I think that there are challenges with the number that is proposed. My take on, you know, the whole proposal is that we have to start somewhere. I tend to agree with Dr. Carr that, you know, regardless of if it's too big or even too small, getting it through, getting something actually passed to me is more important. And then you can go back and work on the numbers.

You know, I don't think that this will pass, you know, in actuality, but I do think that we need to have the conversation. We need to normalize having city councils or county commissions or, you know, state governments really discuss and talk about reparations across this country. Right now, we've seen it. It's sparse. It's here and there. It's in California. There have been some in Illinois, maybe another or two in other places. But even at the federal level, we haven't taken up reparations to even study it at the federal level. And so I think that, you know, if we are serious about paying back the debts of our ancestors who have built this country for free, who were brought over here against our will, whatever

the first step is, we have to get there. We have to get through whatever this first piece, no one will ever be fully satisfied with the number or the items that are being suggested. But if we continue to tear down even the process of just having the conversation, getting a first read, getting something passed, we will forever be in this revolving cyclical door about something not being enough or something being too much. That's true, Crystal. But to your point, I mean, about how necessary it is to have a conversation and to start somewhere, I can't say that I've seen a lot of in-person engagement around this. Now, granted, I'm not in San Francisco, I'm not in California. Am I missing something? And Dr. Carr, you can weigh in too, because you obviously were part of the statewide study or initiative behind this. Is there an on the ground where we talk about things like civic engagement, going to your school board meetings, going to your county meetings?

Has there been a galvanization around this on the ground in the same way that we hear about it online if people are in the YouTube chats? Oh, absolutely. In fact, the first major effort to organize African people of reparations in this country goes back to the 19th century. A sister named Callie House and Isaiah Dickerson, the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief and Pension Fund. These were Africans who had actually gone through enslavement, who made a demand in the federal government. So it starts in the 1880s and 1890s,

and it's really an unbroken string. In the 1920s, 30s, Queen Mother Audley Moore. By the 1960s, you're talking about the Republic of New Africa. You're talking about Chokwe Lumumba, the father of the current mayor of Jackson. That's how they ended up in Jackson, the first place from Detroit. And there's the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, founded, began in 1989 to bring those groups together. And, of course, as Crystal just said, there's H.R. 40, which John Conyers began introducing 40 years ago. And now, of course, Sheila Jackson Lee has taken it up. It's an unbroken string.

The only other thing I would say is that there are local reparations movements. There have been resolutions passed in cities like Philadelphia. There's obviously what's going on in the northern suburbs of Chicago, the Evanston work. So there's an unbroken thing. And finally, what you said, Racine, you always remind us of this in terms of this question of social media, particularly weaponized ignorance. There's this descendants of enslavement conversation going on. All that's local. And there's a lot of people organizing around it. I do not agree with the California framework in terms of this notion of only those who were enslaved in the United States, the Senate of them can get reparations. But I do think it's important that the momentum has now taken up again. So, no, there's an unbroken

string of this demand. And like Crystal said, you've got to put something on the table. Once that is established, then we begin the negotiations. But until you make that demand, you know, we just basically are talking to each other. Well, I agree with you. I definitely agree. I think that there's a rich legacy of this kind of local activism. I'm just curious how much of that local advocacy is paired up with or how proportional it is to people purporting to actually care about this issue when you look at the kind of volume of traffic that you have online. I've seen that proportion of interest on the ground. But again, I could be missing something. What do you think, Crystal? Oh, you're not. No.

I don't know that I've seen. And when I think about this issue, I want to just, you know, compare it to voting rights. So if we think about when I think about this issue, I want to just, you know, compare it to voting rights. So if we think about when President Biden took office, we heard national advocacy organizations. We heard even the DNC talking about, you know, the need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the need to get voting rights really and truly codified or really and truly, you know, just immersed in our American voting electorate system. I don't hear this same resounding voice from national groups and even local groups or state-based groups. Now, that's not to say, as Dr. Carr stated, that there aren't people out here talking

about it. But I don't think that reparations is a true agenda item every single year by advocacy organizations, big and small. And until it becomes this resounding thing, if we talk about reparations the way we talk about people registering to vote, we could probably get somewhere. We talk about registering to vote every single year. It's critical that you register to vote. It's critical that you every single year. It's critical that you register to vote. It's critical that you use your voice. It's critical that you do all these things. We just had a segment on that with Roland about, you know, Texas. But if we talk about reparations in the same light and with the same weight that we talk about these other civil rights issues,

then I think when we hear this narrative, when you talk about, you know, the narrative in the media, it is not talked about enough. So it's not that people don't care about it. It's just not enough people care about it collectively all at the same time. And so that's what I, that's my perspective about it is that I think people, yes, everyone, I haven't really heard anyone say, I don't want reparations. But I haven't seen people run a year-round campaign about reparations in the same manner in that they run these year-round campaigns about voting rights, voter registration, or any other issue that they really care about.

Well, I absolutely agree with you, but, and to be clear, I mean, this Xavier person talked about not wanting reparations because it's a handout. Reparations is not a handout. It's a repayment for the unspeakable horrors that have been inflicted on us. And so to your point, Crystal, yeah, you're right. There has not been the same kind of resounding voice behind that. But look at how much begging we've had to do just to get people at 30 percent turnout. And this is people who are already registered to vote. We're not even talking people who aren't registered to vote. And so where do we go from here? I don't know. But it definitely seems like at least San Francisco is serious about evaluating this. What ultimately, what kind of check gets cut? And I haven't even heard the details around what

eligibility looks like, but if you have anybody that came through San Francisco, now might be a good time to get your paperwork together. It might be a good time if you are in San Francisco to register to vote on whatever the criteria, pay your taxes, do your tax return, file for residency. That's right. Go ahead. I know we're

going to break in a second, but I do want to stress the fact that the fact that we're having this conversation, when you look back over the full arc of the reparations movement, this really is progress. Reparations has typically been a cause that has been championed by black nationalists and pan-Africanists. The fact that we are now having this conversation, you know, Ta-Nehisi Coates' article in Atlantic years ago, before that, Randall Robinson's 2000 book called The Debt. The fact that we're even doing it now, that the California state legislature

appointed a committee, the largest state in the country, headed in the legislature by a Black woman who is a retired professor of African American studies. When you measure the movement of the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, all the way back to the 19th century to now, this is a quantum leap. So I think we should always, you know, not just where we're going, but measure against where we've been. This was something the Black Panthers used to bring up. Us used to bring up. The Pan-Africanists used to bring up. Political prisoners used to bring up.

And now it's stuff that's being discussed by white nationalists like Laura Ingraham because it can't be ignored anymore. That's progress. I'm not honest to write, Dr. Carr. I mean, quantum leap is not a word you hear a lot because we live in an instant gratification society. But when you put it in the context, this is radical, drastic progress, even if it's not at the finish line yet. Well, we have to wrap up. We're going to go to the Black Women's Roundtable that Roland will be moderating at. Crystal Knight, Democratic strategist, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Greg Hart, always good to be with you. Y'all check out the Black Table tomorrow. And I'm Risa Kober signing out for Roland Martin Unfiltered, this part. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

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

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

Bye, y'all. Bye. Thank you. See ya. Streets, a horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not be back. White people are losing their damn lives.

There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial.

This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this.

There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs are running stuff push black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this, so I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell,

I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle, but when someone comes around and is making other, oh, we don't, you know, they don't wanna push it or put money into it, so that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer,

you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues. And that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does it. On the next Get Wealthy, with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits. Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook.

Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. When you talk about blackness

and what happens in black culture, you're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word.

We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in Black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month.

Waits $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Y'all money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. The Cash app is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RM Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered.

Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not replace us. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.

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

This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white people. Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told.

Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home.

You dig? Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network.

Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering in the weight and pressure of the world that's consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for a balanced life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network.

Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history.

Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist

in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear. I'm Deion Cole and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay woke. We'll discuss here today

as the nation's most engaged and reliable voting bloc, but who is that? Black women. Say, who is that? Black women. We have the power to affect change. Say, we have the power. We have the power. We know that when Black women show up to the polls, we not only vote for ourselves, but for our families and communities, as I stated, and this nation. We have saved democracy how many times? Over. And our democracy needs saving once again. So we're here today to walk these halls of Congress, to walk these halls at the U.S. Senate, most specifically today, because we have to make sure that our children are here. We have high schools. Who here from high schools today?

I know a bunch from Alabama and other states are here today. And so they're here to learn from us, but also tell their U.S. Senator, and some will go to House offices to meet with staffers, but to remind them why we sent them here. And here's the focus for us. Our priority issues are to make sure they pass a fair budget. Say pass a fair budget. Pass a fair budget. Protect our rights. Protect our rights. And freedoms. And freedoms. We're about making sure you protect workers' rights. Workers' rights. And make sure that all of our communities are safe with fair public safety policy.

Yes. I'm going to say it again. We want our communities safe with safe public safety policy. Safe. Not to just lock our folks up. Right. safety policy, not to just lock our folks up. We are here to deal with the issues of privacy. We're here to talk about and demand that they protect the safety net. And what is that? That's Medicare. That's Medicaid. That's Social Security. That's making sure that when you talk about

having, not to have to, what they say, take care of our medicine, low cost of taking care of having to pay for medicine, not have to make choices of whether you can eat or whether you can take care and get the medicine you need. We hear about criminal justice and giving first and second chances, right, Around that, around criminal justice reform. And at the end of the day, when we talk about second chances, we're talking about making sure that we pour into folks so that they have an opportunity to thrive in this country. And we're talking about economic security and prosperity in this nation as our priority. So this time, I will bring on some of our national partners. I want to call your name and you come in this order.

Our sister, Clayola Brown, president, national president of A. Philip Randolph Institute. But she, like a lot of sisters, got to wear two or three hats because they need her so much. She also is the special assistant around strategic partnerships and alliances. Did I mess that up? You got it.

She helped make sure they do right, right? around strategic partnerships and alliances. Did I mess that up? You got it. She helped make sure they do right, right? Community and partner up with all of us, with AFL-CIO. Then you will hear from our sister leader, Sheena Meade, who is the CEO of Clean Slate Initiative. Okay. Of the Clean Slate Initiative, but also has been with us for years from Black Youth Vote on.

And we're so proud. You don't have to tell mine, I'll tell yours. So we don't need that alone, right? Thank you. And then we'll hear from who will talk about not just criminal justice reform, but about second chances and what all that means for all of our communities. And Dr. Elsie Scott, who's the founding director of the Ronald Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center. And I say this, I want to hear this. Howard University, just act like you're out of here from Howard.

Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. Thank you. You know. And then we will hear from our senator, hopefully, and then we will hear from some of our state leaders and young leaders to talk about why they're here as a part of this coalition. Cleola, Sheena, Dr. Elton. All right, all right, all right.

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. You have to be dedicated to get up and put on your go get them shoes to come and make sure that your voice gets heard. So I say congratulations to you before you meet with anybody this morning.

You met with yourself. You met with your dignity. You met with yourself. You met with your dignity. You met with the pride that comes with being a Black woman. Our leader, Melanie Campbell, said that Black women have saved this country. Yes, we have. And we're going to keep doing it because if we don't stand up for ourselves, nobody else will do it for us. Now, let me tell you this. Workers' rights is tied in with all of these pieces that we're talking about. Because if there's anything a Black woman knows about, it's what it is to be a worker and 900 other things at the same daggone time. I'm going to try real good and I ain't going to cuss this morning, Melanie.

But if we take a look at some of the legislation that's being provided, and I say provided because they didn't ask us nothing, right? You have to read two times to make sure that you up in there, all right? I am not a PhD, so you're going to hear what comes out of South Carolina. Listen close so that you don't miss it. But workers' rights goes way beyond just the ones that are people who are going into a shop or a plant or whatever. If you get up every day and you go and meet the calls for providing for your family or having the right to make a choice about your life and what you do with your own body, you are a worker in the movement of being protective of yourself and your dignity. So when we talk to these legislators, let them know that we are not a one-trick pony. Not one issue is going to satisfy anybody.

All of the signs that you see that talk about the pride of our family, about the dignity of work. All of those things are a part of who we are as black women. Don't go in there being proper. Go in there being yourself. It's their job to know the number of the bill. It's their job to know how it ties to particular legislation. But it's your job to let the legislators that represent you know that you are paying attention. And that's why when Melanie say we're coming on point, when we're talking, we're talking from our heart and our history. Don't let that be anything fancy for you. Just be yourself. They understand that there is no question about honesty, about truth, and about dignity. And

black women got all of that. So we're going to show them that today as we do our walk. Thank you very much, Melanie, for the two seconds. I'm done. hatred on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist i know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time have you ever had to shoot your gun sometimes the answer is yes but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. that descended into deadly violence. You will not replace us. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress,

whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is White Beat.

We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Yo, what's up? This your boy Ice Cube. What's up? I'm Lance Gross and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Walk through the halls of the Capitol. That who house? Intend to know who you are and realize that you pay taxes to be here. This is your house, and these are your employees.

You employ the folks in here and if you have somebody ain't acting right, what you do? Just let them know. My name is Sheena Mead. I'm the CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative, but more important, let me credentialize myself. I'm a Black Youth Vote, Florida Youth Vote alumni. I'm a Black Women's Roundtable member. I'm a contributor to the organization. And I'm coming up here as a sponsor and a leader. And I'm here. From the South.

A girl from the South. And I want to thank Ms. Melanie Campbell. They're dirty. We ain't going to talk about how dirty it is when we get up in there. But I want to thank Ms. Melanie Campbell for, you know, for what she always do for black women and girls. And, again, I'm a product of the investment, the seed that was planted. I'm the manifestation in the plant that was rooted, and I'm the bud today. So I'm not going to preach and do my two minutes like Ms. Coyola said.

So I just want to say, you know, one thing about Black Women's Roundtable, they always show up to show up for our community, to not leave a sister behind. But I want to give you some haunting stats that there are 18 million women nationwide who have a conviction or non-conviction on their record. And let me break that down for folks who like it broken down. That means someone's been arrested. How many people have someone in their family or their friends that they know, raise your hand, that know that has a criminal record that has been impacted or incarcerated? One out of three Americans, one out of two children have a parent with a record. And when we say, you know, we're about civic engagement, bringing people to the table, bringing people to the voting booth.

But what happens when they shut out? How do we ask you to show up for our community when they can't show up for work because they can't get a job? When they can't show up for their children because they're not allowed to go to the school on a field trip? When they can't get a career because they're excluded from 44,000 occupations and certificates? We need to tell Congress to act today and pass clean slate and give a pathway for people to clear their records because we can't build back better if we're leaving people behind. Let me let you know, we can't build back better when we're leaving 70 to 100 million people behind. And so as you go up there today, we're asking people to share your stories in the field,

let people know that there are people that is behind and cannot be here with us today because they're out there searching for a job. They're trying to figure out how they can show up for the community and their children because they have a record. And we're not going to leave them behind. Are we going to leave them sisters behind? Are we going to leave them brothers behind? So I'm asking you all to show up and show out and talk about the Clean Slate Act and tell Congress that they need to create a pathway. Tell our administration when y'all go to the White House that we cannot build back better when we're leaving 70 million people behind. Thank you. Good morning, everybody.

Good morning. I am Elsie Scott. I'm here with the Black Women's Roundtable, with the National Coalition on Civic, Black Civic Participation. And we are just happy that we have a good turn out of women today, a good turnout of young women today. And when you go to the Senate today and speak with your senators, and if some of you go on the House side and speak with the House staff, we need to emphasize that criminal justice reform is very important in the lives of black people in this country. We have been brutalized by the criminal justice system. We have been the victims of poor policing. We've been the victims of aggressive policing.

We've been the victim of over-incarceration. We've been the victim of sentencing acts that sent us to prison for longer times. So we want to talk about reform. When George Floyd was killed, we thought we were going to see some action here in Congress. We had the George Floyd policing act passed on the House side, but it didn't pass on the Senate side. We got to continue to push for police reform. And I can speak about that because I have done both sides to the policing. I have served as a deputy commissioner for the New York City Police Department and tried to reform from the inside. But I've also been an activist on the outside trying to push for police reform. So policing is a local function, but the federal government

has a lot of power in terms of bringing about change in police department. We can't just let small 20 person police departments do what they want to do, not observe the proper laws, not train their police officers properly, not select people who don't have bad records, criminal records. So there are things at the federal level we can put in standards in order to force all police departments to clean up their act, to select people that should be policing us, to get rid of people who should not be on the police department in the first time. Amen. Because there's people that cannot be trained. We can talk about police training, but I used to run training programs. But there are some people who should not be in the police department in the first place.

So no amount of training is going to stop them from brutalizing communities. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time. But I do have to mention, since we're talking about women, we have to talk about domestic violence, violence against women. We must look at how we can get the system to fight for women who are being brutalized. Because we talked as we talked yesterday is that many women now they have given up on the system, helping them with domestic violence. We are turning to our sisters as the first responders instead of police departments. But we have to get mental health services into our cities to help black women who are being brutalized in their homes by their spouses, by their boyfriends. But this is one of the main areas that I want to leave you with. All right. Thank you, Elsie. She got receipts.

You know, she's very humble about what she knows when it comes to public safety. Elsa, am I correct? Were you the executive director of NOBO? Yes. You know, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Exec uh what you do in new york definitely commission of training new york city so she's not just talking she didn't walk with it thank you my sister um i heard that the senator is here is that correct not yet um but i do know uh vince evans was here from the Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus. If he could walk up here. He's over there.

Where is he at? Where is he at? Come on, push your hand. Vince, I'm from Mississippi. No, Florida. You're from Florida. Even more home training. Exactly.

He don't know when grown folks say, come on, come on. Right. He's just ignoring me, y'all. Okay, we're going to... Thank you. Come on up here for us. Thank you. Thank you.

Do you represent... Good morning, everybody. Good morning'all. Okay, we go. Thank you. Come on up here for us. Good morning, everybody. Listen, I learned a long time ago, you do what Melanie Campbell tells you to do. She told me to be here on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus and our members who are obviously home in their districts today, the 58 members of the CBC. Let me publicly say first what we say privately to Melanie Campbell, which is thank you. I have seen these past couple of years here on Capitol Hill and in the White House. I've seen Melanie Campbell in rooms where there are cameras and rooms where there are no cameras. Melanie Campbell is the same in private as she is in public. She's a fierce fighter and

a defender. So let's give her a round of applause. I want to thank the Black Women's Roundtable for your leadership. I will not repeat all the issues that you have heard from police accountability and public safety to voting rights to equal pay for equal days pay for equal days work for women, women's health. These are all issues that the Black Women's Roundtable and the Congressional Black Caucus are fighting for. We're proud to be a partner with you, Melanie, and the Black Women's agenda. I will leave on this note. Anna Julia Cooper said, when and where the Black woman enters in the quiet, undisputed dignity of her womanhood, when and where the Black woman enters in the quiet, undisputed dignity of her womanhood, without suffrage and without patronage, there enters the entire Negro race.

Black people don't enter without black women. Thank you so much. Well, I told you all. Thank you, Vince. We are so, so delighted. And want to first thank Senator Van Hollen from the great state of Maryland, who is hosting us today. Senator, you have Maryland in the house? Let's rock and roll.

So Maryland is in the house. Our summit is being hosted at the Gaylord. We're spending money in the state of Maryland. That's right. Right, right. Thank you. So thank you for, he is our host. So thank our host.

I do want to just read through your mind. I do want them to know. Okay. Senator Chris Van Hollen is elected to the United States Senate by the people of Maryland in November 2016. Senator Van Hollen is committed to fighting for every day, every day, fighting every day to ensure that our state and our country live up to their full promise of equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity. So repeat after me. I say equal rights, equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity. Technology is wonderful when it works, right? Senator Van Hollen believes that every child, say every child, deserves the opportunity

to pursue their dreams and benefit from a quality education. And that everyone willing to work hard should be able to find a good job. And you have to repeat, I'm just going to say this last thing. That's why his top priorities include creating more and better jobs, strengthening small businesses, and increasing educational and job training opportunities for individuals of all ages in every, in every, every community. Senator Van Hollen, tell us what you want us to know. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Melanie. It's great to be here with you. It's great to be here with the Black Women's Roundtable and with the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Thank all of you. And it is an honor to team up with the CBC. Thank you all for your leadership and to host this gathering today here in the United States Senate. I just wanted to come to thank you, to thank the coalition, to thank the roundtable for all the work that you've done over so many years. I think 12 years now in terms of advocating to make sure that our country does live up to the promise of equal rights and equal justice and equal opportunity and to make sure that we have an equitable society where everybody gets a fair chance and that we also make sure that everybody has that opportunity to have a good

job and a good paycheck. And when it comes to women, we have to deal with the equal pay for equal work issue. I want to thank all of you because black women have been at the forefront of the fight in our country for justice and liberty since the earliest days of our country. I just came from my office in the Capitol and on my wall there hangs the portrait of a great Marylander and a great American, Harriet Tubman. And we are fighting to make sure that Harriet Tubman has a rightful place on the $20 bill. And we in Maryland are working very hard to get a statue of Harriet Tubman in the United States Capitol.

So I want to thank all of you for carrying the torch that has been carried from Harriet Tubman to so many other black women over the years, because you, when it comes to casting your votes and calling for change, you are the ones who have moved our country forward. I want to thank you for what you did to help make progress possible over the last two years. Over the last two years. And we did a lot together, including ensuring that we have the first black woman on the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Katonji Brown Jackson. Katonji Brown Jackson. That was made possible because black women and voters around the country came together to elect a president and a vice president who made justice and equity a priority in the United States of America.

And that, of course, gets to the fundamental issue of voting rights. Because what we know is that as we gather here, there are state legislatures around the country that have already enacted and are in the process of enacting laws to erect barriers to make it harder for people to vote, especially to make it harder for people of color and younger people to cast their ballots, which is why, which is why we need, as you have called for, a national law to protect the right to vote across the country. That is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Because we shouldn't have different standards. The standards should be everybody, every citizen should be able to have access to the ballot

box without having to jump over a lot of hoops or stand in long, long lines that are specifically designed to get people get tired of voting. Now, black women have never gotten tired of voting, but there's no reason that people should have to jump over extra hoops to exercise their right to vote in the United States of America. And we have to deal with issues of public safety. We need to get these weapons of war, these semi-automatic assault weapons off our streets and have common sense gun safety laws. And we need to make sure that we have criminal justice reform and end the national scandal of mass incarceration in the United States of America and have constitutional policing and pass things like the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act.

So we have a lot of work to do, including on the education front, including on the health care front. And I just want to end with this. We made progress in the last two years. We've helped lower the cost of prescription drugs for people on Medicare, including insulin. But we have a lot of work to do, to do that across the country. And, of course, deal with women's maternal health, especially black women's maternal health. And so we look forward to working with you to make sure that we have an equitable health system, equitable education system. And of course, in terms of speaking

to the Supreme Court, there's the good news from the court, Justice Jackson. There was the bad news, of course, from the court, which was overturning Roe v. Wade. And as we speak, we also know Texas and other states are making it harder for women to exercise their reproductive freedom and reproductive rights. So whether it's health care, education, public safety, all these issues, we have made progress in the last two years, but we got a long way still to go. So I want to thank all of you because you are the engine. You're the fuel that helps move this country forward. And I'm grateful for all you do and look forward to continue to work with you in Maryland and around the country for years to come. And for all of you who aren't from Maryland,

come on over. We'd love to have you in Maryland. Take care and God bless you. Thank you, Senator. Maryland, come on up, Maryland. All right, Maryland. Come on over. Where's Robin? Where's Robin? She's stepping away. Come on, Robin. In Maryland, we're very proud of our new governor, Governor Wes Moore. OK, and then while we're coming up, I did want to make sure any Marylanders that come up want to get a photo with him before he leaves.

But what I want to also let you know, and I forgot to say this, our honorary chair is someone I know, you know, pretty well. And that's Prince George's county executive, Angela Alsterbrooks. She's amazing. Angela Alsterbrooks is an amazing county executive. Worked very closely with her. In fact, I just got a note from her this morning. She's doing a great job.

But can we give our senator a round of applause? Thank you so very much. And I think folks are coming to see you. uh... i think that the are still there but i think not around of a problem and i think that the and i will say anyone from the district of columbia we need statehood for the we need democracy and self-determination for the people of the political right

all right thank you very much thank you so very much yet the help of the other Thank you so very much. Thank you. All right. Take the hill. We'll see you in the office. And then y'all can go take a picture. Yeah. Yeah, y'all can go take a picture with him. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you again, Senator Van Hollen. And so we're going to have some quick remarks because we want to make sure the folks don't miss their reports. We're doing good on time.. We're doing good on time. So this next wave of folks, there's quite a few, because we want, when the state leaders come up, make sure you bring your Black You Vote coordinator, if you have one with you, so that you all can share in your comments. So, but we're going to start with some of our policy leads with the coalition.

Jocelyn Tate, who's our senior policy advisor, tech policy advisor, and all things policy advisor, quite frankly, who has an exemplary record around issues around technology and tech policy and how that impacts. We talk about equity and opportunity. She and I are fighting the fight and represents us on the FCC Advisory Council.

Am I correct, Jocelyn? So Jocelyn Tate will come up to talk about our priority issue around privacy. Following Jocelyn, you will hear from Carol Joyner, who is with Family Values Action. Did I say that right? Executive Director for Family Values Action, who is our assistant and partner. All are members of Black Women's Roundtable as well, who will focus on economic security, specifically issues around paid family leave and also weigh in a little bit on equal pay and how important that is. Following her, you will hear from Cassandra

Welch, who leads the Mississippi Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Mississippi Black Women's Roundtable, has been a fighter in the state of Mississippi around issues around economic justice and opportunity for black women and our children, issues of child care and many other things. She will focus on reproductive rights and equal rights. Follow her, Helen Butler, voting rights. And I think you have Mayor Pat Hector with you as well. And then Honorable Sheila Tyson, who will focus on the great state of Alabama, who leads Black Women's Roundtable in Alabama. Helen Butler, I forgot to say her title, executive director, Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda and Georgia Black Women's Roundtable. And the Georgia folks could come up at that time. So if you're here, when we call your state, y'all come up and y'all

do that together. And then we have other states that we will call on accordingly after that. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. you When nobody else will show up. I said, brother, if I text him and say, well, I need, boom. When, where?

I'm there. And we don't take that rolling for granted. And so we were on the wheel, because we were like talking about votes. Like, what you coming to DC for? You don't go nowhere but with me in the ballroom were we outside in the ballroom ladies today we were where we were we went to um uh on the senate side today to make sure that we weighed in and we took our agenda to these folks, Democrats and Republicans.

And so I just wanna thank you. And we wanted to make sure that we showed you our love and Roland, if you haven't made a contribution to his media platform, 100% Black-owned, we need to do that. We need to do that. If we ain't the $10, do that. So Roland, we're not gonna keep, I know you just got out there, I'm sure.

And so we're going to have you come up and get us started. We've got our sister, Joycelyn Tate, who's going to interview you, who is our senior policy advisor, extraordinaire for tech policy, but also is a bad sister from Memphis, Tennessee, who speaks truth to power when she goes and sits there at the Federal Communication Commission. Am I getting that right? George? Well, I said FCC.

And make sure that she weighs in and folks understand that the issues of privacy is a civil rights issue of the day. And so, turn it over to my sister, Jocelyn, just to have this five-second chat. And after that, we will provide, Roland will provide signed copies of the book, and that's sponsored by Black Women's Roundtable. Thank you.

Roland, Jocelyn. Thank you so much, Melanie. And thank you so much, Roland, for coming today to share this book with us today. White Fear. How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Mind. Lose their doggone mind. So we just wanna start first. I wanna start talking, in the book you said that by 2043,

no ethnic group will be the majority in America. Now, let's unpack that and see why that's making white people lose their doggone minds. Well, you might remember probably 30 years ago when the story first came out saying America will be a national majority of people of color. Then it was really like 2060. And people kind of like, oh, man, that's so far away. We'll be dead. Then it started dropping from 2060 to And people kind of like, oh, man, that's so far away. We'll be dead. Then it started dropping from 2060 to 57,

55, 53. Then it went all the way down to 43. By 2039, the majority of the working class in the country will be people of color. So 47% of whites will be, the population will be 47% white. Then you have Latino,

African-Americans, Asian, Native American, compr comprising 53 percent now even inside of that you have to then begin and look at well even what's happening with within latino slash hispanic because you have a number of people who identify as white hispanic who identifies more as white than hispanic uh so you have that dynamic as well but so really what what it is called it, it caused a lot of people to start freaking out. But really what did it for me was in 2009, around the inauguration, a study was released, and the question was asked, are you optimistic about the future of America for your children?

Every group, Black, Latino, Asian, every group, majority said yes, except white America. Now, normally when you look at these stories, how media typically works, they're just sort of they look at the story. Don't ask that next question to the next question. And that caught my attention. And I begin to look into it further. And then you begin to see again how folks are reacting. So I remember I was at CNN and and when i was when i was there john uh avalon i were off air we better go on and i said john we are living in the beginning stages of white minority resistance he's like what are you talking about i said white folks

are about this thing is about to get real even the majority who are about to see the tension because they cannot handle this demographic shift. And then I think it was on the Timer Newsweek did a story that showed that the average death rate in about 10 states was higher than the average white birth rate. So that made there were more white folks who were dying than they were being born. So then when you start looking at how aggressive folks got over the issue of immigration, you start talking about great replacement theory,

then you begin to see all of these attacks on DEI and multiculturalism and critical race theory, anything dealing with black folks and others advancing, you see what's happening. The reason I chose that picture for the cover, which is from January 6th, so the picture is of a white man with his arms outstretched in front of the Capitol, where for me that picture says all of this is ours. Because you got to remember,

when Donald Trump was complaining about losing, he kept mentioning four cities. Exactly. Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee. Those are black cities. So the anger was at black folks. They were pissed off at losing Georgia because black folks turned out in massive numbers. So when you start

breaking all of these and it's very interesting. I've had black hosts of mainstream shows call me and say i would love to have you on my show but my white producers don't like your book title and i said well you know i talked about those very people in the book so the reason mainstream media white media can't deal with white fear is because they're white. They don't want to confront the exact same situation. And so you have white executives, you've got largely white producers who are controlling the information flow, which is why, matter of fact,

just a side note, today is the 196th anniversary of the founding of the nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, March 16th, 1827, which they said in their third paragraph, "'We wish to plead our own cause. "'Too long have others spoken for us.'" So this is a perfect example of why you have to have black-owned media, because even white media does not wanna confront this.

That's why in 2016, they kept talking about economic anxiety. And that was always the dumbest thing to me, because I was kind of like, well, if you look at numbers, black folks are broker than anybody else,. So here we should be the most, uh, had the most anxiety about the economy, but they kept focusing on that. And really what that was about was all of these white folks were, I'll never forget. That was a story. And this white guy

was complaining that he wished they could go back to the days of when he could just call his boss to get his son hired. And I was laughing at the story because what angers them is that they now have to compete. And so you start looking at that academics and everything else. That's really what's been pissing them off, that they now have to compete. The nation that they used to control, they now can't control it the same way. And that's the underpinning of so many different things and media does not want to get at the heart of it. And I literally been discussing this since 2009. And so, and then predicting what's about to happen. So all this anti-CRT stuff, the tax on DEI saw it all coming and

too many of us were actually falling asleep without realizing that they are trying to solidify power for the next 50 to 100 years. And so let me put this down to say, remember, there was a 35-year-old white woman that Trump and McConnell appointed as a federal judge. She was 11 years removed from law school. Had no business being a federal judge she was 11 years removed from law school okay had no business been a federal judge if she retired at the same age that woman will be on the federal bench until the 2069. 2069. So that's why when I'm trying to explain to our folk why you can't act like Judge Katonji Brown Jackson is no big deal to the Supreme Court

and the federal judges, the black federal judges that Biden has been appointing with the Senate Democrats is no big deal because these white conservatives are looking at how can we control every level of power for the next 50 to 100 years? Which means that when you get to 2043, yeah, y'all got numerical numbers, but we still have power. And my fear is that we will be like South Africa. We will have the political power, but they will still control the economic

power, the judicial power, and still control the country. So you unpack that a little bit about the judiciary. Because, talk about how Mitch McConnell was holding up, you said in the book, he was holding up you said in the book absolutely holding up everything so he could get uh gorgeous um um all of the all of the conservative white judges

on and they were real clear they were real clear he gave an interview with sean h Hannity where they said, we are going after young judges. The judges were 35 to 45. If you were 55, 60, you didn't have a shot because they wanted folks who would be there at least 30, 40 years. And see, this is where Democrats, progressives, and black folks were completely asleep at the wheel, not just on the federal level, but you take the state level. I was just literally just walked off the air. And in 2020, that was an increase of 4 percent of black voters in North Carolina from 64 to 68 percent from 2016 to 2020. OK, and that's great. But if you go back to 2008, look at how black turnout was. The reason Obama wins North Carolina by 14,100 votes, because you had massive black turnout.

Of course, they then put in place massive voter suppression, voter ID to bring the number down. You had Moral Mondays, repairs of the breach, poor people's campaign, fighting to bring it back. But here's what happened in 2018. Sherri Beasley loses by 400 votes on the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was chief justice. Now, you might remember, Democrats took over the Supreme Court. That's how they ruled against racial gerrymandering, against voter ID, and which fought a lot of that. She loses by 400 votes. Had she won, Democrats would have a six to one advantage over the state Supreme Court. It went down four to

three. 2022, they just lost one of those seats. Republicans now control the state Supreme Court four to three. What did they just do? The courts issued a ruling in two cases, a gerrymandering case and a race and a voter ID case six months ago when there was a Democratic majority. Now that they took control in January, they're going to rehear those cases. So now you're talking about because, again, they understand that we have three branches of government, legislative, executive and judicial. Judicial has the final say so. So while folk have been sitting here worrying about who's going to be in the White House, who's going to be the Senate and the Congress, they've understood if we control the courts, it matters. That's why that special election in in a few weeks in Wisconsin is so important because there's a if the Democrat, the woman,

the white woman who's running wins, that court flips. Now that court flips. They now can rule against gerrymandering. Now that completely changes the makeup of the courts in Wisconsin. And so we have to understand they have been plotting this because they've been pissed off since Brown was born with education. They were angry with the appeals court and the Fifth Circuit, who was really making all the different rules coming through the civil rights movement. So that's really what the Christian Affairless Society is. And so they are sitting here playing a long game. We were, folks were talking about our minutes. Even Biden was saying that this, uh, things don't

get back to normal with Trump. I'm like, no, player, things are not getting back to normal when Trump is out. They, the part that the Republican party of Trump is the Republican party. And so what we have to understand is we are simply not even maximizing our numbers. There was a massive drop off in South Carolina in the last election of black voters. You look at, look, Warlock only won by 95,000 votes. And let me be real clear, if it was not for the third party groups on the ground, he would have lost.

Let me be real clear, because his campaign, I know, I know, because his campaign was weak as hell. They were not doing what they were supposed to do. They had not put any money in any black newspaper until late September. Now, I ain't got a problem because they even tried to come to me with small money. I told them to go to hell. You're not going to see them play me small.

And so I was just on The Breakfast Club yesterday trying to explain. I'm like, look, if we are voting at 65% to 70% of our numbers, we sweep seats statewide. If you've got 500,000, and so I'm bringing out white fear, so here's a perfect example anti-crt we many of us were asleep that propelled all the white folks to the ballot in 2020 2021 in south carolina moms for liberty that crazy right-wing group took over 10 of the 14 largest school districts in south carolina what do they immediately do start Start firing superintendents. So change the curriculum. That's black folks. So we have to be in a constant state of educating, enlightening. We keep telling folk, vote. You can't vote unless you get,

unless you register, but you can't register unless you're enlightened. You can't be enlightened unless you get educated. And so right now, we have to be engaged in an aggressive education and enlightenment campaign for next year to walk folks through because they are executing their strategy. What Ron DeSantis did in Florida by attacking the AP curriculum, That was the strategy. The story came out to now here's what the next deal is. Right now, the next attack isn't the history class, it's social studies. One of the book publishers said they went through the books and tried to remove race as much as they can, even when it came to Rosa Parks, for fear of violating the law that they passed. So then what did he do next? The DEI piece. What happened? They hit in Florida, then Texas picked it up, then North Carolina picked it up. So they are using the power where they control state legislatures to enact these policies because they do not want to see the advancement of African-Americans and Latinos.

And that's what's going on. And the reason media is so important is because that's how you're able to change hearts and minds. And so too many of us are listening to black radio and laughing and giggling and not being educated. And then when the stuff goes down, but that bill in Florida, I got some fools say, no into black fraternities. It's right. It was wrong.

And I told this fool, stop tweeting. Cause you know the hell you talking about? Cause I call the black legislators in Florida. The bill was written in such a way that it could it could impact them. You don't give them that sort of leeway because they are specifically writing the laws to eliminate as much as our power as possible because and here's why they tack on the d9 is so important because because the divine nine out of all the black institutions we have is the most sophisticated and vertically and

horizontally integrated we're international national regional state grad chapter undergrad chapters with programming impacts K through 12. And we are, other than the black church, we are self-funded. So if you attack, so they are attacking our pillars. So if you attack the pillars of the black community, then you are in position to simply attack us in every other way. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Now, you talked about how this strategy,

because this strategy is real. White people are afraid and they're attacking, and they are using the judiciary strategically. They're using voter suppression strategically. They're using education strategically. Are you talking the book about the black Republicans? How are they being used strategically? Well, look, right now you have the largest number of black Republicans in Congress that you've had since the 1800s. And so what is happening there, you've got John Jaynes, who was elected in Michigan. You've got Byron Donalds, who was in Florida. Of course, you've got Tim Scott. And so what they then say is, oh, my goodness, you can't

call us racist because, therefore, we have these black Republicans. And so they are also living in denial about exactly what is going on. And so you've got the brother who's lieutenant governor in North Carolina who's talking about running for governor as well. And so, and the thing for me is, for me, it's not a question of who's blue, who's red, who's Republican, or who's Democrat.

The question is, where do you sit when it comes to the policies and how they impact people? A Michael Steele black Republican is different from a Byron Donald's black Republican. We've known black Republicans all our lives, but the Ed Brook black Republicans, for the most part, do not exist anymore. And so we have to understand, and a lot of them are actually coming from districts that are 70, 80, 90 percent white. And so they are advocating policies that are absolutely against us. You know, so you take Senator Tim Scott, for example, who is literally doing the bidding of these folks who have our interests at heart. And so he gets on the floor, he talks about how he's been

racially profiled. When you look at the George Floyd Justice Act, he was the one who actually, he killed it. He killed it because one of the most violent sheriffs in all of South Carolina came out against it. And he used that as the reason why he didn't want to support it. Then he goes on to face the nation. He says the Democrats wanted to defund police and that was a bridge too far. Now, here's why that's interesting. A year earlier, Michael Harry wrote a piece in The Root where in Senator Tim Scott's own bill that he had a provision that said if laws were not passed, they couldn't access the money. So the very thing that he criticized Democrats on Face the Nation, he actually did a year earlier.

Now, here's why I know he's full of shit. It's because when I text him, and I got the text, when I text him about the bill, oh, he was very responsive. He was very responsive. But then when I asked him okay what's the difference between what your bill said and what you're accusing democrats of he goes silent i asked him five times i asked his staff nobody wants to respond and so he wants to stand out here and dance around and talk about oh how, how the bill died. No, bro, we know exactly what happened here because they don't want to deal with police brutality.

They don't want. And the crazy thing is, two of the police unions actually came out and said that what he said was wrong. They said, no, we the two of the union said we have not heard any Democrats say defund the police in the negotiations. But he was a rough president. And so he killed the George Floyd Justice Act. have not heard any democrats say defund the police in the negotiations but he wants to run for president and so he killed the george floyd justice act to help his run for president that's exactly what he did and so we just have to understand what is at play here and again how these pieces are going and i'm gonna throw something else out there right now that, again, many of us ain't paying no attention to. You want to talk about white fear, where are most of our HBCUs? They're in the South.

Most of them are state institutions. When you have all of these anti-DEI policies, those policies impact all state schools, including the HBCUs. Look what happened in Tennessee. The lawmaker said that Tennessee owed Tennessee state about $500 million in being historically underfunded. When Tennessee state went to the legislature and asked for $250 million, then they said, let's do an audit. Then all of a sudden, oh, we have issues with the leadership, all kinds of stuff, only when they start asking for more money. Ruth Simmons, who just resigned as president of Prevy A&M, criticized the Texas A&M Board of Regents, same thing.

And if you read her letter, we broke it down on my show, she basically was saying, alumni, students, faculty, y'all had better fight and take control of your school. So we have to understand by them having a grip on state legislatures, they literally will be, they are in control of most of our HBCUs. And so that's going, I can, they already go out into the state, watch, that's going to be the next frontier. They are going to then begin to exert control over HBCUs. So here we are shouting HBCUs, talking about football and basketball and bands,

and they are going to be controlling the very places where we're graduating most of our professional class. If we don't understand the battle that's literally in front of us we're going to get caught flat-footed and that's why we have to be thinking multi-dimensional that's why when i've said this i don't care i've said the black folks do not do not send a dime to the democratic national committee or to any, let me be real clear, to any political campaign. Send that money to black organizations that are on the ground. Here's why. Mandela Barnes, and I don't care what he says, Mandela Barnes would be the United States Senator from Wisconsin right now if he had not listened to those white consultants and ignored Milwaukee. There was a 50,000 voter drop off in Milwaukee last year from 2018.

He lost by 26,000 votes. He from Milwaukee. I had Milwaukee consultants who said they had no contact with the, with the Barnes campaign because the white consultants were like, yo, we got that. They put no money in Milwaukee. That's how he lost. Sherry Beasley lost North Carolina because she listened to white consultants who told her to run from black people. How does the black female vice president come to North Carolina and you don't show up where she's at? How are you black running for the United States Senate

and you have no campaigns on HBCU campuses? And they can't say black folks are not trying to come in because I got the text where I was texting directly. When do you want me to come in with my show? They never called. So what I'm saying is we have to understand next year. Let's just be real clear. We know what they're not going to spend money on. So black folks should right now be saying we must be funding our our institutions that are in the states. And because they are going to be driving voter turnout.

And we know for a fact they will be putting that money on the ground in black radio, in black newspapers, in black media, on the ground game to get our folks out. Because for me and Charlemagne asked me the question yesterday on Breakfast Club, I said, he said, well, shouldn't Democrats be doing it? I said, I'm not going to wait on a party or a candidate to turn our people out when the policies have a direct impact on us. And all of these things, trust me, because this is what happened for Youngkin. Terry McCullough was an awful candidate. He shouldn't have run. OK, he should not have run. But here's the deal. He didn't lose votes. White turnout was actually higher. They were simply more energized. And so we have to be fixated on taking our numbers up 5, 10, 20, 25%.

If you look at Florida, Broward and Miami-Dade, awful numbers. I had Nikki Frieda, and I was like, yo, what you going to do about those black numbers? You cannot win Florida if your numbers in Broward County and Miami-Dade are under 60 percent. You DOA. And so this is a numbers game. And I'm going to say one thing, because you said something earlier, and most of us, again, are not looking at the data. When you mentioned voter suppression, Terrence Woodbury, we had him on before the election, and he said, we have to stop using voter suppression. I said, Terrence, why? Because all of his focus groups, his polling data, he said,

when young voters hear the phrase voter suppression, they immediately think the 1960s. He said, we use it as a catch-all. He said, but those same voters, if you say they're closing your polling locations, they're changing the hours don't lie. When black voters are told your votes will make the difference, they are more likely to vote than just saying you have to vote. So the language that we use, we have to change the language in communicating with our folk to get them to understand why they must turn out. Because next year, trust me, the right, Axios did a story. They have a working group as we speak, laying out a plan of action where they looked at everything Trump did and they said, this is how we're going to do it next time.

And they literally plan to fire several thousand government bureaucrats, workers, folks who just, of course, remember, we disproportionately govern workers. They are looking to fire them because they say, this is where we messed up last time. We're not going to mess up this time. So allowing them to get anywhere near the Oval Office will be absolutely catastrophic to black people. Now, you mentioned in the book now. So we do a lot of voter work, voter mobilization. So it's very good that you said that you told us about we need to change the term. We can't use voter suppression.

That's not resonating. It's in his data. He lays his data. So this is what we've got to do as we get ready to do our voter mobilization work. We can't use terms like voter suppression. So we'll be looking at that because these women are on the ground in the states. So we need to do what resonates with our communities. Now, let me go to another point when you're talking about the upcoming election.

You said in the book, too, you cannot separate Trump from the Republican Party. That was the stupidest thing Hillary Clinton did. That was the stupidest thing. I was like, what the hell are you doing? I'm like, he's a GOP nominee.

Because see, and Biden did the exact same thing. He kept saying that he thought everything was going to return back to normal. I was like, he's a GOP nominee. Because, see, and Bobby did the exact same thing. When he kept saying that he thought everything was going to return back to normal, I was like, what are you doing? I'm like, bro, that's the party. See, what that is, that's white Democrats still thinking they can go get them Reagan Democrats. They gone. They gone.

They ain't coming back. Then you have, again, this is what's crazy to me with the language that they use, because they still have this fallacy that, oh, if we could just connect with them, we can bring them back. You're going to have to spend so much time and money trying to get them, when you can actually spend less money and less time going after folk who are more likely to vote for you who you simply haven't touched they don't lie and so what has to happen right now and again this is where uh how our mobilization has to operate differently yes there are 501c3 organizations that are non-partisan but here's

what has to happen. We have to have individuals and organizations who right now are putting massive pressure on all levels of Democrat Party and progressive politics to say, where's our money? Right now, listen to me, not May 2024, right now. Biden campaign in 2016 was, oh my God, we have a $6 million expenditure of a $280 million they spent. That was $6 million expenditure for black targeted, black owned media. They were touting Larders in history. And I was like, y'all think I'm excited about six? And you're spending 280?

And so, and see, and here's the other thing. Don't get caught into the trap. Because folks say, what's Jamie doing? First of all, the parties have changed. There's so much money flowing in, the DNC actually has the least amount of money. So you have the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, DLC, Democratic Governance Association, but then you have all these progressive PACs. These progressive PACs ain't spending the money with us. So we need to be saying to progressive

PACs, to Emily's List, oh, and here too, right now, that we absolutely must be calling out to the carpet, climate, the environmental lobby, crazy amount of money they spend, virtually no money to black people. Okay? I called them out last year, then all of a sudden my phone started ringing, because when Mustafa Santiago Ali said, you know he's going to keep hitting y'all. Y'all might want to call him. And so we're going to be doing something soon. But the other thing is all of the pro-choice groups,

now they keep using us in all their ads. But if you follow the money, that money ain't being spent with us. And so we have to right now be calling folks out on the money because what they're going to want us to do is they're going to want us to act as political sharecroppers to do all of that work, till the soil, and go pick the same cotton, but then you ain't trying to pay. No. And let me be real clear.

In September, two political campaigns called me, because the media folks called me, and they said, we got this money from this campaign, this money from this campaign, and it was $25,000 each, and they wanted this massive media plan. I said, for $50,000? I'm telling y'all straight up, this is no lie. I'm giving y'all a quote. This is exactly what I said. They talked to my salespeople who called me, and I said, is that what they told you?

And I said, got it. I then put a text together and I sent this to both of the campaigns and I sent this to Clyburn, Beatty, Meeks, Jeffries, and about eight others. I literally said, fuck that. I will keep my black ass at home. Good luck in your campaign. Now, why did I do that? One, you playing me small.

You want me to do you on ads? You want me to sit there and cover stuff on the ground? I said, y'all, I get $20,000 for a speech. That ain't happening. And they were like, oh, my God. I said, no, that ain't happening. Not when I know for a fact. And see, understand how media works.

Sinclair Television announced in their fourth quarter they did $340 million in political advertising in all of their local TV stations. $340 million. And y'all thought I was going to accept 25. During the Biden campaign, brother, they had called us. We had no business even talking to us because he had no understanding of the media. He literally said, I can take $20,000 and give it to four black newspapers and they'd be happy. He said, we ain't them. And they said, here's $100,000.

We said, no. Then they said, here's $200,000. I said, no. Then they said, here's $200,000. I said, no. They said, final thing is final. We're doing $300,000 in advertising. That's it. I didn't answer for two weeks. Then when they said it's final, we accepted.

Then when we signed it, I then cussed them out publicly. And they got mad. I said, oh, y'all thought I was supposed to be happy. Now, why am I saying that? out publicly and they got mad i said oh y'all thought i was supposed to be happy now now now why am i saying that because that's and they literally told me if i understand what i was told i was told of the 25 25 well you get more than anybody else in black media so people have to understand so what then happens is this is what they expect us to do whether you whether you are on the ground group whether you black on media they expect us to shut up suck it up take the crumb and treat the crumb

like a meal no a crumb is a crumb i'ma call a crumb a crumb and so we have to say say this stuff in real time so i've been putting everybody on notice. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Everybody, White House playing games when it comes to getting interviews and getting FaceTime with the president. I was like, cool, but I know who y'all gonna need next year. And so you can play games with me right now. You can play through the gatekeeping,

but I'm telling you what's gonna happen next year. And I will purposely not talk about you. See, we have to learn, and that's what I'm saying now. We have to be making a level of demands now. And then, and make it clear, don't come to us with small money. Because he only won Georgia by 12,000. He barely won Arizona.

He only won Pennsylvania by a little more than 100,000. Did not win Michigan by many. The margins are going to be small in 2024. So every black vote is going to matter. And so like my man, that great financier said, an American gangster, I'm going to get that money. Because if you ain't having a money conversation, you are not having an American conversation. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, we're getting the i'm getting this i know y'all think i didn't custom out but i did i could show you the text

i sure did we believe you i sure did sometimes folk don't understand language except some other kind of language like okay gotcha we believe We believe you. We believe you. We have no problem believing that you did that. I'm telling you, follow the money. Well, Roland, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I'm getting the hook here that our time is up. What? Girl, you got two more questions.

Don't worry about Lon. Go ahead and ask your other two questions. Don't worry about him. Lon ain't running that. Go ahead and ask your two questions. We're going to take two questions from the audience. Don't worry about Lon. We ain't worried running that. Go ahead and ask your two questions. We're going to take two questions from the audience.

Does anyone in the audience have any questions they'd like to ask? Right over there. Oh, okay. Is there a microphone? Okay. Patrick Hicks, I got you. All right, here you go. So we need the mic so that the people that are watching... We are also streaming this on the Black Star Network right now. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm Catherine Hicks. I'm from Philadelphia. I'm the president of the NAACP chapter in Philadelphia. And I also own a Black publication, the Philadelphia Sunday Sun. So what you are saying is very, very important. And it resonates, especially with the elections that's coming up. So my question is for right now, I guess, you know, for the presidential election coming up, Biden is running again. Is there something that we should be doing or even looking at as far as another candidate?

Because again, you were saying that voter turnout is probably gonna be less. And if Biden is not the choice of everyone- Yes, he is. Wait, he gonna be a nominee? everyone. Yes, he is. What? He's going to be a nominee. Yes. He's going to be a nominee. Yes.

So it's going to be him. It's going to be Republican. I mean, again, barring anything health wise or anything else, as of right now, he's going to be the nominee. Marianne Williams is not going to be a nominee. Yeah. Just not. I don't know how many votes she got last time. That ain't happening. No. Yeah. But what has to be nominated yeah just not she she i don't know how many votes she got last time that ain't happening no yeah but what has to but what has to be happening though is we have to be

making a level of demands the greatest time to ask for stuff is when somebody's running right and so if the white house tells us well we did this this this the first two years we should say that was last year right what about this year so that was. That's where we have to be right now. And get me clear. Everybody does that. Every other group is doing that very same thing. I remember in Obama's reelection, when they made the parent plus loan decision, all the HBCU people, it was the stupidest thing I ever heard in my life. I was sitting with them and they purposely did not want to raise the issue. They said, well, we don't want to raise the issue because of re-election. I said, fool. That's when you raised the issue. Look what y'all doing.

And then when election was over, they were mad because they didn't get what they wanted. I'm like, because y'all didn't say nothing. So what should be happening right now, we should be, again, we should be, whatever our agenda is, whatever individual groups should be applying that pressure to him, to the White House, to Democrats in the Senate, and to them in the House as well, because the reality is they are going to all be, everyone in the House is running again in 2024. You're going to have Senate races up in 2024 as well. And so the political game is not you wait till it's over. Now, there are people out there who yell, all these fools yell tangible.

Then they say, if I don't get this, I don't get to vote. First of all, you can't get jacked. First of all, they can make a promise, but they can't do jacked unless they get elected. So if you don't vote, fool, you can't get your tangible. But the problem for many of our, many of us is we say nothing after the fact. So that's, what's also going on when the election is over. A lot of us check out as opposed to say, no, that's what you got to stay checked in.

And so that's why this group was important. The mobilization is important because too many of our groups are waiting after the fact, and then we wait for something to blow up, then go, oh, let's show up. I have been saying for years all across the country, you take the D9 for an example. At the Divine Nine, and I talked to the AKs, Eastern Regional, just a couple of weeks ago, I've said this to the alphas, to the deltas, to all of them. In every city, each fraternity and sorority should say, okay, this month, y'all going to the city council meeting, y'all going to the school board meeting, y'all going to the county commissioners meeting. Then you rotate the next month. First of all, it's nine of them. Each one of those entities only meeting 10, 11 times a year, so you're probably only going to go to one or twice. But what has to happen is we have to be using our organizational power to be able to change

the problem that we have. And let me be clear, you belong to many organizations. The fundamental problem that we have is on the political issues that we face all too often collectively, alphas, AKs, deltas, omegas, sigmas, iotas, zetas, kappas, everybody, and Eastern Star, and Prince Hall Mason and links and many organizations are quiet. This is what Dr. King said. And where do we go from here? Chaos or community? He said there are four institutions that are prime position to liberate black America. He said the Negro church, the Negro press, Negro fraternities and sororities, and Negro professional organizations.

That's what he wrote and where we go from here. Now, this is also how he unpacked that. He said, and I quote this all the time so I can pretty much do it without reading it. He said, there are still too many Negro churches that are so absorbed in a future good over yonder that they condition their members to adjust to the present evils over here. To media, too many Negro newspapers have veered away from their traditional role as protest organs agitating for social change and have turned to the sensational and the conservative in place of the subjunctive and the militant. Too many Negro social professional groups have degenerated into snobbishness and a preoccupation with frivolities and trivial activity. But the failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction

of the present and the future. And so when I look at it right now, corporate America making 50 to 60 billion dollars in commitments in the wake of George Floyd's death, And then what has happened in the last year? 36% of all DEI jobs have been wiped out. 75% of all DEI jobs are white folks, DEI jobs. And so here's the question I have for the Executive Leadership Council, which is an organization made up of corporate America. Why in the hell aren't y'all being more vocal about that $60 billion in commitment from corporate America, but y'all spend more time posting job appointments, but you're not advancing that. The point of black organizations is to organize. If we are so preoccupied with what's happening on the inside of our groups, then we ain't fighting for the advancement of Black people as a collective. So that's how we have to challenge Black organizations

to actually do more. Okay. Okay. You heard it right here. We have to challenge our organizations. We have to do that. I'm a life member of Alpha, and trust me, I got the last four presidents on speed dial. They know I ride them. Look, I call out the boule at our convention. I said, how in the hell we got, we here, I ain't got a problem. What, they want to kick me out? Knock yourself out.

I literally said to Signal Pi 5, how in the hell are we here in the Bahamas? And we got an election in November. We got all these damn parties going on and we don't have a single public policy session. And we got people sitting in the office who are running for office. Come on now. They were like, come on. I was like, I said, don't invite me next time then. But that's, that's, that's part of the deal. We, we have to be willing to challenge these groups because why do you exist? And you spend 12, 14, 16 hours on meetings? And I'm like, like, I don't know what my wife, Adele, I don't know what the hell they be meeting. They ain't got that much internal business. And the same with Alphas. I'm serious. We have to,

we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing with our organizational power that's outside of the walls of our organization. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really really bad Listen to new episodes of

Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Otherwise, all we're doing is beating a full good time.

All right. We got one more question. Where's the microphone? Who got it? Who got it? Who got it? Oh. Come on, Doc. You got to be up front and present.

You can't be walking way back there. Over there. Over there. See? Over there. Is that? Clearly, you did not grow up watching Donahue. He's like, I have no idea who Phil Donahue is.

Hello. Hello. My name is nashana kess i am the second vice president for the naacp in baltimore and i am also the bassist of the alfalfa sigma chapter sigma gamma rose sorority incorporated um so what i wanted to ask was, there's two questions. One is, I have a friend in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. She is running for a judge seated with the Court of Common Pleas. Her name is Latasha Williams. I'm sorry, anybody in Pennsylvania, please keep an eye out. She ran two years ago. One of the issues was that we did not get out and vote. Harrisburg did not get out and vote. Harrisburg did not get out and vote.

She would be the first black woman sitting on the Court of Common Pleas, but we can't get people out here to vote. Because they have no clue what the Court of Common Pleas is. Okay. So what happens in elections, again, this is where we want to say education and enlightenment. Look, the average person, black, white, they are not us. They are not well-versed in all this stuff.

They just like, we ain't got no clue. So Joe Madsen has a great phrase, you got to put it where the ghost can get it. We have to break it down in a way. So the question is, what does the court of common pleas do? And so when you're talking to folks, because, what's her name again?

Latasha Williams. Okay, so here's what happened. Folks probably going around, we should vote for Latasha Williams. They're going to say, okay, who's Latasha Williams? She's running for this. Okay, I don't know what that is. Because if you look around, those are the lowest vote totals.

What we have to say is, again, I don't know what that court does, but let's just say, so why have things changed with district attorneys? Because folks finally said, you know, the DA actually has a direct impact on mass incarceration than any judge. The DA come before the judge. So the reason you now have more progressive DAs, because we started changing the language on why you got to vote for the DA. And so for the judges, what we have to say is this is what these judges do. They deal with these cases, these cases, these cases. That's why we need to assist on the court. I guarantee they're going to look at you

and go, that's what they do? Most people have no idea. In Harris County, six years ago, or was it four years ago, there were 18 black women who were running for judicial positions. They ran as a block. The reason Republicans got rid of straight ticket voting in Texas was because Democrats in Harris County figured it out and used it against them. So I went down and we traveled all day with those 18 sisters as they were gathering to vote. But they were explaining to people what judges do. And so that's what we have to do. We have to connect what the judges do

so our people go, that's what they do? Yes. So when your child or your cousin or your church member goes before a judge, this is one of the judges. This will decide whether they go to juvenile, whether they go to prison, or whether they go to get some kind of deferred case. So we have to explain to our people what the judges do. The second thing is most important. You said she lost. I would ask, what did she lose by? Very little. That's my point. Very little. So then what has to happen, we got to go straight old school. Okay, voting numbers are public. You could literally go down and pull a precinct and to four times, that one precinct could put her over the top.

So here's this is what this is what we keep doing. I'm telling you, I travel all around the country and I see it everywhere. So I ain't picking on nobody. What we do is we go, man, we got to vote and hope they show up. I and every group that I've been a part of, I always counted votes. When I was on the board of National Association of Black Journalists, we were in a board meeting and they were trying to fight to keep in. They were like, why you ain't said nothing?

I'm like, I ain't got to say a damn thing. I got 12 votes in my pocket. Y'all can have all the conversations y'all want to. I said, I already got the votes. This is all meaningless talk. So it's counting votes. We have to stop hoping they show up, look at the data, and then go, well, if we pick up 50 here times five precincts, that's 250 votes. Look at the last one.

So if we're not looking at the data, that's 250 votes. Look at the last one. So if we're not looking at the data, that's where we're losing. And if you're spending your time in an area where they already are voting high, that's a waste of time. I'm going to go where the numbers are low and then say, and go back to what I said earlier, your

vote could be the difference between getting your sister on where you vote. And then we follow up three more times and then come election time, we then make sure they get to the polls, then the numbers change. That's old school politics is still

new school. Okay. That's one of our charges, ladies. Thank you so much. Roland Martin, let's give it up for Roland Martin, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Melanie, I'm going to turn it over to you,

but Roland will be signing books in just a moment. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. You're awesome, bro. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. You're awesome, bro. Appreciate it. Come on over, y'all! They can do it over there. That's gonna be easier. this is an iHeart podcast