#RolandMartinUnfiltered - NCBCP Leadership Institute, TX Impeachment Vote, TX Voting Changes & DEI, MN Missing Persons Office

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

5.31.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: NCBCP Leadership Institute, TX Impeachment Vote, TX Voting Changes & DEI, MN Missing Persons Office Roland at Clark Atlanta University for the launch of the NCBCP Thomas W. Dortch, Jr. Institute For Leadership. He'll speak with social justice leaders on its significance.  Plus, Roland breaks down the Texas impeachment vote and speaks with Texas State Representative Jarvis Johnson on far-right Republicans trying to change higher education.  Then, learn about Minnesota's new Office of Missing and Murdered African American Women and Girls with the state representative sponsoring the bill.  We'll remember the life and legacy of actor John Beasley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. We are live here in Atlanta talking about black politics and the future of black America for the next hour. We'll hear from our panelists assembled here on what we have to do to prepare for not only elections in 2023, but also in 2024. It is time to bring the funk on Roller Martin on the filter of the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it, whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics, with entertainment just for kicks.

He's rolling. Yeah, yeah. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah It's Uncle Roro, yo Yeah, yeah It's Rollin' Marten Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah

He's broke, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's Rollin' Marten Now I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out.

I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out.

I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. Coalition of Black Civic Participation. Put your hands together. Y'all are here. Folks from all across the country meeting here, talking about, of course, planning for our upcoming election, but also organizing and mobilizing. That's what our focus is.

Over the next hour, we'll be, of course, talking about a variety of issues. Got a number of panelists here ready to get started. But first off, Terrence Woodbury is going to kick this thing off to lay out what the data is so we can understand what really is at stake when it comes to our politics. So Terrence, take it away. Thank you so much, Roland. Thank you for having me. Give yourselves a round of applause. Thank all of you fearless leaders. Let's give Melanie Campbell a round of applause for her fearless leadership. There she is. There she is.

My name is Terrence Woodbury. I am a political scientist trained here in the AUC right at Morehouse College. I hear Morehouse in the room. Okay, okay, okay. But it's great to be back home. The AUC is home to us. This is where we sharpen our teeth. This is where I learned the rigorous, rigorous collection of data and application of that data towards our politics. I own Hitch Strategies. It is the largest minority-owned polling firm in Washington. Come on, y'all. We are recruiting and training and deploying black political scientists. I see some young people in the back of the room.

We are recruiting you. We need you. We need to change who's asking the questions to change the answers that we're getting. We are, you know, I'm going to present some data here. I'm not going to bore you, but I do want to ground us in the data. I'm not going to talk to you about my opinion. I'm going to talk to you about the opinions of the black voters that we speak to every day.

Last year, we conducted 200 focus groups. We conducted over 40 polls. That's almost every other day and at least almost every week we were polling. We keep our finger on the pulse. And so let's go to the next slide here. I'm going to walk around so I can see what's going on. This is gonna be the most words I'm gonna give you. The rest of it's gonna be data, I promise you.

What you have here is what we have identified as the challenges that we saw with black voters in 2022 and some of the strategic guidance to fix that ahead of 2024. Before I go any further, I wanna be clear here. Black voters are the consumers, right? You don't blame the consumer when they stop buying the product. You fix the product.

And so I want to be clear here. The challenges I'm talking about are not black voters' problems. These are the problems with the system, the problems in our politics that are affecting the way black voters show up. Number one, the gender and the generation gap between black voters persist. I want to be clear here because we hear a lot about the gender gap between black men and black women. We do not talk enough about the generational gap between younger black voters and older black voters. I always say black seniors

are my favorite voters in the electorate because we know they're going to vote and we know who they're going to vote for. That is not true of younger black voters. They are not always voting and when they do, they're not always voting the way that we expect them to. So what's the strategic guidance here? We need deeper investment, greater insights, targeted messaging. We must improve perceptions of messaging around economic conditions, number one. We have to change the way we talk about the economy. We have to change the way we

engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. We have to change the way we

engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. We have to change the way we engage in the economy. a lot about poverty reduction. Well not all black folks is poor and where you start and where Republicans start to specifically Donald Trump starts to make some progress is when he starts talking about wealth creation. It's a very different economic proposition. The other guidance is we have to connect social issues, progressive issues to black values.

Specifically, when I'm talking about black men, I'm talking about my daddy, who is a captain in the military, raises family, values that he holds closest, values like masculinity. It ain't all toxic. So start there. Not all masculinity is toxic. Faith, specifically Jesus Christ. This ain't blind faith. This is a faith with a name. Family, you know, patriotism. My father still cries every time he hears the national anthem. Those ain't Republican values.

Those are black values. And we have to reclaim those and position our progressive issues through black values. And we have to reclaim those and position our progressive issues through black values. Number two, black surge voters. Those are the voters that show up periodically. They show up sporadically. Black surge voters are cynical to the promises of politicians. They don't trust our promises anymore, even the ones they like. They don't believe Barack Obama is going to do what he says he's going to do. And he got a 96% approval rating. So what do we have to do? We have to change the messenger. We must become the hero of our story. We need to tell us how our votes made our lives better.

Example of that, I was in a focus group in Philadelphia where I gave them a list of all the progress that had been made. Child tax credits and climate and I mean the list goes on. And as I was going through the list, the young brother sitting across from me was getting angry. And I asked him, why are you shaking your head and sucking your teeth?

These are good things that are happening. He said, because I can't access none of this. My sister just got evicted last week. She ain't getting no child tax credits. She ain't getting no rental assistance. So before we go into 2024 and tell them all the progress we've made, if they can't access it, it's just going to piss them off. In that same focus group, though, there was a sister sitting across from that young man who said, wait, wait, wait.

Can I respond to that? Because I got that child tax credit. And during the pandemic, I lost my job. The courts were closed. I couldn't even get child support. And if it wasn't for that child tax credit that I spread across three months, I would have been evicted just like your sister. I watched him shifting. I watched him go from shaking his head to nodding his head. She convinced him. She was the messenger. That's how we tell us

how we, how our votes are making our lives better. Not a great white hope in Washington. It's because you voted that we've been able to accomplish all of these things. Number three, black surge voters feel less powerful. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about this connection between power and participation. But they feel less powerful because the last election has not resulted in the meaningful change in their lives. Well, look, Alicia Garza was just up here talking about the black policy agenda. That is something that we worked on with her. We helped build that policy agenda, but then we started tracking the progress against that agenda.

And we found that 80% of the things that black folks said that they wanted to see this administration do have either been started or completed. 80%. But 76% of black people say that their lives have not gotten better since Joe Biden became president, despite 80% of the agenda being completed. So what do we have to do? This is what we call click here messaging. This is probably the most important thing on this slide.

Click here messaging. When we needed their votes, we delivered to the palm of their hand. Click here to access your ballot. Click here to find your polling place. Click here to encourage your friends to vote. Click here to promise Joe Biden you're going to vote. Click here to make a plan to vote. Click here to promise Joe Biden you're going to vote. Click here to make a plan to vote.

Well, now they need to click here to access the millions of jobs created by the infrastructure bill. They need to click here to access applications for student loan forgiveness. Click here to see the lead pipes being replaced in your neighborhood. They need to click. This is not about a message that tells them that we're making their lives better. We have to make their lives better. Finally, defending democracy. In 2022, defending democracy was the second biggest issue that Democrats spent money on. The number one was abortion. I expect that to be the same in 2024. They are going to position this election as being on the front lines of democracy. The problem is black folks

have had mixed results with democracy. And so they don't want to just defend a thing that isn't working for them, especially young black people who have voted several times for a candidate that got the most votes and still lost. They don't want to defend that system. Simple shift here. I'm not saying stop talking about democracy, but instead of defending democracy, we got to talk about fixing democracy. Fixing democracy requires progressive small-D democratic reforms.

Abolish the electoral college, automatic voter registration, universal polling precincts. Why does it matter that I drive 40 miles from my job? Why can't I walk into any of these precincts, give them my ID, and cast my vote? This don't make sense to young people. In fact, they don't understand why they can't vote on their phone. There's nothing more secure than biometrics. I mean, you know, Republicans trying to secure elections with IDs ain't nothing more secure than biometrics in your phone. You know exactly who's casting that vote. You got fingerprints and pupils and everything else.

Okay? Universal term limits. Ooh, they don't like this one. They really don't like this one. But young people don't understand why anyone sits in office for 65 years. The world has changed, and so should the leaders that are leading it. Next slide, please. All right, let's get to the data. Next slide, please. This is the centerpiece of all of the research. Let me tell you, I'm checking myself. Centerpiece of all the research we do is this correlation. Oh, man, I'm at 10 minutes already, and I had 10 minutes. All right, so let me get three slides real quick. The centerpiece of our work. You know, a lot of pollsters ask the question about enthusiasm. We hear a lot about, you know, enthusiasm is low. Well, black folks don't always vote enthusiastically.

And just because they ain't enthusiastic don't mean that they're not voting. I had a young black man tell me in focus groups in Florida, he doesn't vote enthusiastically. Voting for him is like taking out the trash. He don't want to have to do it all the time, but if he don't do it, it starts to stink around here. That's a quote. So we changed our enthusiasm question to a power question.

Regardless of how often you vote, how much power do you believe your vote has to make a difference in your community? The higher they rate those perceptions of power, the higher their likelihood to vote. It is a direct correlation. That means we don't want to convince them to just tell us that they're going to vote, but we want to convince them that their vote can make a difference. In 2020, 73% of black folks in Georgia said they felt extremely powerful. In the same election, 70% of black folks in Georgia voted. It's also the highest black turnout anywhere in the country. So give Georgia, give yourselves a round of applause.

What's happening here needs to be replicated. Okay? But we also saw, and I'm trying to export it, trust me. What's up, Cliff? We're going to talk about that later. But we've seen that those perceptions of power drop when we're not in election time anymore. From 73%, a 30-point drop. Well, I could tell you right now, if we have a 30-point drop

in turnout from black folks, we have lost every single battleground state. And so in 2022, we start to recover some of those perceptions of power. But if we stop letting it drop, then we don't got to dig ourselves out of this hole. When we asked them why did these perceptions of power drop, they told us explicitly it was high in 2020 because they felt like they were a part of something, because they were being courted, because Stacey Abrams and Governor Kemp were both texting them every day. That's what made them feel powerful, because their teachers were talking about it, their pastors were talking about it, their mamas was talking about it. The election ended.

They stopped getting those text messages. People stopped talking about it. their mommas was talking about it. The election ended, they stopped getting those text messages. People stopped talking about it. Next slide, please. I'm gonna just skip ahead, skip that one. Okay, here we go. This is the gender and the generation gap. I'm gonna give you two more slides, then we'll go out here. These are not poll numbers.

These are actual election results from 2022. At the top there, you see the gender gap. 87% of black women voted for Republicans. 78% of black men voted. I'm sorry, 87% of black women voted for Democrats. 78% of black men voted for Democrats. That is an 18 point margin gap, 18 points. But look at the generation gap underneath there. Younger black voters

voted for Republicans at even higher rates. 21 point margin gap. Next slide please. Why is this happening? Here it is. Here's one of the reasons why. There's several. One of them are issues. This is when we ask who's better on the following issues? Democrats, Republicans, both or neither. At the top there, you see the Democrats in blue, you see Republicans in red. But look at the top. Democrats have an overwhelming advantage on all the social issues, voting rights, abortion, health care, 60, 70 point advantage over Republicans. But when you look toward the bottom there, the things that black men, providers in the household, the things that they are prioritizing, economy, inflation, those advantages begin to shrink. Next slide, please. Well, here's what happens when you look

at just black folks under the age of 50. The advantage disappears. Republicans just as good on the economy as Democrats. If I was advising Republicans how to target black voters, I would only talk to the 28% that say Republicans are better than Democrats on inflation. That's it. Let's just go get that 28%. Next slide. That's exactly what they're doing. Okay, this isn't the slide. Next slide. Next slide. All right. A part of what we have to do here is, when we talk about power, political power,

I've asked folks in focus groups, what does political power mean to you? They only describe the first one, the power to elect the people that we want, electoral power. A part of what we have to do is expand that cycle of power. Your political power ain't just about your vote. That's the beginning of the power, literally the first step, not the last. The cycle of power means after we've elected them, we get to negotiate, moving them closer to our position.

After we negotiate, we get to hold them accountable. Also called protest power. We get to stand outside that office and say, remember that thing we talked to you about? We're going to show up every day until that happens. The last one, young people really like, you get to fire their asses when they don't do it. Punitive power means we can fire them.

Throughout that cycle of power, we've got to keep talking about progress. We've got to keep giving them information. This is the game, folks. If we don't make them feel more powerful, we cannot ask them to show up and do this thing again. That was literally six of my 20 slides. So I'm going to make sure we distribute this.

Thank you all so much. All right, Terrence, great information there. We're going to go to our panelists right now. And I'm going to start with Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Cliff, we talk about this a lot on my show. I'm always talking about connecting the dots, connecting the dots. And I think one of the things that we don't do is we don't connect the dots. And that is in talking to people. Charles, sit down, man. The panel is going on. You're just walking up on the doggone stage speaking to people. I'm going to have your

wife just cut you. All right. So again, part of this deal is how do you connect the dots? Because I think when I look at those economic numbers, that 28% saying Republicans are better, that's because they're actually messaging that. If you don't explain to folk how things actually are, then if that's all I'm hearing, oh, they're better, you're bad, then I believe it. It's part, we have to learn to connect the dots. Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Roland, and thank you to this great panel. I feel like I'm at the kiddie table at Thanksgiving, like what's up? But yeah, no, we got to connect the dots.

We talk about it all the time. We call it the 365 work. You know, we got to show that black voters matter, 365. And we got to show that what we are prioritizing are our issues, our community issues. We always say if the first words out your mouth when we're doing our canvassing or doing any of our activities, if the first words out our mouths are are you registered,

then we've already failed, right? Because that shows that what we're centering is the registration, right? We're not centering their issues. We're not centering the economics. We're not centering the infrastructure, the utility bills, et cetera, et cetera. So we have to have a different conversation. People ask, what's the best way for us

to get ready for 2024? And we say, well, first, we got to deal with 2023. Like, you already jumping forward to what you have decided. School board elections, well, first, we got to deal with 2023. Like, you already jumping forward to what you have decided. School board elections, city council elections, judicial, DAs, those elections. All those elections, those local elections. And a lot of that happens in these odd number of years. There's no such thing as an off year.

So we got to be doing it each year. We got to be doing it all year round. And it's got to be centered on those issues that folks care about, not just on the candidates, not just on every two-year election cycle, but on all those issues that Terrence was just talking about. That takes time and it takes money. It takes resources. And that's what all of us have got to be fighting for, right? Because at the end of the day, money wasn't flowing last election cycle

the way it should have been flowing. If they really wanted the folks in this room to help, as Terrence says, defend democracy, improve, fix democracy, whatever you call it, they weren't making the money flow that helps that to be able to happen, to help us and the communities and the groups that we work with to make that happen. So it takes time and resources to have the kind of deep conversations that we need to be having for our communities. Because we got this crazy notion that if we just talk to our folks more, then they will show up. If we talk to our folks more, if we get more door knocks, and if those conversations are substantive about their issues and tying into, like Terrence said, how

folks can actually benefit from some of these things that they're talking about on these networks. When we do that, then our folks show up. Desmond Meade, you led that effort in Florida, and a huge, huge part of what y'all did to be successful in passing Amendment 4 was to educate folk first. As Cliff said, you can't sit here and get somebody to register unless they're educated on what the issue is and so just talk

about in putting that together how that can be replicated and we're talking about these other electoral offices because again, what was the final number of the passage number there in Florida? 65%.

65% of folks in a so-called red state voted to restore voting rights of formerly incarcerated. I mean, that was a huge issue. So just talk about the education part you had to do. Yeah, thank you so much for that, Roland. I think the other piece to that that I think needs to come into this room and stay in this room throughout this entire conference is who's the educator, right? Now, let me tell you, over the past 10 years, the biggest gains we have seen in democracy, whether it was the 1.4 million in Florida, whether it was the thousands of folks in Louisiana or North Carolina or even California, recently in New Mexico and Minnesota, have a common ingredient.

At the center of all of those movements were directly impacted people, returning citizens, right? And so we are the best educated. And so as we were going out into those communities, you know, we realized, and this was something that I kind of, like, it came to me when, you know, thinking about the civil rights era, right? When I used to hear the stories about how when mom and dad went

to vote, man, they dressed up the kids and everything, and it was like, put everybody in their Sunday's best and they went and voted, right? But then I started thinking about when you strip mom and dad of the right to vote, you kill a conversation at the dinner table, right? Now they're the same associated with it. And so the very same people who've been stripped of the right to vote are what I felt was the key ingredient in re-energizing or or or or revigorating conversation about voting and so that and they were the ones who needed to lead the message right and they was the ones who needed to actually engage individuals who were not voting

that could vote which was family members and friends. And I always, you know, sometimes my wife get mad at me when I use this terminology, but I'm talking about the Pookies and the Ray Rays, right? The ones that we don't want to talk about or we forget about or we gloss over, right? We drive past a whole bunch of Pookies and Ray Rays that we don't talk to to get right here where we at today, right? And those are the same people who have a lot of influence over people who are not voting. And so prior to the Amendment 4 thing,

one of the big things we've seen was that in gubernatorial elections, which historically was decided by 60,000 votes, you know, you had at one point, 808,000 registered African-Americans that didn't think it was important enough to go vote, right? 912,000 registered African Americans that didn't think it was important enough to go vote, right? 912,000 registered Latino Americans. So you had 1.7 million people of color who was registered that didn't even bother to go vote in an election, decided about 60,000 votes. And then

the very next cycle, that number jumped up to 1.1 million and 1.3 million respectively, right? Those folks, the majority of those folks, are related to Pookie and Ray Ray. And when they hear Pookie and Ray Ray talk about, man, my vote don't count, and the only reason I'm saying my vote don't count, it don't matter who get in the office, is because deep down inside,

I'm using this as a coping mechanism because you all have told me, as a person with a criminal history, that my voice don't matter, and I'm not a part of society Matter of fact, I'm not even good enough to be in your church right and so I Think that a common just a natural human instinct is to be a part of something bigger and we've seen that come out during the 2020 election, but I think what's what's it at this education piece is

Allowing the Pookie's and the ray-rays to be empowered right to be the educators, right? I think Tamika talked about that You know when she was up here that my son was the one who had to come in and actually carry some of that load Because these are the people who we need to get and so we did I think we did an amazing job You know, we were able to get, we're like 5.1 million people, 5.1 million people to say yes. And that was a million more people than who voted for our current governor right now.

So education works. And Marsha, on that point, you're the law is committed for civil rights under law. And he's a perfect example. I see these message boards and we're live on the show. And I see these people on social media saying That when Biden talks about naming Katonji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court they go all what that's performative

But but again, I think the mistake though is we assume everybody knows How the federal judiciary works we assume they know how these things work, and yet when I start walking folks through by saying one judge in Amarillo made a decision that affected the entire country, they go, oh hold up, one? They're not thinking that way. So again, this is where I think the education comes in. We have to take these very specific actions and show how one appointee, one judge, one Supreme Court justice, one person in the agency, and who is

the person in office who's picking those folks can have a direct impact on the lives of black folks. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think rather than focus on the elections, we need to focus on the offices and what those offices bring to the issues that people care about. And there are a lot of people who held their noses, they would say, and supported Donald Trump because they saw the prize as being the Supreme Court. And that is an office that isn't elected. Well, they saw the surprise at the Supreme Court because they knew what the Supreme Court does. A lifetime appointment by the president, right? And now we're here shaking in our boots,

waiting to see what they're going to do about the Voting Rights Act, what they're going to do about education. We already know what they did about reproductive choice, and they are feeling emboldened because we have a Congress that is dysfunctional. It always gets back to the, what does the office do? So I want to connect what you're saying to Terrence's research. And Joe Madison always says, you've got to put it where the goats can get it.

And how do you make it plain? So when you talked about Voting Rights Act, okay person hears that it's kind of like okay But what Terrence's research shows is when we say Are you pissed off they closed down your polling location? That's because the Supreme Court did this here And so again, that's that's sort of his research shows if we explain it that way then the person goes Oh, so that's what the 9 cats did with the voting rights act?

That's what they did with the voting rights act. We have to explain it sort of that way where they now understand, yeah, this is why you now have to go through all your loopholes to get a voter ID or polling location closed out, stuff along those lines. Exactly. And that's why your state keeps passing these laws that make it harder and harder to vote. And each time, each election after we jump over the barriers, they look at how we got over those barriers, and then they close off that avenue to be able to get to the ballot. And we have a Congress that isn't doing anything.

So I definitely agree with you. It's connecting what do you want to see? Who has an impact on the criminal justice system? It's the prosecutors who are elected. It's the judges who decide. You care about your school board. What is this, you know, you care about your schools. What is the school board doing?

Look at the state legislatures who have such enormous power right now that are drawing the district lines that take that are taking away our right to be able to elect a candidate of choice and so we need to really take away this just looking at elections to make to have the conversation and to talk about the offices and as was mentioned talk about all the different ways of power that we in which we engage it's not just about casting a vote that's one act of power but we really need to confront all of these offices and to continuously do so not just around when we hear about elections and someone is saying okay now it's time I'm paying attention to you we

need to take the onus upon ourselves to really confront those elected officials, put our issues before them, and make sure that they're doing the right thing. Kyrou, you were at SEIU, and when the Janus decision came down, many people in the labor movement thought that was going to be the death nail. What ended up happening was, and I was talking to Lee Saunders about this, what happened was the labor movement had to go back and figure out, we've got to change our messaging. And what ended up happening was they went back to basics,

started explaining to people what labor unions do, and what we've now seen in the aftermath of Janus is the highest approval rating of labor unions that we've now seen in the aftermath of Janus is the highest approval rating of labor unions that we haven't seen in 50 years. And so that movement had to go back and reassess, because what he basically said was the labor movement got lazy and had to go back and do the basic blocking, tackling to walk people through. And now you're seeing an increase in people now trying to organize and mobilize with unions, whether it's Starbucks and Walmart, other. So just talk about how folks out here, how we have to think about the same thing.

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It's so nostalgic. First, I want to say thank you, Brother Martin, for that. Thank you to the panel. Thank you, Melanie, for having me in this space. But I was on that Janus team, just to go back. When that went down, we formed an internal team to figure out how we were going to reshape the narrative around unions and how we were going to rethink our work and rethink our strategies and approach to the electoral side, to the union side, to worker rights, just a revamp. I remember sitting in this room with the leaders of SEIU explaining to them some of the shifts

that we're seeing on the civic engagement side, on the electoral side, in politics, and how we needed to sort of move with the times and move with the current obstacles. And it ended up being revelational and revolutionary. I think we really opened our scope as to how we viewed a voter. A voter is simply a human, a multifaceted human being who cares about a lot of things, and it includes labor unions. But it is not totally all about ballot boxes and unions. It's about explaining to people in plain language how unions and electoral politics make your life better.

And it's saying it in words that they actually care about and understand, and it's not transactional rhetoric. It's actually community-empower community empowering game-changing statistics and facts and you're listening to the people that you're talking to you go to the door with these scripts you go to the door with this script about why unions are great and why politics is great and you lose the person because they're not seeing great they're seeing struggles they're seeing transactional they're seeing people parachute into their community

snatch their vote and then ghost them and then show up two to four hours later with another sales pitch that's what it looks like it's just simply a sales pitch and it's a transaction so when we sat down in that room, we created an entire department, a whole department that was dedicated to reframing, reshaping, and understanding how to do the work. Y.T., you were at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and that's what I'm about to say. Some say some folk may say dang he really went there and I get I hear this a whole lot from a from a lot of folk we are very good at saying black and brown black and brown but it's a lot of black folks who are saying

I'm looking at latino numbers where in the hell are the brown folks showing up for us? So part of this also is going to have to be, when we're out messaging, we're going to have to say, if we're talking to black folks, black and black, because we have to understand the numbers are there. They are seeing, and a lot of black folks, especially younger voters, don't want to hear black and brown because they're saying, no, no, what about black? So speak to how organizers must be understanding

the language, if you will, the love language, if you will, of these voters because if you come to some folk with black and brown, they're going to immediately turn you off by saying they don't give a damn about us, how we may have to readjust our messaging to absolutely center and focus black, black, black. Yeah, we have to be overly intentional about being culturally competent, too, around when we're talking to black people around their issues and those are not people of color issues, because the issues that black people

face are completely different and are seen differently than our counterparts. And to your point, Brolin, when they show up to the polls, they don't always vote with us, right? It takes a lot of efforts from a lot of the groups on this ground, I mean, on this panel today to kind of bring them along. And so when you're talking to black and brown folk, well, black folks in particular, you should be talking about the issues that they care about. Those are the kitchen table issues. And we also, when we're talking to black people, we often mention that there's not infrastructure in some of the places that they reside. That's not true. In black communities around the country, churches have

been the infrastructure. Those barbershops, those, the hairdresser. If I trust you with my hair, I believe and I have a level of trust with you, right? And so when we're talking to them, You trust somebody with your hair, you trust their ass.

Yes. Very true. So I think to the point that has been made today on the panel, we make sure that we get an appropriate messenger. And it doesn't look like somebody else that may have the resources or another organization to come in and talk to us about our issue. It needs to be another black person. But we also need to constantly educate people on what has happened and the impact. I know we talked about this a little briefly today, but ARPA funds were dispersed around the country. Those directly impacted people that were going through hardship.

And COVID is gone, but the hardships are still there. And black people are facing them each and every day. And so to the message about accountability, this is a way where we hold the elected officials accountable and say, hey, like, rent assistance is very much still needed. The eviction diversion plans are still needed. Legal assistance is still needed. And so that's how you bring some of those issues that are affecting black people each and every day to the forefront and also holding elected officials to make sure that they're meeting them in this moment and making sure they're addressing their issues. And then also the multicultural coalition, which is what the leadership conference stands on. I have over 240 national coalition members that bring the two that,

hey, y'all may not be the best messenger when you're talking to black people. Y'all should focus on this constituency and being honest about that as a coalition so that we can have the biggest impact and turn people wild and make sure we have a message that resonates with them from their own community. Abdul, I'm going to hit you with this one here. Y'all can clap. Go ahead. Y'all go ahead. We definitely want to see your reaction to this one here. When I was battling a whole bunch of these crazy ADOS folk, they were complaining about black immigrants.

Until I hit them with the data, 10% of black folks based upon census are folks who are black immigrants. And so, even when we're having this conversation, when we're talking about how we're going to reach black voters, we also have to understand that if we are, how do we message to black immigrants? Actually, the largest increase in the black population, if you look at the data, are black immigrants. And I don't think that's actually being talked about a lot in a lot of circles on how do you message to them because you have to message to black immigrants differently

than you do a brother who, or sister from Alabama, or a father who's from North Carolina or South Carolina. Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you, Roland. Thank you, Melanie, for having me. I don't know how you knew my father was Nigerian, but you did. I don't know. Abdul Dos my father was Nigerian, but you did. I don't know. Abdul

Dosunmu. Dosunmu. Dosunmu. I just took a wild ass guess that question was for you, Abdul. And I did Google your bio. I'm like, he ain't got no mention of his daddy in here or nothing. But go ahead. I'm sorry. Dad is Nigerian, mine was African American, but you're absolutely right. You know, I think it's important for us to understand the ways in which the strategy in many ways for the conservative right has been a strategy of division, right? The entire effort has been about dividing and conquering our coalition, right?

Whether we're talking about the Black-Brown coalition or whether we're talking about the coalition among black people in the United States. And so it's important that we understand the power of coalitional politics, the power of bringing our communities together. And it's important for us to understand when we talk about black immigrants,

Stokely Carmichael, right? Malcolm X. I mean, so many who have contributed to our movement. Harry Belafonte, Cicely Tyson, Sidney Poitier. Absolutely. But part of that conversation that we have to have is a very real conversation about the ways in which anti-blackness itself operates both here in the United States and around the world, right? And the ways in which many blackblackness itself operates both here in the United States and around the world, right? And the ways in which many black immigrants have been convinced that the only way to get ahead is to distance themselves from African American communities, right?

Which means also we have to understand how that was exported to those places and not just, oh, that's how they think. No, that's how they were taught. Taught, absolutely. And it all comes back to education, which was your initial point, right? The work we do at the Young Black Lawyers Organizing Coalition is education work, right? Because what we understand in the landscape of voter suppression is that they can take a lot from you, but they cannot legislate away your knowledge. They cannot rule away your education and your knowledge

and your understanding of these issues. And so you're absolutely right. Part of the work we have to do is to make sure we're educating our communities across the board about the strategies of the division, the tactics of division, and making sure that we're not falling prey to those strategies. Virginia, you are president and CEO

of the League of Women Voters, and the work that you have had to do is expand a whole lot of the white folks in the League of Women Voters to understand this thing has to be much broader. The reason I'm saying that, look, my parents worked on many campaigns, and historically when you think of League of Women Voters, you are not thinking about black women. And so part of that, and now what we're seeing seeing and I've been saying this now for a decade is a lot of young white voters who are now waking up realizing they coming after you too. Texas trying to remove early voting locations from college campuses with 8,000 or more students.

We're seeing this happen and so when we talk about this attack on democracy, attack on voting, we're now seeing there's a direct attack on young white voters and not just African-American. Talk about the work that you've done to try to expand the horizons of folks, and legal women voters, to say they coming after us too, and you're nonpartisan.

Thanks, Roland. It's good to see you again. ROLAND MARTINEZ- Absolutely. Thank you, Melanie. I don't know if she's in the room or not. I just wanted to know, I think today and tomorrow, the dates that Melanie selected were very profound, given the fact that 102 years ago,

it's the anniversary of the Tulsa massacre and the destruction of Black Wall Street. And so for these dates to be chosen to build Black political power, I think are very, very critical. So thank you for that as well, Melanie. I think it was really important. I've been with the League for five years. I come out of the Latino and immigrant rights space. When I came to the League, our average demographic was 70-year-old white women. That was our average. And so when I came in, I made a commitment and

said the only way I will do this work is if we center racial equity and center black liberation in this work, because I believe that the only way that we can move forward together as a country is if we do it together. So I think that that was one thing that was important. And so we transformed all of the systems within our organization. We have refused recognition and also removed recognition from some leagues who were not living up to our DEI policy. We've had to do things that were really hard in our organization through systems and policies. I believe that you can't create change unless you're willing to walk the walk and talk the talk, and that means changing systems and organizations from the inside out.

So that's really where we focused our time and energy. The other thing I think when it comes to working with black-led organizations and in the black community, we're not here to be on top. We have to be on tap and as a resource. And there are a lot of people who aren't willing to follow black folks lead. But I think historically, if you just look at history, right, and be honest,

we know that black folks have been the moral compass of this country for a very long time. And so for us to lean in in this work, that's why anytime Mel asked me to come, I come. But oftentimes, I'm the only one who looks like me, who's showing up. And that's okay. I'll be here time and time again because also for me, this is greater than a master's degree.

I have more opportunity to learn and to contribute and to help build towards the country and the promise that America has, right? We know that it has never lived up to. And so that's really how we've tried to transition this organization and really leaning it in a different way. We also just recently finalized member rights and responsibilities so that we can remove individual members if we need to, if they're not leaning up. And it's not to become exclusionary, but it's also to be able to say that there are standards and values that there are lots of but it's also to be able to say that there are standards and values that there are lots of organizations, and I don't want to say that there aren't

a ton of organizations who are historic organizations, who talk a lot about the work but aren't willing to change themselves internally. And it's not easy work. I will be the first one to say that it is not easy work. But at the same time, how can you say that you're standing up for these values, for civil rights, for voting rights, for the things that we want in this country, if you're not willing to own the bad history of your organization and to make those changes internally? And so those are the things that we've been focused on. Trey, 2022 could have

been really, really bad for black folks. And a lot of people say, oh, it was the boots on the ground. It was the organizing. It was the mobilization. But it also were the legal fights that were actually happening. NAACP, LDF, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Transforming Justice Coalition, on and on and on. Just explain to folks, we talk about what we're now facing, literally what is happening in the court system

and what y'all are having to contend with on a daily basis. Sure, and thank you for that question, Roland, and thank you all for having me on the panel. You know, one of the principles that I subscribe to is that politics is the expression of economic interest, right? And many people like to talk about the court says in the judicial system as like a political system. And the ultimate reality is that what we have seen historically as a trend, particularly in the last decade, but over the course of the last decade is that the courts have become more and more political.

They've become more and more partisan. So that's what LDF is up against right now. We're up against a judicial system that during the Civil Rights era was key to the strategy of protecting black people, protecting black political power, making sure that black people's lives were not upended, right, and actually judicially killed. Where now we're faced with a court

that have created its own doctrine, such as qualified immunity, right, and extrajudicially killed. Where now we're faced with a court that have created its own doctrine, such as qualified immunity, right, that says that police are allowed to do the type of extrajudicial murders and get away with it with impunity, right? And so that is a piece of what we're up against. Or a North Carolina court that literally flips to the GOP and reverses a decision the court made just six

months, what, three months ago. Exactly, exactly. So we're contending with people that really do not value our lives. They do not value the lives of black people, the lives of people of color, the lives of marginalized people inside of this country, right? And so now inside of the courts, we are actively saying that we know that particularly the federal judiciary will not save us, right? It just is just a fact. It will not save us. It has become hyper-political, in some cases hyper-partisan. And so the next frontier, one, is for us to be more involved in the appointment process. I tell people all the time that Trump, and I really credit Mitch McConnell for it, that Mitch McConnell's strategy was brilliant. He seized the moment and the opportunity to seed the federal bench

with people who will not give, excuse my language, a damn about black people, about people of color, about marginalized people. And they purposely were 35 to 45 years old. Exactly. Purposely for generations, as Martin is saying. Generations. And so now what we have to contend with is to be more involved inside of these political appointees processes

that traditionally we may not have had to think about, at least on the forefront of our minds, to ensure that when issues come back to the courts, because oftentimes they do come right back to the courts, right? It doesn't matter what laws, policies, things that we typically pass, they oftentimes get challenged, whether it's by us, whether it's by our oppositions, they come back to the courts as the final deciding factor. And the courts now are saying that we do not have

to have a civil rights background. Many of the appointees do not have to have a civil rights background, a racial justice background. They don't have to care about formerly incarcerated people, right? They don't have to care about young LGBTQ queer folks. And so now we're inside of this position where we're forced to fight on a battleground

that is not level, right? So how do we get to that piece of having a level battleground on that side? And I'll say just really quickly, last thing that I'll say is that we have found that we have to employ a multitude of strategy, right? The courts and the judicial system is only one piece of the strategy, right? We have to, when we talk about black political power, we have to think about secretaries of states. We have to think about the people who will actually litigate this as our opposition. We have to now take the battle to the state. The states will be the next frontier.

We have to think about passing voter rights acts, not on a federal level, but being able to say that each state must have to have a voter rights act so that we can pressure the federal government to enact one, one that is meaningful, one that has the pre-clearance section inside of it that was gutted by the Shelby decision, one that will say that if you have a history of being racially discriminatory, if you have a history of drawing lines that dilute black political power, you will have to seek approval before you can move forward on enacting any laws. That has to be the next

battle for us. So it's always good when a panelist like segues appropriately to the next person. Billy, you're the media past president, national caucus of black state legislators. He just talked about what the next frontier is. We're actually seeing it right now. We're seeing the Supreme Court say that we don't rule on political gerrymand seeing it right now. We're seeing the Supreme Court say we don't rule on political gerrymandering. And so now we're seeing political gerrymandering run amok on the state level. We're seeing a lot of black state legislators, power just simply being just shrunk left and right. Are those state legislators, are they also saying that they think so much attention is put on Congress, the House and the Senate, that in many ways we're ignoring how critical those state rep and state Senate races are?

You know, I'm so glad that you've segued to this point. You've raised this issue. also raised with the Biden administration for a while now in that everything that is important to our existence is trying to be shifted to the states. Women's health care, gun rights, even the ultimate decision as to who wins elections are being decided, and I was on a roll, are being decided by state legislators. And so we must get engaged with that process. And even, you know, who your congressperson is, is being decided by state legislators. And they are doing this simply because the overwhelming majority of state legislative chambers are being run by conservatives, Republicans. So we

need to really get engaged with that process. You know I used to ask quite a bit of folks and I'm not going to ask you to do it here. How many of you think that your representative, your state legislator, is doing okay? Or you just hear, you know, he's the kind of legislator that you only hear from during election time. Ask the question, do they know their state representative? I know half of them don't. No, no, ask the question. How many of you know who your state legislator is?

I mean, we're going to test somebody and ask. How many of you think that they only show up around election time? Now, you people who are raising your hands, you are telling on yourself. Because the reality is it's a participatory process. When I ask conservatives, how many of you think your legislator just shows up during election time? You know what they say? My legislator is pretty responsive, meaning that they understand that they have an issue. They don't sit on the sidelines and wait for that person to come to their church and come around. They contact their legislator and say, this issue is important to me and you need to address it.

There's nothing, no money, no lobbyists, no issue. More important to someone who is there because of being elected, there's nothing more important than you coming up to them and says, hey, my name is Billy Mitchell. I live in your district. I can vote for you, and this issue is important to me. There's nothing more powerful than that. So that's the kind of mindset that we have to bring to the table so that we can change what's going on in the state legislators. I will tell you, thank God for the people like Helen Butler out there. She's one of those that are out there making sure that folks are voting in our state like they are voting nowhere else. Now, let me tell you, Georgia is a fantastic—and Roland, give me the sign.

Georgia is a phenomenal place. According to the census, from 2010 to 2020, the last census assessment, one million new people moved to Georgia. Ninety percent of them were people of color, most of them black folks. The census suggests that if you are a black person in this country and you are moving to another state, the state you are most likely moving to is Georgia. And it's by far. So we need to continue to cradle, to take that power that we have and make certain that we continue to go and vote as we do because the state is really where it's at.

There's no question about it. That do because the state is where really really where it's at there's no question about it that's where the power is uh that's where we can certainly make a difference uh the quickest as well all right i know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time have you ever had to shoot your gun sometimes the answer is yes but there's a company dedicated 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.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, we got about six minutes left, so I'm going to do this here, and then I'm going to start on this end. We're going to go all the way down, and that is I want each of you in 30 seconds,

let's see how good you are, if there's one thing, there's one thing that you want organizers to do leaving here, what is that one thing? Oh, you don't want to go first? He went, Jesus. Okay. There's more than one thing.

I want you to get engaged in the process no matter what. You know, the best election advice I have ever been given in my life was an older gentleman who said, look at the voting participation process as public transportation. You know, if there's not a bus that is going exactly where you want to go, you take the bus that goes as close to where you want to go. And it's only by doing that over and over and over again where we will get to where we need to be.

Courts, courts, courts. I want us to understand that the issues we're facing right now this summer, we're expecting a not so great decision on affirmative action, a not so great decision on the Voting Rights Act. I want us to understand that that attack did not happen, did not start yesterday. It started 40 years ago. They started building power for this moment 40 years ago by pipelining conservative legal talent for the courts we've got to do the same for civil rights legal talent and that's why the young black lawyers organizing coalition is out here good

job 31 seconds yes I got to stop watching everybody go so the one thing I want you to take away is, yes, I want you to make sure you prioritize your issue and vote, but I also want you to participate. And so what I mean by that is we always see across the country poll worker shortages. You can be a part of the process and get paid to do it and build in that pipeline of leadership throughout participating and providing more trust and integrity into our elections by being a part of the process. Love it. So I just want folks, young people in particular, to remember that we are contending for governing power. That means that while we're engaging inside of the struggle for Black freedom and power, we must control the narrative. It is important that you tell your own stories. If you don't, somebody else will tell it for you. We are building the record, not just in the courts, but in the court of public opinion as well.

So you actually stole mine about poll worker recruitment, but I will say that the poll worker recruitment piece, everybody needs to be focused on recruiting poll workers. We have seen poll workers and elections officials leave in droves because they are fearful of violence and my parents filling that gap is My parents yeah people the who's filling that gaps moms for liberty who are the the main group that has been Recruiting individuals to on the book bands. They've formed over 200,000 people in the last two years 200,000 white supremacists in the last two years who are all white women who have gone, they are filling up the election worker slots as well now. So we have to focus on making sure that our folks are at the polls and that they are the

ones because otherwise those are the same people who are going to contest the elections, cast doubt on ballots and everything else. So please recruit poll workers. And that's how Moms for Liberty took over 10 of the 14 largest school districts in South Carolina and fired a host of black superintendents, including the superintendent of the year, because they showed up at those school board elections. Desmond. Well, I was thinking long and hard about this, and I've just got to be real with y'all.

I mean, when you look across the table from me, a lot of familiar faces, people, you know. I mean, I'm not going to talk to y'all about voting. Y'all show up to vote. What I'm going to ask you to do is step outside your comfort zone, right? It's time for us to step outside our comfort zone and bring some fresh blood into this discussion, right?

We got to talk to Shaniqua. We got to talk to Pookie and Ray Ray. And if we don't talk to them, let me tell you something, somebody else will. And one thing I know is that if we go, the hardest thing for me as a parent to do is to talk to my kids about sex. I knew I'd rather be the one to talk to them

than let the internet teach them about sex. So let's step outside our comfort zone because that's the only way that I think we're going to reverse the trend. Yeah, so many things that popped to mind. But what I'll say is I have been given a charge internally with my teams and leaders within SEIU and organizers broadly to think about an intentional southern organizing and power building strategy short term and long term there are tremendous opportunities in the south for building power not only investing in politics but communities infrastructure and thinking about what immediate and longer term power building in the south looks like

and whatever electoral gains are made in the South, an intense elected official accountability program needs to follow. When they get in, the job begins. It's not over when we get them in like we do every cycle. What I've been thinking about is what John Witherspoon would say. We need to coordinate.

We all have our courts. We are marching in the streets. We have our public communications experts. We have to bring all of these strategies and connect the dots and do the work together. I'm going to say three things. The first one ain't got nothing to do with the question. I'm going to just say five words. Keep your eyes on Mississippi.

That's all I'm going to say. Something's going on. Something's going on in Mississippi. Second, to answer the question, what would I say to organizers? A lot of people think that a sign of a good organizer is how well you talk. I've always believed the mark of a great organizer is how well you talk. I've always believed the

mark of a great organizer is how well you listen. And so listen to our people, listen to our partners, listen. And the last thing I'm gonna say is this, y'all this work is hard. We have got to find the space for some black joy in this work. We've got to sustain ourselves or else we're not going to be able to do this and get to the mountaintop. Black love, black joy. We got to include black culture because culture will eat strategy for breakfast. And our history shows us that when we do that, when we stand in our faith and black love and black joy and black culture, our history shows us there ain't nothing we can't do. I will close this out this way.

And I was listening to the previous panel when they were talking about all the commitments that have been made after George Floyd's death and how a lot of these companies are falling back on that. We have to do a much better job of utilizing black-owned media. It's very easy to say we're doing these things, but it's called mass media for a reason. What the right has successfully done is they have funded the conservative media infrastructure. I'm not talking even Fox News. I'm talking about their digital operations. I mean, they have completely funded that.

And so part of that whole deal is how they're driving that messaging. The reality is, even now, so we launched September 4, 2018, we still are the only daily black news show in this country. And I can tell you if it wasn't for our followers, our followers they've contributed and look we don't send them swag, we don't send them hats, bumper stickers or whatever, they've contributed two million dollars. So I'm talking about five dollars, ten dollars, that's what they've done. And we talk about organizations that have actually supported us. Melanie's group, they've been with us we talk about organizations that have actually supported us. Melanie's group, they've been with us from day one.

Black Voters Matter have been with us from day one. They've been funding this Lawrence Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The key is you have to get messaging out. And so you should be connecting with those black newspapers, black radio, who are those producers, because that's how we're going to reach folks. A lot of times we're waiting on mainstream to show up.

They ain't showing up. But I can tell you this, I know this for a fact. There are things that we discuss on our show, and there are people who come on the show who I see later on CNN and MSNBC because their producers are watching. And so we have to utilize our black media infrastructure because that's actually how we got here. So if it wasn't for Chicago Defender, Tri-State Defender,

if it wasn't for Pittsburgh Curry, if it wasn't for Black Radio, then you don't even have a civil rights movement. So we have to absolutely do that. The second thing is this here. All of you, all of you organizers, hold up your phones. Hold your phones up. Now, some of y'all, we've taken selfies. Y'all ain't got no clue how to use some of these phones. But I'm about to help y'all out. You are literally holding in your hand a communication device to communicate with the world. When you have events, live stream your events on Facebook, on YouTube.

Now let me explain what then happens. When you live stream your events, I can't be every place. We then can grab your live stream, broadcast something on the show because we have the video. You can take that same video, strip the video out, strip the audio off, and now you can send the audio out as well. And so a lot of folks have events and they are only talking to the people in the room. Use the technology that's at your disposal. And again, people complain about, man, media didn't show up. You literally can create your own media.

And then when that thing is now spread across Twitter, across Facebook, Instagram, and fan base on the platforms, we now can expand it. And so I encourage folks to do this all the time. If you're door knocking, live stream that as well, because again, use the technology. Because, trust me, people are watching. And when they see it, they go, oh, I didn't realize they were doing that.

I had a white woman who came on the show with the Poor People's Campaign. And she was one of the organizers. And when she finished, she says, Roland, I got to do one more thing. She said, I didn't know the Poor People's Campaign existed. She said, I'm a white woman in West Virginia. I happen to see your show on YouTube. And I immediately called the Poor People's Campaign in West Virginia, and she's now one of the three co-chairs of the

state of West Virginia. So a white woman was watching my show in West Virginia, and that's how she got with the Poor People's Campaign. That shows you people are paying attention and watching. Use the media to actually drive your messaging. Give it up for our panel, please. Melody's going to come up and close us out. Black Star Network, we're going to commercial break,

and then I'll be live in two more minutes. I'll be back on Roland Martin on the Black Star Network. Melody, come on up. All right, Ro. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Was this not power? Yes. You had to be the one to do this panel,

because we were going to split it up. And it was at the.. Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not be like 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 Whitefield. 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 when 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. Weigh it to $100,000.

We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your 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 RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. This is Judge Matthews.

What's going on, everybody? It's your boy, Mack Wilde. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore, and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. Eee! Să ne urmăm. Să facem o p în următoarea mea rețetă. Thank you. Să ne urmăm în următoarea mea rețetă. Thank you. All right, folks, welcome back. Roland Martin on the filter here in Atlanta. I want to introduce my panel. They join me right now to run Walker founder of Context Media out of Atlanta. A. Scott Bolden, attorney out of Washington, D.C.

Also, Rebecca Carruthers, vice president, Fair Election Center. She's also out of D.C. as well. Rebecca, I want to start with you. You just listened to this for the past hour in terms of a variety of folks talking about what is needed to inform voters, to educate voters, to reach them. That data that Terrence Woodbury presented really is captivating. And it shows, look, that there's a lot of work that has to be done to really get black voters focused on this election or a variety of elections. Yeah, I thought his presentation was great. In fact, I was able to see his full presentation here in D.C. about a month ago. And he goes into a lot of deeper context of just the variety of types of Black voters.

His particular presentation was a sampling of 1,500 Black voters, Black folks across the country. And I think right now he's looking to increase funding so he can actually redo his study, but across 15,000 Black folks so he can really dig deeper. And what it shows, we are not a monolith. You have to talk to us. You can't just wait until the last 30, 60 days of an election, but you have to actually talk to us and engage with us about issues. Tagline simply isn't enough, but you actually have to connect with folks with the real world impacts of legislation instead of just assuming that they should just understand build back better means infrastructure. No, you have to talk about

the infrastructure that's happened in their community and has in turn made their community better. Hey, Scott, the reality is these are the people who are in this room. These are the people who are going to be on the ground in florida north carolina south carolina georgia mississippi alabama i mean all of the folks here i mean in this room these are the folks they're the ones who do the work do the door knocking and so uh if people really need to understand that the only way this thing is going to happen is if these folks... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Are successful. They're the reason why Warnock won in Georgia.

Yeah, it's a, you know, the other thing about that panel that we watched was the work is never ending. It's never over. And for those of us born in the 60s and seeing the progress Black America has made politically and economically, it's just a painful reminder that it's not over. But that 28 percent of young people who are more likely to vote Democrat, S-E-R, Republican, they believe the parties are the same and the leadership is the same on the economy,

we got to go get that 28 percent. Everybody in that room want to go look for that 28 percent and really talk to them and educate them, because it's depressing knowing if you're not in the know, if you're not an informed voter, it's depressing with how uninformed voters and young people, how much energy and effort it takes to bring them to a clear understanding on what's at stake here and why Democrats and independents are so much better for this country than Republicans and their slogans and their far-right extremist political violence infused sometimes, how detrimental they are to the country. And so that was my takeaway from the panel.

Great discussion, but just really a lot of work to be done. Absolutely. And Toron, the thing that I think is also critically important, when we talk about that 28 percent, and we see this in the data, and that is you cannot make assumptions today in 2023 about black voters based upon 2013, 2003, based upon 1993. What has to happen is that is progressive groups, Democrats, you name it, are going to have to be far more aggressive at tailoring messaging. And this sort of this blanket strategy, it doesn't work anymore.

There's going to have to be micro-targeting of folks. Those African-Americans who are concerned about economics, those African-Americans who are concerned about housing, those African-Americans who are concerned about education. It's just not going to be, oh, we just have this sort of one way of reaching African-American voters. No, it has to be a lot more micro-targeting. You know, Roland, I am so, so happy to finally see conversations being had like this

among organizers and people who are going to be going out knocking on doors, because this is something that has been said for the longest on the ground level, that people who are going to work every day, people who are poor and working-class black people, you have to find messaging, and you have to talk to these people respectfully, and you have to talk to them about issues that concern them. A lot of times

these people who come into cities and come into towns when there's an election are people who are not connected to the culture. They're not connected to the people in each individual city. And you have to reach people where they are and you have to talk to them in ways that they can respond to, which is the bread and butter things that they deal with every single day as they go throughout their lives. And I'm just really happy to hear people on the bread and butter things that they deal with every single day as they go throughout their lives. And I'm just really happy to hear people on the ground and people who are working and organizing start to have these conversations about how do we talk to people in a respectful way, not a condescending way, that really resonates with these people.

And I'm glad to see this finally. Well, I think that the reason this gathering is so different is because these are the local people. What you're talking about when these campaigns hire a campaign director or they bring in staff, they're not from there. They're from other parts of the country. Whereas folks here in Florida, they know Florida. They know those states. They know those neighborhoods, those cities.

They know those blocks and those streets. And so that's why we thought it was important to be here to live stream a lot of these different events, because what we are about to see take place between now and next year in local races, congressional races, we're about to see a wholesale attack on black folks. And I wrote my book, White Fear. It's there. We're seeing it. It's in real, it's in real terms. And so we're going to go to break. We come back. We're going to talk with the Texas state representative. They're dealing with that right now. Folks, this thing is real. And so we have no time for African-Americans to play games because what Republicans are largely doing, they are specifically targeting black people and black advancement, and they absolutely want to roll back many of the successes. So we'll continue this conversation right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. We'll be on YouTube. Hit

that like button, folks. Please, we certainly appreciate that. We also want you to support us in what we do. You matter. Download the Black Star Network app, Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, your dollars matter. Look, folks, your dollars make it possible for us to be here to broadcast

these type of events. Nobody else in black-owned media is doing this. Let me say, nobody else. All those so-called new black media folks, a lot of them are real quiet when it comes to this hardcore organizing. Senior checking money orders, Appeal Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash Shop, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal, or Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered. Zelle, rolling at rollingsmartin.com, rolling at rollingmartinunfiltered.com. We'll be back live at Atlanta. Up next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes. The poetess, Alicia Morris, is in the house. She's an emcee, a recording artist artist a hip-hop historian broadcast journalist and an entrepreneur the advantages was i got to do an album and hear my music on the radio and travel

around the country with a major label i was um labeled mace with tupac and marky mark and the funky bunch welcome the poetess right here on The Frequency in the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not. 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. 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 fear. Next on The Black Taper with me, Greg Carr. We welcome a towering intellect, activist, master theorist, prolific author, and unstoppable firebrand for change. The one and only Dr. Errol Henderson joins us to talk about his new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Theorized, Cultural Revolution in the Black Power Era. And this is what's going on in so much of academia and in some movement circles. It's an anti-Black national.

It's an hour of power that you don't want to miss. That's right here on The Black Table on the Black Star Network. That was a pivotal, pivotal time. I remember Kevin Hart telling me that. He's like, man, what you doing, man? You got to stay on stage. And I was like, yeah, well, you know, I'm thinking, I'm good.

And he was absolutely right. What show was the other time? This was one-on-one. Got it. During that time. So you're doing one-on-one, going great. You're making money. You're like.

I'm like, I don't need to leave. I don't need to leave from Wednesday, Thursday to Sunday. I just didn't want to do that. You know, it was just like, I'm going to stay here. Oh, I didn't want to finish work Friday, fly out, go do a gig Saturday, Sunday. I was like, I don't want to finish work Friday, fly out, go do a gig Saturday, Sunday. I was like, I don't have to do that. And I lost a little bit of that hunger that I had in New York.

I would hit all the clubs and run around. You know, sometimes me and Chappelle or me and this one or that one, we'd go to the Comedy Cellar at one in the morning. I mean, that was our life. We loved it. You know, you do two shows in Manhattan, go to Brooklyn, leave Brooklyn, go to Queens, go to Jersey. And I kind of just, I got complacent. I was like, I got this money. I'm good.

I don't need to go. I don't need to go chase that. Because that money wasn't at the same level that I was making. But what I was missing was that training. Yes. Was that, was that. And it wasn't the money. It was the money. You know, it was that, that training. Yes. Was that, was that. And it wasn't the money. It was the money.

You know, it was that, that's what I needed. 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. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit,

man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hi, this is Essence Atkins. Hey, I'm Deon Cole from Blackist. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. All right, folks, welcome back to Atlanta course, the upcoming elections this year in 2024. One of the places where we're seeing just craziness happen is in Texas.

Massive changes to voting. We're seeing literally Republicans in that state are specifically attacking black people and Democrats in Harris County. Joining us right now is State Representative Jarvis Johnson. Representative Johnson, glad to have you back on the show. I don't think people, if we want to talk about how Republicans are abusing their power, there are 254 counties in Texas. These Republicans literally passed a bill, and the governor's going to sign it into law, where they can take over and order new elections in one county in texas harris county the largest county the bluest county

the largest concentration of black voters in the state that's right that's exactly what they want to do because as they know so goes harris county so goes so so goes Texas. So the idea was to, we're going to attack it. And they specifically passed a bill that said it was applicable only to 3.5 million people and above. So that only left Harris County. So they passed the bill specifically to attack the voting process, because that's exactly what they want to do is to overturn elections, to do damage and certainly send a message. And of course, now it's going to be Dallas County, it's going to be Austin, it's next going to be San Antonio and El Paso. They're going to continue this process because they realize they can do it. And so unfortunately, the longer legislating,

they're continuing to move the goalposts each time when they lose elections. Instead of changing their platform, instead of meeting the needs of the people, they just simply change the rules. And again, we're not talking about them saying, hey, here, we could allow the Secretary of State to order new elections in all counties. No, it is specifically Harris County. They have been ticked off. People don't realize they got rid of a straight ticket of voting in Texas because they were angry

that Democrats were winning in Harris County. So they outlawed straight ticket voting. That was, I think, 2017, 18. Then all of a sudden they were angry with Harris County when they had drive-through voting. So all of the innovative ways they allow folks to vote during COVID. And so, and not only that, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, was so nasty and despicable to Harris County when, and I forgot the name of the hurricane, but when that federal funding came in, he literally held back a billion dollars to Harris County. Republicans in Texas literally are trying to bleed the county dry because they have rejected Republicans. Well, the fact that they did they reject Republicans or did they elect people that were more like-minded or that

people listened to them. And so when you saw the judges and how you saw the black girl magic with all of the black females that were elected countywide to be on the bench, when you see mayor and when you see county commissioners. So we're speaking to the people. And as I said, instead of speaking to the people, they simply want to move the goalposts. People are moving away from the Republican Party. But the Republicans, while they're in power, are trying to keep the power, grab it, change the rules, make rules applicable only to them. And they justify it by saying, oh, well, Harris County ran out of paper at 1% of its voting polls. Well, the paper was only gone for 15 minutes.

Nobody wanted to change the laws when black people had to stand in line for six hours to vote. And when there was a complaint about that, when they took away straight ticket voting, because we have so many judges in county positions and bonds and things like that. So yeah, it was going to be long to vote. And so they continue to put these obstacles in place simply to make it difficult to vote so that people get tired of why I want to go vote. Republicans make it difficult to vote. And that's why Texas is the only state and is the hardest state to vote. And that's why voter participation is always so low. And that is by design, because Republicans understand they cannot win when people show up to vote because they're going to vote against their hateful rhetoric. They're going to vote against their horrible legislation because it

just doesn't work for the people of Texas any longer. So how do you counter that? Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the governor's mansion. And look, you've got political gerrymandering going on. And so, you know, what is it going to take for Democrats to stop this vicious assault on democracy? This is an assault on African-Americans in Texas. Well, brother, you are in Atlanta and you guys are addressing just that. You just in your last segment talked about the need for us to be able to have better messaging so that we can get people to the polls. We're going to have to start being certainly more unapologetic. I'm not going to advocate that we go storm capitals. I'm not going to advocate

that we go, you know, defecate on on on floors and in in buildings to make a point. But we will have to start standing tall and standing strong. Unfortunately, there aren't enough moderate Republicans that want to make sense. So we're gonna at some point have to, I don't wanna say pick up arms, brother, but at some point we're gonna have to start fighting

for our right to vote. We're gonna have to start defending our right to vote. And unfortunately, it's not happening. But I truly believe through and continually doing what they're doing by changing the rules and changing the laws and doing the things that they're doing, people are seeing through it and people are making that change. I. Y will see a big change um um because I think people a conservative effort. Te caucus will put forth its

sure that we're reaching of Texas because we do un the largest population of country right here and we can make a a real substantive change to get rid of this Republican party that continues to destroy Texas. I'm going to say this the one thing there are two things that Republicans have done this session for the last, fo they have attacked local Harris County to try to o

and they've expelled two That tells you that they' they had to get rid of th their members, rape one, their staff and then you general who was given a p and 20 articles of impeachment and a whole long laundry list of things that he has done wrong uh and so these things are inevitable and it's all coming to life and people are seeing we just have to stay on message to make sure that we continue to let the people know this type of

party this type of politics cannot w certainly can't work in t only way that we're goin ourselves is by getting o type of harmful hateful l body that wants to overlo desires of the people and are asking for. They're come constantly. They're even ignoring their own people and pandering to a very minority

of people in this country that are that want to overturn this country and make it white again and only white. Representative Jarvis Johnson, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Appreciate you, brother. Keep up the good work. Thank you, sir. Well, Scott, I want to start with you. Here's something that really jumps out. In the last election, 2022, even with Beto O'Rourke on the ballot, 75% of Texans under the age of 30 did not vote. If you want to talk about how do you change the fortunes, under the age of 30 did not vote.

If you want to talk about how do you change the fortunes, you've got to have a Democratic Party that is coming up with candidates and a message and a turnout machine as getting those folks out. You can't beat back these old white conservative Republicans who vote in large numbers if you're not turning out young voters. Yeah, the panelists you have in the program behind you that's based out of Georgia, many of them based out of Georgia, they need to move those operations or build an organization in Texas, because otherwise the elections matter. Results of the elections matter. And Texas and Florida, Democrats are just getting killed down there. And, you know,

there's a sense, I'm a former party chair for D.C., when you lose and lose over time, the DNC drives up the money that they're giving you. And then there's this kind of sense of hopelessness that you're kind of just kind of flailing in the wind as an organization, because the Republicans are just kicking your ass, basically. But you see, you can't give up. That's the time to build out the organization, go door to door, and get people to vote. You had a statistic when Gillum was, Andrew Gillum was running in Florida for governor. He could have won, had just something like 10% more black folks voted in Miami-Dade County and Broward County. He used to have a charter that you used a couple years back. And you could do that in every other jurisdiction, including Texas. I mean,

it doesn't take a whole lot. We just need black people and we're reaching them and what have you, but you just need black people to make it a priority and commit to the commitment of voting. And we just don't have, we've got the message, but we just don't have the implementation. And I'm really tired of talking about it because all black people got to do is get up and go vote. It's that simple. Well, but it's not just African-Americans, Rebecca. Again, when I say 75 percent, it wasn't 75 percent of young black Texans. That was all young voters.

Scott makes a great point when he talks about money drying up. But look, here's one of the things that happened when Obama was president. Many people thought because you had a competitive primary in Texas, a competitive primary in Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, that you were going to see this increase in attention and focus. Well, it didn't happen. What happened was Obama would fly into Texas, have massive fundraisers, raise millions of dollars in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, and then fly back out.

What you have to have is you've got to keep that money in state. What is absolutely needed, you've got to have, obviously from a political party perspective, you've got to have a strong infrastructure in Florida, in Texas, in these places. But also, going back to the black point where Scott was raising, this is where we are going to have to recognize, hey, what is our power? Louisiana, a third of that state is black. Yet folks are not turning out. We have to be we have to be saying, how do we fund our own political infrastructure? That's not for me real clear here. That's not for the benefit of the Democratic Party, but for the benefit of black people, which actually might mean voting Democratic to keep Republicans from passing bills that greatly impact and

hurt us. So I want to provide some context here. So even with you referencing, I think it was you're referencing the 2008 primary in Texas and some of that voter turnout. If that's what you're referencing between Obama and Hillary Clinton, a couple of things to point out about what happened in 2008. That was the year that Texas did their two-step, where they did a caucus, and then they also did a primary election.

And many of the voters were very confused and didn't know which one did they show up at. Do they show up at both? What counts? What what doesn't count so i want to provide that context but also to scott's point the two steps still goes on but what happened was there was i mean i remember being on the set of cnn that night and my parents called me the voting location, the voting location at the elementary school. They told me that cars, even for the Texas two-step cars were part, they were, they were parked on the side of the freeway, which was half a mile away. So the point I'm making is there was this, this is what Texas Democrats thought. They were like, oh my God, we had such massive enthusiasm. They thought that was going to be

this big restructuring of the party in the state. What happened was Obama barely came to the state, took the money, didn't build infrastructure. So what I'm talking about is infrastructure. You cannot win unless you build infrastructure. So what I'm talking about is infrastructure. You cannot win unless you build infrastructure. Yes. So I'm going to also say this in taking off my hat as vice president of Fair Elections Center, but talk about, you know, the 20 years prior when I've done a lot of political work and a lot of partisan work. And you're right. State parties do have to do a better job. National parties, county parties have to do a better job with infrastructure. If we're talking, we were talking even Florida as an example. Florida is a state that's very confusing to

Democrat voters or even infrequent Democrat voters because you have the state party, you have the county party, you hav that's in each of the cou the democrat women's uh, committee. And so you lia different layers of democ and becomes quite confus out where the funding go,

get supported or where do volunteers or like a casual person who might want to get a part of the process on the Democratic side of Florida. So Florida has its uniqueness. And when you take a candidate like Gillum in 2018, he has to be able to work with all four of those layers of the various party apparatus. That's before you even get to the national party trying to participate in Florida. So I will say context matters. But finally, my biggest point I want to make is I'm not going to just blame black voters and say black voters don't want to show up. Even in Louisiana, where Louisiana is one-third black, understanding just because the population

is one-third black or voting age population doesn't mean that they're eligible to vote. We could look at Tennessee as an example where one out of five voting age black folks in Tennessee are ineligible to vote because of prior felony conviction. So there's other things that are also going on that makes it harder for blacks to be able to turn out to vote. The thing, though, to run that's happening in Louisiana, it literally is what you heard the pound describe. Folks have checked out when Desmond Desmond Meade talked about some 800,000 African-Americans. I think he said 900,000 or a million Latinos simply just not voting in Florida. That's what we've seen in Louisiana. Gary Chambers, when he ran for the U.S. Senate, he actually showed those particular

numbers, how even in early voting, it was like 28 and 30 and 32 percent, like total electorate. In many of the places in Louisiana, they weren't even hitting 50 percent. When he and I talked, what we talked about was you did not, what you did not have in Louisiana is what you have in Georgia. You have third party organizations who are on the ground, who are mobilizing and organizing. You heard Cliff Albright talk about what they're being doing in Mississippi. They saw what happened when Mike Espy lost by 65,000 votes to Cindy Hyde Smith in 2018 for the United States Senate to fill the expired term of Thad Cochran. And guess what?

It was more than 100,000 black people who were eligible to vote in Mississippi, but who did not vote. And so if we're talking about how do we slow down, how do we win elections, how do we change what Republicans are doing, we have to say, you know what? We cannot depend on a party. win elections? How do we change what Republicans are doing? We have to say, you know what? We cannot depend on a party. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

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

really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives this is

kind of star-studded a little bit man we got uh ricky williams nfl player hasman trophy winner it's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne from brothers osborne We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. podcast. We have to then say, how do we fund our own infrastructure that's for the benefit of us putting the people who we want in political power? And so the opportunities are sitting there. We simply got to do it. You know, first of all, I want to say that the scenario that the honorable gentleman from Texas laid out is horrific. What that sounds like is almost like what happened at the end of Reconstruction when Hayes pulled the federal troops out of the South and the Ku Klux Klan started resurging, started filling in political positions and basically creating militias to either completely disenfranchise black voters or just or kill them outright now to your point that you just made about um elections and the

fact that a lot of people check out of them we have to start looking at elections from a pants from a standpoint of pulling out these old hidebound ideas of people getting hit with dogs and water hoses and stuff like that we know that. But people who are young and who are trying to understand the way politics works in the present day, frankly, they're tired of it. And you can't really blame them for being tired of it. They've had three or four generations of hearing church hymns and seeing MLK's

slogans and speeches and everything. You have to go to where the people are, like the panel said earlier that you were in Atlanta talking about. You have to go where they are. You have to find out what they're passionate about, what their everyday concerns are, and show them how voting is going to affect their daily lives. You can't scare people into voting anymore. You can't bully people into voting anymore. You have to tell them what they have at stake. And you have to be willing to listen to what their concerns are instead of condescending to them and telling

them you need to vote because of this. People who go through these things every day know what they're dealing with, and they can tell you as well, and then you can craft your messaging that way. Now, what I do want to ask is, as far as the situation in Texas, my question is, how come the National Party isn't on the ground and putting that message in everybody's face nationwide to contribute to helping them build an infrastructure? Because that is horrific. What the gentleman laid out is horrific. That's voter disenfranchisement. That's voter intimidation. And that flies directly in the face of the Voting Rights Act. So how come they're not on the ground on top of that?

Well, or why is the Department of Justice suing Texas as a result? Harris, I can tell you this. Harris County officials have made it clear they are going to sue the state of Texas once this bill is signed into law. But you're absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that should be fought. Not sure why the Department of Justice has not been far more aggressive when it comes to going after these these sort of cases where they said they would. So we'll actually see what happens. So we'll hit the DOJ, see what they say. Got to come. We got to go to break. We come back. We'll tell you about a new initiative in Minnesota when it comes to missing African-Americans. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. 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. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it when 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, raise $100,000. We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your 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. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how big a role does fear play in your life? Your relationship to it and how to deal with it can be the difference between living a healthy life, a balanced life, or a miserable one.

Whenever the power of fear comes along, you need to put yourself in that holding pattern and breathe, examine. Find out if there's something that your survival instinct requires you to either fight or take flight. Facing your fears and making them work for you instead of against you. That's all next on A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. That's Kim Whitley. Yo, what's up? It's your boy Ice Cube.

Hey, yo, peace, world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Rolander Martin Unfiltered. Deja Johnson has been missing from Minneapolis since February 18th. The 16-year-old is 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 150 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about Deja Johnson is urged to call the Brooklyn Park Minnesota Police Department at 6126733, 6126733, focus spoke.

Speaking of Minnesota, they're launching the nation's first office of missing and murdered African American women and girls joining us right now as they represent their Ruth Richardson to talk about this particular new office so a route. Glad to have you here. and girls joining us right now as they represent Ruth Richardson to talk about this particular

new office. So Ruth, glad to have you here. How did this come about? You know, this really came about as a result of some really devastating stories. We were hearing from a number of families who had loved ones go missing. And they talked a lot about the fact that they had to conduct their own investigations and they weren't getting the media attention or the law enforcement support that they needed. And it was really those family stories that set the groundwork for us to start this work in Minnesota. So I'm looking at the stats. So, black women and girls make up 7% of the population, but 40% of all domestic violence cases? Yeah, there are so many disturbing statistics when we think about this office for missing and murdered black women and girls. In Minnesota, black women are

less than 8% of the population, but they make up 40% of the reported domestic violence cases. And I would note that those are the reported cases, so it's likely even higher when you take into account the cases that are not reported. We also know that in Minnesota, black women are three times more likely to be killed by homicide as well. And it's really startling that we don't even know the full number of black women and girls who are missing in Minnesota or across the nation. Nationally, the estimates are anywhere between 64,000 and 75,000. So exactly what is this office going to do? So the office is going to do a number of things. One, it's going to be a support for families that are facing cold cases. In the last two years, cold cases related to homicides involving black women have increased 89%.

So when you think about that increase in cold cases, and also recognizing that for missing person cases, cases involving black women and girls stay open four times longer than other cases. So being able to have a support for families to be able to have a bridge to law enforcement and the media to help to resolve cold cases is going to be an important component of the office. The office is also going to be focused on prevention efforts, and there will be funding that will be granted out through the office to community-based organizations that are working and deeply connected within community around youth issues and also to address issues related to domestic violence,

intimate partner violence, and also ensuring that there's support around addressing human trafficking, both labor and sexual exploitation. All right, Representative Ruth Richardson, we appreciate it, Thanks a lot. Thank you. Toe Run, we're seeing how black legislators are using their power to do things in California.

Senator Bradford is putting forth a bill that would basically create an amber alert for black and brown girls. I mean, look, I mean, if we talk about disparity, look, either you do something about the disparity or we just keep talking about it. This is great what they're doing in Minnesota, trying to address the problem. That's just for creating

this initiative, but it's really, it's almost kind of sad that she even has to create that initiative because we all know if a little blonde girl goes missing, the whole world is going to know about it. You're going to see

updates every five minutes on CNN and major media. My question is, and what's interesting to me is, I don't understand how you can put one child's life and give that more priority over another child's life. A child is a child and a missing child is a missing child. And they deserve to have every resource that's available to find these children and but i you know it's just it's sad it's sad but i'm glad that she's doing this i just wish it wasn't necessary but rebecca i mean it's the reality of being black in america it's no it's no different frankly uh when you have to have other initiatives that that center us because frankly, white supremacy says that black lives actually don't matter.

Yeah, and what's unfortunate is that there are folks within our own black communities who internalize it, and they view that as well. You know, like hearing the number of 40 percent of domestic violence in Minnesota is black. I mean, that was a very disturbing number to hear. And I would have wanted to ask the representative, is it just I would definitely want to delve more into that to understand the disproportionality behind it. Is it that in the white communities in Minnesota that it goes underreported? Or is this a, you know, a clear statistic that black, I just, I got questions about that. And so that's a question I would definitely want to learn more about. Hey, hey, Scott, again, I think, yeah, go ahead.

No, go right ahead with your question. I can give you, I can give our panelists some answers. Having been a former sex crimes prosecutor and having worked with hotel chains against human trafficking, the racism makes this even worse because half the time in major urban centers or even middle-sized cities, you can't get the police to even take a report if it's a young black woman or boy. They presume they're prostitutes or they ran away from home or whatever goes along with their perception of young black girls and young black boys growing up in poor black communities. you can't even get them reported. Every week, every day, you have missing reports of young children.

I bet you 80 to 90% of them are black girls on your report on this very show. And so it gets worse in the sense that you can't even get the police to take a report and the families have to go out and do stuff on their own. And so what's happening in Minnesota, I had a question for the state legislature is, okay, how are you going to work with the police? Because the black families are still going to call the police first. If they don't take a report down, is there going to be a mechanism for them to talk to this new agency? Or is this just going to be another layer of bureaucracy

that makes the problem worse versus making it better? But the racism is the root of these kids not even being acknowledged as missing because of racism. But Scott, my question is, if the statistic that 40 percent of domestic violence victims in Minnesota are black, that means it is being reported. So my question is, why is that number so high, considering that the black population in Minnesota is much lower? So that's the question that I'm trying to figure out here. Well, there are probably all kinds of socioeconomic and health-related issues as to why that number is so high.

But we know domestic violence exists all around this country. The question is, what does the government do? What is their social and political and business obligation to the police and state prosecutors and judges to reduce the domestic violence, right? Law enforcement comes in after the crime is being committed. You've heard me say this before, that the paradigm for law enforcement ought to be preventing crime, not solving crime. Once you've committed a crime against me or my family or property, I'm violated, right?

To be honest with you, it'd be nice if you caught the people and prosecuted them, but I'm still violated. I've still lost my child. I've still lost my child. I've still lost my wife. I've still been violated in some way. And so a lot of this has to do with how law enforcement not only looks at black people, but how they do their job, which is why this alternative agency is important, but it's got to have some authority in interacting with the police to not only reduce domestic violence, right, but more importantly, identifying young black children who are missing, who may never be found, and yet and still, the numbers go up,

and we sit there and scratch our head on what's happening. We don't even know the full number of young black girls or black boys that are missing because the police don't keep accurate records of it because they think they're just some negro children who ran off to get away from their parents or to go sell their bodies. And it's just, it's rooted in racism. Indeed. All right, folks, hold tight one second. No, you have to go. I still appreciate you joining us right here on today's show. We come back. Our Tech Talk segment, we'll talk to the owner of a black travel app. We'll tell you all about it

when we come back. Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network, broadcasting live from Atlanta. Back in a moment. I'm Faraiji Muhammad, live from LA, and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me. We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's The Culture, weekdays at 3, only on the 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 RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered.

Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. My name is Charlie Wilson. Hi, I'm Sally Richardson-Whitfield. And I'm Dodger Whitfield. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, 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 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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, folks. One of the biggest increases of folks traveling are African-Americans. And there's a new app called Melanin on the Map. My next guest actually launched this particular app to help folks.

He offered them travel tips as they are traveling abroad. Ashley McDonough, she's joining us right now. Ashley, glad to have you on the show. Joining us from Los Angeles. And so what happened here? Were you going somewhere and you couldn't find enough good fun stuff for black folks? And you're like, there's got to be a way to fix this. Yes, precisely. That is exactly what happened. You know, I am an avid traveler. I've been traveling my whole life. I'm

first generation American. And when I was traveling to these different places, I just felt that we needed more. We needed a platform, a community. And, you know, that's where Melon on the Map came to play. And so what areas do you cover in terms of is it U.S.-based, is it Caribbean, or is it all over? Yeah, so it's worldwide. I am U.S. based. I mean, kind of, because I'm traveling always. But we are worldwide.

We travel internationally, domestically. We kind of do a number of things, mainly, of course, creating these experiences for other like-minded travel lovers of color, but also showing them how to monetize travel, so internationally as well. And when you say monetize travel, what do you mean? Yeah, so we show the everyday travel consumer how to not just be a consumer, but actually make money from the trillion-dollar industry. So we show people how to build brands, show them how to create group trips, retreats, show them how to become travel agents, whatever makes sense to them in their own individual niche.

Gotcha. All right. I got some other questions, but let's go to my panel. Rebecca, you first. Thank you so much for being on the show tonight. So I'm looking to book a trip to Montana because it's one of the four states I haven't been to yet so is this an app for me um to put I yes yes I've been to uh to all but like last four or five states so yeah I got to get to Montana um get to uh big sky country so my question is is this app for me to plan that trip? Or is this app for me if I'm trying to be like a travelpreneur and try to, you know, focus on making money while traveling? Yes. So the beauty of Melanin on the map is it's both.

You know, you could book your own Montana trip and monetize that experience. But you can also join a community and we could also just book it for you. You know, it's really kind of up to you. We have an agency of over 500 travel agents who do specialize in just that booking experiences for you if you don't necessarily want to go that travelpreneur route. All right. Scott. Okay. So I want to plan a golf trip to Curacao, right? Yes.

And I want to go to your app. And other than going to your app, what's the next thing I do if I have no experience planning the trip, but me and my buddies want to go play golf in some exotic place? Yes. Tell me what I do after calling you or contacting the app. First of all, you need to go get you a golf coach first.

I've got golf clothes, brother. I'm a 10 handicap. You just don't know. Don't start rolling. You've been on good behavior. I want to talk to the guest. I'm sorry. I want to talk to the guest. Ma'am, I want to know about your app and I want to argue with Roland.

What's the next thing I do? The very first thing you do is you know where you're trying to go, you know what you're trying to curate, which is great. You got the hard part out the way. Then we connect you with a certified travel agent. So in your case, you would want to book a trip. So you know where you want to go and you have all the logistics. Now somebody really helps you and walks you through what that experience would look like for you.

Do you want excursions? Do you want champagne upon arrival? Do you want an ocean view room? You know, whatever to customize your experience. Roland, let me get one quick one here, just one quick one, right? So if I go to Curacao, if I go to Turks and Caicos or even the Bahamas, right? How do I know what I don't know if I'm choosing a hotel or things to do? I have no frame of reference. And so how do I make sure I have the best travel experience if I don't know anything about other than reading Yelp? Right, right.

So we, I mean, that's a common concern for a lot of travelers, especially first-time travelers. So that's how we like to connect with group specialists and actual travel booking specialists at that destination. So, you know, if you've never been to Turks or Curacao or wherever, now we're able to connect you with someone on the grounds. They know exactly where the stores are. They know exactly what your excursion should be. And they kind of walk you through that experience. So you're not really left high and dry, especially if you have no knowledge of that location. Thank you.

Well Scott look cute in handicap. But on the scene see that right there Scott you see that right there. That's a real handicap right there. That's a real handicap. No, no, no. Why are you bragging? You see that top left? Yeah, I see it. U-S-G-A-G-H-I-N. That means it's a certified U.S. Golf Association golf handicap. Do you always? No, I'm just, I'm just letting you know, a Kappa has a 10 handicap, an Alpha has a 5.4.

That's a damn good handicap for both of us. You know, the average handicap is much higher. Nah. Oh, God. Then again, you are a Kappa, so therefore, that's a natural handicap. All right. Let me apologize to your guests. Forget that, you are a Kappa, so therefore that's a natural handicap. All right. Let me apologize to your guests. You can't do that.

It is a show. So, all right. So you have Melanin on the map. How many folks have already downloaded your app? Hmm. We were at 20,000 plus downloads. We have a full community of over 50,000 people. So our full community we

talk to every day, that's that community. And then we have actual 500 plus agents who are looking to actually make money on that travel side as well. So we have a little bit of community in all different parts. All right, Ashley. Well, congratulations with that. Mild on the map, folks. Y'all check it out and we appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks a lot. Thank you for having me. All right. Thanks a bunch.

Folks, that is it for us. Let me thank my guests, my panelists. Well, first of all, I'll thank one of them. I mean, I tolerate Scott, you know, but I'll, you know, I've just, you know, I mean, no, I said, no, I said, I said, I said, I tolerate you. And the only reason I tolerate you because I'm like your wife. She's she's really she's wonderful. We pray for her all the time.

All the time. We pray for her. It's okay. Y'all, Scott is like a broke clock. He's nice at least twice a day. So he did hook me up. When the Houston Rockets. Hold on, Scott.

I'm about to give you some credit. So when the Houston Rockets came to town, y'all know I don't care about the Washington Wizards. And so I said I would watch the game. So I was able to use Scott's ticket. So I mean, he's good for something. So I appreciate that. I gave you

floor seats. And you didn't even think I'm publicly thank you when you first said I'm publicly. I didn't thank you. Thank you. First of all, I thank you when you first did them. Thank you, Rebecca. I am. Look at me.

I am publicly. Thank you, Scott. I am publicly acknowledging. No. I'm publicly acknowledging. Thank you. Thank you. Let me say it again.

Erica, thank you for providing. He didn't even get it out. No, I just. Scott. I just said. I just said, Erica Bolden, thank you so you for providing. I didn't even get it out. No, I just said, I just said, Erica Bolden, thank you so much for providing the tickets for me to go see the Rockets.

See? So, you should take credit for me thanking Erica. She didn't even pay for the tickets. What are you talking about? That was very funny, Scott. I'm not saying, tell your wife I appreciate it. Yeah, I will.

I'll be sure to pass that on. All right. You know she watching. All right, y'all. I got to go. Hey, we're going to be live streaming some of the stuff here tomorrow from Atlanta, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. They, of course, lay out their action plans and we'll be streaming some stuff.

Other stuff will be actually off-the-record conversations. So we appreciate the work that they're doing. And so I am here, and so we appreciate that. So go check out the live stream. And, folks, don't forget to support us in what we do. Download the Blackstone Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. And, of course, support us by joining our Bring the Funk fan club.

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Holla! Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Black crowd. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller.

I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scape. 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,

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