#RolandMartinUnfiltered - OH mayor: Fire cop for not using bodycam; Black doc dies of COVID; Pandemic to get worse during Xmas

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

12.23.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Ohio mayor wants to fire cop for not using bodycam; Black doc dies of COVID after she alleges racist mistreatment from hospital; Black turnout in the Georgia Senate runoff election is at 99.4%; Pandemic to get worse during the holidays as the virus mutates; Florida State University basketball player who collapsed on the court has been diagnosed with a heart inflammation that my be related to COVID-19; Haiti's Ambassador to the United States will join us to talk about recent developments in the country; Update in the Quawaun Charles case; Meet the creator of an interactive virtual reality experience set to the historic events of the Civil Rights Movement + We remember Ecstacy from the group Whodini Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered #RolandMartinUnfiltered 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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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 starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. 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 podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like, he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit adoptuskids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Thank you. Today is Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, broadcasting live from Atlanta, where we are covering the Georgia Senate runoff.

Columbus, Ohio's mayor wants a police officer fired for not turning on his body camera during a fatal shooting of a black man. Mayor Andrew Ginther joins us to explain. Black turnout in the Georgia Senate runoff election is at 99.4%, nearly the same as it was during the general election. We also have the latest information about the COVID-19 vaccine and new mutated versions seen in the UK of a doctor who was fired

for sounding the alarm about the virus last year. Also, speaking of COVID-19, a Florida State University basketball player collapsed and almost died on the court during the game and he's being diagnosed with a heart inflammation tied to COVID-19 will explain. Also on today's show,

Haiti's ambassadors to the United States would join us to talk about developments that three members of Congress targeted. Haitians'll talk about some other issues as well. Plus, an update in the case of Kwan Charles, the last person to seem alive and miss as she knew he was missing. Plus, in our Black Tech segment, you'll meet the creative and interactive virtual reality experience set to the historic events of the civil rights movement. Plus, we remember ecstasy from the group Houdini who died today. It's time to bring the funk

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You know he's Roland Martin now. Roland Martin. Another black man dead at the hands of police, this time in Columbus, Ohio. A black man was faintly shot early Tuesday. The officer did not turn on their body cameras until after the shooting. But because of a 60-second look-back function, the shooting was captured on video. However, the function does not record the audio. The mayor of Columbus, Andrew Ginther, said the fact the cameras were not on when they were supposed to be is unacceptable. Officers were responding to a call about a running vehicle at

1.30 in the morning on Tuesday. They found a 47-year-old man in the garage. At some point, the man started walking towards the police officer with a cell phone in his left hand. Officers say his other hand couldn't be seen. That's when one of the officers opened fire, striking the man. He died an hour later at a local hospital. To date, the victim and the officers involved have yet to be named. This comes two weeks after law enforcement fatally shot 23-year-old Casey Goodson Jr. as he was entering his grandmother's home. There isn't any recording of that incident as the sheriff's deputy involved wasn't using a body camera.

Joining us right now is the mayor of Columbus, Ohio. Actually, we're going to play this soundbite first, and then we're going to go to Mayor Andrew Gither. So go ahead and play it. It is unacceptable to me and to the community that the officers did not turn on their cameras. The city works hard to provide police with the tools officers need to protect themselves and the public.

So let me be clear. If you're not going to turn on your body-worn camera, you cannot serve and protect the people of Columbus. I have asked Chief Quinlan to remove the officer involved of duty and turn in his badge and gun. We are awaiting the notification of the next of kin to release the name of the gentleman who was shot and killed. We are also giving them, the family, an opportunity to see the body-worn camera footage we have before it is released to the media. We expect that to be in the next 24 hours. As you all know, this past summer, we signed an MOU with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, to investigate police-involved shootings and deaths that occur in custody. This investigation is being handled by BCI, and the Columbus Division of Police is fully cooperating. In addition, I spoke this afternoon with U.S. Attorney Dave DeVillers and have asked him

to review the investigation to determine if the victim's civil rights were violated as well. I am deeply saddened, frustrated, angry, demanding answers of what happened in our community earlier this morning. And I am committed to transparency and accountability in our division of police. The director and I are the civilian oversight of the division of police. The director and I are the civilian oversight of the Division of Police. The chief reports to the director, the director reports to me, and I report to the people of Columbus. And I am committing to them that we will seek the truth wherever it takes us, and justice will be served. In just a moment, we'll be joined by Columbus Mayor Andrew Gither.

I want to now go to Scott Bolden as well as Robert Portillo, two of our regular Wednesday panelists, and so we're going to go to them in just a second to talk about this here. Do we have the mayor? All right, we're going to have Columbus Mayor Andrew Guenther in just one second. Again, what we're dealing with here is a police officer failing shooting an african-american man

on tuesday in columbus ohio body camera not on now you heard me say on many occasions on this show i believe that officers who do not turn on their body cameras should be automatically fired that is the point of the body cameras uh scott bolden robert patel i want to start with you uh scott that's the point of contention that I've always had. And I'm sick and tired of excuses from these police officers, Scott. There should be no excuses. And the mayor and you are right. They have the police tools to photograph and to videotape their work. If you're a good cop, if you do it by the book, if you're procedurally sound with this gun and badge,

then you should have no problem turning on that camera. This was not an emergency run. The run was for someone sleeping in a car running, and then as it turned out, it was in the garage. It was 1.30 in the morning, and so the police approached cautiously. They didn't have their sirens on. They didn't have their lights on.

They just investigated. And now, as a result of what appeared to be a simple investigation, you have another dead black man. It just makes no sense. It's bad policing. The camera raises suspicion. But the fact that you used your gun because you couldn't see his hand or he had a cell phone in his hand, it goes back to police training. But more importantly, what I've said to you before, is who are we giving guns and badges to?

There's got to be a psychological assessment as to whether these people are prone to racially profiling. Can they handle the pressure of carrying a gun as part of an investigation? And they don't deserve to have a gun in them badge under color of law because this is what happens. Bad policing. Robert, we've had Ben Crump on the show. He talked about 95 African-Americans shot and killed by police this year in 2020. I'm sorry, since the murder of

George Floyd. Now you see this case here, it's just absolutely unbelievable and it's crazy. This is part of the reason that we're going to have to demand federal legislation within the first 100 days of the Biden administration to address police

brutality. I understand what many in the establishment are saying about defunding police, hurting this concept of democratic homogeny. But in reality, there has to be federal legislation to set an across-the-board national standard for policing for individuals. It should not depend on your state or your local jurisdiction as to whether or not you have constitutional rights to be protected. But understand right now that we are regulated as civilians when it comes to crossing the street. If you cross the street wrong, you get taken for jaywalking. You are regulated when it comes to parking your car. If you park your car in the wrong place, you get a citation. But police officers in many jurisdictions have no consequences

and no repercussions for not turning on their body cameras or footage disappearing for not following proper police procedures. You get a write-up when you get a violation or a criminal complaint for crossing the street the wrong way. So we have to ensure that federal legislation that if you fail to turn on your camera during a fatal event, that that is a felony charge for the officer. No questions, no ifs, no ands, no buts as part of the duty of care for you taking part in being a police officer. Additionally, local governments should be given resources to have continuously recorded tamper-proof body cameras.

It should not be a turn on, turn off situation. You record it directly to a remote server and then our servers say for 90 days that there's a Freedom of Information request or a discovery request put in, then the footage is archived. There's nothing stopping local jurisdictions except for money for putting that into place. So we can pass a $780 billion defense bill. We can pass legislation on the federal level that doles out $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to the rich. Why can we not put money into proper policing and the type of criminal justice reform that's

necessary to stop these things from happening? Some people on the right believe we just like protesting. We like being mad about things. No, we want these things to stop. And the best way to stop those who are federal legislation. Yeah. And Roland, we need a national bill. Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, one second no, Scott, Scott, Scott, one second. Scott, one second. Scott, one second. Joining us right now is the mayor, Andrew Ginther. Mayor Ginther, welcome to Roland Martin Infiltrated.

Mayor Ginther, can you hear me? I can hear you just fine. You hear me okay? There we go. All right then, mayor. Yep, I hear you just fine. You hear me? There we go. All right then, Mayor. Yep, I hear you just fine. Mayor, I have long contended for years when it comes to body cameras that if a police, not just body cameras, but also dash cam cameras, that if a police officer does not turn that body camera on,

does not turn that dash cam camera on, or they turn off the audio, or they switch off the video, that should be automatic firing, because the cameras are there not only to protect the citizens, but also to protect the police officers. And to me, it's careless. When they walk out of that police station, they walk out there with their gun, with their badge,

with their flashlight, with their taser, with their mace, and I don't understand how hard is it to simply go click, it's on. Well, it's really careless and reckless and it undermines community trust. This was a top priority of mine when I ran and became mayor was putting body warning cameras on our officers. And I am furious the fact that this officer didn't turn on their camera until after the shooting of Mr. Hill. Unacceptable in this community. If you want to police in the city of Columbus, you better have that camera turned on. And after the shooting, it was minutes before any aid, several minutes, that Mr. Hill lied there dying without any CPR,

without any aid given to him. Unacceptable in our city. The point that you just made there is, one, we showed the body cam footage the other day of a shooting by police in Lamarck, Texas. And the same thing. He shot and they're sitting there saying, oh, get the crowd back, get the crowd back. And it was three and a half, four minutes. And we've seen this in numerous cases over and over and over again. And it just boggles the mind that if you're a police officer, if you shoot

somebody, look, you go in to try to, you know, to get paramedics there and to try to save the person. But unfortunately, there is this attitude of shoot to kill. And we've even seen some instances, Mayor, where they've shot somebody, then they go handcuff them. Totally unacceptable, you know, and what we saw in this footage, once the camera came on after Mr. Hill was shot, I believe was a total disregard for life, in this case, black life. And when, you know, lives are disregarded, you know, that undermines the community's trust and confidence. There are two things that we are calling for the termination and firing this officer, not turning on the body worn camera and not offering aid and CPR in terms of resuscitation. Unacceptable in our city. Mayor, I'm here in Atlanta, Georgia, right now covering the Georgia Senate runoff race.

And I remember after they had some protests in this city, once the police officers pointed a gun at two college students, snatched them out of the car, no cause whatsoever, and the mayor quickly moved to fire those officers. The police union and other officers were angry. They were upset. They chastised Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Even the police chief said the firings were political and not based upon the situation on the ground.

Part of the problem that we're dealing with here is that when mayors like you take such a stance, there's a blowback from police. There's a blowback from the unions who say you're not supporting law enforcement. But what about the citizens? What about the people who now have to bury a man, the family who has to bury a man, because his car was running at 1.30 in the morning. That somehow results in death? Unacceptable. And I'll tell you this. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is an outstanding mayor and friend of mine, and she leads with courage and conviction. And that's what

we're attempting to do right here as well. And I could really care less what the FOP and the police union say. I don't work for them. I work for the people of Columbus. And the people of Columbus are calling for truth and justice. And that's exactly what we're pursuing. Mayor, we have seen the protests around the country. And clearly Congress has to act when it comes to federal legislation. But the reality is this.

You can pass a federal law. You can pass a state law. You can deal with qualified immunity. You can deal with all those things. You can spend $100 billion to outfit every law enforcement agency with body camera footage. But this is also dependent upon the individual who goes on the scene, who answers that call to not sort of make these judgments. We hear them saying we saw a cell phone in the left hand and we didn't see a phone in the other hand. And again, I'm just trying to understand, how do we get to the point

of avoiding having to bury another black person shot and killed by police, and then typically what happens, folks say, no build, officers felt that their lives were in danger, yet

somebody is dead. And as I said, since George Floyd's murder, 95 black folks shot by police. Absolutely. And in our community, what we're saying is enough is enough. We've now buried Casey Goodson today. And we are now notifying the Hill family of the death of a member of their family. Two African-American men in our community in the last three weeks, one from the deputy in the sheriff's department, and this shooting involving Mr. Hill from the Columbus Division of Police.

Enough is enough. And you're right. We have body-worn cameras. We have policies and procedures. But the way you change behavior is by holding people accountable. And that's exactly what we intend to do. That's the only way you can change the culture and make sure that you have the independence, the oversight, and the accountability. Just one more question for you. One of the other issues that is a problem here is that when an officer is fired or officer resigns or retires, they can simply move on to the next locale. We saw that happen in Cleveland. The officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice had issues with another police department and was able to get a job there.

And then after that situation, another place hired him as well. Do you believe that when these things happen, there should be state legislation that bars another law enforcement agency from being able to hire a police officer? Let's say who's been let's say this officer is fired and the firing is upheld. I'm not quite sure what the contracts are there in Columbus, Ohio. But let's say that happens. Shouldn't there be some law that says this person can't just hop to another law enforcement agency, that there should be at least a wait of a year, two, three, five years if folks don't support a lifetime ban, but at least some period where they just don't get another law enforcement job that quick? Absolutely agree. and we're working on that. And actually, the Democratic mayors of the big cities of the state

are working with our Republican governor and attorney general to put in place a statewide database so that jurisdictions from across the state know exactly what they're getting with officers that are applying to serve in their communities, what their background and history are, so that those red flags can be raised before they're even brought into communities where they clearly are not committed to protecting and serving everyone.

Mayor Andrew Ginther, we certainly appreciate you joining us on the show. You're one of your predecessors, Michael Coleman. I know him well. He would often be here. And so you're certainly welcome to come back to Roland Martin Unfiltered anytime to talk about this case or any other issues. Thank you, Roland. Have a good evening. Merry Christmas. Likewise. Thank you very much. Come back to my panel, Scott. The point I was just making there, you can pass a federal law, You can pass a state law. But there has to be a change of attitude, a change of policing, a change of conduct, a change of culture, a change of attitude

among police in this country. Yeah, I think the mayor of Columbus is right. He said it best. He says, I don't care about the police unions. I don't represent them. I represent the people of Columbus is right. He said it best. He says, I don't care about the police unions. I don't represent them. I represent the people of Columbus. And it takes courage. It takes courage and courageous conversations and mayors like that, as well as Keisha Lance Bottoms and others to do that because the killing has to stop. These major urban centers are just becoming killing fields for black men and the national standard for the use of deadly force.

I'll supplement what Robert said and what the mayor said and what you say repeatedly. Aren't you tired of having these conversations and reporting on these incidents, Roland? I mean, it just makes zero sense. And I'm tired of reporting on it. Something's got to be done, including a national standard on the use of deadly force, what's not so much what's reasonable but what's necessary or whatever that national standard, new national standard in the pending legislation is. But it's just got to stop.

And then the training piece, who are we giving guns to and badges to and allowing them to use them under color of law? There's got to be an assessment as to whether you qualify to be a police officer and carry that gun and badge. We don't do that enough. There needs to be a consistent national standard on all of this stuff. That's the only way it's going to change from a culture standpoint and courageous of politicians pushing back on these very powerful police unions at the state, local, and county level. I want to bring in Monique Presley right now. She is working on that particular case in Lamarck, Texas. I made the point there, Monique, with Columbus Mayor

Andrew Ginther. Here he criticized the lack of aid being provided to this 47-year-old Black man, the exact same thing we saw on that video footage of the shooting there in Lamar. Officers shot that young man, and three and a half, four minutes go by, and no aid given whatsoever. Yeah, and we think it was more than that. That's only what we can see on the camera.

The witnesses on the ground are telling us that it was at least six, seven minutes before aid was actually rendered. They panicked a man who was likely dead before they even tried to render aid. When he was shot, he was on the ground. He was hollering for help, begging for help, and saying it felt like he was shot through his heart.

Even neighbors came out and said, he's still breathing. Let us help him. They came out with their hands up before. You can see on the video, he tried to render aid. That officer, Jose Santos, refused to render. And instead, they just watched him die. I mean, they knew that it was a life-threatening injury. They watched as he bled out and as the puddle of blood got bigger and bigger. And that officer was more concerned with crowd control and more concerned with his own story than he was with saving his life.

And those are people who should never carry a badge in any district, in any territory. And what we know where Santos is concerned, same as we saw with Tamir Rice and same as we saw with so many others, he carried a badge in multiple jurisdictions. So you get in trouble in one jurisdiction, you resign before you're fired, and then you leave and you go to another jurisdiction. In this case, from Galveston and Lamarck, all you got to do is cross one bridge 10 minutes down the road

and you get a new job. And Joshua was not the first person that died at Jose Santos' hands since he's been at Lamarck PD. And I don't care what the circumstances were of the prior shooting. He never should have had an opportunity to carry a gun that sanctions

violence, that sanctions death when he had already shown he's willing to beat a man to a pulp and try to drown him, just as willing as he is to do that, as apparently he is to do a drive-by shooting and call it an officer who's getting a suspect. So, no. Many things. Many things. Monique, as you were talking, we were

rolling the video of that Lamarck shooting. This is at the one minute point of the video. There's another four minutes and four seconds. He's there lying on the ground. No aid being provided. We have yet to see, of course, first of all, there's even that 60 second preview out of Columbus. But Robert, this is the thing that we also deal with. We deal with officers who lie on these reports, these officers who say someone was coming at them. And the reason

why the body camera footage is important or the dash cam footage in the case of Laquan McDonald, the officers lied. And then the other officers around them lied, too. And so part of the part of the deal here, Robert, is that when they lie, the body camera footage then is able to contradict the lie. And that's why this stuff matters. We're not saying that the body cams are the panacea, the be-all to end-all, but my God, what it does

provide you is real and proper context of the actions not only of the person who has been apprehended or held up or shot, but also of the officer. Well, look, Roland, and on that same note, I'm part of criminal defense bar. Most of the cases I do are criminal defense cases in addition to civil rights cases. And frankly, it cuts both ways for officers that if a officer is doing something above board, if they do not believe

they are breaking the law or breaking any code or breaking any protocols, then the camera is absolutely a benefit to the officer. I've had many cases where my client has told me a sob story, and then we see the police body cam footage like, no, you did it. You did all of it. It's all on video. So for any police officer, if they think they are in the right, they will want to have the camera on because that is a non-biased witness that will exonerate them. So just the camera being off de facto is an indication that something wrong is going on because who wouldn't want a non-biased witness if you think you were

doing the right thing? And this is why we have to have federal legislation that mandates body cams on a national level that has federal standards for policing. You cannot have one state where you need a bachelor's degree to be a police officer and another state where you can be a high school dropout and be a police officer. We have to ensure that we're getting the proper people, the proper mental health evaluations.

And we also have to look at what other modern nations are doing, what other first world countries are doing. Why do you police officers have guns in America? You can walk around London all day and not see a police officer with a gun. The reason we have SWAT units, special weapons and tactics, is because those are the people who are supposed to have the weapons for advanced, for important situations or advanced violent situations. Every single beat cop does not need to have a gun on their hip to do traffic tickets and

jaywalking. So we have to have a holistic reassessment of how we do crime and punishment in this country. Until we do that, we will not have true criminal justice reform. Scott, last point on this particular issue, when we talk about these cameras and dash cam videos, we know the stores out of New Orleans where cops would turn the dash cam video off when they would pull up. In Chicago, they would break the antennas. They have this high rate of antennas being broken on dash cam cameras because they did not want it to be recorded. And this is very simple. You break it, you're fired. You turn it off, you're fired. You don't turn it off.

That is the only way. There must be zero tolerance on the part of cities. And this is one of those things where you say in your negotiations, we're not signing on a new contract. You're not going to get a raise unless you agree to those things. And if you object, fine, we're going to sit here and no contract. City officials need to talk tough like the mayor of Columbus, but they must follow through and hold police accountable for their actions as well. Well, and I'll supplement, I agree with that, but I'll supplement it with the people who are watching the bad actors, this whole culture of blue, that is that culture of just lying, right?

The culture of shooting unarmed men. Here's the deal. If you are watching it and not reporting it, you are just as culpable as the bad actor. So when you're doing your police union contract or you're supporting a culture in a police department, there ought to be incentives in that contract too, that the good actors, the police officers that are not breaking the law, if they observe bad police conduct,

they need to report it. And you need to give an incentive to those officers because otherwise, if they tolerate that in their culture and they're around bad officers, like in the George Floyd case, then you're just creating this expanded culture and environment of bad police culture and bad police conduct while others tolerate it. Give them an incentive to report it and make it verifiable.

Do that along with these national standards, and you can stop these unnecessary killings. You just got to have the courage. These elected officials have to have the courage to do it once and for all. How many more Black men and women must be killed in this country, right, before politicians, elected officials stand up, government officials, and say enough is enough. Here are the 10 things we're going to do. We're going to pass it, bipartisan or otherwise, and we're going to stop the killing fields in black communities around this country.

So it's a simple solution, hard to get a map. Well, that's exactly why people are out here protesting. That is why they are pushing and challenging. Black and white people protesting. But that's why when you hear people talk about defund the police, we hear them talking about because they're sick and tired of

things not being done. That's not the answer, though. Excuse me. Excuse me. Scott, Scott, Scott. Scott. You can say it's not the answer. What I'm saying to you is that's why people are demanding it. Because there is death after death after death after death after death after death.

This is like Groundhog Day. So you can disagree with all you want to. people are calling for it because they're sick and tired of having to bury another black man or another black woman who is dying at the hands of cops who do not know how to control themselves. But speaking of what is happening in terms of things that should be done right in this country, same thing when it comes to COVID-19. This video, folks, went viral on yesterday. And it is the video that a black female doctor posted of herself talking about COVID-19 and the lack of care she received from the hospital. This video was shot a few weeks ago.

That sister is now dead. Watch this. Now, that is not how you treat patients. Period. So I don't trust this hospital, and I'm asking to be transferred. These people wanted to send me home with new pulmonary infiltrates and all kind of lymphadenopathy in my neck. The other thing that that white Dr. Bannock said was that if I stayed, that he would send me home Saturday at 10 p.m. in the dark. Who does that? On a week? who does that

and that nurse was telling me oh i was marching in black lives matter i told him no i don't believe none of that not one bit not one iota he wouldn't even know how to march. Probably can't even spell it. This is how black people get killed. When you send them home and they don't know how to fight for themselves. I had to talk to somebody, maybe the media, somebody, to let people know how I'm being treated up in this place. And he gladly told me, I know you're a doctor. He didn't want the black doctor to have no medicine, nothing.

And then had the nerve to say, it's because of him, the nurse, that I got the medicine. Really? Because of you? No. How about because I had that stat CT on my neck where it showed all of that lymphadenopathy and infiltrates? Yeah, you didn't know about that? You didn't get that in report? That's what I said.

To being black up in here, this is what happens. Folks, if you go to my iPad here, she posted a number of updates on her Facebook page. This was this was update six. I was home for less than 12 hours. Spike the temperature of 103. My blood pressure plummeted to 80 over 60. The heart rate of 132.

I'm back in the hospital, a different hospital, St. Vincent Carmel. Those people were trying to kill me. Clearly, everyone has to agree they discharged me way too soon. They're now treating me for a bacterial pneumonia as well as COVID pneumonia. I'm getting very compassionate care. They're offering me pain medicine. Update number seven on BiPAP being transferred to ICU. She died shortly after that. Dr. Clavon Gilman is an emergency medicine physician and former

Marine combat medic who served in Iraq. Gilman, you said that you're seeing this kind of death simply is not normal. And in fact, you had to battle your own hospital when it came to the issue of you speaking out as vigorously as you could on this issue of COVID-19. This is a black doctor who is dead. This is a woman who knew what was going on. This is not someone who wasn't aware. She is now dead. Yes. Hello?

Yes, we can hear you. Go right ahead. Yeah, no, no, no. I think what happened to Dr. Susan Moore is very tragic, right? This is an educated physician who knew her disease process. She knew she had COVID-19. She had to advocate for herself to get a CT scan to get the proper care. She was on oxygen, so she had qualified for a certain type of treatment. She was on oxygen, so she had qualified for a certain type of treatment. She was in pain. She was refused pain medicine.

It sounds as if she also advocated to get a CT scan as well, which showed that she had multiple pulmonary infiltrates. And then the talk of sending her home at 10 to 30 at night. You know, this is a physician, right? I mean, if we're going to treat our own physicians like this, you know, how do we treat people who are not that educated, right? This is an educated woman here who knew her whole disease process, and she still had to advocate for herself, and she still ended up with the worst possible... But Dr. Gilman, Dr. Gilman, I got to add one thing.

I got to add one thing, Dr. Gilman. Yes, sir. She was a black doctor. The black part cannot be left out. She was a black... You cannot convince me that a white female doctor

who was going through what Dr. Susan Moore was going through would have had to beg to be treated. She clearly says it, that it's because of her race, how she was being treated. I can't negate that, you know?

She clearly says it in her video, how she was being treated was based upon her race. This is truly tragic. And, you know, I looked today, I looked on Google earlier today to see if there were any articles written about it, and there hasn't been anything written about it yet, you know? Tragic.

You have been extremely outspoken on this issue of COVID-19. You've been posting on social media. You had a contentious battle with your own hospital. One report said you were fired, then you were hired back. Tell us exactly what happened here. But you have made it clear you're not going to be silenced when it comes to speaking the truth about what's happening with COVID-19 in this country. Absolutely. Look, look, look, look.

Absolutely. People are dying. I served in Iraq, right? I know war when I see war. In March, I was in Manhattan where 20,000 people died over the span of 10 weeks. And a large majority of those people were Black and people of color. And then I come out of Arizona and I hit the surge again twice. This is my third surge. So I've been, so what kind of happened to me was I was, I went to work and, and I had three patients I couldn't transfer out. And I'm like, what's up with these ICU beds? Where are these ICU beds I keep hearing about? And so I put a tweet out about that. I come home, I get off work very early on in the morning, and then it goes up viral. I wake up in the hospital. It says I can't return back to work. Over a tweet about

ICU beds, my medical group begins trying to negotiate over the next three weeks, and they refuse to let me back to work. So then I get a call from a reporter who heard about what happened, and she breaks the story. All of a sudden, I'm able to go back to work. Look, people are dying at the end of the day, man. This virus is killing Blacks at three times the rate of whites, and it's real, you know?

And we have to address this pandemic that is killing us. And I've been very vocal about that. I've been battling Trump's misinformation and the Republicans' misinformation since the beginning of the pandemic. They said it was like the flu. They said it was a hoax. They said it wasn't gonna hurt kids. I mean, I have my 27-year-old cousin, Simon Press, who was Black, who went to the hospital twice,

who was told he had GERD, was sent home, returned back to the hospital, was told he had anxiety, and then a few days after that, he was driving a car and he died on the side of the road. You know, that's unacceptable, right? That's unacceptable at the end of the day. Would that have happened if he was white? I don't think so, you know? I don't. I don't think so at So, he's on his... the treatment of African-Americans in the medical field, but the mistrust as well. This is why, and it's sad that, first of all,

we've lost her because she's a black doctor. It's not like we've got that many. We've seen black nurses in Detroit, in D.C. and other places die of COVID. So we're seeing the loss of trusted black health professionals. This to me is where, and in a moment we're going to talk with someone at the National Medical Association, but this is where black medical experts are so vital because our people are more likely, based upon the research, to get better treatment from Black

healthcare professionals and to trust what is coming from Black healthcare professionals more than anybody else. If they're dying from COVID. And there's very few of us, right? Like, when I went to medical school, there were only a few black people in my class, right? And so there's very few this virus and it's just extreme, it's a hard position to be in. And then also for persons of color as well to have trust in a medical community, when they see a doctor like Susan Moore saying that she's being treated differently because she's black and this is how black people die.

Dr. Clavon Gilman, we certainly appreciate you. First of all, we thank you for your courage. Thank you for the work that you're doing and your willingness to speak truth, regardless of what other folks, how they want you to stay quiet. That is exactly what we need and it is vital and we thank you very much. I appreciate it, man. You be safe.

And now, wear your mask, stay inside, stay six feet apart, and get the vaccine when it comes out. I got the vaccine a day ago. I'm feeling good right now, yo. I'll keep you posted. Oh, absolutely. First of all, understand, when we're out here

covering uh stuff in georgia i got two masks i got goggles i got ears protected uh i'll tell somebody in the heartbeat back the hell up you know so that ain't no problem at all so trust me uh i you know i don't play that uh we keep five six six bottles of hand sanitizers around. You can say on this one, bruh is real OCD. I got goggles. I got the shield. No, no, no. We ain't trying to get sick. Good. Good, man.

I'm loving what I'm hearing, man. You keep doing that thing, man. All right, brother. Take care, brother. Dr. Gilman, I appreciate it. Thank you so very much. I want to go to Monique Presley. Monique, the listen... First of all, you sent me the tweet of Dr. Moore

and just... Here's a black doctor begging for treatment and these white folks are like, man, we don't care. We don't care what you're dealing with. That, I'm sorry, that's manslaughter.

That, to me, to me, how she is treated, that means somebody at that hospital should be charged with manslaughter. Yes. And what I, I'll say it more civilized than I did in my text to you, but I will explain, you know, just the exhaustion and rage and heartbreak because what we saw happen to her, to our beloved sister doctor to a smart, brilliant woman who was on the front line, giving her community and getting the patient and had to advocate for herself. And even though she had all the smarts in the world and all the expertise and knew exactly what was going on with her and could diagnose herself better than anybody else could,

it still was not enough. She still got sent home when she shouldn't have, got refused medicine when she shouldn't have, ended up in a better hospital because her friends had to advocate for her. Other doctors who were not black had to advocate for her. But it was too late. because people will listen to that and they'll listen to her video and say that she was assuming that it was because she was black, because she was a black woman, that it would happen. But the numbers do not bear out that it was an assumption. The numbers are clear. If you look at black non-mortality rates, you know, legislation, the momnibus that then-Senator, now-Vice President-elect

Kamala Harris proposed and which Ms. McConnell has been holding up, which acknowledged that Black women who are pregnant are dying at higher numbers than all of their counterparts. And it doesn't matter how much money we have, how much education we have, what neighborhood we are in. When we go in, you can be Serena Williams. And when you go into the hospital, they don't listen to your concerns the same way because they do not value Black lives. So if we're talking about Joshua Feast, if we're talking about George Floyd,

if we're talking about Serena Williams, if we're talking about Dr. Susan Moore, if we're talking about Roland Martin or Monique Presley, we can go into a hospital in the wrong area, and they will expect me to be able to take more pain. And they will take for granted when I complain that it's not as bad as I say it is. And they will take for granted that I can suffer through things. I'm one of the vestiges of slavery. And so when you compound it with the diseases that come from poverty,

with the diseases that come from poor nutrition, with the diseases that come from abuse, our genetic code, our DNA has depression and anguish and trauma in it from the way we've been treated for centuries. And what it ends up being is we see a beautiful black

sister like Dr. Susan who was, for real, just giving us a video of her journey to death. She kept hollering and screaming, saying, I'm going to go to social media because nobody else will believe me. And as you asked in the last segment,

how long do we have to really go through this? And I don't think it's just a federal solution. I don't, because we wait on the feds, and we keep dying while we're waiting. People in the streets need to understand that this is going to be you next. It's your mama. It's your sister.

How close does it have to get to you before it matters? Because if you don't go and speak to Susan Moore, what does it take? Right. Robert, on this particular point that Monique was making when she talked about the issue with the pain medicine, here's a perfect example of what she's talking about there. being victimized due to opioids is because doctors were white doctors were not prescribing opioids to African-Americans because they thought were afraid that they were coming there to get high. And so as a result, this was early on white white folks all of a sudden falling out.

I'm sitting here thinking about her son having to go off. I'm thinking about the movie John Q where Denzel has a gun holding folks hostage to get his son treated. This literally are the lengths that black folks are going to have to go through.

The movie For Life, I'm sorry, the television show on ABC, they had the same thing. A black woman who pulled a gun Are the lengths that black folks are going to have to go through. I just saw the movie for life. I'm sorry. The television show on ABC. They had the same thing. A black woman who pulled a gun out on doctors in the hospital to treat her son. This is what Serena Williams, when she had had her baby, she would tell doctors, hey, something is wrong. Right. That was worth knowing her.

This is why black black black women are dying when it comes to childbirth these doctors do not want to listen to black folks and then when we get physical and then when we get loud and we gotta break out guns and start threatening folks they're like oh my god what are y'all doing

because your racism is stopping us from being treated. Well, just as Condoleezza Rice said, racism is the original birth defect of America. And what Corona has done is not that has created these new problems, it has unmasked these new problems, like Future said. Now we are seeing what happens in environmental racism and racism as it relates to the health care system. When we talk about the comorbidities that we have in our communities, many of those are caused by, one, the lack of trust between African-Americans in the health care community,

and secondarily by the lack of access to proper care of a doctor who will actually take seriously what is wrong with you. I cannot count on the top of my head the number of times that a relative of ours has had to go to the hospital, and it took an entire generation of us to stand up to the doctors and say, no, they need additional care. You cannot simply put them in a room and give them an aspirin after having heart surgery. You're going to have to get in there and give them the standard of care

of everybody else, and most people do not have that. They do not have a couple attorneys as. And most people do not have that. They do not have a couple attorneys as nephews. They do not have a couple of doctors in the family who are able to stand up and do so. So what we have to start addressing is, in addition to criminal justice reform with regards to the African-American community, medical justice reform for the black community. Because it's crucial. They keep talking about the issues they're having, getting black people to take the coronavirus vaccine. It is because of this distrust between our community

and the medical community in general. And in order to bridge that gap, you have to do better. Don't just come to me during a pandemic and say you want our help. Come to Morehouse School of Medicine, come to Mijente, come to the African American Healthcare Association such as the National Medical Association

go to Dr. Deborah Furholden Dr. Leon McDougall make these investments early, provide better care to the black community and then when there is a pandemic you won't have to fight and do PSAs to get us to take the vaccine because we'll actually trust what the medical community is telling us I'm sitting here reading I'm sitting here reading will actually trust what the medical community is telling us.

I'm sitting here reading something from Cigna Brooks on YouTube. This is what she just posted, Scott. I suffered for 12 years with endometriosis. My white counterparts got Oxycontin. I got Motrin 800. That is what we are dealing with. And again, for all the people out there, when you listen to a Mike Pence, when you listen to Mike Pence say, oh, how dare folks bring up systemic racism. There isn't systemic racism in America. This is systemic racism. Systemic racism, Mike Pence, is when it happens in Ohio, in North Carolina, in California, in New York State, in Oregon, in Florida, in Texas, in Tennessee, in Arkansas, and Texas and Tennessee and Arkansas and Missouri and Illinois.

That's systemic racism. When this thing is happening with widespread, these are not just one-offs. No, this is consistent. And that, to me, is what we are having to contend with. And we're having to contend with people, white people, who are living in denial about the reality of race and here we have

a black woman who put in years and years and years of study to become a doctor, something very few African Americans are able to do and she is

dead today on December 23rd, two days before Christmas, because not because she's a doctor, but because she is black. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I watched that video, and I'll be honest with you, I saw my mother, my sister, my nephew, I'm sorry, my nieces as black women in that video. And when you look at the video of the shooting earlier in the show,

you know, they treated them like an animal. You know, I think it's getting beyond, it's beyond racism and white supremacy and white privilege. It's just inhumanity. I mean, the treatment just compares well to just how we treat animals.

Yeah, we treat animals better. You know, you shoot a dog in the street, you can go to jail in most jurisdictions, Roma. You know? Guns and badges and uniforms shoot black men and women out here. They keep their jobs. It was a mistake. And they don't, most of them don't go to jail.

Think about that. I really think we ought to be talking about human rights or the inhumanity of the treatment of black people. And you talked about all these jurisdictions. Well, you just go to the professions. Systemic racism rears its ugly head in the legal profession, accounting profession, medical profession, architectural profession. First of all, all over because it's America.

It's America. It's America. It's all America. It's America. There's no place. Now, speaking of saying why talk about systemic racism, it's all around him. But here's the thing, though. Here's the thing, though, that that is is unbelievable here, because, again, you have this story where Susan Moore, she begged for a CT scan, and she was at the Indiana University Health Hospital trying to send her home.

And so that was the background of that story. But I think about Keontae Johnson, who plays for the University of Florida, on his way, who was the preseason SEC Player of the Year. This happened, folks, earlier this month in a basketball game versus Florida State. This happened shortly after he had had a major dunk in the game. They came out of a timeout, roll the video. He collapses. He collapses on the court.

Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 over the summer, leaving some to believe his collapse was linked to the virus. Well, guess what? Today, he was released from the hospital and they did indeed say that a heart inflammation that is associated with COVID-19 was the cause of that. Now, why am I saying all of that?

Because all of these other people out here were clamoring, let's get them back to playing basketball. Let's them back to playing basketball. Let's get back to playing football. There were a couple of baseball players who had to sit the season out because of the exact same heart inflammation. Okay. Other sports, same thing. Miles Garrett, graduate of Texas A&M University. Miles Garrett, star defensive end for the Cleveland Browns.

Had COVID-19 over the weekend. What happened over the weekend? He was Sunday. He still had a coughing fit due to COVID-19. I'm sitting here saying, why is this man suited up? Why is this man sitting here ready to play? His life could be put on the line. Folks, if y'all see that video, and if we have it, if y'all have already shown it, that's great.

Y'all, he literally collapsed face down, wasn't moving. The other players were stunned. He goes to the ICU. He was in critical condition. It is a miracle. They put him into a self-induced coma. It is a miracle. They put him into a self induced coma. It's a miracle he got released today.

He should not have been playing. Now we're seeing multiple teams cancel bowl games because players are testing positive for COVID-19. Joining us right now is Dr. Wallace Johnson. He's a cardiology chair with the National Medical Association, the group of black doctors,

and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland. Dr. Johnson, can you hear me? Yes, I can, sir. How are you? Doing great. Dr. Johnson, people think that because these are top athletes, they're in tip-top shape.

Oh, it's no big deal. Donald Trump says, oh, it's the young people. But no, we are seeing multiple players have this heart inflammation. That brother could have died on the court. He could have died.

He was close to death. He was in serious condition in ICU. I mean, because he had COVID in the summer. And the people were trying to rush. We've got to see sports. We've got to see sports. Not if it's going to mean somebody dying on the court.

Yes. Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things that come at me real quick with that, I'll tell you. But go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off, but the bottom line is that this virus is not following any of the rules. That's number one.

So kind of funny we have a sports under here, right? We got a situation where you want to follow the rules, but not when it comes to this virus. So bottom line is you have this gentleman who, like you said, was perfectly healthy and his stories of quote-un, perfectly healthy, athletic, et cetera, and now suddenly moving over to on the verge of death and unfortunately sometimes even to death

is not one that is the first time we've heard this happen or seen this happen. It won't be the last time, unfortunately. The bottom line is that this COVID virus, we know it normally goes in through the nose, the mouth, and goes down into the lung cavity, but it looks like it can traverse and go wherever the bloodstream goes. So in other words, the heart is not necessarily going to be spared from the COVID-19 vaccine, meaning that people are going to be predisposed to what often kills people. And I'm going to just kind of make a quick point. What often kills people when they have,

for example, heart attacks is not so much just the heart just dying, but just the arrhythmias or irregular heartbeats that come about, rapid irregular heartbeats that come about as a result of that heart attack that bring about poor blood flow to the brain and the rest of the tissues and ultimately result in the patient's demise. Hence the expression, he fell out from a heart attack. Do you believe, Dr. Johnson, that an athlete

that tests positive for COVID-19 should be playing? Yeah, I think an athlete who tests positive for COVID-19 should not be playing. My thought process is that, bottom line, at the end of the day, if you have a situation where somebody's putting their life at risk, and we've seen what has happened,

and of course, I'm a native Baltimorean, so if anybody has heard about a story about of course we all know the basketball player reggie from baltimore who was uh in a situation uh yeah it was uh it was reggie lewis it was it was it was it makes no sense whatsoever and i would say no that athletes should not play and all of those sports figures or all those sports organizations can take this in mind and It's a no-brainer. It makes no sense whatsoever. And I would say no, that athletes should not play. And all of those sports figures or all those sports organizations can take this in mind and have this be a wake-up call. In fact, you were speaking of Reggie Lewis,

who played for the Boston Celtics. But you also have another player who was on his way to the NBA, Hank Gathers, who also collapsed while playing and died on the court as well. Those are examples there. And again, we are seeing a lot of these players. That's why a lot of players, college football players who could go in the pros, they opted out to play. In fact, there are a lot of NFL players who chose to sit out the season because COVID-19.

Not only because they were concerned about their family getting it, but they were concerned what could happen to them if they got it. And we're seeing the examples of what takes place when somebody tests positive in the summer, but again they insist on playing. That

brother could have died just by playing basketball. Absolutely. Yeah, what happens is that, of course, unfortunately, we have yet another example of people being in a situation. Now, sometimes, as we know, and you know that I have to tell you, Mr. Barton, that unfortunately many people have a lot of pressure, not just from the sports world, but from friends and family,

to stand up and go to the plate, so to speak, and say, batter up, even in a situation where it may not be necessarily prudent to do so. So we know that there's pressure from all ends, from the organization, from the family, from friends, all kinds of situations. So this is a chance in a lifetime, but unfortunately, unfortunately, it can end your life simultaneously, as we found out in certain situations. Dr. Wallace Johnson of the National Medical Association, we certainly appreciate your expertise, sir. Thank you so very much. I'm sorry, I had someone question. You got to go to a great.

I won't repeat that, of course. No, I said, Dr. Johnson, I still appreciate you joining us. Thank you so very much. Oh, yes. I just wanted to make sure. We come back. I thought I missed the last part of what you said. Yeah, yeah.

I appreciate being here. Yeah, we're all good, sir. Thank you. For a long time. My family's very happy to know that I'm talking to you. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, got to go to a break.

We come back. We're going to continue a little bit more about COVID-19. We're going to hear from the sheriff here in DeKalb County. She talks about losing Benny Johnson, the brother, who was a sheriff out of the Detroit area to COVID-19. She also tested positive for COVID, and we talked about that in the vaccine. We'll have that conversation with her next. Also, in the second half of the show, we'll talk with the

Haitian ambassador to the United States about the federal government, three congressmen targeting Haitians. We're going to explain this thing to you. Plus, we'll also have our tech segment. All of that, Roller Mart Unfiltered, broadcasting live from Atlanta. We'll be back in a moment.

This generation, which gets so much inspiration from entertainment, you know, this generation is influenced. I mean, every generation has their influence, but I would argue by and large, when you talk about Harry Belafonte or you talk about, you know, how it was, you know, in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s, there was, you know, you had the entertainers.

You had the church. You had the activists. In our day and time, you know, the church is somewhat losing its influence. Entertainment influence is growing. The activists are losing their influence. So where do most, you know, this younger generation go? They go to entertainment. You know, and so the influencers, entertainment can actually move the needle.

And when you see people become active, I love how this younger group of people are saying, wait a minute, we don't like what just happened with Kavanaugh. We're going to do something about it. We don't like the fact that there's no gun control. We're going to do something about it. And I do think that as tragic as these events are, they are becoming more galvanizing to get this younger group of voters, which is so influential, to get out and do what we know they can do, which is to help move the needle in a massive way. Daring to demand the right to vote for Black Americans in Selma, Alabama, 55 years ago, John Lewis was nearly killed as he and hundreds marched across this bridge. That movement's courage secured the Civil Rights Act

and the Voting Rights Act, but the promise of equal justice in America remains unfulfilled. So together, we'll fight for a new Civil Rights Act and a new Voting Rights Act to ensure equal justice for all, no matter the color of our skin, to end racial profiling and police brutality,

and to stop anyone from suppressing the sacred right to vote. Congressman Lewis gave me my first job. He instilled in me the conviction to fight for justice. He said to never give in, never give up, keep the faith, and keep our eyes on the prize. I'm Jon Ossoff. I approve this message. Too many people struggled, suffered, and died

to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote. There's a lot of stuff to do this time of year. Get the tree. Done. Hang the lights. Not yet. Wrap presents. Check.

But this year, there's one extra thing to do. Vote. That's right. Early voting starts December 14th, so make voting part of your holiday plans. It'll probably take you less time than it'll take me to do this. I'm Raphael Warnock, and I approve this message.

We learned early in Sunday school that thou shall not steal, thou shall not bear false witness, thou shall not have no other gods before me. Raphael Warnock's opponent seems to have forgotten these basic Sunday school lessons. Her gods have agreed her lies about Pastor Warnock. And her shady Wall Street practices are evidence of this. And on January the 5th, let's bear witness that greed, lies, and shady dealings don't represent Georgia. Let's send Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate to fight for the least of these and not Wall Street billionaires. The end is coming, Donald. Even Mike Pence knows.

He's backing away from your train wreck, from your desperate lies and clown lawyers. When Mike Pence is running away from you, you know it's over. Trying to save his reputation, protect his future. Oh, there's one last thing, Donald. On January 6th, Mike Pence will put the nail in your political coffin

when he presides over the Senate vote to prove Joe Biden won. It's over. And Mike Pence knows it. The Lincoln Project is responsible for the content of this advertising. You are leading the way for the rest of this state. And we believe that this state is on the verge of shocking the entire country. Keep your eyes on the prize and hold on, hold on. What y'all know about that damn office? And ultimately, we know we can't let nobody turn us around. In spite of all that you have endured this year alone,

this is still the good life city? Yeah! All that you have endured this year alone, this is still the good life city? Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

If it turns out that the Senate is hinging on one seat, and there's only one race left... Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up!

Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! Turn it up! That's right. This will literally be the epicenter of the entire country, right? So we ready. Music has an ability to be able to help us feel connected. And that's because music has a way of speaking for the spirit. And it is the spirit we're going to change this country with. It is going to be standing in a space of our power and in the fullness of our spirit of love and the spirit of humanity.

That is what's gonna transform America. Hello, everyone. I'm Godfrey, and you're watching... Roland Martin Unfiltered. And while he's doing Unfiltered, I'm practicing the wobble. All right folks, yesterday we were at Morris Brown College. We caught up with Melody Maddock. She's the sheriff here in DeKalb County. And the issue of COVID-19 came up. And she shared her thoughts about the passing of Vinnie Napoleon, of course,

who was the sheriff in the Detroit area who passed away at the age of 65 last week due to COVID-19. This is what she had to say about him. And it breaks my heart because he is a part of us. Although we've never met, we have a friendship as sheriffs that we know that we have to work together in order for the good of our community. He was an outstanding man. From what I've read, when you called his name, everybody knew who he was. And I'm just so honored to have read something positive,

especially from a law enforcement side. So I'm just heartbroken by all of this. And definitely, like I said, send my condolences to the family. Now, now, she also, she dealt with COVID-19. Myself, I was very fortunate to not have any symptoms. I was asymptomatic after being at the Georgia Sheriff's Association Conference. 13 out of 31 tested positive for this virus. So as you can see, it does not discriminate.

It is not based on color, sex, religion or anything. It has affected the law enforcement as a whole. Number one from the sheriff's's office, being that my office have over 1,500 inmates that are incarcerated. So I'm responsible for making sure, number one, the officers are safe, but also those inmates are safe so that when they are released, they are not taking that virus home with them. So it has impacted us on the psychological level. My mental population has gone up. We're talking from anywhere from 15% now is up to 20, 25% of my population has been classified as mentally ill. And we have to deal with that as sheriffs in office. Now, of course, we're also dealing with right now

in this country, the whole issue of jails and COVID-19 and whether or not you're going to see folks like her take the vaccine. But also, how do they handle the folks who are in jails and prisons who have COVID-19? This is what she had to say. We have county sheriff's office. We have strict regulations and guidelines the way we handle this pandemic. And we've done an outstanding job with it. Just also note that the sheriff's office, I would say law enforcement as a whole, needs to be vaccinated first with that. And for the reason being, then it goes to the inmates, because the officers are the ones that are leaving out every day. And I've even had inmates to tell me that it's not us, the ones that are actually getting this this are saying it's not us. So it must be coming in from outside, Sheriff. So what are

we going to do about it? So we want to make sure that the officers receive, should they want to receive this vaccine, and hopefully they will. And I'm going to be, let me just say this also, when it first, when it comes to my agency, I'm going to be the first one to receive it as a leader to show this is what we need to do. All right, then, Robert, that is exactly the leadership that we have should have. We're not seeing that coming out of the White House, obviously. The Washington Post had this whole breakdown on just how absolutely dysfunctional, how much of a joke the Trump administration has been when it comes to COVID-19. I mean, these people, I happen to be actually watching the documentary on the Reagans. There is a direct parallel to Ronald Reagan's complete ignoring of the AIDS crisis.

And Dr. Anthony Fauci was quoted in there talking about how they completely ignored this. Look, Trump is doing the same thing. He doesn't even care about what's going on right now, and people are still dying. And you're going to have people like her and others who are saying, you know what we got to do? We got to do to really advance this issue, to look out on behalf of other Americans. You're absolutely correct. And remember that Donald Trump is a symptom. He is not the sickness. The sickness goes deep down into the American system,

into the American way of treating persons who are incarcerated. Reverend Jackson this week made a call to Dr. Fauci requesting that inmates around the country, persons in custody be vaccinated because of their high comorbidity rates, because of the confined population that they're in, because of the lack of the ability to social distance.

We've asked state and local sheriffs, headed up by Reverend Freddie Haynes out of Dallas, to work on releasing their nonviolent offender population. Because simply put, COVID-19 should not be a death sentence because you are in jail for a misdemeanor conviction or because you are awaiting trial on shoplifting, something along those lines. We have better ways of handling this. This goes into the holistic nature of criminal justice reform we have to have in this country, but we need to have fewer people in jail. And the people who are in jail still need to have access to basic human rights, basic medical care. The same treatment you would expect of any human being, simply violating the law does not de-elevate you from being part of the human brotherhood. So until

and unless we address these issues from a systemic fashion, we're going to continuously face these issues, whether it's from coronavirus this year or AIDS 20 years ago or whatever the next pandemic is. Monique, again, what we're dealing with here is, yeah, an international pandemic. Thank God we're going to have a new president and vice president come in because the lack of leadership here is stunning. These people who refuse to wear their mask, the people who are acting a fool. I mean, my God, how many deaths will it take for these people to realize that, you know what, business as usual can't be business as usual? It's disheartening.

And, you know, it's colorless. There's no demographic that is not and has not been affected by this. The one thing that I would hope we have learned as a country, those of us who are awake and discerning and of conscience, would have learned is how not just sacred, but tenuous and fragile our democracy is because people were literally led to their death by this president who they were willing to listen to, even if it defied all reason, all logic, all sense. And even after, I mean, I saw at one rally, an older white woman had on a sweatshirt that on the back of it,

she had painted, my son died of COVID and I'm still voting for Trump. That's where we are. And that is a symptom, as Robert was saying, that Trump definitely is not the illness. He is the evidence of just an inbred, ingrained illness and ferociousness and twistedness that has become a part of what it means to be in the United States of America. And I'm not just worried about black folks. I'll admit I worry about black folks more because we're under attack more. But I worry about all folks, all humans who have been sucked in, who have been suckered by this administration and that they have followed someone off the cliff who does not care at all about them. Right.

Only cares about them. He only cares about himself. Absolutely. Scott, real quick, again, leadership. Finally, leadership is coming to the rescue. We've got to have a far more serious focus on this coming out of the White House and really with these governors as well. Whether we're talking about as well, whether we talk about these athletes, whether we're talking about what's happening to prisoners, we can go on

and on and on. I mean, we still are in the throes of a significant pandemic and the numbers are not subsiding. Well, we certainly need consistency. You know, the problem with the pandemic is that the GOP and the White House have politicized a pathogen that could care less about our politic or race or creed or color, even though it affects our people more than others, like three times more. protecting ourselves and the messaging from the White House and GOP leadership contributed to the deaths of these 300,000-plus people. You're right. That is stunning. That is just stunning that we live in a country where a political party where close to one out of every two voters on a second election voted for this failed leadership.

These contributors to 300,000 deaths still voted for this and are still not wearing masks, still not protecting themselves. And many of the leaders in that party got the pathogen, suffered, got heavy medication or special medication, and then emerged just as strong with their following. That is just sick. That's scary. That's more than stunning.

The real challenge for Biden is what are we going to do about it? How do we reach that other half of America and bring them into the one reality and the one truth? They're not going away quietly, but more importantly, they're going to still be here after Trump, and Trump is still going to be a voice in the titular head of the GOP. I thought it was just Trump and maybe, you know, because he was in the White House. This is the cult now. How do you break up that cult to save America? That's going to be Biden's greatest challenge.

That's our greatest challenge, Roland, you, me, and the other guests on this show. Well, here's what you do. You drag them, kick them in the screen, and that's what you do. Let's get a quick update on the story we've been covering. Kwon Bobby Charles, a 15-year-old black boy, found dead and beaten in a Louisiana sugar cane field last month. Folks, they've obtained audio of a conversation between the private investigator and the last two folks, white folks, to see him alive. Within the recording, Janet Irvin,

the white woman who kidnapped Bobby, is heard saying she should have called the cops when she noticed he was missing. Her 17-year-old son also admitted to smoking marijuana with Bobby before he disappeared. The toxicology report on Bobby's body shows traces of narcotics. The Charles family attorney, Ronald Haley Jr.

and Chase Trichel, believe there's enough evidence to charge Irvin with child delinquency, child endangerment, and serving drugs to minors. We'll keep you up to date on that particular story. Got to go to break. When we come back, we'll talk with the Haitian ambassador

to the United States. They are not happy with three members of Congress, including a CBC member, challenging them when it comes to the creation of an intelligence agency. That's next on Roller Martin Unfiltered. If your vote didn't matter, you wouldn't

have so many people trying so hard to stop you from voting. There is some value there. But even when you talk about that people are not paying attention to your issues, I can't pay attention to your issues if I don't even know you there. And the only reason people are going to know you there is when you show up to the polls and vote. That's when that power manifests itself. But as long as you stay at home, as long as you're making excuses making excuses then guess what you will always experience these issues that we're

experiencing today and another thing don't get caught up in the candidates right there's there's no such thing as a perfect candidate but you should be going to vote for the most important person and that is you and the one you love you talk about you you'll fight for the one you love, you're willing to die for the one you love, you need to ask yourself, are you willing to vote for the one you love? Because if you don't, there's going to be somebody's neck on yours pretty soon.

America is a complicated story of people building a more perfect union. And if you don't think there's been any change, you should sit down with Andrew Young. You should sit down from some of the folks in that generation who know the distance we've come. And as we continue to push hard, change comes. The other side knows your power. The other side knows your voice. The other side knows your voice.

That's why they're engaged in voter suppression. If you weren't so powerful, they wouldn't be trying so hard to stop you from voting. So you ought to stand up in this defining moment in American history and win the future for all of our children. We're at Mom's Kitchen in Preston, Georgia. It's a family business. I enjoy making people happy, giving them a good meal.

But since COVID, we had to close our main dining room. We lost all of that business. And we used to do a lot of caterings. We can't do any of that anymore. David Perdue knew what was about to happen. He was getting classified briefings about the pandemic. But instead of him being concerned about us, he off selling stock. We had no idea we'd have to close our businesses off.

We'd lose caterings and so many people died. And then when we needed help the most, he fought against the stimulus checks and to cut unemployment insurance. Perdue needs to come out and Ossoff in. Early voting starts December 14th. You got to make a plan to vote. I'm John Ossoff, and I approve this message. All right, folks. We have been looking at stories not only here in the United States, but also across the diaspora.

And what's been happening in Haiti for quite some time has been lots of unrest that's been taking place there. You've had critics of the new president there as well. Now, check this out. You've had three members of Congress, including Congressman Gregory Meeks in New York, who wrote a letter, released a letter on yesterday criticizing what they term as the creation of an extra-constitutional domestic intelligence force in Haiti. This is what they wrote. His latest actions are reminiscent of past anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured, including the run-up to the Duvalier dictatorship.

We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos. Joining us right now is His Excellency, Moshit Edmond, Haiti's ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Edmond, I'm sort of glad to have you on the show. What do you make of these members of Congress who are critical of this intelligence agency being created in Haiti? Them saying that you have an autocrat who is the leader of your country.

Thanks, Roland, for having me on your show tonight. First of all, it is unfortunate to see that's the way they understand it. But we do understand their concerns and we are open to talk to them. And as I did last month in November, I sent a letter to those three congressmen explaining the situation in Haiti and detailed plans and what the government intends to do

for next year and 2021, which is gonna be an electoral year. So I take their conscience very seriously, and then I believe I'll be talking to them. That's why I'm here, to talk to them and, you know, engage them in a frank dialogue and to clarify things. But when you look at this letter that they wrote, this is what they also said. I'm reading here from my iPad. We will work urgently with the incoming Biden administration to develop a U.S. policy that prioritizes the rights and aspirations of the Haitian people and supports a credible Haitian-led transition back to democratic order.

Is there democratic order in Haiti? Of course there is a democratic order because there was a president that was elected in 2017 for five years. His term ends in February 2022. I don't know what is the definition of democratic order. But the only thing I know, a transition government is not the democratic order. So, therefore, there is only one thing we can do as international partners with Haiti, is to have, you know, to encourage the dialogue between Haitians, politicians, and for them to find a solution for themselves, for the country. But this kind of remedies, I don't think it will work for our democracy.

And we have seen it already. It has created a lot of damages to our system. Therefore, it is very important to foster that democratic order that exists and strengthen it through electoral process. And this is what we do intend to do. There are critics of this current government. There are people who say this government is harming citizens, killing Haitian Americans, excuse me, killing Haitians as well. And so how do you respond to individuals who are in the United States who are also from

there who say that what they are seeing in Haiti simply must be stopped, and they're asking the United States to actually step in and intervene. And, of course, the U.S. has a long history, complicated history, when it comes to Haiti. And so how do you respond to that? You know, I will only respond to say that it is unfortunate the way they are reading the situation. Because I repeat again, that's why I'm here. And I will continue to engage them in a frank dialogue. Because when you say this government is killing people, I don't think it's right.

Because you do have a U.S. embassy there. And I'm sure there is no way a U.S. embassy, and even any international community members in Haiti, would accept something like that. Certainly there was something happen last year in 2019, but we know that it was a result of gang battles for turf control. That happens in any country, a lot of country that happens, gang battles. We have very big issues with guns. And I believe the United States certainly will be very useful in helping us out to get rid of those guns.

But saying those things, I don't think it's relevant. We just now we want to concentrate on our next year, 2021, which is going to be electoral year, on working in constitutional reform to have a new constitution and then to have elections to have a new legislative body and a new president will be sworn in February 2022. This is what we are working now. I am looking at a piece here in the Miami Herald by Monique Kleska. She is a former United Nations official.

This is what she writes about President Moise's years in office. She says they've never been characterized by respect for the will of his people, protecting them from kidnappings, gang rapes and massacres. But the spectacular horror of recent kidnappings, the high-profile assassination of a constitutional lawyer, repeated police brutality against peaceful protesters, the publication of an avalanche of illegal presidential decrees, redacting a new constitution by unconstitutional means and giving extrajudicial powers to a new intelligence agency, are ignominious acts that signal his intent on creating an autocratic state, saying the United States has also allowed that to happen.

What has been the relationship of Haiti with President Trump and his administration? And what are you looking to do with the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris? This is, once again, this is the beauty of democracy. Because whenever there was a project, there was something, a new initiative going on. Everybody can, we do not, you know, intend to get everybody involved. Suddenly there will be disagreement, there will be dissent. But the most important thing is, if you look at the last poll, 87% of the population believe that the new Constitution

is very important to have, because the current one has been a real source of instability. But when it comes to the Trump administration, we certainly had a good relationship with working with any U.S. administration. And when it comes to the incoming administration, Vice President and President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris, we certainly wish them the best. And Haiti is willing to work with our international partners and we'll be more than happy to engage with a frank dialogue

and see how they can help this country moving forward, not calling back what the efforts have been done. So therefore, we are ready to work on the new urban solution and move things and move and strengthen this relationship. How do you respond to the United States sanctioning three men cited in the 2018 La Saline Massacre? This took place on International Human Rights Day

on December 10th. Does Haiti disagree with the sanctioning of these three men? No, we do not disagree. As a matter of fact, those men were sanctioned by the Haitian government first because they were terminated. They were separated from their function

and by the president. And now there is a legal process, a judicial process going on. I believe their case are before the judge, investigative judge, and the executive cannot interfere in that. But the most important thing, we did it before. The president fired them, and they're no longer at their post. It's been more than a year since they were separated. Therefore, we welcome that sanction. I mean, we don't have anything at all against that. There's a couple more questions for you. And I'm curious, when we talk about the rebuilding

of the Haitian economy, you still are trying to, frankly, rebuild this country after the devastating earthquake that took place as well. How would you assess the current condition when it comes to living conditions, when it comes to food, when it comes to the economy of Haiti? Listen, it is not a very good situation at all because we understand that a country like Haiti cannot progress without any foreign direct investment but unfortunately it comes back again to our to the current constitution because there is a constant political instability and most of those are the reasons of those instabilities is due to the governance. And we understand that we need to have a very stable political environment for the foreign investors to come.

So there is no way we can, from our own resources, to better our national economy. It has to be a factor of foreign direct investment, but it doesn't come with political stability. But this is one of the reasons that we are concentrating on this new constitution and to see if the people will agree with it. And then once the people agree or disagree, we will continue forward for the elections, because we need to have a parliament in place by next year and early in 2022 in February, we'll have a new president in place. This is what we are working on now.

Last question for you. What would you, if you had to ask of one thing from President-elect Joe Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris, what is it that you want from the United States to assist Haiti? What do you want? What do you need? It's not what we want. What we would like

to see, we would like to see the two oldest republicans in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti and the United States, for the United States to consider us as a real partner because we are a partner. And then to not only see Haiti probably in the lens of humanitarian assistance,

but as well to see Haiti as a very opportunity land where foreign investment and American investors can come and invest, because we do have a lot of opportunities and potentialities. We just want to unleash them. But to unleash them, we cannot do it without foreign investment. And that's where we count on the United States to come and invest and to help us strengthen our democratic system, not to call on weakening it, because we believe Haiti has to go forward forward and we need the help of our international partners but we're here to work with you and to to engage the congressman and

the u.s administration and so we will continue to work on our national interests and and i believe every a stable haiti will be best for even U.S. national security. So I got to ask one more question. If you want investment, how will investors know the investment is safe if they believe there's too much unrest and you don't have democratic rules in Haiti? I mean, how do you foster people to get them to understand, to accept this, if they believe that, frankly, there's too much turmoil in the streets and too much turmoil in government? Yeah, that's where comes the national dialogue. We believe it's very important for our politicians to sit together and to, you know, to have a frank dialogue and discuss, you know, the men and girls of the Haitian people.

And because the reason of those unwares of those things always, those are consequences of political instability. Most of the time, there are some misunderstanding between parties. But we understand that there was a willingness from the president to have a front dialogue with the opposition parties. And so we can have a national agenda where we will put the national interests on the forefront and to discuss them and see how we can have a stable country. the foreign direct investment and we badly need because our national economy cannot, cannot and will not be better without foreign direct investment. We have to have it, but to have it, we have to sit together and solve our own issues.

All right, Ambassador Edmund, we really appreciate it. Thank you so very much. It's been a pleasure to be with you, Olin. Happy holidays and stay safe. All right, thanks a bunch. Folks, going to a quick break. We come back. Donald Trump's handing out partners to his friends like candy.

What about Kwame Kilpatrick? Is he going to get one? We'll discuss next at Roller Mountain Infiltration. How y'all doing? Thank you, brothers. Thank you, brothers, for coming out. We appreciate y'all. We love to ride, so as soon as the word came out, especially to come support a good cause, we were on it.

They work together on different, and they support each other's events. And then they're going to ride out with us. I was like, we're going to ride pretty today. OK. OK, you're going to ride loud and pretty. Loud and pretty. How y'all doing? We on the bus.

Black folks on the bus. Y'all gonna say a little prayer for us? Turn up, we got something for you. How y'all doing? Make sure y'all say a prayer for us. How you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm LaFoxie Brown. I'm with Black Voters Matter. If y'all can use them, y'all can help. Thank you. What was the word today? What was the word today? That's all. That's it. Trust in Jesus Christ. We're going to take that. We're going to take that. Trust in Jesus Christ. All right. Thank

y'all so much. Make sure to let people know that they can vote early tomorrow. I know y'all are going to be there. Make sure y'all, we got five friends to get there. The job is not finished. We got to do it again. We got to do it again. We got to do it again. We got to do it again.

Amen. All right, bye, y'all. We got to get back. I love y'all. Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, come on. All right. Let's take a picture.

Let's take a picture. We in these streets, y'all. We in these streets. We got business to take care of. It ain't over yet, y'all. It ain't over. It's about the vote. It's about us. I got George on

my mind. That's why I'm down here. Got George on your mind. That's right. Thank you, sister. Alright, folks. The Thug in chief is handing out pardons like candy. He has issued pardons to Roger Stone today. Paul Manafort, serving seven years in prison, frankly, for being a lying thief when it comes to Ukraine, also gave a pardon out to Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Y'all might remember Charles Kushner served a year in prison for tax crimes. He also tried to punish his brother-in-law for cooperating with prosecutors by setting

him up with a prostitute and then recording it and sending the videotape to his brother-in-law's wife. Those are the kind of people. Now, mind you, this follows yesterday where Trump pardoned four Blackwater security personnel who murdered 17 Iraqis. Scott, I guess if you kill Iraqis, it's no big deal for the so-called pro-life, lover of Jesus, Christian conservative Donald Trump.

You know, this is just like handing out candy. I'll be honest with you. As a former prosecutor and someone who's been active in Democratic politics and presidential politics for a long time, remember that the candy part of this is that this is Donald Trump handing out pardons and sentence commutations on his own at his whim. Normally and historically, Republican and Democratic presidents,

there's a process you go through at DOJ. They review it. The president can make his desire known, but you've got to have the application done by the person seeking the pardon or the lawyers, if you will. This also happens at the state level. But there is a formal process. DOJ reviews it.

You get a lot of input. There are a lot of letters and support. And then you test also those who don't support it. And eventually, the DOJ has a formal recommendation to the president. The president can accept or reject it. Most presidents accept the DOJ review process. Some may not. But at least there's some formal review of this, whether it's Blackwater or whether it's Charles Kushner or whether it's even his former chairman of his campaign. That doesn't happen and has not happened in four years. This is Donald Trump sitting in his office figuring out what favors or what pardons, what he wants

to hand out as if it's candy on Halloween night. And that's the big difference. And that's the most dangerous part of this, because he's pardoning some pretty, not only bad people who have been found guilty or pled guilty, or have beat the system and beat the taxpayers or the U.S. government out of millions of dollars. And that's the real danger part. Can't wait to January 21st. But here's the deal, Monique. The president does not, there's nothing in the constitution that says he has to follow any procedure established by the Department of Justice. The power, he can issue a pardon to anybody he wants to for any reason. He doesn't

have to have that. But what you're dealing with here is somebody who doesn't care about rules or procedures or regulations. All he's doing is saying, how can I hook up my people? And that's what you're seeing here. And, you know, there were some conservatives who were trying to get a pardon for Kwame Kilpatrick. Now, granted, Trump still has some days to issue, but he's issued pardons to a couple of lying former Republican congressmen who went to prison because they also were tax cheats and were stealing campaign money. And so he's just sitting here saying, all right, who can I hook up?

Monique? Can't hear you. Who can't hear me? Scott says he can't hear me. I can hear you now. Yeah, we hear you. Who can't hear me? Scott says he can't hear me. I can hear you now. Yeah, we got you. No, Monique, we got you. Why does Scott have to hear me?

I don't care about it. I don't care. Hold on. I don't care. I don't care about Scott hearing you. I can hear you. That's all that matters. Go ahead.

He's not going to say he can't hear you. Okay, listen. It's all that matters. Go ahead. He's not going to say, can't hear you. Like, he's a normal person. Okay, listen. It's not my show. It's not my show. As long as you know that, Scott. So, as my brother was just so wrongly saying, yes, there are all these checks that we've wished were in place, but what we've had to learn in the past four years

is the strength of our nets or the lack thereof. This president can do whatever he wants to do about pardons, everything Scott said about the DOJ, about the state level, about the recommendations, about the vetting. None of that is codified. None of that is judicial. None of that is legislative. None of that is constitutional. This man is going to do what he wants to do. Voting matters. Can he abuse power with the pardon? No.

Arguably, he can't. But what's the fix for that? Another impeachment? 20-something days before he's about to be out? Not going to happen. So let's just watch the lotto because that's what's about to happen. Every day is going to be some new, more ridiculous pardons. And when we get a new administration, what will have to happen is Congress will have to limit the executive power of the presidency in case we elect another certified fool. So now we can trust that the people who get in the office are going to stay within bounds of decorum, decency, morality,

legality. No, none of that is likely. So we have to deal with what we have and we have to put some more checks in place. But from now until January 20th, forget about it, y'all. Look, Robert, this is sort of like Oprah. You get a car, you get a car, you get a car, you get a car, you get a pardon, you get a pardon, you get a pardon, you get a pardon.

I'm a thug in chief, and so I got this power for another 20-some odd days. I'm just gonna go ahead and. And so I got this power for another 20, 20 some odd days. I'm just going to go ahead and just hand them out like party favors. Even if you committed murder, even if you committed murder. As your resident Haitian on the panel, it's very difficult to listen to us have to be lectured about constitutional norms and the rule of law. Well, y'all got a damn game show host as president over here. And I wish it was a lottery giving out these pardons. It's an auction. And we all understand that Charles

Kushner is a criminal. They put a criminal son in the White House to run Middle Eastern foreign policy and everything else. These things don't happen to the rest of us. The reason Chris Christie was never in that cabinet is because he's the one who prosecuted Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner's dad, who was Ivanka Trump's husband, both of them who were advisors to the president, and contravention to every anti-nepotism law that we have on the books. Let's understand something that is going on right now in our country. The rule of law is no longer a thing, as long as America does not buy into that fundamental fiction. And we have to stop

letting the political right walk around claiming they are the defenders and protectors of the Constitution. Remember, their Tea Party used to walk around with the pocket constitutions everywhere saying they were defending the Constitution. Not anymore. And we have to call them on it every time that you passively sat by as this president who was allowed to shred the Constitution, to turn the White House into an auctioneer's block, to circumvent the rule of law, to circumvent electoral norms, to circumvent much of what we've done in the last millennia in Western civilization, that you sat there idly by so you could have tax cuts and conservative judges have to call them to the mat on it.

And look, if we're going to hold up these rules for foreign countries and for foreign powers, we damn sure better be enforcing them on the local level for our own politicians and game show hosts before we start talking about other countries getting their books in order. Oh, I agree 100%. I agree 100%. So, again, he's handing pardons out. But, again, ain't it amazing how quiet all them white conservative evangelicals are? You know, all them pro-life people. They ain't saying nothing about him letting four murderers go.

People who kill Iraqis with impunity. Oh, but I guess those lives don't matter. I thought y'all said all lives matter. Oops. I guess not. Because y'all don't mind the thugs. All right, y'all. Ebony Magazine.

Y'all know the historic magazine founded by Johnny Johnson. Well, guess what? They have now been sold to former NBA player Junior Bridgman in bankruptcy. $14 million bid. Of course, it has been just constant drama with Ebony Magazine for the longest. Junior Bridgman put in that particular bid after the previous owners, frankly, just squandered the entire deal. They owed the debt to the company, Parkview Capital, that controlled their debt. And so now Junior Bridgman and his daughter are going to take it over.

I've reached out to them to find out what their plans are for the historic magazine. We will certainly find out and let you know what goes on. But again, Ebony Magazine has been purchased out of bankruptcy, the Southern District out of Houston, for $14.1 million. And hopefully the people who were owed money, especially those writers, are going to get their money as a result of this. And so we'll certainly let you know. All right, folks. Every Wednesday, it's time for our tech segment. All right, then, folks, let's get right into it. We're always talking about, you know, new technology. And of course, my next guest is the creator of I Am A Man, which is an interactive virtual reality experience that gives users an opportunity to go back in time and witness historical events that took place during the civil rights movement.

Joining me now is Derek Ham. Hey, Derek, what's going on? Hey, how are you doing? Nice. Thank you for having me. All right. All right, man. So how does this thing work? How does this, how does this, this, this virtual thing work? So, Roland, you know. And what are we experiencing? Yeah, absolutely. You know, virtual reality right now is on an ultimate peak. You know, you see it everywhere you look, You turn on the commercials, you see it everywhere. But there's something that's really interesting about this form of technology and that those who tried it and those who understand it feel like it's like a dream. You feel like you're being transported. And so I saw an interesting gap here. The time in VR was coming out, I began to ask

myself, well, who's telling the stories and what stories are being told? And so I found a unique opportunity for us to tell our stories. You know, we're living in such an amazing time where, unfortunately, so much of our history is being lost in real time. Some of the giants that we have who have lived in the civil rights are now passing away. And as a father, I have three young children, Taylor, Reed, and Evan. When I even tell them about history, you know, kids like immersive, kids like technology. Why not turn this tool right now to capture our stories, to preserve our stories, and share them in a way that feels like you're experiencing it from a first person's perspective? And so how many different things in the past can we experience with this?

So this is an emerging genre right now. One of the things that creators like myself who have taken to this tool very quickly are really looking right now. What stories should we be telling? What should we be telling? What should we be communicating? How do we capture these things for the next generation, partnering with museums and partnering with other historical storytellers? And so right now, I Am a Man is a piece that starts off with you as a Memphis sanitation worker strike. And when you put the headset on, you feel like you're transported back to 1968. And you live through those experiences all the way up to the Lorraine

Motel, where we know the tragic events that happened there. And so this is a piece that's meant for you to look at history. And you know, it's interesting, Roland, when I have white people who try this experience, because VR actually gives you black hands. From my experience, when you grab that controller, you track your hands, and I make sure that those hands are a black, African-American hand, I've seen white people just freak out just immediately from saying, oh, my God, I have black hands.

And...but that is a tool for me to anchor them in the story. It's like, you can't escape from this history. When you watch a film, you can look away, and you can have that separation. But VR, as a tool tool allows you to be there. There's no escape. So the history happens all around you. And then you have to pause to say, well, what does history mean for the other?

What would it mean for me to be black in 1968? What does this historical moment mean for all of us? So what we're trying to do here is install empathy. So where can people go to access it to check it out? So right now, I Am A Man is available in the Oculus store. It was funded by Oculus. It's a VR company, it's parent by Facebook, and that's for the Oculus Rift headset. But I'm excited to say right now,

we've taken that fully immersive experience and transformed it into what's called a 360 video experience. We're going to be releasing that experience early next spring, starting with January, and definitely promoting it everywhere on Facebook. So imamanvr.com is the parent website of it, but you can follow the work that I've been doing. Follow me on Twitter, Derek, a ham.

And I will tell you this role in some of my next projects are just as big as the, I'm a man piece right now. We're working on a Negro league VR baseball experience. So all these types of rich history projects through VR are on depth. And I'm excited to be a part of the developers working on these types of stories. All right, then. Well, we certainly appreciate what you're doing.

Derek, hope folks check it out, and we look forward to more historical moments to experience via VR. Thanks so much for having me, Roland. All right, thank you very much, folks. Our last item. Today, we remember the life and legacy of John Fletcher, better known as Ecstasy,

who co-founded the rap group Houdini. Ecstasy died Wednesday at the age of 56. Right now, the cause of death is unknown, along with Jaleel Hutchins and DJ Drew Carter, known as Grandmaster D. They're known for their hits, Friends, 5 Minutes of Funk, and Freaks Come Out at Night.

The group released a self-titled album in 1983. The trio also released six studio albums throughout their careers, four of which were certified platinum. Their most recent album was 1996's Six. In 2018, the group earned the Hip Hop Icon Award and a third annual Black Music Awards. Today, many people took to Twitter to pay their respects to Ecstasy, saying he was a legend and a pivotal member of a legendary hip-hop group. So we certainly send our thoughts and prayers out to the family of Ecstasy on the passing at the age of 56.

I want to thank Scott, Monique, and Robert for being a part of our panel today. We wish all of y'all a great Christmas. We will not have Roland Martin Unfiltered, a live show tomorrow, Christmas Eve, giving our staff off that Christmas day. We'll return, of course, the live show on Monday. I'll be back here in Georgia covering the runoff race here.

If you want to support what we do, please do so by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You can support us via Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered, PayPal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, Venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered. Also Zelle at Roland at RolandSMartin.com. You can send a money order to New Vision Media Inc.

1625 K Street NW, Suite 400, Washington DC, 2006. And so we want y'all to support what we do. We're always doing different things here. And so y'all look at, so we're here. Of course broadcasting the show. We're here to help you. We're here to help you. We're always doing different things here. And so y'all look at you. So we're here, of course, broadcasting the show from from the home that

we've been renting here in Atlanta. And of course, we're always doing stuff. We add a little new feature. We want to give you a lot of really close up looks. And we've added this shot right here, this shot right here to the show just to give you a give you a certain look and just i want y'all to understand something because i'm always sharing with y'all uh in terms of uh in terms of what what we what we do here and and why the resources absolutely matter uh we we have invested more than fifty thousand dollars in a new live streaming unit which allows for us to be able uh to do more uh and so we have is a live view come called live you have a unit called lu800 just lu800 allows for us to send back four signals to

our control room whereas before we could only see in one shot we can have a switcher set up here where we have to plug in the cameras and we have somebody who was switching right here well now we can actually send all four of those signals back to our control room so they can see and so this right here is one camera the one that's uh i'm pointing to right now so here you can take that one and of course we have this wide camera that's over here we have this camera that's right over here and then we wanted to sort of a different little look here and so we have this tight camera that you see right here as the operating as well and so uh this this is all so important folks because again we're trying to greatly increase our production for this show give you uh different looks that we do on the show as well and so

that's what this is all about and so your support really is important to make this happen uh your dollars have been critical for us to do so. Look, look, I haven't run into any other national black media outlets who are here in Georgia covering this particular race like we are. We've been on the ground for the past three weeks. We're going to be here through January 5th covering these various events. That's why we've been here. That's why we have been focused on what happens here. It's also why we have been, again, covering all of these different rallies. And we've been sitting here doing different things, showcasing a lot

of different stuff. And so that's why it matters. Because look, we're not interested in just simply repeating what other people say. I don't believe in this whole aggregation where, you know, you got white media out there reporting stuff and then we're not telling our own story. You look at today's story, having that doctor talking about COVID, having Dr. Johnson talk about the case of the basketball player out of Florida, having the ambassador to the United Nations, excuse me, the Haitian ambassador on. I've already gotten some Haitian critics who want to say, hey, we want our critics to come on. I've welcomed them to come on as well to be able to talk to him, our tech segment, that segment as well. You look at having the mayor of Columbus, Ohio on, talk about that shooting there as well folks all of that is important that's why that's

why we do uh what we do you know and we were in um you know um Athens uh Georgia last Saturday uh broadcasting uh the rally there as well you know one of the things that we've been doing there is again uh giving you a different perspective here where you can go to my iPad right now again you talk about upgrading our quality you see how we incorporating drone shots into our broadcast as well folks let me be real clear with y'all we are a black media company but that doesn't mean that we are second class it doesn't mean that what we do uh can be ignored it doesn't mean that we can't do quality work like you see on CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and ABC and NBC, CBS, but it requires resources.

It requires us to be able to hire staff, hire freelance crews, to buy this equipment. What we are committed to and what I am committed to is to giving you the best product that we can give you. And that's why we do what we do. And so when we would live stream that rally on Saturday, that was live. It wasn't edited. Plus being able to have those drone shots in there for us to have cameras on the ground

live streaming. That's why we're here. And so we've got some amazing things lined up in 2021. There are some there's some new things that we're adding. I told you I was on the phone with an OTT company. Look, but to build us an OTT channel, to build us a Roku app, an Apple TV app, an Amazon Fire Stick app, as well as for Android, that's going to cost $145,000. And so we're out here trying to make these things happen because I do not believe that we as African-Americans have to take a backseat to anybody.

I believe that we as African-Americans can create the kind of media product that you could be proud of. So that's why we're doing what we're doing. So I would certainly appreciate if you support us in all that we do. Again, I'm gonna say it for the last time, and I know it's Christmas season, and here's the deal. We've been asking our supporters to give 50 bucks each

for the course of a year, $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day. You can support us on YouTube or Facebook or give to us direct by going to rollamarketunfiltered.com using a square for a credit card. Again, PayPal.me, excuse me, PayPal.me forward slash R. Martin Unfiltered, Cash App, dollar sign RM Unfiltered, Venmo.com forward slash RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. You can send in a money order to NuVision Media, N NU Vision Media Inc., 1625 K Street Northwest, Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 2006. This is 21st century journalism.

The work that we're doing is what Robert Abbott did with the Chicago Defender, what Frederick Douglass did with the North Star, what Ida B. Wells Barnett did when she covered lynching, what A.I. Scott did with the Atlanta Daily World, what Claude Barnett did with the Associated Negro Press, what John H. Johnson did with Eb Atlanta Daily World, what Claude Barnett did with the Associated Negro Press, what John H. Johnson did with Ebony and Jet, what Earl Graves did with Black Enterprise. That is what we are about.

Folks, I want you to have a fantastic Christmas. Be safe. If you're going to be with your family, please avoid social, do social distancing. We do not want to see more of us die because we were reckless wear your mask wear your goggles cover your ears take all the precautions if you travel travel safe i prefer you not to travel i'm not going anywhere i'm leaving atlanta tomorrow flying back home uh to be with my family but again folks have an absolutely joyous christ. Be safe. Be well. We will see you live on Monday on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

HALF! HALF! 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. 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. Yes, sir. 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.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more.

Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.