#RolandMartinUnfiltered - No Charges in Marquis Rivera Case, Remembering Hydeia Broadbent, Houthi Rebels, HBCU Figure Skating

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

2.21.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: No Charges in Marquis Rivera Case, Remembering Hydeia Broadbent, Houthi Rebels, HBCU Figure Skating A Missouri family and community are outraged that the cops who killed a black man having a mental health crisis will not be charged with his death. The Senior Breaking News Reporter from the Kansas City Defender is here to tell us about the Marquis Rivera case.  Her story put her at the forefront of HIV-AIDS awareness at age 11. Tonight, we remember Hydeia Broadbent, who died Tuesday at 39. Rae Lewis-Thornton, an Emmy Award Winning AIDS Activist, will join us to talk about their friendship and what it's like living with HIV. President Job Biden says $1.2 billion in loans are forgiven for more than 150,000 students as part of the Biden administration's SAVE plan.  Counterterrorism Expert and author Malcolm Nance will stop by to update us on the recent Houthi rebel attack, the Russia-Ukraine aid package, and the latest in the Isreal-Hamas War.  And Howard University is debuting the first-ever HBCU figure-staking team this weekend. Watch #BlackStarNetwork streaming 24/7  Amazon Fire TV / Amazon News, Prime Video, Freevee + Plex.tv Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. I'm Robert Patel sitting in for Roland Martin on Roland Martin Under Filter. Here's what's coming up, streaming live on the Black Star Network. A Missouri family and community were outraged that a cop who killed a black man having a mental health crisis will not be charged with his death. The senior breaking news reporter for the Kansas City Defender is here to tell us

about Marquise Rivera and his case. Also, her story put her at the forefront of the HIV AIDS awareness movement only at the age of 11 years old. Tonight, we remember Hydea Broadbent, who died Tuesday at the age of 39. Ray Lewis Thornton and Emmy Award-winning AIDS activists will join us to talk about their friendship and what it's like living with HIV AIDS.

Also, President Biden announced another $1.2 billion in student loans being forgiven for over 150,000 students as part of Biden administration's SAVE plan. We'll talk about what that means to African-American communities and the black middle class going forward. Many people have delayed much of their lives because of student loans. This is a fresh start for many people who are highly educated but also who were previously highly in depth. Also counterterrorism expert and author Malcolm Nance will stop by to update us on the recent Houthi rebel attacks in

the Red Sea as well as the Russo-Ukrainian aid package and the latest on the Israeli Hamas war. Also, Howard University is debuting the first ever HBCU figure skating team this weekend. It's time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Let's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks.

He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's rolling, Martin. Rolling with rolling now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Roland Martin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Roland Martin now.

Martin. On August 4, 2023, in Columbia, Missouri, officers were dispatched to a black man who was in a mental health crisis. Marquise Rivera told the officers he was thinking of self-harm. We have body cam image of exactly what took place at the time. A lot going on. What can I do to help with that? Just let me do what I got to do. Just let you do what you got to do.

What you mean? Having some bad thoughts? Well, what are you thinking about, man? What do you mean, should I tell him I'm fine? So you're having suicidal thoughts? Okay. So you haven't thought of suicidal thoughts? Instead of help, Revere was shot and killed after several pleas for help. Revere's family says his kneecap was blown off before he was shot in the heart. They also said his body lay outside for hours.

The officers involved in the shooting will not face any charges related to Revere's death. This case is causing community outrage. Joining us now from Kansas City, Missouri, is Zeleny Hull, the senior breaking news reporter at Kansas City Defender, who has been covering this story from the beginning. So with this story, thanks so much for joining us. What is the police justification for not charging the officers? I don't think that the justification has been

released. It was after a six-month investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and they just concluded, along with the county clerk, excuse me, the county prosecutor, Benjamin Miller, that charges would not be filed. They did have in a report that Marquise Rivera fired at officers. That claim has been unsubstantiated, as well as the family has voiced that based on the body cam footage that they have, they do not show any evidence of Marquise Rivera firing at the officers. And with that, we see from the video that there doesn't appear to be, at least on camera, him firing the officers. But even if he did, this is clearly a mental health episode. Is there a different standard for Black people going through mental health episodes versus any other member of the

community? Not that we're aware of. And that is the concern of the family, was the response of the officers not responding properly to a mental health crisis. And I think it speaks to a widespread issue of just how we should be responding to mental health crisis in the first place and whether or not police officers, at least just alone, should be dispatched to address such issues. And now in several states and jurisdictions around the country, we have seen efforts being made to require that there be a mental health expert dispatch to a police for situations along this line. Was there any effort made in the shooting of Mr. Rivera to have a mental health expert or somebody who had experience dealing

with these situations, as opposed to officers alone, to be able to respond in a better method than these officers did? No. Based off of what the family recounted on their now-viral TikTok videos and Instagram videos, what was mentioned was the police officer, the one that's actually speaking to Marquise in that video, he did at one point get Marquise to provide him with a contact of Marquise's ex-girlfriend. And on that phone call that the officer made to the girlfriend, you can hear the police officer state and tell the girlfriend that he had enough information to get Marquis to what they have a 96-hour institution or 96-hour evaluation. So he did at least inform the girlfriend that he would attempt to

or had enough information to get him admitted. But that never happened. And so what protocols were supposed to take place when there's a mental health episode of this nature where there may be a person who's armed who may be a danger? What protocols are in place to stop these from ending in a fatal experience, as we saw with Mr. Rivera? I'm not sure if there's any full protocol that the police or Columbia police has in place. The only thing that they do have in place is they do have a protocol that just calls for any police-involved shooting to be evaluated. But from my knowledge, there's no protocol as to how to respond to a mental health crisis. And that, again, speaks to the bigger issue of whether or not police should be involved

in handling those situations. The family said that Marquise was shot in the kneecap and then shot through the heart in this case. Have the police explained why, after the first shot would have incapacitated him, shooting him in the kneecap, why they felt the need to continue shooting at him? There's been no explanation other than they just will not be charged based off of the family's account. I cannot assume why that was done. From what I understand from the family, the shots, sitting in kneecap, did disable him. So I don't know why the shot to the heart was

necessary or if there's been any explanation provided to the family. It seems that this doorway of the local police has been closed. Are there any other institutions or organizations that the family will be reaching out to to potentially try to find justice, whether it be the Federal Department of Justice or other agencies? As of right now, they certainly seek to sue. I don't know that they've engaged any counsel at this time, but they do have a GoFundMe page to raise money, as they did state that they intend to sue and seek further advice and to seek justice for Marquise. So they're at the beginning stages of that. You talk about seeking justice for Marquise, and one thing that I always find is that these individuals who are victims of police violence often end up only being defined by their interaction with police and only being

defined by their unfortunate connection with police violence. Can you tell us a little bit about Marquis? Who was he and what the family is doing to try to bring justice to him? I know you mentioned the civil suit, but are there other efforts that the family is doing to try to bring justice to him? I know you mentioned the civil suit, but are there other efforts that the family is doing to help us remember exactly who he was outside of his interaction with police? I think right now their concern is just raising the awareness for this,

to bring awareness not only to Marquis, but to maybe mental health and how we respond to it. From what I gather watching the videos that went viral, the videos of his sister, Katiana Edwards, and his cousin, Janae, he was a family, loved by family, adorned, and seemed like a pretty nice guy. But there's not much that I can speak to him yet. We are in contact with Katiana Edwards, and we do plan to

schedule some time to meet with her. So hopefully we'll get some more information and can speak more about Marquise outside of his interaction with the police. Are there any planned reforms that the police department is going to be making to prevent this from happening going forward? It seems that if you don't change anything, then the next time there's a mental health episode involving a young African-American male, this will be the same result. What changes can be made to police protocols to stop this from being the end result

of their interactions? The police haven't made many mentions of protocol. I think it's on us as reporters, as media to put pressure on them to do so. As I mentioned, this was also investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. This is the same agency that investigated, you know, the murder of Michael Johnson, who was shot and killed by police in 2001, and they found that the shooting was justified. I think it just takes a pressure and us to pressure them to take accountability and to create some type of reform around how to respond to these situations.

And, you know, it seems that Missouri is often connected to these sorts of shootings. Is there any effort on the state level to pass new legislation that would require things such as a mental health expert to be at the scene of instances of this nature, or any other pending legislation that the voters can get behind to stop these things from happening? That is something I'd have to look into to see. As I said, I'm not currently aware of any, but it is something I think worth, if not, if it's not already out there, certainly worth drafting up and looking more into. And just kind of before we run out of time here, just going forward, you mentioned the need for the community to be involved. We get really riled up whenever there's a situation like this.

A young man loses his life at the hands of police, but often we miss out on the follow-through. From the experience you've had covering these cases, what does the community need to do to make sure this time it actually results in long-term changes, both to police policy and potentially to city and state-related legislation? Well, it's a long solution. I think it's a multi-layered answer, and I think the answer is just remaining consistent with keeping our pressure on, and I think also providing more of a community solutions, but that's things that we have to develop within our community, provide alternatives to policing, focus more on more of a restorative justice

that doesn't just look at the problem, but look at the root of the problem, what's causing the problems. But again, that's a multilayered answer. And it's just the answer to that is to remain consistent and don't get fatigued at trying to resolve and search for solutions. All right. Well, we're lucky to have reporters like you that are able to look into these and bring these issues to national attention. What we saw for generations of these cases died in the darkness. And it's important for us to have reporters such

as yourself there to bring national spotlight to these situations and bring the stories of people like Mr. Revere to the national audience. Ms. Hall, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate you taking time out to speak with us. We'll be back after the break. Thank you so much. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.

We'll be right back. You heard why we're marching, and it's really a launch. It's not even a march. We're launching a 42-week campaign. March the 2nd at 10 o'clock in Raleigh and 33 other state capitals and the District of Columbia. This is a historic move to mobilize the most powerful untapped block of voters in this country. Poor and low wealth voters who make up 87 million votes. And it's never been tried before.

Never been tried before in history. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business,

taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 man. 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. The same time, the same message, same focus. When that power turns loose, they will not be able to figure out the political calculus. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to shake things up. I'm ready to get up out of the valley. I'm ready for God to put his spirit on us. I'm ready to be used to change this nation.

And what we're saying is, can't we're saying is can't we come together? Can't we come together around an agenda? You ain't got to like everything about Rembobble. You don't have to like everything about Sangria. You don't have to like everything about Longprior. But can we come together and say it's time to end poverty as the fourth leading cause of death. It's time to have $15 at a living wage indexed with inflation so every time inflation goes up the minimum wage goes up. It's time to have health care for all. It's time to fully fund public education. Can't we come together?

It's time to protect women's right to women's health. It's time, it's time to have affordable housing for everybody. It's time to stop the proliferation of guns. Ain't no way folk ought to be able to have more guns than they have food, more guns than they have meat on their table. That makes no sense. Isn't it time for division to be ended and love to take over? Can't we organize around that? Look at your neighbors and say, neighbor, I don't need to like everything about you. But can't we organize for power? Can't we stand for justice?

Can't we love everybody for just a little while? Can't we come out of the valley? Can these balls live! Yeah! Come on together! We're not gonna stand back! Come on together! We're not gonna stand back! Yeah! This is Essence Atkins.

This is Love King of R.B. Raheem Devon. Me, Sherri Sheppard, and you know what you watch. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right. Joining us now to continue this discussion, Rebecca Carruthers, vice president of the Fair Elections Center, Washington, D.C. Derek L. Jackson, Georgia State Representative, District 64 here in Atlanta, Georgia. Derek, we could have done the show in Atlanta, apparently, because it's downtown somewhere. But I wanted to go to you first as a legislator to talk about this case of Mr. Rivera there

in Missouri. What can be done from a state and local lawmaking perspective to try to stop these police interactions that end up in fatal situations when it comes to mental health issues in African Americans? You know, Robert, there is a solution to resolve this matter, and that is we need to eradicate qualified immunity. It's not training. It's not protocol. It's not qualification. If we go back to 150 plus years ago, right, when citizens were being deputized, they also gave them this thing called qualified immunity. And qualified immunity has protected law enforcement officers from being held accountable.

And so that's what we need to do from a state as well as a federal level and say we will no longer grant qualified immunity. And we need to hold individuals accountable. I'm looking at data from the CDC. And, Robert, you know CDC is right here in Atlanta. And nearly 1,100 people nationwide were shot and killed last year.

And the significant percentage of that 1,100 shot and killed were Black people. Something is wrong. Families no longer want thoughts and prayers. They no longer want candlelight visuals. They no longer want thoughts and prayers they no longer want candlelight visuals they no longer want a hashtag they want their loved ones alive and as i was watching that videotape that body cam robert we thought as legislators right here

in georgia by passing legislation providing resources so we can have body cams on every law enforcement officer from GBI to ATL, every police officer. And as I was watching that body cam footage, I did not see where Marquis was being aggressive. He obviously did not have a weapon. He has no T-shirt on. He was not a threat. And as a retired naval officer, we were taught how to deal with stressful situations. And so I know that police officers are taught how to deal with stressful situations.

I did not see Marquis being aggressive. I couldn't tell if he was under the influence. It's very obvious that he's very calm and collective. And there's no reason why he ended up dead. And so I think what we need to do as state legislators and at the federal level as well, say there's no more qualified immunity. And we got to start holding folks accountable for their actions, especially when you leave a young man like him out for six hours, no medical attention, no assistance, that's inhumane.

Absolutely. And, Rebecca, kind of on that same note, we talk about many of the great things that the Biden administration has been able to achieve on the federal level. You can go down the list. Many of it's amazing, but for many people in the black community, the fact that they were not able to push through

the George Floyd justice of policing bill, the Tyree Nichols duty to intervene bill, or any real legislative work on police brutality. When I talked to listeners on my radio station, when I talked to voters, they said that's a big part of why they were at Calzatron, to support Biden at the same levels they did in 2020. What do you think can be done right now, given the makeup of Congress?

What can be done through executive order or through executive action to try to do something about police brutality? You know, there's so much here. And before I even get to the policy and the advocacy side, just like the representative just said, you know, even if we want to accept that what law enforcement is telling us is 100 percent accurate, please explain in any SOP standard operating procedure in any police department across the country, please explain why after a suspect is subdued, if they are bleeding, if they are shot, whether it's self-inflicted by the police or by a third party, then immediately they are supposed to administer some type of aid. And so for Marquis to be shot twice, to be bleeding out, according to the reports by the defender, is unclear if he died immediately or if he laid on the ground for several hours bleeding out and dying and no

help was administered. That's against SOP. And that's before you get to any type of police reform. Because bottom line, even without a George Floyd Act, which, by the way, is kind of the bare minimum of the actual reforms that need to happen to actually make law enforcement law enforcement and safer communities and specifically for black folks, is is that there are currently things in place that police departments beneficial for Black communities in the United States. But when it comes to two big issues, which is voting rights, and when it comes to the right for us just to live our lives and not be killed at the hands of law enforcement, those are things that the Biden administration should and must make a priority if they want Black communities to support the Biden-Harris ticket come November 2024. That said, going back to the George Floyd Policing Act, that is the bare minimum of things. In fact, the way the George Floyd bill was even debated, it's still watered down. There's many more meaningful reforms,

and I would encourage that the administration actually listen to community activists, to people who do peace intervention in community. Listen to those folks on the ground, and they can provide actually good guidance on the types of reforms that we need that is a lot more robust than the George Floyd bill. And Representative Jackson, here in Georgia, we were able to push through police reform legislation, even with a MAGA governor like Brian Kemp, that requires for their mental health professional to respond along with officers. You're in the state legislature. How were we able to push that through in a state like Georgia, and what can we do to get more legislation like that pushed through nationwide? Well, you know, Robert, unfortunately, it was around timing around Ahmaud Arbery.

We all recall what happened during Ahmaud Arbery. And we struck the iron while it was hot and say there was no reason why Ahmaud Arbery, jogging in his own neighborhood, three o'clock during the day, no threat to no one, end up dead. And how these three citizens took his life. And so we added pressure both inside the legislature, but it was a great deal of pressure outside the legislature. ACLU, NAACPP and a host of other organizations called on Governor Kemp and said, we need the Ahmaud Arbery Act signed today. And so that's what we have to do. And I always remind the listening audience that if you think about the Constitution, there are three powerful words.

We the people. And so we not just need a collective, but we also need everyone to join in this fight, because no one based on the basis of the color of their skin should be threatened to lose their life when they leave home in the morning and they may or may not be able to come home in the evening. Absolutely. And, Rebecca, you know, this reinforces a vicious cycle that we have in the black community where somebody is having a mental health breakdown, they're having a medical breakdown, they're having an addiction issue and an overdose. Often we don't call law enforcement because we're afraid that something like this will happen. How can we encourage people to seek the help that they need when they're in dire situations,

but also be cognizant of the fact that these police may make the situation significantly worse? You know, I've personally been in a situation with a family member who was going through a mental health crisis and needed to be hospitalized and yes how to make the decision is it safe to call the police in the situation or do i need to call other family and friends in order to get this person in a vehicle and get them to the emergency room and ultimately the latter is what i chose because i didn't think it was safe in that moment to actually have law enforcement involved in what should be a medical situation. And so that said,

when it comes to mental health crises, it should be EMTs who are the primary responders to that situation. I can understand in certain situations, especially if someone who's going through a mental health crisis has a gun or is a harm to others beyond themselves, I can understand having the police as secondary. But when it comes to doing a mental health or any other type of medical intervention, it should be medical personnel as the primary responders, not someone with a gun and a badge and who's scared because an acorn drops on top of a vehicle and thinks that someone's shooting them. So all of a sudden they're shooting multiple rounds. That type of person should not be responding to medical issues. You know, it's kind of like that old saying that when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

What do we equip our police officers with? We give them a gun, a stick, handcuffs, pepper spray, and a badge. And we send them out there to say, de-escalate the situation. Nothing about that says de-escalation. And for Representative Jackson, how can we start changing the narrative that we have around law enforcement in this country? The conservative right talks about the war on cops. They talk about chaos in the streets and the crime epidemic is going wrong in the country. I note that there's no statistic

to back any of that up. FBI statistics said that violent crime went down 6% last year. However, they have been very good at drumming up this idea that you have to have this militaristic force of police in order to keep communities safe,

how can we change that narrative and help people to understand that investing in mental health experts, investing in addiction experts, investing in people who can de-escalate situations is a better approach than simply saying, well, here's a gun, a badge, a stick, and some pepper spray, go have at it. You know, Robert, I always start the conversation around mental health and all these other scenarios that you just articulated. Start with human beings, right? With humanity. And when you think about humanity, you think about what we need to do to ensure everyone have the quality of life just simply to live and breathe. But my friends on the other side of the aisle will say, well, you know, crime. They start all these talking points.

And so I use one example, Robert. I said, y'all remember Dylann Roof over in South Carolina? He sat with those he killed for over an hour. They even prayed for him in the church. When the cops finally came and they arrested Dylann Roof, he did not end up dead. In fact, they even took him by a fast food restaurant before they even booked him. So don't explain to me that it's training. Don't explain to me that it's crime and gang and all this other, you know, talking points. You got

to look at this thing from a human being perspective, from a humanity perspective. And so when you think about mental health, that mother that dialed 911 because her son was having an episode she was first intimidated, but she eventually

went ahead and did it, but her son ended up dead anyway. And that's why we got to change the narrative that when we dial 911, we want the same level of assistance that any other human being get when they also

dial 911. Absolutely. We got to keep our eyes on this and bring the attention to this. That's why it's so important to have shows such as this one on the black star network make sure you guys hit that like button on the video we'll make sure when roland gets back he sees thousands and thousands of lights uh so he knows you guys are still watching when he's not here we're gonna keep this conversation going after the break you're watching roland martin unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network.

Check this out. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are investing a record $7 billion into HBCUs. Billions for campus improvements, grants, and debt relief. Billions more for HBCUs. Endless possibilities for us. Next on The Frequency with me,

Dee Barnes, the amazing Drew Dixon. She gives us the details behind the HBO documentary that shed light on the alleged sexual assault by Russell Simmons. And we're talking about the Netflix documentary Ladies First right here on The Frequency on the Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We look at one of the most influential and prominent Black Americans of the 20th century. His work literally changed the world. Among other things, he played a major role in creating the United Nations. He was the first African-American and first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet today, he is hardly a household name. We're talking, of course, about Ralph J. Bunch.

A new book refers to him as the absolutely indispensable man. His lifelong interest and passion in racial justice, specifically in the form of colonialism. And he saw his work as an activist, an advocate for the black community here in the United States as just the other side of the coin of his work trying to roll back European empire in Africa. Author Cal Rastiala will join us to share his incredible story. That's on the next Black Table here on the Black Star Network. What's up, everybody? It's your girl Latasha from the A And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered © BF-WATCH TV 2021 A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.

But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and

consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 man. 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. In 1996, Hydea Broadbent's story reshaped the face of HIV and AIDS with her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. When I was born, I was HIV positive. And when I turned five, I had symptoms of AIDS. I had had fungus in my brain, blood infections, pneumonia. I went cold blue a couple of times and I

that's when I was about five they said I was full blown AIDS and right now I'm doing really good. What's the hardest part for you Hadiya? Living with this disease? Basically, that's like when your friends die. Like? Like? The worst part is you always lose a friend at eight. And it's hard, but especially, I don't think it's real hard. I don't know the parents. And they're friends and stuff, and you love them a lot, and you get real close. And a lot of my friends that have died of AIDS.

No one really knows how long anybody's going to live because I don't put myself like, oh, you have AIDS, or I could go outside and get hit by a bus tomorrow, and you never know. If you stay in your bed and feel sorry for yourself and don't get up with the birds and just sit there and say, I'm going to die, why get up and try and make a difference? But when you say, well, today's another day, I can get up, I can do something, make something positive. Idea, who spent her life as an HIV AIDS activist died Tuesday. She was 39 years old.

Her family announced her transition to following statement. Idea will be remembered for her work as a worldwide HIV AIDS activist, as well as being a loving daughter, sister, aunt, godmother, family member and friend. We, the family, ask for your prayers and privacy as we grieve during this difficult time. Joining us from Alton, Illinois, is author of Unprotected, a Memoir, and Emmy Award-winning AIDS activist Ray Lewis Thornton. Ray is a close friend of Heidi and has been living with HIV-AIDS since 1983. She went public about her HIV status on the cover of Essence magazine in 1994. Ray, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you. Thank you. She went public about her HIV status on the cover of Essence Magazine in 1994. Ray, thank you for joining us tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And even before we hop in, can you just tell us about Hydea, the person, the individual? So many people simply know her for her activism and through her diagnosis. But who was she as an individual? You know, Hydea was a very kind, loving girl, woman. She was committed to this HIV work because she had no choice. But it was a struggle for her.

Living with this disease was a struggle for her. And she, you know, she didn't she kept the good side of it going. But I got to see the more personal side where she was struggling financially. She was struggling with mental health. She was struggling with, you know, staying in treatment and, you know, following her regimen because HIV is a difficult disease to live with. She never really talked about that so much publicly. And, you know, that's the difficult part about this. You know, often the strongest among the struggle and silence. It's amazing to me that at such a young age, she became such a powerful spokesperson. They're really changing the way that the American and the international conversation was around HIV AIDS. Beforehand,

in the 80s, you know, it was always about it was a gay disease. It was a drug disease. It was a African-American disease. But her appearance on Oprah really helped to change the dialogue around it. Can you talk about how important she was to this movement? Oh, my God. You know, it's interesting. Haidea and my work, we were parallel. I was on the cover of Vesson. She was on Oprah. We were doing all of these things around the same time. She was six years old, and I was 30 years old doing this work. And what Hydea was able to do is humanize HIV. She showed you a face of what it looked like to be HIV. And, you know, she touched on our hearts. You know, here's this little girl talking about, you know, waking up in the morning and enjoying the birds.

And, you know, you may get hit by a car, but yet at the same time being kicked out of school because nobody wanted to be with her. And so she was so brave in that. But what she did, especially, I mean, she transcended race for sure. But what she did, especially for the Black community, was to show another side of AIDS, that women get infected and have babies that also become infected with HIV. And she began to pull on our heartstrings, like to say, yes, if this was our daughter, if this was our granddaughter, we would want to love and nurture her like any other person. The failure, that was the good piece about it. The bad piece was that nobody wanted her to grow up.

And so they kept her, you know, she was always known as the little girl with AIDS. Even when she was 30, she was still the little girl with AIDS. And I think that on one level, she opened our hearts as a little girl. But then as she grew up, you know, we backed away from it. Oh, she's still living. It's, you know, whatever. But, you know, it was as if, you know, her message wasn't as relevant, you know, as she aged. And that was the disappointing part. And I think disappointing for her as well. It's almost like because our society is such a microwave society, after a few years and a couple of decades, they're like, oh, you're still doing that AIDS thing.

I thought you were past that now. Absolutely. You still got this disease. And so, you know, it's it's and I think the fact that, you know, she survived, I survived, we survived past that that rough period. And we don't really talk about that period anymore. But, you know, the fact of the matter was that we did have heavy pill loads. The fact of the matter is that the life expectancy for somebody with full-blown AIDS was 18 months. And so by the time she was eight and nine years old, you know, she was already a long-term survivor. You know, she had lived with this disease longer than expected, as so as I did. So when I was on the cover of Essence, it was like the expectancy was 18 months,

and here I am 30 years later. And so people liked the celebrity of it. You know, it was one thing, but once we start living, people became silent. Wasn't as much attention drawn up. And, you know, the fact of the matter for Hydea, her only speaking, her only source of income was speaking. And, you know, and so when the business of AIDS dried up for Black activists like Hy Hadiya and myself and others that are around. You know, she had to struggle with the medicine.

She had to struggle with, you know, paying her rent and paying her bills. And so I don't—and at the same time, African Americans are still disproportionately impacted by this disease. At the same time, African-American women are still 62 percent of the newly diagnosed cases with HIV. Black babies, and that in and of itself shouldn't even be because a woman doesn't have to infect her child anymore if she gets into treatment and care. And so there is a disconnect, I believe, with the celebrity of, you know, people like her, people like me, people like Magic Johnson, with the reality of what it means to live

with this disease. On one of the clips that I saw that's been floating around social media, she said, it's a struggle living with this disease. And I think that that message has gotten lost, you know, and I would be remiss to say, you know, that yes, we can keep you alive with treatment and care, and there's over 30 HIV medicines, and you don't have to transition to AIDS, but it's still a struggle living with this disease. It's a struggle living with the chronic disease for the rest of your life. And I think a part of Hydea gave up.

She was tired. I've noticed that there's a generational gap that has happened between millennials and Gen Z. The millennials, me and Hydea were the exact same age. That's why her story resonated so much with me. But millennials, we grew up in the 1980s and we were so afraid of AIDS. They made every news story 2020 with Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, made it seem like it was coming around every corner to kill us all. But then as treatment advanced, people like yourself and

Heidi and Madison Johnson and others were able to destigmatize it. It's almost as if the pendulum has shifted too far in the other direction, where you have Gen Z that has a very permissive attitude when it comes to sex, when it comes to contraceptives, when it comes to protected sex. You know, you have sexy red doing interviews saying she's the raw queen, things of that nature. Do you think that there's still a place for activism to help explain that we don't need to stigmatize and be afraid of AIDS like we were in the 80s, but we still need to be conscious and cognizant of its dangers and destructions as it is now? Everything's not a prep commercial with people smiling and playing softball. There are still hard parts of this.

Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that stigma is still very real. You know, people with HIV still live with stigma and shame, especially in the South, where, you know, we don't talk about it. And within the African-American community, let's be clear, we don't talk about it. And within the African-American community, let's be clear, we don't talk about sex. We are so stuck in respectability that we do not talk about sex, our sexuality. And it's, you know, it's wrapped up into, you know, the images that came out of slavery, women being raped, and, you know, what kind of woman we were supposed to be.

And there's still this perception that's unspoken, but it's real that only certain types of people get HIV. And the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, anyone could get HIV. I mean, if you're having unprotected sex and you don't know what your partner's been doing, and I know Roland will kill me if I say it, but if, you know, if the penis ain't in your pocket, you don't know what it's doing with you. And so we still live in a level of arrogance about who gets HIV and how he gets HIV. And sadly, people live in isolation with this disease. People who are aging with HIV live in isolation, and young people are afraid to disclose. I mean, I get messages every day from a family member saying my niece was just diagnosed with HIV.

My, you know, young people who've heard me speak hit me up. And so people are still becoming infected with this disease. Black people are still becoming infected with HIV. And there's this sense that we don't have to worry about it anymore. What we should be talking about is, yeah, you can take one pill a day, but what we're seeing with, you know, people who are aging with HIV, like me, we have more of the comorbidity problems that people our age have. You know, we have more cancer, more heart disease. We have osteoporosis, men and women, because HIV destroys the bone. And so, and there's depression.

And that is a huge thing. We, as a community, Black folk don't deal with mental illness very well. And Hydea, and I've spoken very publicly about my depression, but Hydea struggled with depression. And she just, I mean, I don't, I'm still trying to mourn her, but we struggle with depression. We struggle with, you know, acceptance. We, it's still very, very real. And so while the point is this, while we can treat you with HIV and you don't have to transition to AIDS like Hydea and I, you will still have a lifetime of a struggle. You will still have a lifetime of a medicine treatment. You will still have a lifetime of a struggle. You will still have a lifetime of a medicine treatment. You will still have inflammation in your body all the time in your body.

And so the best bet is to not get HIV. You know, we don't talk about testing anymore. And what we know is that 38% of newly diagnosed people are infected by people who don't even know they're infected, you know. And so we have this vicious cycle that is going on in our community. We don't get tested. We infect others because we don't know we're infected and our virus is not suppressed. And so there are some social determinants that impacts access to medication, even access to PrEP. Who gets PrEP? Black men aren't on PrEP.

I mean, the statistics show that white men are taking, and what's PrEP? A one pill a day that you can take that will prevent HIV. And so now NIH and CDC are trying to shift PrEP to black women, and they didn't do a good job with black men. And so, you know, the business of HIV, I think, is also interfering with what we should really be talking about in our communities. You know, churches should still be having programs, should be testing people for HIV. And the reality is, is that if Hydea wasn't tired, she could still be living. But she was tired. And before we go, what would you say should be the takeaway that people have from the work Hydea did and what should her legacy be in this movement? You know, she definitely humanized HIV and opened up this disease to the heart and minds of Black people in a way that had

never been done before. And I don't know that we can take this away from her. You know, the other thing is that Hydea was wise beyond her years at six and seven years old. And so, you know, I'm grateful that the Broadbents adopted her and cared for her through this younger period of her life and that God had a plan for her life. And let me tell you something. She wore those shoes. She never grew beyond five feet, but she stepped big in her shoes and accepted her calling in life and did what she, you know, God called her to do. And I'm a better person for it. She helped to make me a better person. And I'm just grateful that she and I in later years as our paths crossed were, you know, able to forge a friendship. And I could call her my friend, and I could call her dear.

She didn't let everybody call her dear. And, you know, I just want to say this last thing. That picture right there of us in mass, in the height of COVID, she took a Greyhound bus to come to Chicago from Las Vegas to see me. And I think she was saying goodbye. And she came to Auntie to have some really poignant discussion about what our life looks like with HIV and what the hope is. And, you know, I think that and I'm grateful that she that she came to me and and wanted to have that that discussion. But I think it was her way of saying to me also that you it's not going to change.

So I'm tired. I'm tired. And so, I mean, she's going to be missed greatly. That's all I can say. She's going to be missed greatly. Absolutely. I want you to stick around with us. Our panel would love to ask you some questions also when we get back from this break. We really appreciate everything that you've done for this movement. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on The Blackstone. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 man. 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. Pro Network. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 You heard why we're marching, and it's really a launch. It's not even a march. We're launching a 42-week campaign March the 2nd at 10 o'clock in Raleigh and 33 other state capitals and the District of Columbia. This is a historic move to mobilize the most powerful untapped block of voters in this country. That's right. untapped block of voters in this country, poor and low wealth voters, who make up 87 million

votes. And it's never been tried before. Never been tried before in history. At the same time, the same message, same focus. When that power turns loose, they will not be able to figure out the political calculus calculus I don't know about you but I'm ready to shake things up I'm ready to get up out of the valley I'm ready for God to put his spirit on us I'm ready to be used to change this nation and what we're saying is can't we come together can't we come together around an agenda you ain't got to like everything about rembaba you're not the like everythingbob. You don't have to like everything about

St. Greer. You don't have to like everything about Longpire. But can we come together and say it's time to end poverty as the fourth leading cause of death? It's time to have $15 at a living wage indexed with inflation so every time inflation goes up, the minimum wage

goes up. It's time to have health care for all. It's time to have health care for all. It's time to fully fund public education. Can't we come together? It's time to protect women's right to women's health. It's time, it's time to have affordable housing for everybody. It's time to stop the proliferation of guns. Ain't no way folk ought to be able to have more guns than they have food, more guns than

they have meat on their table. That makes no sense. In the time for division to be ended and love to take over, can't we organize around that? Look at your neighbors. Neighbor, I don't need to like everything about you, but can't we organize for power?

Can't we stand for justice? Can't we stand? For justice. Can't we love everybody? For just a little while. Can't we come out of the valley? Can these bones live? Can these bones live? Come on together. Come on together.

Come on together. Come on together. All together, we're not going to step back! All together, we're not going to step back! This is Reggie Rock Bifle. You're watching... Roland Martin, unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? © transcriptF-WATCH TV 2021 Welcome back. We're still here with Ray Lewis Thornton talking about the life and legacy of Idea Broadband. I'm going to bring in our panel, Rebecca Carruthers, of course, and Dara Jetson. But for Ms. Thornton, I have one question before we go to the panel. You were talking about the conversations

that the African-American community needs to start having about sex and self-health and things that are taboo in our community. I was recently watching a podcast with some young Gen Z women on it. And they universally said that if a man asks a woman about her sexual past, that's a sign of insecurity, that it shouldn't matter, that that's inappropriate for them to ask. And as a millennial, I said to myself, oh, that sounds just foolish to me. Can you talk about kind of how do we work through this stigma of people being able to talk about their sexual past without it seeming, as they said, as being misogynistic? Well, you know, I don't agree with that comment.

I think that if a woman can ask a man, then a man should be able to ask a woman. I mean, we should know this. It's not about how many people you had sex with. Be clear on that. It only takes one person to infect you. And so I think we need to have a different conversation with our partners. Have you ever been tested for HIV? And if you've not been tested for HIV, let's go get tested together. My good friend, Shirley Ralph, she and her husband, Senator Hughes, had this program, let's get tested together. And so that's the conversation we should be having. Are we going to use condoms in this relationship? Who's going to be responsible for the condoms in this relationship? Not how many people you've had sex with. I can give less than

a coo-hoo how many people you have sex with because it only takes one person. And so I think that we spend a whole lot of time talking about the wrong thing. Absolutely. Rebecca, do you have a question for Ms. Thornton? Sure. I have two questions if I have time for that. I just want to say thank you so much, Ms. Thornton, for your activism. Like, Robert, I'm a millennial. I'm an elder millennial, though. I have a couple years on Robert. And here's the thing. I remember in the 80s, Ryan White was the face of AIDS and HIV. And then I distinctly remember in 1991 when Magic Johnson had his

press conference and announced to the world that he was diagnosed with HIV. And there was this controversy of can you even play basketball because can you pass the virus through sweat? Or if you're up and down the court, you accidentally scratch someone and someone else scratches you, you know, with a whole entire league, get HIV and then full-blown AIDS. But I say all this because, you know, you talked about the Black community, how we viewed sex and sexuality. And it also made me think about the role that public policy plays in the increasing rates of STIs and STDs. And we know for sure that where comprehensive sex education isn't taught in public schools, we know there's an increase in unplanned pregnancies. We know there's an increase in STDs, STIs, including HIV and even AIDS.

So can you talk about the role of pushing for comprehensive sex education? Exactly what is comprehensive sex education and how it's a positive thing? This is not a moral issue, but this is a health issue. You know, you're correct. And I think in the South, thank you for that question. It's a great question. In the South, there are a lot of Southern states where abstinence-only programs are what could be taught in the high schools and nothing in the elementary schools or junior high school and higher, you can actually—should be talking about, you know, sex, you know, what HIV is, how you get it, how you get other sexually transmitted diseases.

I think we should have that conversation. But I think that morality politics plays a very heavy role, especially in the South, on, you know, what gets taught or what doesn't get taught. And so, you know, principals who want to do programs, you know, in some of the high schools in the South have difficulties because they're states, you know, are abstinence-only states, where the only type of education you could have is that. I had a principal once in Huntsville, Alabama, I'll never forget this, who defied the state law to bring me to speak because she caught some kids under the bleachers having a girl and a guy having oral sex. And she was like,

I've had enough with this. And so it has to really, you know, leadership has to take a stand, be willing to challenge government on these issues. I think that in some of the bigger cities like Chicago, New York, where sex education is taught, I just think that we don't emphasize HIV AIDS anymore in the way that we do because, you know, it's not a sexy topic anymore. I mean, I don't know how to say this, but people do not talk about HIV in the way that we need to talk about, including the media. For example, there's a one pill a day that you can take to prevent HIV. For example, there is, if you think you've been exposed to HIV, within 72 hours, go to a doctor and you can get a regimen that will stop HIV in its tracks. For example, women and black women don't get the type of prenatal care that they need. But if they were tested and was in a medical regimen around HIV, it's a zero chance that their child would be infected.

And I think what's hard for people to believe that the medications are so good now that if I had unprotected sex with the person, as long as my viral load is undetectable, I cannot infect them. And so there's a lot of new information that we are not sharing with everybody in the schools. You know, they don't bring speakers anymore to talk about HIV. It's just, you know, the basic self-education class because HIV isn't sexy anymore. It's just not a sexy topic. But the South is definitely a problem. Absolutely. Representative Jackson, do you have a question?

I do. First off, thank you, Ms. Thornton, for your body of work. And also thank you for sharing your story about Hydea and as her work will continue, although God has called her home. My question is around, can you share with us the psychological, emotional, and cultural impacts on the Black community? Because HIV, AIDS, and syphilis, and gonorrhea, and all the other STDs, it has been politicized that this is a Black thing, right? It's always a black face that's attached to STDs. But when I read CDC, 39 million citizens in the United States are living with HIV AIDS. Two million children under the age of 14, from zero to 14, are living with HIV. And so it's been politicized that HIV, AIDS and syphilis and other STDs, it's always associated with the black community. Can you share with us

the psychological and emotional and cultural impact on the black community? Well, you know, first let me, thank you for your question. First, let me say this. There is no conspiracy. The fact of the matter is African Americans, Black people, bear the brunt of HIV cases in the United States of America, period. Black men who have sex with men are the majority of the cases among men with HIV. Black women, heterosexual women, are the majority of cases among women living with HIV. So this is not—we are trying to make it be a Black problem. It is a doggone Black problem. And the conspiracy is a part of the problem. The problem is that black people have—the brainwashing has come down through slavery with the images of Jezebel and the black buck and how black people should then respond to white people to show them that we're decent people. And it has impinged upon how we talk about sex and how we deal with sex, sexual relations, and even sexual violence within the African-American community. The R. Kelly case is a case in point. How we talk about sex, we, you know, call girls fast. One of the things

that my cover article did, that Essence did with my cover story, was we changed the face of AIDS for Black women in America. And we gave Black women permission to say that, yes, we have sex and understand that it's not about promiscuity. It's about who you love, who you have sex with, who you trust. And and you don't know what you don't know. You don't know if your partner is infected with HIV. You don't know if your partner is outside of your relationship. And since you don't know, your partner is outside of your relationship. And since you don't know, use a doggone condom. Since you don't know your status, go get tested. Let me say this too.

The stigma around HIV, oh, it's a black thing. It puts people, especially young people, in a position where they don't want to disclose their HIV status to their families. And so we have young people who I know someone right now, and there are literally two people in her family that know she's HIV infected and she's a 23-year-old woman because we don't want to come across as being hoes. And so it is a black problem. And we need to, as a community, talk about it. Our churches need to talk about it. Our politicians, you should be making some legislation about some money to help educate black people, to help some of these non-for-profits out there, black non-for-profits that are doing the work in your town. It is a problem. We and the majority of black people's virus is not suppressed, which means that we are not in health care.

We get in health care, but we don't stay in health care. That's a problem. People don't want to be seen going to the AIDS clinic. People don't want to be seen taking their medicine. And so when we push back with the, oh, it's not just us argument, and you got me heated up over here, that it's not just us argument, what we do is we put people's, Black people's back against the wall in a way that we, it doesn't open the environment, it's not conducive to having an open and honest conversation about how do we reduce these numbers?

We know how people become infected. How do we reduce these numbers? We've got to have some conversations, some sex education conversations. Women need to sit down and talk to their men. You need to ask the poignant questions. Have you ever been tested with HIV? You need to go get tested. Just about every Department of Public Health testing is free. And so that is the issue. It's not about what they're saying about us. It's about what are we going to do to stop these statistics in our community? A statistic that Hyde idea was one of. In fact, her mother was a drug addict and she was

infected in the 80s by someone who was a drug addict and left in a hospital abandoned. That's real. And that's what we need to be talking about. We should be demanding. I tell you what Bill Clinton did do. He declared a state of emergency in AIDS in the black community when he was president, and it freed up millions of dollars to go to black CBOs to do the work in the black community. And we saw in the 90s a decrease in cases, especially around women with HIV. That money has dried up. Ain't nobody fighting for that now. Hydea was fighting for it

and couldn't even get a speaking engagement. I'm fighting for it and just barely hanging on. And that's the reality of this. Y'all don't make me cuss, Roland. No, I try not to cuss. I try to be respectful as much as I can. But ain't nobody doing nothing to us. We're doing it to ourselves.

A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 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. Absolutely. Well, Ms. Thornton, we appreciate it.

Yes, go ahead. Sorry, can I have a quick follow-up? Something that you said, Ms. Thornton, that I think is very important, you talk about the business side of this thing, the business side of activism, following the money, how capitalism even impacts as we see infections ravage? We should be talking about the dollars should follow the numbers. And in majority cities, the money does not go to black organizations who do the work. I lived in Chicago for the last 30 years. I just moved to a small town to get away from Chicago four months ago. In the small town, the Chicago Department of Public Health, they say the money doesn't go to black organizations, but it goes to organizations that service black people.

And that's the way they're able to get around it. So I think culturally, we know how to talk to our people. So the dollars should follow the numbers. So that should be a part of it. Pharmaceutical companies are making a stench. Let me tell you something. My HIV medicine is $54,000 a year. And my co-pay for my, and I'm just talking about my four HIV medications, are $2,500 a month, depending on where I am in the donut hole. That's what we need to be talking about. That's what we need to be talking about. We need to be talking about the right-wing attack on HIV money, whatever little is left of it. I mean, that is the reality. We should be challenging pharmaceutical companies to have other images than gay men talking about HIV because gay men aren't the only ones that have HIV. And I love my gay men.

I'm just saying, black women need to be in some of them ads too. Absolutely. Well, Ms. Thorne, we appreciate all the work that you do in this field. Please keep us updated on what the community needs to know and continue this activism you've been working on. And you've done an outstanding job of continuing the work and remembering the memory of Idea as we honor her life and legacy. Thank you so much for joining us.

Reverend Jackson taught me well, and I will continue to do this work until the day I die. You know, but it's not just about HIV. It's also about trauma. We need to begin to have an inclusive conversation about HIV and trauma, trauma-informed care, and how, you know, these issues around sexuality that have been, you know, affecting our community for years. Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you for having me. I talk a lot. No, no.

That's great for a talk show. It's always good to talk on talk shows. It's a really good thing to do. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Check this out. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are investing a record $7 billion into HBCUs. Billions for campus improvements, grants, and debt relief.

Billions more for HBCUs. Endless possibilities for us. 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.

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RolandSMartin.com. My name is Lena Charles, and I'm from Opelousas, Louisiana. Yes, that is Zydeco capital of the world. My name is Margaret Chappelle. I'm from Dallas, Texas, representing the Urban Trivia Game. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching. Roland Martin on Unfiltered. A lot is happening on the international front. The Russo-Ukrainian war enters its third year. Houthi rebels are shooting now U.S. drones.

Of course, you have Iranian-aligned groups which attack U.S. soldiers, killing three of them. The U.S. responds by bombing 85 targets within the region. The death toll in Palestine is creeping towards 30,000. To discuss all this, we have counterterrorism expert and author Malcolm Nance joining us from Montreal, Canada, to break all these things down. Malcolm, how are you doing? I'm well. I'm well.

Good to see you, Malcolm. Thanks so much for joining us again. So, of course, I want to talk with the Russo-Ukrainian war, because you, of course, have experience serving directly with the Ukrainian military. Ukraine recently had to withdraw from Avdypka. We're seeing that the Biden administration is saying this is directly connected to Republicans blocking the supplemental funding for Ukraine. What can you tell us about the needs of the Ukrainian military?

And is this money being held by Republicans putting lives at risk in the region? Well, it's absolutely putting lives at risk in the region. What's happening is that the Ukrainian army is suffering from an artillery shell shortage. And that artillery shell shortage means not only can they not go on offensive operations, but they cannot really defend in depth with the amount of shells that they need. If there's any one thing that we learned about the Ukrainian war, it's that most Western, modern Western armies underestimated by a factor of 10 to 20 the amount of artillery shells that they would need in a high-scale kinetic war. So with the Ukrainian army's withdrawal from Avdiivka,

which is, by the way, a very, very small town of 30,000 people, I went to Avdiivka in the pre-war. I was quite amazed that Russia hadn't taken this place in the first 24 hours. We were only 70 meters away from the Russians in the pre-war. And the Ukrainians had been holding it since 2014 when Russia carried out their initial invasion. So for Avdiivka to finally fall at the cost of 30,000 or more Russian troops, almost 1,000 armored vehicles, it is a tiny, tiny victory for the Russians, if you want to call it that. But it was strategic bloodletting that the Ukrainians gave them. You know, on that point, we've seen far right-wing propaganda start to become increasingly pro-Russian.

We have the Tucker Carlson interview with Vladimir Putin, where he's riding around in shopping carts and telling us how wonderful the bread is in Russia. We have Republicans in Congress who are blocking funding for the Ukraine. President Trump saying he would allow Russia basically to do whatever he wanted with NATO if he's reelected. In addition to that, we have the witness in the Hunter Biden case that we found to be now a Russian, or connect connection to Russian foreign intelligence, the assassination of Navalny, the assassination of the helicopter pilot in Spain, the detaining of the Russian ballerina for treason. Does it appear to you that there is a portion of the Republican Party in this country that has been co-opted by the Russian government. You know, I've written four New York Times bestsellers about Donald Trump and his administration.

And every one of those books was about how Russian intelligence co-opted a major component of either Donald Trump's campaign, Trump himself, the Republican Party. The Republican Party now is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin. And there's only one reason that they flipped. There's only one reason why they betrayed Ronald Reagan's legacy. And that is because Donald Trump has ordered them to do that. Trump has been under the thrall of the Russians since the 1980s. I'm not saying that he's an actual agent of Russia. He has started out as an unwitting asset in the 1980s. But by the time Miss Universe came in 2014, when he went to Moscow,

he was very well aware to get Trump Tower Moscow that he would have to play Vladimir Putin's game. He is madly in love with Vladimir Putin, his ruthless, authoritarian, dictatorial, mass-murdering style, the way he could kill journalists and citizens at whim. Donald Trump loves that stuff. And that's why he, since he went to Helsinki in 2017, has essentially been a puppy on a leash for Moscow. When Donald Trump says something, the Republican Party goes along with it. Now Trump believes NATO bad, Moscow good. That's just the way it's going to be because that cult can't think beyond whatever Donald Trump,

the words Donald Trump puts in its mouth. You know, it's amazing to me because if you look at the situation that Donald Trump is in currently, he owes E.G. Carroll $85 million. He has a $355 million judgment against him for the Trump Organization suit. He has a $2.5 million judgment against him for the Trump Foundation suit. He has a $25 million judgment against him for the Trump University suit. So he's going to be walking into this next election over a half billion dollars in debt with no ability to make that money. He's selling sneakers and cologne now, trying to raise money. His super PAC has about $8,000 in the bank. And Vladimir Putin is the richest person on earth, according to Elon Musk, who says he has many times as much money as Elon Musk.

Is Trump at risk of being co-opted by the Russians, given his current debt cycle and the need to pay those things off? And that's why he's running. No, he's not at risk being co-opted because of the current debt cycle that he's in. He has been co-opted for a very long time. So, you know, this money situation to him doesn't matter. He has now tasted raw power. He now understands he could have done a lot of things that he did by remaining within the the, you know, the crayon drawing limits of the law.

He's no longer interested in that. He wants to get reelected to president, and then he's just going to abuse it the way Kim Jong-un in North Korea, the way Xi in China, and the way Putin does it in Moscow. But, you know, his current debt load does not impact that. He will just erase that by saying there is no such thing as a debt load. This is a man who I've been warning for eight years, wanted to be a real authoritarian dictator. All the evidence was there.

It took media several years to catch up to the books that I've written about it. But he has stated what he wants to be. Take him at his word. He is going to be a dictator. He will use the power of the United States government to abuse its own citizens. And he'll just eliminate the laws. He'll eliminate the courts. He'll make courts passive and supportive of him.

He said he's going to do it. You believe that he's going to do it. Let's transition to the Middle East. So the death toll of Palestinians is closing in on 30,000 since the October 7th attacks. Netanyahu has indicated he has no interest in a ceasefire, no interest in ending the ground offensive. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's

just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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 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 iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and

ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I saw just this week the U.S. vetoed a ceasefire resolution sponsored by the Gulf States, but it has circulated their own memo regarding a potential ceasefire. Where do you think things go from here? Will Netanyahu press forward with his ground offensive? And does the U.S. have any power to stop him from doing so? Well, first off, you know, I've just come back from four weeks,

from a month in Israel, going around with the Israeli army, also investigating the 10-7 massacre and Israel's conduct of operations in the war. You know, let's just remove the word Netanyahu when you're talking about Israel, because you're talking about the most hated man in Israel. These people there absolutely understand that he failed in the most basic task of keeping Israeli citizens alive. It is a coalition government right now. Politically, he is a dead man walking. So any president, no matter who it was, all right, would have carried out this war in the exact same fashion that they're carrying out. This is a war between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. The terrorist group Hamas mass murdered a thousand or more Israeli citizens to get the effect that you're seeing there on video, which is to have invaded Gaza, to kill civilians in order to garner some global sympathy and carry out a larger base of, you know,

support for the Palestinian cause that they haven't had in, you know, in 75 years. First, those numbers, the 30,000, all come from the terrorist group Hamas. Those numbers are not verified by anybody. And apparently, you know, none of the Hamas combatants, the 30,000 men that are doing daily full-scale battle with the Israeli army are included in there. That being said, a ceasefire, which is what people are calling for, would be a gift to Hamas. Hamas needs a ceasefire. They are in their last 30 percent of troops. They are facing utter annihilation by the Israeli army. You know, they are using civilians as human shields and human sponges, where they actually put themselves, you know, they are using civilians as human shields and human sponges where they actually put themselves underground between Israeli bombs and the civilian population. The Israelis are not going to carry out a ceasefire.

Their mission is to eliminate Hamas as a combat force, as a terrorist force, forever. And until that mission is done, there will not be a ceasefire unless, of course, Hamas comes back seriously. Hamas turned down the last ceasefire. They put in conditions which were insane, which was that Israel would stop all combat operations, would withdraw from every inch of the West Bank, and, would allow Hamas to come back as the leadership organization of Gaza, knowing the Israelis aren't going to agree to that at all. So Hamas had a ceasefire on January 6th, I'm sorry, on October 6th. They broke that. It led to this horrible, horrible war. And then they had another ceasefire when Israel agreed to exchange hostages. They broke that also.

This is the final game for Hamas. We know their leadership is trapped in Rafah. That will be the end. Well, proceeding from that, there's been a large conversation among some Israeli officials about the proposed occupation and resettlement of Jewish communities, two parts of both the West Bank and Gaza, the secession of this war. Many people believe that to be a red line to not be crossed. Do you believe that there will be attempts at resettlement, and could this be the end of Palestinian-controlled Gaza? Well, this certainly won't be the end of Palestinian-controlled Gaza? Well, this certainly won't be the end of Palestinian-controlled Gaza, because first off, Israel does not want to occupy 2.2 million people

in a strip. And I've been down the entire length of that strip on the Israeli side of the wall. And that is now literally a pile of rubble. Israel doesn't want political control. But what they want to do is eliminate Hamas's influence right now by shifting to a system the United States proposed that we did after the destruction of al-Qaeda in Iraq in the city of Fallujah in 2004 after Operation Phantom Fury, which is to empower the regional tribes with the ability to control where the aid goes, where the food goes, to rebuild under the control of an authority that is not UNRWA, the United Nations Refugees Organization, that has been established strictly since 1948 only for the Palestinians. They want it under the control of UNHCR, the High Commission for Refugees, which handles every other refugee in the world.

So Hamas really is facing extinction if that gets into place. I want to shift a little bit further south in the Gulf to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Houthis have said that they will continue attacking shipping in the Red Sea, as well as naval vessels of nations that support the Israeli invasion of Gaza. We've seen Hezbollah attacks in Syria and Lebanon in the northern part of this conflict, almost opening a second front in the war. Do you believe that the U.S.'s response to these attacks has been sufficient, or do you think there will be additional airstrikes needed in order to bring a succession to these attacks? Right. Well, what's going on with Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and southern Lebanon is a campaign the

United States is carrying out. I have fought all of these groups before, and let me tell you, the Houthi rebels, or the terrorist group, by the way,. And let me tell you, the Houthi rebels or the terrorist group, by the way, we shouldn't refer to them as the Houthi rebels. Their official name is Ansar Allah terrorist group, right? The supporters of Allah terrorist group. They occupy a small part of northern Yemen and are being funded strictly by Iran. They are a proxy of the Iranian government. All of their weapons and equipment come from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. All of their anti-ship drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, underwater manned vehicles,

unmanned vehicles, I'm sorry, and these anti-ship ballistic missiles are all of Iranian manufacture. We intercept them all the time. The Houthi rebels are just a proxy that is used by Iran to pressure Israel from the south. And now they are affecting 12% of global shipping by allowing them to attack ships, allegedly in support of operations against Israel and Gaza. But in fact, Iran understands the U.S. presidential election cycle, and they are increasing the cost of basic goods throughout Europe and the United States by forcing all of these

ships not to go through the Red Sea, but to have to go around through South Africa, as well as rewarding South Africa for their support of the Palestinians and Hamas in Gaza by bringing a case of the International Criminal Court of Justice against Israel. For, as you saw with the ICJ, Israel was carrying out its war. It was determined it was not genocide, but it could in some future chance be genocide if Israel doesn't take care. Israel is taking care. Iran understands the dynamics of all of this, and that's why it is making the Houthi rebels attack.

On the other hand, Israel is an intensely powerful country. For anyone who has not been to Israel, which is a multinational, multicultural, very brown country, it is 80% people of color because 80% of Israelis are Mizrahi Jews who come from all over the Muslim world. And then 20% of Israel are Israeli Arabs, people who are who are Arabs, Palestinians born, raised in Israel who didn't leave after 1948. So that country, as a as a multinational, multicultural, multilingual democracy, is a threat to Iranian aspirations. They love the image that Israel is this Ashkenazi white country of settlers that have come in there. Well, then again, they have been settling for 3,500 years. They are in the Bible. As you might recall, the entire story from the creation to the end, Israel is not going

anywhere. And they also understand Israel is a nuclear power. So Iran does not want to tangle with Israel using Hezbollah in the north, even though there are skirmishes going on there. Israel has the manpower, weapon power, and technology to change the entire balance of the Middle East. I mean, they could destroy the Syrian army, surround Hezbollah. So all of these are things Iran does not want to do. Malcolm, let's take a quick break right now. I want to keep this conversation going on the other side.

I did have some questions about the Iranian regime. I want to bring the panel in on this discussion. Also, we'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. You heard why we're marching, and it's really a launch. It's not even a march. We're launching a 42-week campaign.

March the 2nd at 10 o'clock in Raleigh and 33 other state capitals and the District of Columbia. This is a historic move to mobilize the most powerful untapped block of voters in this country. Poor and low wealth voters. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

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

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. 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 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. Who make up 87 million votes. And it's never been tried before. Never been tried before in history. At the same time, the same message, same focus. When that power turns loose, they will not be able to figure out the political calculus. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to shake things up.

I'm ready to get up out of the valley. I'm ready for God to put his spirit on us. I'm ready to get up out of the valley. I'm ready for God to put his spirit on us. I'm ready to be used to change this nation. And what we're saying is can't we come together? Can't we come together around an agenda? You ain't got to like everything about Rembobber. You don't have to like everything about St. Greer. You don't have to like everything about Longprior. But can we come together and say it's time to end poverty as the fourth leading cause of death? It's time to have $15 at a living wage indexed with inflation so every time inflation goes

up, the minimum wage goes up. It's time to have health care for all. It's time to fully fund public education. Can't we come together? It's time to protect women's right to women's health. It's time, it's time to have affordable housing for everybody. It's time to stop the proliferation of guns. Ain't no way folk ought to be able to have more guns than they have food,

more guns than they have meat on their table. That makes no sense. Isn't it time for division to be ended and love to take over? Can't we organize around that? Look at your neighbors. Neighbor, I don't need to like everything about you. But can't we organize for power? Can't we stand for justice?

Can't we love everybody for just a little while? Can't we come out of the valley? Can these bones live? This is Reggie Rock Byker with you watching... Roland Martin, unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Welcome back. We're still joined by counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance.

And Malcolm, before the break, you were talking about the Israeli superiority over the Iranians. One thing that I think a lot of people don't know is that there are not three but four variants of the F-35. Of course, you have the Air Force variant, you have the Marine variant, you have the Naval variant. But there's also the F-35I, which is the Israeli variant that has Israeli technology, Israeli avionics in it. And this kind of goes to show the interconnectedness between the U.S. military and the Israeli military. But recently, we've seen more and more that the U.S. government has criticized the way that the Israeli government and Netanyahu have executed this war against Hamas. Do you think that that relationship may start fraying between the U.S. and Israel if the U.S. feels that the Israeli government is not listening to them

when they talk about humanitarian issues or the need to kind of meter their response to this war? Well, first off, no, there's no fraying between Israel and the United States when it comes to military technology and military cooperation over the conduct of the war. In fact, the very fact that Israel did not invade Gaza on 10-8 is a testament to the United States and our relationship with the IDF, where we came and advised them that they needed to step back, take weeks before they carry out a ground invasion, get the civilian population to move out of Gaza City, based on the experience we had in the city of Fallujah, the battle for retaking Mosul from ISIS, and the final battle to wipe out ISIS in the city of Raqqa. So there is very deep military ties.

I mean, I've been operating in this area for over 40 years. We have always had relationships with Israel. We buy an enormous amount of ammunition, small arms ammunition from Israel. And as you see, they buy a lot of our weapons systems. We actually adapt a lot of our technology and weapons from Israel, where they actually carry it out. You know, in combat operations is almost an experimental step for many systems the United States has.

So that is not what's fraying. What's fraying is our patience with the prime minister of Israel, who, to be honest, and anyone who is looking at this situation honestly, really should not be in power. I mean, he is responsible for a lot of the trouble that's happening here. He supported Hamas early on. He may even have had access to plans and activities of Hamas up to a year in advance, and he failed utterly at every level to protect the Israeli citizens. And this is why the hostage families have broken down into three separate groups, one that is pro-Netanyahu and the other two that are not. So, you know, they want their families back from Hamas. And some groups want it back in

any way, shape or form. So I don't think there's going to be much daylight between the United States and Israel in terms of war fighting, because this particular war, no one has ever fought before, and certainly not in the urban environment that the IDF finds themselves in now. But certainly, and my last question before we go to the panel, we talk a lot about the Iranians funding many of these rebel groups throughout the region. But we've seen in recent months, Vladimir Putin has spoken with President Raisi in Iran. We've seen massive amounts of weaponry, drones, artillery shells being shipped from Iran to Russia to continue the execution of their war in Ukraine, of course, Russia going to North Korea for Soviet-era ammunition to be used on the front lines.

But in addition to that, we've seen Afghan incursions in the west of Iran over water rights. We've also seen Balochistani rebels attacking the commemoration of General Soleimani and his assassination. We've seen airstrikes from Pakistan into those areas in response to Iranian rocket attacks. Does Iran have the capacity to both support militarily Russia, to support these militant groups, to fight off the Taliban, to fight off the Pakistanis, as well as continue to be a threat to U.S. shipping in the region?

Or at some point in time, will they no longer be this regional threat and the last member of this axis of evil, as George Bush called them? Well, Iran is certainly stretching its legs in terms of being an expeditionary force using the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. You see, its relationship with Russia is deep and long because Russia does not have the ability to have a sustained military industrial complex. The Shahid-136 drones, which Russia has bought 6,000 of for the purpose of bombarding Ukraine, has proven not to be as revolutionary as people thought it would be, as the Ukrainians are shooting them down with relative ease. But you see, these drones now are the weapon of choice that Iran is giving to its proxies. It was Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias that they gave the Shahid drones to that attacked the U.S. base at TAMF-22 in Jordan. There were Syrian rebels that were, you know, Syrian militias, all Shia Muslims, by the way,

that they gave these weapons systems to as well, including Hezbollah. The Houthis have them and are firing them at ships. So as they gain these new technologies, like the ballistic missiles, right, which are a real threat, Iran gives them to its proxies to carry out pressure campaigns for Iran using other Shia militias. The United States is not going to be bombing Iran anytime soon so that we can destroy the factories or destroy the pipeline of weapon systems that have been put out there. But like with regards to Yemen, we do have the capacity to degrade them anytime they roll out an anti-ship missile or ballistic missile platform

or they warehouse them. We have the ability to destroy them. So you're going to be seeing this U.S. campaign against these groups not to destroy the leadership, not to destroy the people who are actually pulling the triggers. We're destroying the capability. We're going to leave them in the desert with empty warehouses and ballistic missile or drone launchers that have no drones in them. All right. Let's go to our panel. Rebecca, do you have a question for Malcolm Nance? For being on the show tonight, you mentioned the majority of folks who are in Israel right now are people of color. As we all know, over 80 percent of the world is non-white. So saying people of color is ambivalent. Right.

So specifically, can you tell me about the current state of those of the African diaspora that are currently in Israel and currently in the West Bank? You mentioned you just spent four weeks there. So talk about black folks, but specifically those of the African diaspora. So broader than black Americans in Israel and West Bank. Sure. Well, you know, when I mentioned Israel as people of color, I'm talking that they are the same color, ethnic, you know, makeup as the nations they came from, which is Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, huge numbers of Moroccan Jews and Yemen, which have a very large Jewish population. They have all, you know, they are indigenous to the region and were all ethnically cleansed from other countries and sent off to Israel in the last 75 years. The Israeli diaspora is pretty dark. With regards to the actual sub-Saharan African or, you know, African diaspora that lives within Egypt, I'm sorry, in Israel. First off,

3% of Israelis are Ethiopian Jews. It is, and I will tell you, I was, I've been to Israel many times, but just over the last 15 years, the number of sub-Saharan Africans that are Israeli citizens has risen dramatically. There are almost 200,000 Ethiopian Jews. The first man, the first officer killed in the Iraq, I'm sorry, the Israel-Hamas war was an Ethiopian falasha major in the Israeli army, an infantry officer who was killed. The last one killed in the last 24 hours was a 19-year-old Ethiopian Jew who was born in Israel from that community. They are deeply integrated into their community. We see very few African Americans, but we do see a lot more sub-Saharan Africans. There's an entire population that was brought out of South Sudan to Israel, not as a labor force, but to save these sub-Saharan African Christians from South Sudan from the Janjuweed Arab militias that were massacring black communities in South Sudan. It is not surprising at all to see people in uniform on the streets. And I'm not talking about guest workers. I'm just talking about Israeli citizens who are Black.

Absolutely. Representative Jackson, do you have a question? I do. First off, thank you, Mr. Nance, for your service to our country. Thank you for the body of work. I, too, served in the Navy for 22 years, retired naval officer. And my twofold question is, out of all the 91 felonies and four indictments that Trump is under, the one that's most airtight to me is the classified documents. You and I both know, after holding a top-secret clearance, a very high-level top-secret clearance for 22 years, you cannot mishandle any classified documents, not even one piece, more or less 300 boxes. And how he went back and forth for 18 plus months talking about he's going to keep these classified documents.

Can you share with us why is it keeping why is this airtight case taking so long to adjudicate? And then my second question is, I saw in a recent poll that a lot of citizens who voted for Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020 said that they're not going to vote for Biden, Kamala Harris, because of President Biden's position on this Gaza Strip with Israel. And so citizens really do not understand the dynamics when it comes down to NATO, dealing with our allies, but more importantly, in this particular scenario, when it's coming down to dealing with Israel, the Gaza Strip, and during this presidential year, can you share with the audience what President Biden can do to turn this around so people can understand the reason why they do need to vote for President Biden and why we're dragging our feet on these classified documents case down in Florida. Well, let's talk about the classified documents first. There's clearly a double standard for Donald Trump versus every other person who has handled classified information.

Just as late as yesterday, he admitted on Laura Ingraham's television program that he has this bizarre belief in his head. Someone somewhere told him that the Presidential Records Act allows him to keep anything that he wants. He keeps saying that. It's insane. The literal words in the Presidential Records Act are very clear that presidential records, all documents, all materials that the president handles from the moment he is elected is the property of the United States. And he stole, they've charged him with 91 felony counts of stealing these documents. You might recall a young woman by the name of Reality Winner, former U.S. Air Force signals intelligence analyst, went to become an intelligence contractor at Fort Gordon, Georgia, stole one, one top secret document, which she thought showed some nefarious activities by the Trump campaign.

And she went to prison for five years before she had her sentence commuted. Donald Trump has, if it were you or I, and you know, and I had a top secret SCI special access program clearance as high as most people on the National Security Council because I generated this level of intelligence for the National Command Authority. If we accidentally walk outside a sensitive compartment and information facility, turn around and walk back in, we can still be convicted of that. So the biggest reason that nothing is happening is the judge, Judge Eileen Cannon, who Donald Trump appointed, who had never had a criminal case

before her, was a rent-a-cop, you know, mall lawyer that Trump put into that job. And she seems to think her job is to protect him. That's that classified documents. With regards to Gaza and the electorate, there are two bodies of people who are claiming that they will not vote for Joe Biden. One is Arab Americans who previously voted for Joe Biden, principally made up around the Dearborn, Michigan, the Michigan area where the largest concentration of Muslim Americans, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans are. They have decided they are a one issue voter pool and that they do not care what happens beyond their one issue. And all I can say about that is if they view that Donald Trump would be any better

for them, he has already stated out loud, Stephen Miller and his other acolytes have stated out loud, the largest roundup using the armed forces of the United States since World War II will be carried out on day one. They promised that they would also deport anyone that was a pro-Palestinian protester, U.S. citizen or not. They will immediately revoke all visas for anyone who is pro-Palestine. They will deport anyone who is not a U.S. citizen who is pro-Palestine, and he's already threatened to use the armed forces on U.S. citizens. If you're a single-issue voter and that's your single issue, be prepared to lose all of your rights for everyone. They want to vote democracy out of existence over this single issue. I have fought in wars in the Middle East.

This is one of the wars that people are now seeing on their television screens for the first time. But there is no difference. I'm sorry to tell you, there is no difference than the way that we carried out combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, with casualty levels that were far higher than what the Israelis are doing. see it. And it suddenly is in the grasp of the Palestinians because it involves the Jews. And now they have decided that they would rather have a dictatorship than to have an American electorate where there is more than one subject on the table. They may find that they have voted for their own destruction and all of our destruction. But like usual, African-Americans are going to step up to the plate and save them. And Malcolm, we have about four minutes left. I did have one question. How do you see this war ending between Israel and Hamas?

I was on press TV in Iran at the beginning of the war, and the segment before me was a young boy. He was about eight years old. And his father had just been killed by the IDF. He said, my father's been killed by the IDF. My grandfather was killed by the IDF in 2005. My great-grandfather was killed by the IDF in 1987. Will this actually end this conflict or just be a temporary ceasefire while the next generation

rises up to fight back against the Israelis? You know, I've been following this subject. I've been involved in the Middle East for 40 years. My first operations in the Near East, in Lebanon, dealing with Palestinian diaspora terrorist groups, Fatah, part of branch of the PLO, since I was 18. I first started studying it when I was 12, and that was in the 1970s. This is not new. But there is one consistent theme that I think the Palestinians fail to grasp. All right. Everyone who takes Israel on loses. And there's a reason that they lose. First off, they have been, instead of negotiating to go back to 1948, the U.N. mandate that gave them a two-state solution,

a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis on the land, the territory that they had and technically have been occupying, I like we use the word occupying, for 3,500 years. Judea, Samaria, Galilee have been in existence for two centuries before Jesus Christ. Actually, more. If you want to go back to the 12 original tribes of Israel, you're talking 3,000 years before the time of Christ. This is not something that has happened in the last 75 years. The Palestinians, on the other hand, the Palestinian Arabs do not want to negotiate. And Egypt negotiated a strategic peace in 1978. And the first thing that the Egyptians did was

they gave Gaza to the Israelis. They didn't want to have to handle the Palestinian issue. So the Palestinians generationally keep talking themselves into the belief that they must fight. And you're talking to someone, I speak Arabic, I've been to the West Bank, I love my Palestinian brothers and sisters, but this is a losing battle. They cannot keep creating generations of terrorists to carry out terrorist acts and expect to win. They don't have the capacity. They don't have the population. What they do have is an opportunity in order to shrug off the terrorist group Hamas

and see about reforming in the day after. Because here's the Israeli philosophy of the day after. That is a traumatized country. I'm telling you, I've been to every inch of Israel. I have been to the kibbutzes that were where the people were slaughtered. They are traumatized to the point where they do not care if another Palestinian ever works in Israel again. That's 50,000 jobs that are now lost. They're bringing in 100,000 Indians from India to replace them. Their national security is their number one priority. So the day after this, we're all going to have to make a concerted effort to understand, to hope that there is not going to be a next generation,

that this time when they bring in concrete, they rebuild these buildings and create a Gaza that could have been on par with Singapore or Dubai. Sir, well, Malcolm, we really, Malcolm, we appreciate everything that you bring to light for us, breaking down many of these issues that sometimes, you know, don't get handled in African-American press and media and breaking it down in a way people can understand. We really appreciate you for joining us today. Got to thank also Rebecca and Representative Jackson for joining us today. Really appreciate the insight that you added into this conversation. Thank you to Roland for letting me keep his seat warm while he is out.

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