#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Patrick Lyoya Shooting Video, Ed Buck Gets 30yrs, A Delta Responds To VA GOP, Joe Madison's New Book

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

4.14.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Patrick Lyoya Shooting Video, Ed Buck Gets 30yrs, A Delta Responds To VA GOP, Joe Madison's New Book The video of Patrick Lyoya's shooting by a Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer was released yesterday.  No word on if the unnamed officer involved will face any charges.  Ben Crump, the Lyoya Family, is here to give us an update. Ed Buck, the white California Democratic donor who was convicted last summer for the deaths of two black men, will spend 30 years in prison.   The organization used to help diversity in newsrooms is not getting much participation from news organizations.  We'll talk to one of the researchers to find out why. Last night, I had that salty Loudoun County GOP Chair Scott Pio on to talk about why he was hating on the Delta Sigma Thetas.  Come to find out, it was just one, in particular, he doesn't care for.  Phyllis Randall, Chair at-large of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.  He said her name 13 times during our interview. She'll be joining us tonight. Radio host and activist Joe Madison will be here tonight to talk about his new book, Radio Active: A Memoir of Advocacy in Action, on the Air and in the Streets. Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Let's be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You can't be black on media and be scared. You dig? Today is Thursday, April 14th, 2022. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The video of a Congolese immigrant being shot in the back of the head in Grand Rapids, Michigan,

continues to shock people all across the country. We will talk with the family attorney, Ben Crump. Now that video has been released. Ed Buck, the white California Democratic donor who was convicted last summer for the deaths of two black men, will spend the next 30 years in prison. The organization used to help diversity in newsrooms is not getting much participation from these white newspapers. We'll talk to one of the researchers to find out what the hell is going on.

Last night, I had that salty Loughton County GOP Chair, Scott Pio, on the talk about why he was hatin' on Delta Sigma Theta at the White House. Well, one of the people who he is targeting is Loudoun County Chair Phyllis Randall. Well, we will talk with her right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Also, radio host and activist Joe Madison

will be here tonight to talk about his new book, Radioactive, a memoir of advocacy in action. We'll talk about him, talk about his new book, Radioactive, a memoir of advocacy in action. We'll talk about him, talk about that. And also, y'all, I'll do a deconstruction. Jackie Robinson, the Negro Leagues, black-owned businesses, and white validation. You want to hear what dropped in my spirit earlier today. Trust me.

It's time to bring the funk on Roller Martin Unfiltered with Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the mess, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling.

Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling, best believe he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling, yeah It's Uncle Roro, yo Yeah, yeah It's Rolling Martin, yeah

Yeah, yeah Rolling with Rolling now Yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now. He's bunk, he's fresh, he's real the best, you know he's Rolling Martin now. Martin. Yesterday on the show, we showed you the shocking, stunning video of a Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer shooting 26-year-old Patrick Laiola in the back of the head after a traffic stop dealing with a license plate. Since the release of the footage, protests have been ongoing across the state,

and Patrick's father, Peter, is calling for changes to be brought against the officer who killed his son. Ben Crump is the attorney representing the family. He joins us right now. Ben, glad to have you back on the show. I mean, this is... Can you hear us? Yep, we can hear you. We can hear you, Ben.

It was... We're not showing the video today. It was shocking what we showed yesterday. And you had, and of course the police are calling this a lengthy fight between the police officer and this 26-year-old young man. We hear on the video he's talking about, he's talking about get his hands off the taser. But we still haven't heard from the police department why this officer found the need to pull his gun out to shoot him in the back of the head.

Exactly, Roland. When you look at the video, it shocks the conscience because you conclude it is so unnecessary for this police officer to escalate a misdemeanor traffic stop to execution shooting Patrick Loyola in the back of his head. And what I kept saying yesterday is that we keep seeing black men shot and killed for traffic stops. I mean, on the video, he's saying he had the wrong license plate. What the hell is that? Yeah, and I'm here with Commissioner Robert Womack, who is on the county commissioner

and really has been speaking up for the family and the black community as everybody else tries to sweep it under the rug. And it is crazy, Roland Martin. And I know we've talked about how many of these cases are just crazy, but it is, they say he doesn't have the right tag on the car. That's where all this stems from. He could have done any number of things to avoid having to shoot

this unarmed black man in the back of his head. He could have called for backup. The man left the car there. He had a passenger in the car, so they were going to be able to ascertain his identification. He could have, instead of going hands-on, created distance and used a taser the proper way they're supposed to use it.

But there was no justification. But he was on top of him, Roland Martin, to say that he was an intimate fear of his life to the point where he had to use deadly force. So I'll be quiet and let Commissioner Womack, who's a huge fan of yours, Roland, talk to you about his community and how they are struggling right now. How you doing, Roland?

Doing great. Mark? Well, I'll tell you, Grand Rapids in 2015 or 2016 was the second worst place economically for African Americans to live, according to Ford's magazine. That means a lot of our leadership falls under a manumission, where you can be rewarded for being silent, you can be rewarded for not stepping up for your people. Really seeing a Congolese family that was having some language barriers with dealing with the process and knowing that even their interpreter, this is his first time having to deal with the police department,

I was able to see the police department and the powers that be not acting the way they usually do under these investigations. So I began to speak up and get my community involved and ask for transparency. The city seems to be responding, but we definitely had to ask for that transparency to get the ball rolling. We reach out to Ben Crump because we knew if the black attorney general of the United States of America came to Grand Rapids, there would be no way this could be sugarcoated or thrown under the rug. The thing, Ben, that we keep talking about is you have other police chiefs who said, stop pulling people over for BS traffic stops. Stop pulling them over. Because when you look at the data,

this is where a lot of these incidents happen because of basic, small, insignificant traffic stops. Not major crime, but taillight, license plate, what was it in, what was dangling from a mirror? I mean, again, air freshness.

Yeah, air freshness. And so folks end up either being shot, paralyzed, or dead over stuff that's not significant at all. Yeah. And that's what Commissioner Womack and I were talking about. It seemed to be a pretext that these officers are engaging and could have given him a notice to appear versus going hands-on, they always seem to do the most when it's Black people. And that's the thing that tells you it's not about training. It's really about biased policing.

And we have to just go ahead and call a thing a thing. We have to get this George Floyd Justice Policing Act passed because whether it's Minneapolis, Louisville, Kentucky, or Grand Rapids, Michigan, this is a national epidemic of them shooting and killing unarmed people. It is. Commissioner, obviously you had protests there as well. The governor has promised an independent investigation. But I'll be honest with you, we've seen so many of these stories before. And frankly, I simply anticipate somebody coming back saying, well, he should have complied. And the officer, that's one of the things that we always hear. And then what ends up happening is nothing happens to the officer. And then another young black person is dead.

Well, we are hoping that that won't happen here, and we're glad that we have Ben Crump here to help us. This is the first time also the African-American community has had a chance to embrace our Congolese brothers and sisters. So it's bringing two communities together for the first time. Very unique situation here, and we are going to keep marching. We're going to keep protesting. We're going to keep working with Mr. Ben Crump and anyone else we have to work with so we can have justice. All right. And Roland, I'll just let you know, Breonna Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, was here today. Many people didn't know that Breonna was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And it was so ironic when at the press conference she said she, too, lost a 26-year-old innocent black child to police violence.

Patrick was 26. Breonna was 26. Indeed sad. Ben Crump, Commissioner, I want to thank both of you for joining us and just keep us abreast of what happens there at Grand Rapids. Thank you, Roland Martin. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Bringing my panel now, Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, Recy Colbert, Black Women's Views, also Terrain Walker, founder of Context Media. The thing here that I keep saying over and over and over, Greg, and it's simple. When you have these cops who know they can do what the hell they want to do, when you have basic traffic stops,

a basic traffic stop for something as insignificant as a damn license plate should not end in death. That's right, Roland. Of course. And I'm glad that you said to Attorney Crump exactly what you said. There really isn't a lot to talk about. These patarolas

are hunting. And this punk cop, this punk cop, this punk white boy executed a human being. I won't say another human being, because since they don't respect our humanity, I don't feel like we should respect theirs. I mean, let me just be quite frank about it. I mean, you know, we could ask Attorney Crump, what would it take to stop this? And he's going to say what he has to say to do what he has to do to advocate for his client. But the simple fact of the matter is this, they're going to stop

shooting us when they have to think about their lives. If you understand fearing for your life, then perhaps some of your lives have to be lost. And I'm not advocating violence. What I'm saying is that if I'm driving, if I'm in a car and I'm pulled over by a cop, I immediately think my life is in danger. I mean, why do I think that? That's not speculation. You're pulling people over for nothing. You're hunting. You're a goddamn pat-a-roller, is what you are. You are in the tradition of killing black people in this country

and you will only stop when your own life is at risk. And that's not going to happen in a courtroom. It has been clear. And what you told Ben Crump is exactly right. They're going to claim procedure, say it was a good shoot, and he'll be reinstated. Hell, they can kill all white people. Knock the white man down, fracture his skull,'s exactly right. They're going to claim procedure, say it was a good shoot, and he'll be reinstated. They'll even kill all white people.

Knock the white man down, fracture his skull, just following procedure. They're going to stop when we stop them, Roland. It really is sad terrain. And again, when he asked for his driver's license, the young man, Patrick, initially wasn't really understanding what he was saying And and then of course you always have these people comply comply comply

But then you got people who also are scared the moment you have a cop pull you over you scared to death that you're gonna end Up dying, which is exactly what happened to Patrick Well, you know, I think there's something that we need to be very clear about here Every time these things happen, there's a conversation about the person being unarmed, and that's usually the case. But what we have to understand in America is that as long as you are a black man or a black woman and you carry black skin, in the eyes of America, you are armed. That's your danger right there. That's what you're armed with. And unfortunately, the people who controlled police departments, police unions, and police culture tells you that a black person is automatically a threat just by the fact that they are a black person. And their training, whether they want to admit it or not, tells them to neutralize that threat. So when you see cops coming up to cars and their hands are on their guns, when they automatically escalate altercations with black people in cars,

and when they automatically pull them out and they go through the same routine of stop resisting and get your hands off the taser. It's to the point now where they say these things out loud because they know the cameras are watching them and they say that to make a plausible case that they're being attacked. This is never going to stop until we completely re-overhaul police culture. And I don't know what it's going to take to make that happen because the things that are in place are in place for centuries and it's not going to stop until we forcibly make it stop. And Reese, there are people who are real quiet. All those MAGA loving folks in Michigan, real quiet. All those people who love talking about cops, real quiet. It's amazing how quiet they get when these things happen.

But then it's always, oh, respect the blue, respect police. We should not be criticizing them. Well, you know, when you're winning the war, you're going to be very quiet, right? You're not going to be loud and give away the game. So absolutely, when black people are being lynched, this is a lynching, essentially, by the cops, that's them winning.

So they're not going to draw even more attention to that. So it's absolutely clear where their priorities are. Now, if you got to wear a mask, then they loud as hell and then they got a problem. But the bottom line is, I agree with what Terrain said. I hate emphasizing unarmed. I hate emphasizing a person's criminal background, which is irrelevant, because the reality is these cops know within 30 seconds if they're going to execute that person. You know, and the fact that Patrick could not speak English and he could not, you know, understand the commands made it that much easier for him to start yelling out these pretexts. If you know somebody can barely understand English, then what are you talking about?

Hands off of this and this, that, and the other. Because you're setting up your bullshit ass defense before it even gets off the ground. And even if Patrick did get your taser, that's not gonna kill you, right? Learn how to fight if that's what it is. You know what I'm saying? So I'm just sick of seeing these executions shooting a man, a human being,

which they don't believe that we are, as Dr. Carr said, in the back of a head. And there is an investigation. Take his ass to jail yesterday. All you motherfuckers that was out there so traumatized, I can't sleep. I can't believe I've seen something like that. And you ain't have that same

energy when it was at the Oscars. You don't have that same energy with this footage, which is absolutely gut-wrenching, circulating wildly. You didn't have that same energy when the subway folks were laying in New York, you know, shot. Y'all quiet now. So that's why

I don't take y'all seriously. Be just as loud, be just as outraged as this kind of state sanctioned violence as you are about what the hell happened at the Oscars. Indeed, indeed. Folks, let's not turn our attention to the West Coast where today

Ed Buck, the white Democratic donor who was responsible for the death of two black men, pumping them with drugs and watching them die, he is gonna spend the next three decades in prison. In the federal courtroom, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison as a result of those two deaths. First of all, of course, remember he was,

first of all, deaths go back even three years. So this has been a story that did not get a lot of traction by California media, did not get a lot of traction by LGBT media. A lot of people were real quiet because Ed Buck was passing out lots of money to Democrats. My next guest, though, was one of the folks who brought attention to this story and really got us to this particular point. Jasmine Koenig, she joins us right now. Jasmine, glad to have you on the show.

I saw your tweet where you said, look, it wasn't gratifying to see this elderly person coming through the court being flanked by two people, but the reality is it still had to be satisfying to the family, knowing full well that this predator, and that's exactly who he is, this predator will no longer be able to kill more black people. Absolutely. I mean, a lot of people are upset because Judge Snyder did not give Ed Buck life. But 30 years and he's 67 and it's federal time, so he has to do at least 85 percent of that time. It's effectively a life sentence. And yeah, the families are happy. The surviving victims who testified during the trial

and also came to sentencing today are happy. I spoke to Ed Buck for the first time today when I read a victim impact statement. Almost five years, I had never spoken to this man before in person. He has no remorse. He still feels that he is not responsible for the deaths of Timothy Dean or Jamel Moore. And so for the families to see him go off to prison now is very gratifying. The next step for them is the restitution hearing next month because he is going to pay them money. And he has lots of it to pay. And there are civil—the wrongful death civil suits that are now can move forward in civil court.

They were on hold because of the criminal case. One of the things that, first of all, you said Timothy Dean and Jamel Moore, the reality of Jamel Moore was the first one who died at the hands of Ed Buck. And a lot of people were like, eh, no big deal. And you had a black DA in Los Angeles who was of the position that she somehow couldn't charge Ed Buck, but the federal folks figured out how to charge Ed Buck, and that's how he got convicted. And that was one of the reasons why Jackie Lacey

got her ass booted out of the DA's office. You're exactly right. So let me back it up a little bit. I wanted to start off with this, but you went to jump right in. Roland, thank you. Thank you so much because of you, because of the respect that you gave me as a journalist and the respect you gave me as a political strategist. And you believe me, you had this story on every time anything significant ever happened in this case for almost five years. And you are the reason why Black people outside of L.A. know about this case. And so I want to

say thank you to you, because this case had a lot of media bias, a lot of media who are afraid to report on it, were worried that he was going to sue them. And so for a long time, no one would even talk about the fact that Jamel Moore died in his apartment in 2017. And you're right. And that's why Jackie Lacey is the former district attorney for Los Angeles County. But I will tell you this. I'm a pretty fair person. And I will tell you that I'm actually very happy that the feds prosecuted this case, because I don't know that given the criminal justice reform climate that we have, which I advocate for as well here in LA, that Ed Buck would have received any significant time in prison. And so for the families, it was important because you cannot bring back Jamal Moore. You cannot bring back Timothy Dean, that he spent a significant amount of time in prison because the

feds prosecuted him. He will. Well, absolutely. And the thing is, you had to battle LGBT media that ignored this story. You had folks who you had to battle Democrats who didn't want to give the money back. They were still our nations. And it was as if these folks didn't care about the lives of these two brothers. Yeah. And let me and let me be really clear. It's more than just Jermell and Timothy Dean. As you know, throughout my reporting, more and more men stepped forward. And that's why during the trial, we had a significant amount of witnesses, young men that came and testified about what Ed Buck did to him. Everybody that he hurt did not die, right? And so, you know, what I said when I spoke to Ed Buck and I spoke to the

court today was that crime victims matter and that we have to send a message with Ed Buck to all the other Ed Bucks who are operating under the radar and also engaging in this behavior. And we also have to send a message to Black men, particularly in L.A. County, who make up the majority of our homeless. Right. Because he specifically went after black men who were homeless. And L.A. is a I mean, that's just like every community, the Black community, the Black queer community understands that the Justice Department is going to stand up for you if someone like Ed Buck kills you. And that's the message that was sent today. And I'm really happy about it. It's unfortunate that it took almost five years.

And as you know, Roland, many people didn't believe. I haven't heard from none of the big gay organizations, but I will give a shout out to MBJC, one of the organizations I co-found. But other than that, like you would have thought that this case would have resonated with a lot of sort of the big gay organizations. It has not.

And I still believe that that's because the victims are Black gay men, mostly. And which says we still have a lot of work to do in our community. Which is also why, and I'm going to talk about it a little bit later, I mean, this is also why you've got to have Black-owned platforms. You know, when you first hit me, Hatch on Time, I'm joining a morning show, Hatch on the TV One Show, absolutely. And again, without those national Black-owned platforms, then we're having to ask someone else to approve whether to do the story, and then it doesn't get out. It doesn't get

covered. And that constant focus on that, the amplification, putting on social media and putting pressure, why aren't y'all covering this? That's what caused other folks to all of a sudden wake up and then force them to actually have to cover the story, including a whole bunch of prominent gay folks in national media who were not returning your phone calls. So let me tell you this, Roland.

I'm literally sitting in a restaurant with the families and the surviving victims right now. My phone has been ringing all day. I have not done any interviews but yours. You know why I'm on your show? Because like I said, Roland, when nobody else believed, nobody else cared, nobody else would listen, you were there. And you and I both understand the power of having Black reporters, having Black journalists.

The whole reason why for the past five years I've been covering this story is because nobody else was. Now, there are a lot of Johnny-come-latelys now that have jumped on and, you know, they're reporting on it. But let's be clear. In the beginning, nobody wanted to report on this case, not until it got sexy. And it didn't get sexy for most people until he got arrested. Yep.

And that was after the second death. Second. Second death and almost third with one of the young men who managed to make it out of Ed Buck's apartment and was able to get help. And these are the type of stories that Black people need to know about. And these are the type of stories that Black people

need to know about. When you have a white man in a city intentionally going after Black men using his wealth, they calculate that he has over $4 million, at least $4 million, right? He was using his money, his power, and his wealth to lure these men and to do these things to him. And in court today, he spoke for the first time. He has no remorse. He says he feels bad that they died, but it's not his fault. He's going to continue to fight it. He's going to continue to appeal it. His attorney is Harvey Weinstein's attorney. As soon as he lost the criminal case, he fired Christopher Darden and hired Mark Worksman, who is also Harvey Weinstein's attorney. And so he has money, clearly, because he hired—these attorneys aren't working for him for free.

Right. And so he continues to use the system to his advantage. He continues to take—you know, he should have been in prison a long time ago, Roland. Yeah. I mean, he's been in jail over two years. Nobody sits in jail for two years, okay? But that's because he was able to work the system. He was able to get it to work on his behalf, except for today, it didn't, so he had it to sell Block 4.

So it is what it is. Well, certainly give my best to those family members. Even though he's been, he's going to prison, they can't get their loved ones back. These were still two human beings. And you're right. For a lot of these organizations out here, they're like, because you also like, for instance, the story, the young girl who's been missing for a month,

and the police were like, oh, she's a sex worker. So what? So we don't give a damn about her being missing? Again, that's sort of the mentality that even law enforcement has. Unfortunately, that's what we have to deal with. And so we appreciate your hard work. I love you, Roland. You know I appreciate you so much.

Thank you for keeping Ebba's name You know I appreciate you so much. Thank you for keeping Edbuck's name out there. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Great job. And again, you on it for five years. People don't realize

that was like constant, constant. And so certainly, again, great job and give our best to those families. Thank you. I will thank you so much and thank your entire team. Y'all have been wonderful will thank you so much. And thank your entire team. Y'all have been wonderful.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Jasmine, thanks a lot. Okay. Go back to our panel here. The point there, Recy, that Jasmine made there when the silence of these national LGBT organizations. And it's not like she wasn't reaching out to them. The silence of a lot of mainstream journalists,

including LGBT journalists. And this is how these stories don't get covered. And the reality is, had this story got the attention it did after Jemele Moore was killed, Timothy Dean could possibly still be alive. Mm. Right. Yeah, you know, there are so many layers to... so many things that are disturbing about this, but first I have to say shout-out to Jasmine

for coming here, Roland. One of the things that you continually, rightfully call people out on is how Black journalists or Black celebrities or Black attorneys, whoever, they don't come to Black media first. They want to go on the sexy channels, you know, the white facing channels instead of coming here. So shout out to her for that, as well as her advocacy. But what we have is we have a situation where there are so many notches on the totem pole below what society deems to be human being to be worthy of even an investigation. And these are Black men who were homeless in some

cases, or they were not of means. There was an element of drugs involved. Now, whether or not they were consenting to do these drugs or not is beside the point, but they certainly weren't consenting to overdosing. So when you hear black person, homeless person, gay person, drugs, you're getting completely written off the map. It took, you know, I'm trying to remember his name. It's escaping me now.

But one person did survive. And it was just it was torture what he was doing to these black men. And there are other people who came forward later and also described this was torture. This wasn't just simply overdosing. This wasn't people having a good time. He was getting his rocks off doing abhorrent, diabolical things to these victims. So I'm glad they finally got a victim. They finally got justice to the extent that they can.

But we have to really, really challenge ourselves and how we start paying attention to these stories. It has to be so tawdry. It has to be so graphic before anybody even gives a damn. The fact that a Black man was found dead for any circumstances should have been enough to have people give a damn. It should not have taken the amount of victims that it did just to get the bare minimum notice. Terrain? Well, first of all, I want to give a shout out to Jasmine because I know for a fact that she's been

basically the only person in L.A. who's been holding it down, telling that story for the past five years. And shout-out to you for giving her a platform to speak as well. That's the first thing. The second thing is, I'm pleasantly surprised that he even got that much time, because, normally, when these cases come up, somebody with that much influence and somebody with that much money and resources is able to either plea bargain their way out of it or they're able to get out of it and to reese's point i think she's absolutely right that there is a

hierarchy of um consideration and compassion about who is the victims of violent crimes when you have a black lgbt homeless victim you're very very low on the list of priorities that police want to go try to investigate this is a wealthy man and this is the other part of it, too. You have to look at the power dynamics at play, because this was a very wealthy Democratic donor. Who knows what kind of influence he might have thrown around, what kind of money he might have thrown around to get these stories killed, to get them suppressed. And there might have been some issues from the police departments and also from, you know, journalists in the mainstream media in L.A. or in the West Coast to not really address this. I think it's very good that this happened. It's a tragedy that it had to happen through the deaths of these two Black men.

But I also think it speaks to the fact that influence and the power of money and influence can make you write any kind of story you want, if you want, if you have the power to do that. So I'm glad that he's facing justice. I'm very sad that these families had to suffer this way. But hopefully, we won't have to go through this again and have to get to the point where there's definite victims and people have already been called and there's already people who have been on the point of death to make people pay attention to this. And we won't have to be tied into somebody's local hierarchy or the power structure. I constantly, constantly talk about this, Greg. And that is that quote that is on a mural in our office

from Freedom's Journal, March 16th, 1827, in the third paragraph. We wish to plead our own cause too long have others spoken for us. And I don't know, even when I look at

other black, targeted media, black owned media, I'm sick and tired of all we're being fed. Entertainment, sports, bullshit gossip, okay? I don't give a damn about any reality show, especially in the Housewives show. If you want to watch it, that's fine. I don't care. That's fine.

The problem I have, though, is we are so inundated with that that when we don't have real news sources, being able to cover the things that matter to us, then all of a sudden, these are the type of stories that you never hear about. And if you're a family member, you don't want to be on the other side of this.

You don't want to be one of those families where a loved one has come up missing and they've been gone for two, three, five, and ten years and completely vanished, and you have no idea what happened, whether they're dead or alive, which is why we have our Black and Missing segment, because those stories don't get amplified.

Black person comes up missing, we got to yell, holler, scream, act a fool, and three months later, all of a sudden, they might cover it, or what white-owned media does, they get guilty when they go lavishly cover some white woman who comes up missing, and then it's like, okay, go find some black people who we've ignored, and we'll just go ahead

and send a reporter out. And so I try to explain to people why also owning the platform matters. Or if you don't own, you actually control it. The reality is I didn't ever, I never asked Tom Joyner permission on who I put on my segment. I controlled it.

In fact, what people don't know, I'm going to tell this. It's a true story. I got the email. David Cantor, who was over Radio 1, David Cantor said that the folks with Black Panther were not spending enough advertising money so no one with the cast of Black Panther

could come on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Tom Joyner. His name was on the show. Tom Joyner Morning Show. Tom Joyner, his name is on the show. Tom Joyner sent me an email, asked me to book Chadwick Boseman on my segment because he couldn't book Chadwick Boseman. I guess he figured I was so crazy, they wasn't going to tell me no.

And that's exactly what happened. I actually was in Hawaii for my wife's birthday when Chadwick came on, but I did book Chadwick. So when you heard Chadwick Boseman on Tom Joyner Morning Show, it was because I booked him in my segment. So Tom Joyner, host of the Tom Joyner Morning Show, asked me to book Chadwick on his show because his bosses wouldn't let him. Because why? Tom sold majority ownership of his show to Radio 1. He didn't control his show. Tom was an employee.

Folks, this story here is why we have to own our own media. It is, Rowan. And it's why building that ownership and building that platform is essential. The work that you have undertaken is only beginning. Everyone listening to this, and I have to echo Recy, and I have to echo Terrain, and by leading by saying that this is not only the value of independent platform and black media, it is the importance of establishing a platform loud enough, large enough, powerful enough to cut through the noise.

And I know in a few minutes you're going to talk to a Professor Clark about this question of white media and not participating in these surveys. Well, I mean, it's legacy media. You had the foresight several years ago to say, I'm not attempting to get a job with these people or that people. I'm going to build something and I'm going to build it in a space that everybody's going to be trying to get into down the road. What does that mean? That means, of course, that Sister Jasmine is able to come to you, and her voice now will reach other people. Wade Nobles, the African-American psychologist, says, you know, power is the ability to define

reality and have other people accept your definition as if it were their definition. Well, you know, there are a there are countless number of people out there in cyberspace. But when you have a platform like you have there, you've built slowly, you've built accretively, you've built organically with investments from the people, that can break through the noise. Now, the other thing I will say is, I mean, it's very clear that we live in a society where humanity is not valued. The late Lonnie Grenier wrote a book called The Miner's Canary. When you see the canary die, that means that the people need to get out of that mine.

Well, guess what? If you're LBGTQ, there is no LBGTQ community. There are people who are LBGTQIA, and then there are Black people in that hierarchy. And they have been screaming, we have been screaming, all the people who are black in this country, I don't care if you're from Africa, all you ADAS people, nobody asked that Congolese brother in Grand Rapids where he came from before they hit him in the back of the head. The bottom

line is we have to make a community in order for that to impact. So this story, of course, is evidence that in a country where a man or a woman who doesn't have a place to sleep at night will be attacked by a Tennessee state senator, as you're going to talk about later on, in the season of Easter when Jesus Christ himself didn't have a house. You calling yourself a Christian? This is a referendum on the type of society we live in. And that's why this platform

isn't just important to Black people. It's important to any human being who is concerned about more than their individual comfort. And so if you're watching this, regardless of your racial background, you better understand that Black media ends up having to speak for humanity. And that's why this platform is so important. Indeed. Folks, go into a break. When we come back, we're going to talk with one of the researchers who's working on a study of essentially white-owned media. There's a whole

lot of them don't even want to answer the questions regarding diversity in their newsroom. This has been an ongoing problem and it has gotten worse in the last several years. We'll talk about that. We'll also share with y'all my thoughts tomorrow being April 15th. Jackie Robinson today in Major League Baseball. How you need to look at this a

little bit differently. Also, we'll talk with Phyllis Randall, Loudoun County Executive, who is the target of Republican Party there. That clueless dude I had on yesterday, well, clueless gets to respond to some of his accusations. Plus, Joe Madsen is in the house talking about his new book. And there's, of course, Radioactive, a memoir of advocacy and action on the air and in the streets. And so Joe is in the house.

We'll be chatting with him as well. A lot of stuff to cover. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Be sure to download the Black Star Network app, folks. Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support the show.

PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. Cash app is DallasSideRMUnfiltered. PayPal is RMartinUnfiltered. Venmo is RMUnfiltered. Zill is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMart RM Unfiltered. PayPal is RM Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back. This is what I wanted.

I think right after high school, because in high school I was in all the plays. I was always funny, but I didn't know nobody would pay me for it. And then... On the next Get Wealthy, with me, Deborah... For Owens, America... On the next A Balanced Life, the Bible says that the spirit... ...is willing, but the flesh is weak. After two years of hunkering down. All right, folks, having some issues with our video playback machine.

We'll get that taken care of. Let's talk about this story here. A resource designed to increase diversity in the newsrooms is slowly beginning to die as a result of lack of participation. First of all, the News Leaders Association has conducted an annual diversity survey since 1978. First of all, AS&E has done it for real. A resultant report is a basic but indispensable tool

for gauging diversity efforts in journalism and helps newsrooms see larger trends in hiring, retaining, and promoting underrepresented journalists. Basically, everybody who's not white. However, researchers say a lack of newsroom participation in the study has made finding accurate representation difficult. Meredith Clark is an associate professor at Northeastern University.

She joins me right now. Dr. Clark, glad to have you here. I've been a member of NABJ now 32 years. It was always an annual deal. You would see this AS&E diversity report. A lot of newspapers would respond to it. And it always showed that you had a lot of newspapers, especially your smaller newspapers,

that had no Black people, no Latino people on staff. So then what happened? So these white managers are like, oh, this is making us look bad. We feel so awful. So you know what? We're just not even going to respond. Is that what still is going on here? Yes, Roland, and thank you so much for having me. That's absolutely true. And now it's not just the small newspapers, the mom and pops. It is also some of the larger newspapers, the larger publishers that are refusing to participate because they say it hurts their recruiting efforts, that it makes them look bad, that they are unfairly sort of castigated for their failures to integrate. And so it's, oh, my God, we feel so bad that we don't have enough people of color. So therefore, the hell with you. We just won't respond. But you're asking the newsroom leaders why you're not going after their corporate owners. So we not only ask the newsroom leaders, think about it this way. The newsroom leaders are the

point of contact that we ask to provide the data. We do actually, and in the work that I've done with NLA over the years, one of the things that I've advocated for is reaching out to potential partners to make some changes in terms of influence. I've worked with this project for almost four years. And the thing that I very quickly realized was that if you're simply relying on newsroom leaders to turn over this data, it's never going to happen. You're going to have to go to the power brokers. And for us, that's not just the corporate owners, because the corporate owners have a specific responsibility, and that's to profit and return something on their bottom line. to reach out to foundations that are responsible for giving grants to some of these organizations and say, hey, include a participation clause in your applications that says, unless you prove that you have participated in this research within the last two years,

your application for whatever it is that we're doing is going to be ineligible. That didn't go over so well with some folks. And so NLA did not make that push. I'm hoping that they will reconsider. So do have y'all publish the group of people who have responded and then have you published those who have not? I'm getting this is breaking up a little bit for me here. So I'm going to repeat the question just to make sure I understand what you said. Yes. Have you all published the name, the names of the individuals, the companies that have responded? But have you also put out publicly those papers that refuse to participate? No, NLA did not publish the names of the papers that did not respond.

And so you mentioned NABJ earlier. And that's... I'm also a member of NABJ. And that's... And you may recall that... Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, you may recall some years ago that NABJ at its awards ceremony did sort of a cheers and jeers. NABJ reached out to us and they asked, you know, who are some of the outlets that did not respond? And we provided a list to them so that they could make that call out. But that is not a choice that Newsleaders Association has acted on. They should. See, trying to go to foundations or whatever.

No, this is very simple. If the people, so the people that have responded, you published their information, right? Correct. Okay, so your deal should be, here's the list. This is sort of like an empty chair at a debate. And so you should publicly say who did not respond and then put it out there on social media

and allow folks, allow us to tag those individuals and target them because here's the deal. By the organization not stating who didn't respond, you're actually helping them. Look, Henry, give me a shot of that Ida B. Wells artwork on my wall. This is the quote from Ida B. Wells that she is famous for that speaks to what I'm talking about here, because trust me, what media hates,

media hates becoming the story. Media cannot stand when they get reported on, when they get called out. They can't handle it. They love talking about everybody else. But then when you put media on Front Street, then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, what are you doing?

Why are you calling us out? Well, if you're not sitting here responding, you get called, you should get called out. Well, if you're not sitting here responding, you get called. You should get called out. And that's really what this whole thing is about. This is about checking media. She said the way to right wrongs. It's a turn the light of truth upon them. Y'all got to hit them with the light. I totally agree, Roland. And I think one point that it's important for me to emphasize as an individual here, as a researcher, I am a person who is not a member of NLA. I am not part of their decision-making bodies. I'm the researcher that they contracted with to actually carry out the study. So one of the points that was made in the Neiman Lab story that came out a couple days ago about this survey and its dismal results mentioned a very critical point, and that is that

I have resigned from doing this research because there are some things that I see differently from NLA that I think that we should act on. I can tell you that if you take that suggestion of naming and shaming, that was discussed for years and it wasn't done. So people can come to their own conclusions about what that means. But the other thing that I will say is that while I agree that we should definitely name those people who are, or those organizations that are not participating.

That information isn't too hard to find. You can look at the list of those organizations that participated. And if your hometown paper is not on there, if your hometown, you know, digital news network is not on there, then, you know, they didn't submit their data. Well, and there's questions to ask. And the reality is the reason New Leaders Association will not do that, because those individuals who don't respond, they're members of NLA. That is a member based organization. That's what it is. That's what it is. Correct. All right. We appreciate it. Sorry you had to resign. But again, if folks not acting right. Sorry. Sometimes you got to go to let people know that you're not going to be just ignored and disrespected.

And so my deal is we got to keep calling these folks out for exactly who they are. They do not want to actually have the truth being cast upon them. Yeah, the work will definitely continue, even though I'm no longer with NLA, someone else will continue to do it. There is certainly work that I'm committed to doing to bringing this information to light and to pressing really hard with that. And so I look forward to continuing to do that work

from the position that I enjoy as an academic. All right, Dr. Clark, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, thanks a bunch. All right, folks. I'm walking over to the other side here. And so y'all see me wearing this Kansas City Monarchs shirt and hat. And the reason I'm actually wearing this is because tomorrow is Jackie Robinson Day. Jackie Robinson Day all across the country.

So Major League Baseball, every baseball player tomorrow is going to be wearing the number 42. Jackie Robinson had his number retired by Major League Baseball. For instance, the Houston Astros sent me, I don't want to put my name on the back, but all the teams have no name on the back, but they have 42 on the back of the jersey. So it represents the jersey of Jackie Robinson. And so I have a couple of Dodgers jerseys. So the only time you ever see me wearing non-Astros is on April 15th when I wear the Jackie Robinson jersey. And the interesting thing to me is it hit me today that, again, you have all this attention on this day.

You have so much focus on April 15th, where it's a celebration of Jackie Robertson breaking the color barrier. And it's an important day for us to remember. But here's the issue. Folk don't talk about who Jackie Robinson was playing with before he got signed by the Dodgers. He was playing with the Monarchs. Can't say the Monarchs. If you ask people what was Jackie Robinson's number

when he played for them, they can't tell you. And so you have all of this attention on, obviously, breaking the color barrier. But I really think we have to look at this just a little bit different. Because if tomorrow is deemed Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball, let me be real clear, this is not an attack on Jackie Robinson. A phenomenal human being. Obviously, Hall of Famer, all-star. But what I need people watching to understand this is that if tomorrow is the celebration of Jackie Robinson

becoming the first black player in Major League Baseball, then April 14th should also be commemorated as the death of the Negro Leagues. I told you all about Gerald Horne's book called The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press, Claude Barnett's Pan-African News, and The Jim Crow Paradox. This is the actual book. This is the actual book right here. The key I want you to focus on is The Jim Crow Paradox. See, black folks fighting for equality, wanting to show we can do justice, good as somebody

else, we could play ball, we could do all this sort of stuff, and they called it the major leagues. It was called the major leagues. But the reality is the major league talent was already in the Negro leagues. It was called the major leagues because white folks owned it. So because white folks had more money, they had better stadiums, better uniforms, they had better travel, they stayed in better hotels, they had better food, they paid better salaries. That's what made it major. And so you had this, this, this, this euphoria among black people when Jackie Robinson made

it was like, man, Jackie made it to the major leagues. But Jackie was already a major league star. If you do the study, Dizzy Dean, white baseball player, he often played in the, played in the off season with the Negro Leagues and he said there was way more talent in the Negro Leagues than in the major leagues. But black folks, it was like all around the country, it was like folks were listening to the radio, and they were clamoring, Jackie, Jackie,

because it was about, man, we're about to show those white folks who we are, but they already knew. If you look at everything in American history, black people were killing in every phase. It was simply racism, Jim Crow, white supremacy, keeping us out of those systems. But while we were fighting to break down those systems, it was actually leading to the breakdown of our systems. That's the Jim Crow paradox. So you had Negro League teams that were owned by black people. How many Major League teams were owned by black people?

None. To this day, do you have any, do you have a majority owner of Major League Baseball team who's black? No. One African American who owns an NBA team, Michael Jordan, who bought it from Bob Johnson. No African Americans own a Major League Football team.

So what did we give up to be able to play with white folks? And again, this is not a diss on Jackie Robinson. What I'm trying to get us is to think a lot differently in terms of how we perceive these things in terms of how we see us getting better. So when I was getting dressed, I was sitting here saying, what shoes am I going to wear with this Kansas City Monarchs jersey? Now, I could have worn these white Adidas.

Could have worn these. I got these at the Scythian Entrainer Golf Tournament. These are Stan Smith personalized Adidas. Or I could have worn these red and white Adidas. I normally wear my Houston Rockets attire. So I could have worn any pair of these Adidas. But I said, no, I'm not going to wear these. Adidas ain't paying me to wear these.

The folks at Rock Deep, who we featured a couple weeks ago, these are one of the pair of shoes they sent me. So I'm wearing these athletic shoes. They are red and gray from Rock Deep, black owned. Now, listen to what I just said. I could have worn these. We don't own these. These are not black owned. But we will stunt in some Adidas and some Nike.

Oh, we'll rock them. But they're not black owned. See, it's, we give up a lot when we desire something white folks got. I am not suggesting that we should not have torn down Jim Crow. What I am suggesting is that what we have to learn in the 21st century is that we as black people cannot be so locked into white validation that we actually are ending our very institutions in order to be comfortable and get acceptance from them. Y'all just heard Jasmine Koenig talk about folk wouldn't cover the story, but I took a phone call and put her on the air because those were black-owned platforms. You just heard the doc

talk about how these white newspapers won't even respond to the study because they're embarrassed. They don't have real diversity. So what do they do? Basically shut the study down. We're not going to respond and then we're not going to talk about it. So as we are thinking and operating as black folks, we really have got to change our view of how we spend our wear, what we watch, what we listen to, we literally are making other people rich. I have said to you, America has always loved black people because they love the fact that we have made them money. We made them money doing slavery. Oh, let's be clear. We made them money when Jackie. Oh, let's be clear. We made them money when Jackie Robinson went to the Dodgers. Because Branch Rickey saw 50,000 black people in Yankee Stadium

watch the Negro players play, and they said, yo, we could create an entire new fan base. And so what do you think happened? That's exactly what happened. Why do you think all of a sudden all of these mainstream white outlets are now having all of this black content? Do y'all understand why Lifetime and we are doing all these black movies all of a sudden? It ain't because they're interested in our stories. It's because our black eyeballs will follow,

which means the ad dollars follow. $322 billion spent every year on advertising, and black-owned media gets 0.5 to 1% of $322 billion. How many billions are spent on athletic shoes? And we have made Phil Knight a mega billionaire. We have made people who own Nike stock extremely rich. But how many black folks have gotten rich? All we have to show for it are some tattered Nikes in the process. Oh, yes, I appreciate, I appreciate seeing black folks on mainstream television, and we fought for that, but I will never ever say let's give up what's black-owned just to have somebody who's on ABC, NBC, CBS. See, y'all, the reason I understand this is because I told y'all,

when I got hired at CNN, they wanted me to leave Tom Jonah and Born to Show. They asked me to leave Tom Jonah and TV One, asked me to give up my speeches and my books. I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no, that's not happening. In fact, they were upset with me because I turned down my own little segment on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. They came to me and they said, now they wouldn't give me a show. They wouldn't give me a daily show or a weekly show. They said, we're going to create a segment so your fans know they can watch you every single week.

And they said, so you're going to have a segment on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. And I said, oh, that's pretty interesting. I said, so you're going to have a segment on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. And I said, oh, that's pretty interesting. I said, so cool. I can sort of incorporate when I'm traveling around the country because a lot of times I'm giving speeches. The governor's there or mayors and CEOs. They say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. Because that's going to be too costly. You've got to be in the studio. I said, hold up. Y'all want me to stop giving speeches and come off the road

and do a segment and y'all ain't replacing the money? They said, precisely. I said, ain't going to be no segment. Now, some of y'all watching will go, Roland, what's wrong with you? You should have taken that segment. I was making $500,000 speaking. Why in the hell would I give up $500,000 for a segment that they were going to be selling and making money off of me and not increase my pay?

Hell, y'all turn the money down. Because I did not believe in white validation. And when they asked me to give up all my black media platform, I said no. I said, well, you don't give me a five-day-a-week show. What I'm suggesting is this here.

We should always celebrate breaking down Jim Crow. We should celebrate when we get a black CEO. But I'm not just gonna celebrate a black CEO if that black CEO not breaking down some damn walls. I'm not gonna celebrate somebody black being on the board of directors who is not using their power to ensure

that other black folks are getting stuff. If they are simply enriching themselves so they can spend more time on Martha's Vineyard, well, damn it, all you're doing is helping yourself. You ain't helping everybody else. No, that ain't what this is all about. At some point, we've got to be smart enough to understand that one person getting the check don't mean we made it.

It means they made it. And we make a mistake when we as black people take our dollars and our eyeballs and our attention and we make other people mega billionaires and we are still broke and starving for information and we say say, well, man, I wish we could have had that. Well, had you watched, had you donated, had you spent money black, had you bought black, had you invested black, it could have happened. So when I hear people say what we should be doing, I always say, what are you doing?

So yeah, I'm going to have my Dodgers jersey on tomorrow. But here's what I suggest, y'all. Don't just get you a Jackie Robinson Dodgers jersey. I want you to go to the Negro League's website, the museum, and buy you a Kansas City Monarchs jersey. And I want you to wear your Monarchs jersey on April 14th, and then wear your Jackie Robinson jersey on April 15th. But don't just make money for the Dodgers. You also make money for the

Negro League Museum that's trying to keep our history going. This, Greg, is what we have to get people how we must, what I keep saying, how we must reprogram Black America, this is what I'm talking about. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And that was, as usual, a brilliant breakdown and so poignant as we sit on the eve of Jack Roosevelt Robinson playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. It's so poignant for any number of reasons. I mean, the black press, I'm glad you held up Gerald's book. You know, yesterday, actually, the day before yesterday, I was

telling my students at Howard, because actually, Robinson played in an exhibition game for the Dodgers on the 12th. So that was kind of like the soft open. and I shared with them an article from one of the papers that she used to run, the Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier, the New York Amsterdam News, that ran a story in April 1947, and the headline read, Robinson becomes the first Negro in professional baseball since Moses Fleetwood Walker. The black press reported at the time,

Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played in 1884 for the Toledo Blue Stockings, was the first black man to play in professional baseball. Now, here we are in 2022, and people said, wait, Jackie Robinson wasn't the first? You had to check the black press. It was those black press guys, the sports writers, that pushed to get Robinson in the Dodgers in the first. You had to check the black press. It was those black press guys, the sports writers that pushed to get Robinson

in the Dodgers in the first place. It is so poignant that you talk about the Negro Leagues. And like you say, like you, I've been to 18th and Vine. I don't go to Kansas City without going to 18th and Vine and to the Negro League Museum and the Jazz Museum. The great Andrew Rube Foster, the genius who was not only a great

athlete, but a great businessman who put together the Negro Leagues in 1920 in Chicago. This was the biggest business in the country, as you say. And to see the Kansas City Monarchs across your chest, brother, and to understand that Ewan Kaufman, once the Kansas City team got another team in Major League Baseball, named that team the Royals in tribute to the Monarchs. All the professional sports teams in Kansas City named after the Monarchs in that. The Royals, the Chiefs, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Kings when they had a basketball team.

The Monarchs were the platform. And then finally, at a stadium that is no longer there. Right there on Georgia Avenue where Howard Hospital is used to be Griffith Stadium. The Washington Senators couldn't draw flies. But as you said, when Clark Griffith and them boys saw the Negro League All-Star game and saw the great homestead, Graves, Kupapa, Bell and Josh Gibson and Judy Johnson and

Buck Leonard and Ted Double Duty Radcliffe, Smokey Joe Williams, and them boys winning the Negro League World Series, they said, shit, we need to make some of this money. They would rent out those stadiums. Branch Rickey, you ain't no hero, bruh. You picked up some bargains on the cheap, and you knocked us out of the business to begin

with. So yeah, I'm with you, brother. We need to know our history, and the Black press is at the center of that history, because they've always known. I've got coming up next, Phyllis Randall. We're going to talk about how the right is attacking her. And I had to check that fool last night. Risa, you always talk about this.

You always call out the blue check black folks, black celebrities on Twitter, who love to retweet clips of mainstream news shows. And, hey, a lot of times, they saying stuff we talked about two, three weeks earlier. Mm. Well, you know, I was actually gonna tweet about this today because I've been seeing, you know, it was trending about BET and, you know,

we could have had this, that, and the other. And it trips me out because I see so often Black folks complain about what we ain't got when we have all those things. We just don't have them on the white networks. We just don't have them on the traditional formats like cable TV, as you expertly broke down the demise of Black News Channel,

which people were up in arms about after it was gone, but didn't watch it while it was on there because it was only getting 4,000 views an hour or something like that, which is less than what you get on YouTube. So I challenge once again, like I've done many times before, we have the power to validate ourselves.

We just don't use it because we want the white gays to validate us and then they looking at us to validate them. So it's real ass backwards. Why don't we want the white gays to validate us and then they looking at us to validate them. So it's real ass backwards. Why don't we spend the energy and the cool factor and the capital and the money that we have, which makes everything

pop and make our own shit pop. Then we don't have to ask for permission. Then it's not a thing when Don Lemon, no shade to Don Lemon, or whoever else on CNN or one of these other networks say boo our way. We have the power and we're

doing it. Just look at the people who ain't necessarily the big names and you'll find what you're looking for. Terrain, last point here. Last year, black people made Clubhouse go from nothing to a $4 billion valuation. I keep saying we can make fan base sexy.

Start about Isaac Hayes III. Again, we made Nike a multi-billion dollar company. We can make Rock Deep a multi-billion dollar company. We have got to stop making other folk rich and learn to make black folks rich. I'm going to say something that is probably going to upset a few people, but it needs to be said. Well, the show called Unfiltered, so we used to it. The cold, hard truth is there is a mentality in a lot of our people in America

that something that we make is less than something that white people make. And there's this mentality in Black culture that says the white man's ice is colder. You may not hear people say that outright, but they prove that by their actions and their spending and how they spend. The other part of that is some of it is a lack of knowledge of your own history. If you go back and look at the history of the black press, and there was a very excellent documentary that came out a few years ago called The Black Press, where they did a complete breakdown of the black press. It's done by Stanley Nelson. It's called Soldiers Without Swords. That's it. That's it. There has always been a Black infrastructure, whether it was Black doctors,

whether it was Black nightclubs, whether it was Black record labels, whether it was Black newspapers and Black press. We've always supported our own, and we always saw the worth in our own. But it seems like, and Malcolm X talked about this, the minute the ink was dry on that civil rights bill, it felt like black people got as far away from their own culture as they could to go throw money at white people or throw money in their hotels that they would have got kicked out of two years beforehand. We have to get back to the idea that what we make is valuable, and we have to get back to knowing what our own power is.

I mean, the examples are there. Look at what we do on social media. Everything that happens on social media, social media does not pop unless black people take a break, get on there. Like you said about Clubhouse, Twitter would be, Twitter would be my space if it wasn't for black people

getting on there and chopping it up every day. That happens with a lot of things. That happens with like music. Look at hip hop. Look at all the record labels that black people created, like Def Jam and Luke down in Miami and all these other places that did this stuff. And they did it like selling out of the trunk,

which is the old cliche. But we have the power, we have the economic power to be able that did this stuff. And they did it like selling out of the trunk, which is the old cliche. But we have the power. We have the economic power to be able to do this stuff. We just have forgotten how to do it. We've had to reclaim that back or we're going to end up lacking it again for another 10 more years. And that's why we do what we do. All right, y'all, going to break.

When we come back, she has been under vicious attack by Republicans in Loudoun County, Virginia. Now they attacking her because she a Delta. Yeah, y'all saw the interview last night. I think his butt's still hurting from the size 10 and a half that I kept kicking him in the behind with.

We gonna talk with Phyllis Randall next about the Loudoun County, Loudoun County, Virginia Republican Party attacking her and her sorority. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. All of this is Black-owned, 100%. Pull up a chair, take your seat.

The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. On the next A Balanced Life, the Bible says that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. After two years of hunkering down, we can all relate to that. Spring, sun, and fun. We may be ready to get out there, but our bodies may not be ready to party. On the next A Balanced Life, we're going to get our mind, body, and spirit on the same page.

That's A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie here on the Black Star Network. Hey, I'm Deon Cole from Blackest. Hey, I'm Arness J. Black TV does matter, dang it. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore, and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. Stay woke. Randall, it looks like you're in the DC area,

so you might actually have contact. Yes, I'm based in DC. I live in Loudoun County. I do know Phyllis Randall, it looks like you're in the D.C. area, so you might actually have contact. Yes, I'm based in D.C. I live in Loudoun County. I do know Phyllis Randall. So Phyllis likes to show, and this really has me curious again, like why would Phyllis Randall hire the Miss Chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors does? We've already declared that Phyllis Randall's a Delta. Hold on, that's one person. Phyllis Randall's a Delta. Hold on. That's one person. Name them.

Phyllis Randall's a public person. I'm certainly not going to name the private individual. We have research, but I've not personally heard from Phyllis Randall. This all starts with Phyllis Randall hiring the executive director. No, it doesn't. No. First of all, hold on. Phyllis Randall

did not embezzle anything. No, she did not, but her executive director did. But, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, of deltas, a photo of a number of deltas taken at the White House. This is the photo right here. And so he sent this tweet out. He goes, even the Loughton, this is the tweet, Skull and Bones has lost their power. It's now the sorority known as Delta Sigma Theta, who is taking control of our country at all levels of government. Even the Loughton County Board of Supervisors chairman is a Delta. Well, that Delta joins us right now. Phyllis Randall.

Phyllis, glad to have you on the show. You had to laugh at this fool whining and complaining by saying, oh, my God, how dare they throw their sign up on the White House lawn? It's public. And these deltas and, oh, my God, these deltas are saying they're running government in Virginia. He don't know nothing about black sororities, black fraternities. He don't know jack about the phrase when we say we running stuff and just running his mouth. And it's all a matter of being to say, even you, how dare Phyllis Randall put photos of her throwing up her sign and wearing her colors. Right, right.

So, you know, first of all, thank you for having me. And secondly, I saw your beautiful wife, who's my Sarah, and actually in the same chapter that I'm in a little earlier. So love to Jackie. You know, listen, Scott Pio is a, a, in some ways he's a joke, but in other ways I take him very seriously because when you put people who are not serious in serious positions, they can become very dangerous. And so I, I, I can laugh at some of the things he says and does. That doesn't mean I don't take him seriously, because he can also be a very dangerous person as chair of the Republican Party of Loudoun County. Loudoun County is a very powerful county. And Scott Pio, we were all just shocked when the Republicans voted him chair.

I mean, that is probably, that post is one of the least offensive things Scott Pyle has said in the past many months. He recently was the Republican Party's chair, I mean, candidate for a state office. The fact that the state Republican Party allowed that man to be the chair of a state for, to be a candidate for a state office was shocking. The fact that the Loudoun County Republican Committee has made him chair of their committee is disturbing. And so although I laugh at some of the things he does, I do take it seriously because he's in a serious position. And if you put somebody like that in a serious position, they're dangerous people. I think we all learned that when we elected

the most non-serious person in the world to the highest office of the land. He was a very dangerous person in that office. And so, I take him seriously. I don't ignore him. I laugh, but in laughing, I keep my eye on

the prize. Of course. Absolutely. So, after he was on, so he put out some tweets today. Y'all go ahead and put them up. Thanks for the time to chat and allow me to come on. I know you have to spin it to sell views, but I'd love to do coffee with you sometime since we both live in Loudoun. I love to chat one-on-one. Well, actually, Scott, I didn't spin anything.

People saw and heard you exactly what you said. Was that another tweet he put up, y'all? Come on, Crossroad, thank you. Had several nice chats today with some deltas, both online and offline. They were very helpful in giving up their time. Some nice discussions to be had if we just break down barriers and start talking to each other. Thank you to those people who spent their time to talk. But here's the reality here, Phyllis.

He was attacking you, and there were some things that he said that were absolutely wrong. Because like, for instance, when he tried to mesh the two to say, this is what he said. He said that you hired the executive director of the Deltas who pleaded guilty to embezzlement. First off, this person was your chief of staff before becoming executive director, correct? He was. And she did. She was convicted of embezzlement. It had nothing to do with the county. She wasn't in my employee when that happened. She wasn't part of my employee when that happened. I knew nothing about it.

In fact, I knew nothing about it until the morning she was going to go to court and the president of our sorority called me and let me know that it was happening. So I had nothing to do with that at all. And they know that. No, no, but see, but again, so again, timeline. And this is why people have to, I tell people all the time why, yes, it is important to put these people on the front street to force them to ask questions.

Even in the clip that we just played there, he said Phyllis Randall hired the former executive director of the Deltas who's going to prison for embezzlement. She was chief of staff before, left you to become executive director, goes to the Deltas, gets fired in 2019. A month later, they uncover the embezzlement,

gets reported. She and her husband plead guilty in November of 2021. So he made it sound as if you hired her after all this happened. That's the lie. Actually, before we knew, she actually worked for me, went to the Deltas and came back and was with me for a short time before we found out any of this happened. And then she was actually with me when I found out this happened.

She was back with me. And within four hours of me finding out that she was involved in anything, I walked her out of my office. So my office had absolutely nothing to do with this, nothing to do with it at all. And so and so but but also this attack on other deltas. One of our guests last night said is an attack on black women. And so, when he's attacking the state senator, Louise Lucas, with what she's saying, when he's attacking other folks, what he's doing is, he doesn't like the fact that

you have these black women who are in positions of power, which is why I said, hey man, if you're clueless about deltas, go find, there's some black Republican deltas, why don't you go find and talk to them, but this is a, and then to say, well, Louise said that she and Phyllis are fulfilling the mission of Delta Sigma Theta,

he goes, what's their mission? That's why I was like, fool, go to the website, it's right there. And so these are folks who do not like the fact that we have black organizations that are involved in politics, in community, in culture, who care about what happens to our community,

and we have just as much right to be with these issues as the League of Women Voters, as Conservative Women for America, as any of the rest of these groups out here. Any of the rest of those groups who is invited will go to the White House, will stand together, will take a picture, will be proud to be there.

All those same things. All those same things would happen. It-It's not about any of those things. It's not about the fact that there were women at the White House. It's not about the fact that there were women at the White House throwing up a sign. It's not about any of that. It's who they were.

That is the issue. It's who they were. And, you know, the funny thing is, as an elected official, as a public servant, I have never even one time said something like deltas are running the county or deltas are running things. Listen, the truth is I'm an elected official. The people who run things are the citizens of my county. I'm working for them. I am a public servant for them. So there was almost nothing that came out of his mouth last night was truth.

And he knows that. But, you know, throughout the day today, people have called me and they said, why have you responded to Scott Pio? Leave him alone. He's an ignorant man. He's a silly man. Oh, I disagree with those people. I disagree. You do not

allow people to say stuff and because silence, people go, oh, must be true. People fill in the void with what they hear and if a lie is repeated enough times and it is not answered and it is not responded to,

people assume that that lie must be the truth. And again, this is not the worst thing that Scott Pio has ever said. It's just not. I mean, offensive, yes. But was I surprised by that? No, he's Scott Pio. He's the one that said, you know, that he's the one that talked in one of his tweets that he sent out one time when I talked about the fact that there was some misinformation put

out in textbooks about what it was to be an enslaved person, and enslaved people were happy that they could own guns, that they had family units. And I put out how incorrect that information was. And he comes on my page and says, tell me what that's incorrect. I don't see what that's historically wrong. He's the one who asked the question, if we take all the boats out of the water, would the sea levels go down? He's the one that asked the question, why do we have a Women's History Month? Why can't men have a Men's History Month and wear all white?

This is who Scott Pyle is, right? But the problem is, this is who Scott Pyle has always been when the Republican Party of Loudoun County voted for him to be the chair of their committee. So now they gave an unserious man a serious position. And that is what I'm responding to, the position, not the man. Absolutely. Recy, question, Phyllis. First of all, Recy, it is amazing to see you and your baby is beautiful. Oh, thank you. Well, you know, I just want to talk about the safety aspect of this, because, you know, Howard, I believe, yesterday, the Delta marker was vandalized,

as well as other sororities and fraternities, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Howard University, yep. Right, and then when you start talking about secret societies, it just gives me the call back to QAnon, and we know how people respond to those things. So can you just talk about the implications beyond obviously the threat that this is really serving as a pretext

to attack Black women, but also the seriousness, as you're referring to, when people try to assign a sinister motive to an organization like Delta Sigma Theta. Right. And that really is his underlying motive. I mean, I don't believe, I believe that Scott Powell's an ignorant man, but he's not a stupid man. Right. He knows what he is. And so he is trying to say that he started off saying that we are skull and crossbones.

So he's trying to make it a fear factor. And then he connected us to all it a fear factor. And then he connected us to all the boogeyman names right now. He connected us to Equity, connected us to CRT, connected us to all the names that are scaring people for no good reasons except they need to be scared of something right now, right? And so in doing that, he's trying to say that we are doing something secret and scary. And then the next say that we are, you know, we are doing something secret and scary. And then the next thing will always be, you know, they're going to damage your children. They're going to do something like that.

So it is a, I mean, you know, again, there's an underlying goal to what he's trying to do, which is why you can't leave that goal unanswered. And you are right. I did see that this morning, that there was vandalism on Howard's campus, on the Delta tree and other places. You know, and I thought about that. You know, I thought about that because, you know, if you're in my position, if you're the the the air of the county and the when I was elected, I became the first person of color to be an elected chair in Virginia's history. And the threats just start pouring in the next day. I mean, like literally the next day. So I am not used to getting threatening statements, threatening words, or just flat out threats. But then you attach sinister implications to it. And it does make it all the more serious for me and for all my sorrows as well. And so, you know, he is not, he is ignorant, he is not stupid and he is dangerous.

Doreen. My question is, what precautions are you taking because of this? And are you getting in front of the messaging that this man is trying to do, like kind of trying to link you all with these dangerous groups or these groups that are caught up in conspiracy theories with people?

Yeah, so, you know, I will say that in Loudoun County, there have been quite a few people who have gotten in front of that message, who've talked about how kind of ridiculous it is. There hasn't been, to my surprise, there hasn't been any media stories about it, except media stories on social media. But there have been quite a few people who've gotten in front of it. You know, he says he talked to deltas today. I seriously doubt that he talked to deltas.

If he talked to deltas in my county, I'd be getting phone calls about that. I would know that. I will tell you what has happened today. I have had Republicans call me today and just say, we cannot believe this is happening. We did, you know, some people said I was, I didn't vote for him for to be chair of the committee. So that has happened today. So there are people who are realizing how dangerous this man can actually be. Now, you know, he just was elected chair of their committee, and I believe it's a two-year term, so he'll be there for a while. But I do think that the best disinfectant is sunlight. And so what I'm trying to do

on my social media here, and Roland, I appreciate you very much, is putting sunlight on that, because you cannot let this stuff fester in the dark. You just can't. You're right. That's exactly how we got Trump. Because a whole bunch of folks in mainstream media played footsie with Donald Trump. And I called him out at CNN. And didn't take him seriously. Oh, yeah. I mean, I just understand before I go to Greg, when I was at CNN,

I called out Donald Trump on the air and I said, why do we keep calling this man? We should run a crawl at the bottom that says this is for entertainment purposes only. Ken Jouts, the executive vice president of CNN, who is still the executive vice president of CNN, sent me an email, said, do not criticize Donald Trump.

He's coming on our air. And I criticized his ass that night. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. My deal is like, I got other jobs. I'm good. Greg, your question, Phyllis Randall. Thank you, Roland. And thank you, Chair Randall. If Scott Pio wanted to have his head explode

looking at the power of Black sororities and fraternities, then maybe he would have been able to peek into a room like I've been able to peek into when I've been one of the many who've been honored to do workshops with Delta when you all have Deltas on the Hill. If he ever walked into Washington Hilton and seen that room, he'd probably melt and drain into the men's room.

But I raise this in particular when I think about Adwoa Badwe Oswald, my sister, of course, your soror who's over in equity, the first cabinet-level position to have an equity person in a cabinet level position because, again, of your former national president, who was the head of HUD. Scott Pyle don't know what he's talking about. He should. If he knew what he was talking about, he better back up off of Delta. I know that much. But I guess I want to ask you, really, and you began to say this at the beginning, this strategy they have. I know Scott P Powell has talked about taking over school boards and the board of supervisors. How much of this is driven by this attempt to take over local government? I understand some of the Republicans have called you and said, I didn't vote for him. Yeah, but y'all back these people when they

get in office. I mean, could you talk to us about what their strategy is at the local level to try to wage this war? Right. I think what they've realized, and there's some truth to it, local government is a bench usually for what is called higher office. And so Loudoun has been the epicenter for harassment, for lies, for violence. You know, the lie of CRT. I say all the time, if your seventh grader is taking CRT, then your seventh grader is brilliant, because they take all these levels of classes. If your seventh grader is taking CRT, congratulate them and move it on, right? So Loudoun is the epicenter for all of those lies. It's been kind of the proving ground, the training ground.

And it started when the governor, the now governor, Glenn Youngkin, was running for governor. Now, Loudoun, you know, he didn't win Loudoun. He lost Loudoun by double digits. But he made a big enough dent in it. He made a big enough dent in it. And I think they believe that if they can get to these local offices, to the school boards, to the city council, to the board of supervisors, equalization boards, planning commissions, all those types of things, then that gives them the pipeline for the state Senate seats, the governor's about words like CRT, it's a boogeyman word. When you talk about words like grooming, it's, first of all, it's disgusting. It's just a disgusting thing to say, especially if you're somebody who's ever dealt with physical violence, sexual assault of a child. To use it as a political tool is just abhorrent. But it's also, it's also a,

it's a strategy to start from the ground up and build the party from the ground up and start it really at the school board level. And so we need to be aware of what they're doing and why they're doing it. And let me say that, you know, all the Greek organizations, all the D9, we're nonpartisan organizations. We just are. And Mr. Kweise Mfume used to say when he was president of the NAACP, he used to say, we don't have permanent political parties and we don't have permanent people, but we have permanent positions. Right? We have permanent positions. Not people, not party, but positions. And it is important for people in the D9 to not look at the letter behind the name, the D and the R, but look at the positions people are putting forward. And are those people in those

positions going to move your agenda forward? Are those people in your positions going to help your neighbors, your friends, the people who have been left behind in so many ways, communities of color, women, people with disabilities. What are they going to do with those communities? And so, you know, a lot of people want to make it just about R&D, but as Roland said last night, there are Republican Greeks. Heck, there are white Republican Greeks. But it's the positions that people take that we have to look at,

and they're trying to put those positions in places and, you know, in the court system, prosecutors, especially prosecutors. So it's really important that we know what we know, that there's a long-term goal here. And if we're not careful, we're going to look up in five years, and everyone in these positions are going to be people whose main goal is to roll back all the successes that we have worked for, that my mother worked for, that my grandmother worked for. All those things would be rolled right back, and we've got to know that that is their plan and not look back, not look past it, not laugh at it, not just assume that no one's going to believe them because they're not rational, logical people. People believe them, right? I mean, January 6th was a real thing. People believe that ridiculousness, and we've got to have a faster game.

We have to pay attention to what they're doing, and we have to have a rapid response. Indeed. Phyllis Randall, I appreciate you joining us. And see, you're going full tilt. of what they're doing, and we have to have a rapid response. Indeed. Phyllis Randall, I appreciate you joining us. And see, you going full tilt. You got the Delta Cup. All of it.

Yeah, I see all of it. I see. All of it. All of it. Yeah. Yeah. Look real familiar. Trust me.

I've been an alpha now. My God. April 27th will be 33 years. And I think my wife is trying to quickly surpass me with Delta gear. I'm like, look, look, you ain't even been in there that long now. I'm like, you done bought enough Delta stuff. We fine. We good. There's no such thing as enough Delta stuff.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. That's not a real thing. Yes, it is. I limit Delta stuff to one room in the house. That's it. One room. We ain't spilling over into three or four other rooms now.

All right. Fellas, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right. And for people to follow me on P. Randall Cares, that's my Twitter handle. Please give me a follow. All right, then, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right, and let people to follow me on P. Randall Cares. That's my Twitter handle. Please give me a follow. All right, then.

Will do. Thanks a lot. All right, bye-bye. Thanks. Take care. All right, folks, coming up next, my man Joe Madison is in the house. We're going to talk about his new book, Radioactive. He's been pissing white folks off for decades.

We're going to talk about that and some other stuff right here on Rollerball Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. When did you know that this is what I wanted? I think right after high school, because in high school I was in all the plays. I was always funny, but I didn't know nobody would pay me for it, you know?

And then I saw Eddie Murphy. This was like 84 when I saw Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy was the hottest thing in the whole wide world. Not just comedy, but anywhere. He saved Saturday Night Live. If he hadn't started that, that show would be gone. He had done 48 hours, trading places, his first Beverly Hills cop, could wear

the hell out of a red leather suit, and he wasn't but 23 years old. He was rich enough to pee cream, and he got all that telling jokes. I said, shit, I've been funny my whole life. I didn't know people give you money like that, so I went and got some Red Fox albums. I went down to my mama's basement, where I was living anyway, and I stood in that mirror and played them albums and them jokes until I could tell them like they were mad. Wow. And that started me doing jokes. And then I went and did comedy in the street. I was standing on State Street,

tell jokes would pass my hat, and white folks would come up and just hand me money. And I liked it. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. On the next Get Wealthy, with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, you'll learn how wealth begins at home

and how it can set the right path and the right course. Wealth building, specifically in the Black community, is about making sure that we have assets that can last beyond our lifetime. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Pull up a chair, take your seat, the Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Blackstar Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network.

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He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scape.

It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? On the next A Balanced Life, the Bible says that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. After two years of hunkering down, we can all relate to that. Spring, sun, and fun. We may be ready to get out there, but our bodies may not be ready to party. On the next A Balanced Life, we're gonna get our mind, body, and spirit on the same page. That's A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie here

on the Black Star Network. This is Judge Matthews. What's going on, everybody? It's your boy, Mack Wiles, and you are watching Roland Martin. Folks, when you hear folks talk about Sirius XM Radio, they talk about Howardius XM Radio, they talk about Howard Stern, one of the stars, but Joe Madsen is also one of the big-time stars at Sirius XM. He's been on their network for a very long time.

He will also take Howard's check, too. Of course, for a long time, folks in D.C. heard him on WOL Radio. He, of course, has been on the front lines of so many issues, not just in the United States, fighting for Sudan. A long-time friend of Dick Gregory, he was an NAACP board member, talks about all of this stuff, his life in

his book, Radioactive. The subtitle, A Memoir of Advocacy in Action on the Air and in the Streets. And Joe is one of them black people who's a member of the Bring the Funk fan club who put the money right in my hand. I tell a story. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hold on a second. No, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. This is real, too. There you go. That's my annual duty.

Joe gives an annual $100. I did an interview, Joe. Yeah. And I actually, I think it was with Cafe Mocha. And I had them crying. I said, y'all don't know what it's like when you travel around the country. And you're in Tulsa or whatever. And you're on the air.

And somebody black just walk up, they just go. Can I tell you a story? And they squeeze your hand, and they go. And walk off. Can I tell you a story that's in the book? I started a cuss jar because I heard Howard Stern cuss a woman out. So I went to the president of SiriusXMM and I said, can I do what Howard Stern does? He says, well, you know, I've heard you slip up every now and then and it's

organic. He said, but sure. I said, now, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Howard's a six-foot-five white guy that you guys are paying a, you know, half a billion dollars to or more. And if I cuss out some white woman or white man, will you have my back? And he said, yeah. Now, I have my wife with me, who's the executive producer. She's always with me because she's the witness. And we walked out, and I said,

did he give me permission to do that? She said, oh, I think he did. So I started doing it and every now and then little old ladies would call up god bless them oh mr. Madison you really shouldn't do that you know I said tell you what I'm gonna do I'm gonna put a I'm gonna put a dollar and I first called it a swear jar. But then George Wallace said, black folks don't swear, they cuss.

We cuss. And so I changed it to a cuss jar. Now this goes back to what you said about palming. Right, right. I'm at Morehouse. We're doing a voter registration, get out the vote drive. Afterward, we're taking selfies. Folks stand up, and the ministers, I walked out of there with $400 in cash

and for the cuss job. And most of the money came from ministers. They were like, keep cussing. I can't cuss, but you are a surrogate cusser. I had a woman in Tulsa, she said, now, Roland, I'm going to give you this money, but baby, can you just stop cussing? I said, look, I know how you feel.

I said, but sometimes, I said, look, some stuff got to be said. The show is called Unfiltered. I said, I got to keep it real. And the reality, if you're going to let Howard Stern do it, then, you know, you're talking about equity.

I mean, I cuss. Now, I don't cuss like Reese cuss. No, no. Now, Reese, Reese cuss. Is that right? But see, every now and then, I have to invoke Jackson, man. you know, Samuel. I just, but look, people...

Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. It's two... Who? Before I met Reese, there were two people who I thought, first of all, I thought before I met Jennifer Lewis, Sam Jackson was the absolute king of motherfucker. But when I met Jennifer Lewis, she became the queen of motherfucker. But Reese is the princess of, Reese will, okay, this is how I got to know Reese.

Reese would do these videos on Twitter. Right. Joe, she be, I'm talking about, she uses more cuss words in two minutes than a whole lot of people. And, but she killing it now. She killing it. And so I said, man, you know, I said, I got to put her on the air. So Joe, she comes on the air and so she's sitting on the, and so she's sitting on the air, and so she's talking.

I'm like, that ain't why I called your ass. I'm like, I need, so after about three or four appearances, I said, look, you got to, I need you to do you. I said, I ain't invite your ass here to be somebody else. The person doing them videos, ever since then, oh, Lord. What my girl say, let your freak flag fly, let your cuss flag fly. Well, it goes back again in the book. I have a chapter about success

and it was three things that I was told. Be original, be authentic, and then be daring. And when you look at folks, and particularly in our business, what you're doing, for example, nobody does this. It's original. You're authentic. When you see Roland Martin, you get Roland Martin. Your guests are all authentic.

That's really the formula of success. But I say this, Roland, one of the things I wanted the book to do was to be in my voice. And that was one of the most difficult things I had with the editor and Dr. Canton, because they started writing it in their voice. And I always go back to what Malcolm, somebody said about Malcolm X and Alex Taylor. Because Malcolm used to have to shape, kind of shake up Alex Taylor. That's not the way, that's not what I'm thinking about.

So I wanted it to be in my voice. The other thing I wanted was people to understand that you use your platform. And I always remember something else. There's a chapter in there that the late professor Ron Walters said. And that was, he gave a lecture, and he chastised students about moments. You go in, you have a demonstration, you leave.

Go back to the campus, go back to wherever. You just had a moment. Right. What moment? It was a moment. And so one student said, well, professor, what's the difference between a moment and a movement? And he said, sacrifice.

All movements in human history require sacrifice. And sometimes that's what you do. I had to sacrifice a job. I tell this story in Philadelphia. My first full-time talk show, I moved from Detroit. That was my political base. Children were born. I moved everybody to Philadelphia.

And I was doing a show. Now, get this, midnight to 530 in the morning. And I was doing a show. Now, get this, midnight to 530 in the morning. And I was only black. And I had the program director and the owner tell me, now, this is after. In Philadelphia. In Philadelphia. We're getting too many calls and letters because this is before social media. You're talking about black folk too much.

And so, you know, you know me. So the next day I decided, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to interview two people, different viewpoints. So it was Ron Brown, because he was running to be chairman of the DNC, the first black chairman. So I had Ron Brown on one hour. And then the next hour I interviewed Louis Farrakhan. I was gone.

You say y'all wanna see black? And then when I came to, you know, and then when I came, and then, and you talk, and you, oh, now I'm, and all of this is in the book. So I'm doing a TV that Geraldo was, this is when the, hey, the first beginning of talk radio. Right. And there was this argument about black folk, black folk,

and talk radio, but there weren't a lot of black folk. And the program director of WABC, Geraldo asked him legitimately, why don't you have any black folk in New York, and you don't have a single black person? And he said, oh, well, we have to think about it. And then somebody spoke up and said, well, you do have a black person,

and I can't remember the man's name now. And he said, oh, well, we don't think of him as black. And that debate is what sort of got me into Washington. And because the program directors said, well, they don't want you in Philly. We want you in Washington. But I did say this. I'm not going here and replacing another black. See, they have one black person. And I said, so if you're going to hire me and fire her, then I don't want the job because I'm not going to play that game. Right.

This is, you know, it's about sacrifice. And then take your platform, and you do this all the time. Go to a war zone in Sudan. I swear, I asked, and Geraldo can be upset if he wants to. I've been in that war in South Sudan for, had gone back and forth at least six times. I kept asking people who had more resources than I had, come with me. I mean, he asked me,

well, can we get in and out of South Sudan in a day? What hotel are we gonna stay in? Excuse me, we're sleeping in the bush. It's a war going on. And, you know, he just walked away. He just walked away. And I think at the time he was with ABC. And then I've had some brothers who I've asked to go with me,

and they would say, well, there's a war going on. You don't see the folks at CNN. Everybody's clamoring to get over there because there's a war going on. And the other final thing I wanted people to understand in the book clamoring to get over there because there's a war going on. And the other final thing I wanted people to understand in the book was people tend to look at us as we are now. Right. They see you. They say, oh, man, he's got a nice suit on.

Brother, I was not born with this suit on. Right. I always say everybody want to talk about Bishop T.D. Jakes today. They don't want to talk about when he was digging ditches in West Virginia. Or when I was 10 years old, my grandfather hauled trash. That's how he made a living. Separated metals, paper. And I worked with him.

In those days, they called it a dump. Today, it's a landfill. And that's how I spent my summers. That's how I made my money in my summer. So in the book, I talk about going from working, and my grandfather saying to me, you don't like this, do you? What is there to like?

No, hell no, I don't like this. And he said, well, then you got two choices. And that is you either go to the military, and that was the day he said to Army, or you go to college. But come 18, you're getting out of here. And I always, and I talk about in the book that I go from working in a dump to interviewing the first black president of the United States in the Oval Office. And so I just want people to understand that none of us in this business, first, all of us in this business have to use our platform.

And that's what you were talking about all this evening. You got to use it.. And that's what you were talking about all this evening. You got to use, everybody can do something. And that's been my mantra. No matter who you are, everybody can do something. I can't do what you do. This place is, I mean, I wish people could see where I am. This is magnificent. Man, you ought to be renting this out to students,

to all kind of folks. But everybody. That's on the folks. But everybody can do something. The thing that you talked about being talk radio. The general public really doesn't think about this. How white folks absolutely dominate talk radio. But not just talk radio, sports talk radio. And so how people, I tell people all the time, the media is the second most powerful institution in the world.

Guns, the military. Get the guns. Any cool is guns first, media second. And just what you said is what you do with it. So, you've seen other folks and how they frame stories and how they talked about stories and how they talked about individuals. And I think that's what you're talking about. do with it. So you've seen other folks and how they frame stories and how they talked about

stories and how they talked about individuals. The white loud Republican, how he dog and Phyllis Randall. No, no, we're going to have Phyllis on. And again, it's framing. And I tell people all the time, you cannot ignore the reality of how powerful media is in shaping the hearts and minds of the public. That's right. And the other thing I'll talk about, and that is, and this is what makes your show so fascinating and popular. You hear me say, put it where the goats can get it.

Yeah, I tell people that all around the country. I say, as Joe Madison says, put it where the goats can get it. Yeah, I tell people that all around the country. I say, as Joe Madison says, put it where the goats can get it. Now, that is, I came, you know, and I'm kind of intimidated with all these distinguished professors. I am absolutely, especially my man from Howard. Oh, great, great. But let me tell you, let me tell you. I came back from college,

and I believe it was a Thanksgiving dinner. My grandfather, Clarksdale, Mississippi, no more than a sixth grade education. Wasn't because he was dumb. It was just what it was. Jim Crow as well. Jim Crow. And I'm trying to wax eloquently about what I did. This philosophy teacher and data my grandfather looked he said Joseph why don't you put it where the goats can get it it's an old country saying goats eat down to the root they go beyond the top

and they go all the way down. And he said, if you can explain it to me so that I understand it, I imagine that teacher with a PhD would probably understand too. Right. And this is what irritates me about all of these talking heads

that you see on news shows is they, you know, I just wish they would just plain, just, somebody needs to say, explain to me like I'm in the second grade. Yeah, it's real basic. Just basic. I mean, we used to always cross paths doing Lou Dobbs' show

when he was sane. He was at CNN. People don't believe. But at one point, he was sane. Lou Dobbs was absolutely sane. Then he had a lobotomy and he lost his damn mind. Actually, it was talk radio that actually changed him. Yes, it was.

When he got that radio show. When he got that contract. Because when he got the radio show, it was around the same time that Rush Limbaugh signed for $100 million. Yes. And that's what caused Lou to lose his damn mind. So we used to always do these shows together, and you're absolutely right.

One of the things that made me so popular on CNN, I told it straight. That's right. I mean, I wasn't sitting here, and it was a trip because they tried to change my wardrobe. Really? Oh, yeah, absolutely. They tried to change.

They always wanted, you know, this is how we do it. I said, whoa, let me explain something to y'all. I ain't them. I remember sitting on the set one day, and Joe Klein with Time Magazine was sitting there, and someone said something. I said, look, I ain't him. I said, first of all, look at him.

I said, he got dirt on his jacket. He wears some khaki pants and this boring-ass blue shirt. I said, I don't know about y'all, but shit, I'm clean. That ain't me. I said, I ain't going to never look like him. So I don't care what that is. Because I used to have a clothes rack that was in my office. I had suits.

I had shirts. I had cufflinks. And I would be on the air daytime and nighttime. And they would go, you wouldn't change clothes? I said, oh, a brother came, we had the same thing in prime time, he wore it in daytime. They were always trying to figure out. I said, y'all, I'm

going to do me. And I understood the audience, how I speak to the audience, and the reason that thing I knew was a trip, 2008, the debates had already been scheduled. The first two debates, I had speeches. I wasn't in the studio.

Yeah, I heard you say that. And we lost the first two debates to CBS. So the third debate, I had another speech. I'm flying from speech. The president worldwide calls me. I get a voicemail. Hey, Roland, it's Jim. Buddy, nothing urgent.

Give me a call when you can. When a worldwide CEO call you and say nothing urgent, you know it's urgent. So I knew exactly why. So I called my agent, Mark Watson, and said, Mark, we're probably going to have to move that speech next week. I think

he's telling me we need you. When I called him, he said, we need you on set. So I go on set and they got, that's when they had them huge panels. So they had about 10 of us up there. It was, no, it was nine. It was eight panelists. It was, yes, it was nine panelists.

It was two anchors. They had eight seats. So I'm standing up. Like, well,. I was like, so I'm standing up. And I was like, who could be the first black person who called me or sent me an email about me standing up? It was Spike Lee. Black man can't get a chair? So when the

night was over, I was like, what the hell was up with that? They said, oh no, we wanted everybody to see that you were here. That's what they told me. Again, that's when you understand how you have an impact on people, and it's who you're communicating with. You have been doing that.

But serious is one thing, but talk about, again, being in D.C. and dealing and talking just regular, ordinary folk, the folk like your grandfather, and how they have a commitment to say, we're going to ride with you, Joe. We got your back no matter what happens.

I think you get to a certain point where they just can't deny you. Look, they know you're professional. And I think there's the other issue. I'll say this. They know you'll walk out the door. I mean, I will walk out the door. Can I add something, though?

Yeah, go ahead. I'll get off that point. You were talking about Jackie Robinson. I think the piece you did was superb. I wanted to remind everybody that this summer, Rachel Robinson is going to be 100 years old. Indeed. And if you're going to talk about Jackie Robinson,

you've got to talk about Rachel Robinson. And I'll say this. This may tick a lot of people off. I said it yesterday at George Washington University, they have a Jackie Robinson project that they won't fund, the university won't fund it. They have to raise their own money. And I said yesterday, you know, maybe if Will Smith had just stopped and paused for a moment and thought about Jackie Robinson

and what was said to Rachel in those stands, they called her everything but a child of God. And I said, and he had a bat in his hand. Yeah. and he had a bat in his hand. And maybe he just should have thought about Jackie Robinson and what was said about him and the woman he was married to until the day he died. Now, I know there's an argument about who should have slapped, who would not slap, and that kind of thing.

And I personally also think that there ought to be curriculum in every college about Jackie Robinson's legacy, because it was more than just baseball. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you read his book. I never had it made. He was a business person. I mean, these professors know better than I do. And was hardcore and challenged his own Republican Party.

And there's another issue, too, I've been hitting on. Fort Hood. You know, first of all, well, he was court-martialed. There is an effort and a petition to change the name of Fort Hood to the Jackie Robinson base. Really? Yes. Look it up. And by the way, so let's start with who was Hood. He was a Confederate general.

He was a Confederate general who, by the way, quit the military. So I want the audience out there to go look it up. And I think that's one of the next things that they, since they're talking about changing the names of these bases. And one of the hardest things to find is the TNT movie where Andrea Briar played Jackie Robinson. It was called the court martial Jackie Robinson.

I had been, you cannot find that anywhere. I remember watching it and it may be still on VHS tape, but not even on DVD. I got some other questions. I'm going to bring in the panelists here now so they can ask. Oh, man. You didn't tell me. I got to take an exam. Yeah, you do.

So I ain't going to go to the professor first. We going to ease into it. So the cusser, the chief cusser on Rolling My Under Filter, who's also a contributor on Sirius XM, The Clay Kane Show, Recy Colbert. Recy, your question for Joe Madison. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and dubbing me the princess of cussing. Joe Madison, it's such an honor to be in company with you on this show. So thank you for blessing us with so many gems.

A question that I have for you is, you know, now I feel like news in our society and our attention span moves so fast. You have such a long career. And I'm just curious, did it feel like that in the other kind of historic and significant errors that we've been through, that things were moving fast and it was easily forgotten? Or does it feel a little bit different, like we have to push harder to really get people to see the gravity and the momentous part of what we are experiencing. And I have to apologize. Putting into context... I didn't hear the first part. Putting into context this moment,

this moment that we're in, all the different things that are going on, how does it compare to other eras that when you've been on... Oh, nothing has really changed other than the characters and also the means of communicating is a lot faster. I think the reality is war is war. You know, inflation is inflation. Black folk have always had to survive,

as Roland and all of you were explaining in the first part of the show. They're, you know, these... It's something, maybe the best way to put it, like putting it where the goats can get it. It's Jim Crow's sophisticated cousin. I always refer to him as James Crow

Esquire. Same attempts to maintain white supremacy. No ifs, ands, buts about it. It's just more sophisticated. And they've learned a few tricks, but the reality is that it's just sophisticated. And we have to do more reading.

We have to do more researching. And I also say this. It's again in the book Radioactive. It's cultural conditioning. Now, what do I mean by cultural conditioning? And you've been you've been saying this all morning, all evening long. America is culturally conditioned to believe that white is superior, black is inferior, and the manifestation of that cultural conditioning is that blacks are undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized. And some of us are culturally conditioned to believe, to undervalue, underestimate, and marginalize ourselves. When you were talking about the monarchs, you can have both monarchs and blacks in major league. I mean, but we have to recondition our culture.

And culture is the hardest. For me, I say reprogram. But it's the same thing. And culture is the hardest. For me, I say reprogram. But it's the same thing. And culture is the hardest thing to change. Yeah. In any country, culture is the most difficult thing to change. But this is what you said about when you talked about

if Wilhett stopped and thought about Jackie Robinson. It's about being intentional. Just what I was saying, when I was picking shoes, I could have said, I'm going to wear a white pair of shoes. No, no, no. I'm going to specifically wear those because they're a black-owned company. That means

stopping yourself, thinking it through, taking that moment, thinking it through, and then, no, I'm wearing these for a reason. And I think what happens is, we have gotten, first of all, I tell people all the time, we have to really, not

appreciate, but understand how powerful white supremacy was in terms of how it's so deeply ingrained into our psyche and white folks that yeah, we can look at something, and I get it all the time when somebody's like,

yeah, but we ain't gonna get you a real show. Yeah. I'm sorry, what the hell is it? What you mean real? Oh, let me tell you about- And they really mean white. Yeah, I have a chapter in the book where I talk about, people always ask, how did you get the handle Black Eagle?

And when I first started using that handle, folks went crazy on the radio. I mean, these white people went nuts. Now, the managers didn't because they're going to tell me I can't say it. And let me tell you how it came about. I was following Oliver North. We're in a meeting with a talk show consultant who was bragging about Oliver North. Oliver North had never done talk radio before.

Oh, he's the Captain Kirk of this enterprise ship. And I said, well, what are we? We're not Oatman. I mean, what are we? And he brushed me off. So I left the meeting and got in the car with Dick Gregory. And I said, you know what? I think I'm going to start calling myself the Black Eagle.

I'm in Washington. National bird is the eagle. And I said, but have you ever heard of a black eagle? He said, no, but I think tomorrow morning we're going to be hearing about it. But guess what happened? I find that God is fate. I'm looking at National Geographic, and they do a special on eagles. And the biggest, largest bird, eagle species,

is a black eagle. Wow. And, you know, and then you would have folks call in, white folks call in and say, well, if you the black eagle, I'm the white pigeon. And I said, well, just remember, eagles eat pigeons. So, I mean, I just think you have to be original, you have to be authentic, and you have to be daring.

That is, and you know who told me that was Aretha Franklin. The queen. Because when you hear Aretha Franklin, that's who you hear, and you know it. And remember, she wasn't a big success when she first started out because she was doing other people's... She was doing covers. Covers.

When she decided to be authentic... There you go. That's when she became a hit. There you go. That's why, and I say this, and that's why I consider you a brother and a friend. You're authentic. And people need and a friend. You're authentic. And people need to understand that.

You are authentic. And folks just don't like it, just got to get used to it. Whatever. Yeah. Whatever. Terrain. Terrain. Terrain Walker.

First of all, Joe, it's an honor and a privilege to be in the same space with you. First of all, Joe, it's an honor and privilege to be in the same space with you, first of all. This is amazing. My question to you is, well, there has always been a history with black entertainers and black reporters and black radio people, where they were the voices of the community and they were able to interpret world events to the community. And my question to you is, do you feel like some of that legacy is lost? How can we bring that back? How can we revitalize the idea of black people like yourself as only being the reals for the community and interpreting black communities to the world,

the world of black people? We've always had, we've always had in these cities, in each one of these cities, you had a black eagle. You had that voice. Yes. It could have been a DJ. Yes. It could have been a talk show host.

Yes. It could have been a columnist. And what Duran is saying is— There was a congressman during Reconstruction period. He was known as the black eagle. Yeah, go ahead. And you see, in many ways, I think what Terrain is saying is we've lost that. And so how do we bring that back where we have these voices that to your point,

that are sacrificing for the collective and I'll add to what you said Terrain, who are not all about getting them the check, but it's really about representing the people in the community. I don't know how to answer that. I really honestly don't know. I think that's maybe one of the reasons I did the memoir, is what made you? What made you? You know, my grandfather, working with my grandfather in a trash truck. What made you?

Was my minister at St. Margaret's Church, who was a brilliant man. What made you? It was a football coach who, by the way, my first football uh experience i got kicked off the team because i was active in in large part in the black student movement this is and and some of you may know this and that is we were just we're trying to get black studies on these campuses uh you know brothers are getting kicked off the football teams around, go read this, around the country because they wore afros or because there was a black student movement and ballplayers were looked up to. And if you walked around campus maybe with a black band as part of the protest, the coach would call you in and say you take that black band or you lose your scholarship. And some folks wouldn't do it band or you lose your scholarship.

And some folks wouldn't do it, and they'd sacrifice their scholarship. That's the best way that I can answer it. Our perspective is what creates us, and our experience creates our perspective. And so I guess it was all the things I went through. And that's why it was a challenge writing this book because I had to go back and the editor kept saying, well, why did this happen?

Why did that happen? And so it's based on your experience. Why are you the way you are? Why are these professors the way they are? What makes you you? Yeah, what makes you you? The way I would answer what Terrain asked is this way. I am who I am today because there was a black newspaper that I worked for. John Ware was a former city manager of Dallas.

He left to run a billion dollar investment fund for Tom Hicks, a big private equity guy, later bought the Texas Rangers. When I was at Tom Jones' blackamericaweb.com and then when I got fired from there and I was sitting here trying to do some other stuff and I would call John. And this is what John always said.

He said, Roland, it doesn't matter just get a platform that you control. So the way we do that terrain, we have to create the platforms.

So when I launched this show, it was never going to only be me. The moment I launched, I said, I'm going to be the tent pole. I'm going to be the axis. And so the people I bring on, then that's going to then create who stands out, create a

show for them. So now Faraji has a daily show. Here was Faraji, a 25-year-old young brother from Baltimore coming on my TV One show. And I was like, all right, well, he got something, he got something. And then I created for us, we're going to do this daily show. And so bring them on. And then, uh, Greg, you know, Greg, I'm thinking about this and this is, but that wasn't even a black star network. And even before Greg was doing what he's doing with Karen Hunter, we were talking about,

okay, I'm up, we create this, but I got to build this first. And then my wife's show and then what Deborah Owens is doing. And then there are four or five other shows. People be hitting me, Roland, what a Reese's show. I'm like, calm down, y'all. Calm down. I got a plane. Everybody chill. But that's really

it. If we don't build the ecosystem terrain, then you're not going to have the voices because there has to be a place if we don't build the ecosystem terrain. Yeah. Then you're not going to have the voices because there has to be a place where who owns it gives you the freedom to develop your voice, cultivate your voice, cultivate your rhythm, your tone, all those different things. That takes time, and you ain't going to get it over there.

It was Jonathan Rogers. Everybody, this is no disrespect. It was not Kathy Hughes. It was not Alfred Liggins. It was Jonathan Rogers, who was the founding CEO of TV One, who said, I'm going to put you on. America needs to hear your voice, but we got to get the network built first.

Jonathan got the job and called me. He called Royal's wife first, called me. TV1 wasn't even named, but he told me that, but I had to be patient. That's how I got the village. Same thing happened with the Sirius XM. I was on WOL Radio 1, and Satellite Radio was created. They did not have a black talk platform. Did not have one. And Nate Davis, brilliant. He was president. And no one thought that Satellite Radio would take off.

You remember that? Nate Davis, y'all black. And Nate Davis, brilliant, just as quiet. And he said, you know what? We need this channel. Because, you know, Sirius is like, I always look at it, it's like a bookstore. Yeah.

And if you don't like what's on channel 26 or 126, go over to another. I forget how many channels there are. So it's like if you don't like this book and this section, then go to another section. And Nate Davis came to me and said, we have got to have a platform like, and initially it was the power.

Right. Now, they know how I feel about that. It should have stayed the power. Right. Now, they know how I feel about that. It should have stayed the power. But, you know, some brother came on and said, well, I don't like news and, you know, and the power sounds so 60ish. And I'm blowing them out, but that's okay. And said, let's change it to urban view.

First of all, I hate when they slap urban on anything. I'm like, just say black shit. Stop, just don't. I hate, I hate, dude, I can't. I can't stand when they throw urban in it or so. But wait a minute, you got the Patriots Channel. Right. So that's the right wingers.

You've got the,ots channel. So that's the right-wingers. You've got, what is it, Progress? And that's the liberal channel. Basically the liberal. Yeah, the POTUS channel. Politics of the United States. Now, why can't you, and I've argued this, why can't you have the black channel with all these brilliant minds you have

and call it the power. And so what I've been told is, you know, it is what it is now. You guys are really popular, so don't change it. And I'm saying, okay, I'm still going to cuss. No, I'm teasing. Dr. Greg Carr. Oh, I'm

really intimidated now. Oh, God. It's the opposite, Baba. I tell you, man, I could just sit here and listen to you all all night. I want to add my honor and respect to giving to you like Reesey and

Terrain said, every time that I've been around you and seen you, it's just an honor, brother, sometimes to shake your hand and stand there and listen. I remember the first time I saw your studio in Sirius XM in D.C. I went down to do a Wilma Leon show on the weekend.

We walked by and said, that's where the Black Eagle sits. And I'll never forget that. But you know, I guess my question is very broad and it kind of echoes what Reesey was asking, Brother Madison. And I know my old classmate Dave Canton

probably gave you hell because he liked me as an academic and tried to put words in your mouth and you had to get him straight. But he says in the beginning of your book there, Radioactive, he says, you know, you always remind us to listen with our third ear. And so looking forward, and you and Roland are really talking about this, but I wonder what you see with your third eye, what you hear with your third ear about the future of media generally. I don't know if radio will ever be displaced.

I mean, we all grew up on radio. Hearing your voice got us through many a challenge in our community. But I wonder as you're looking forward with legacy media seemingly coming apart at the seams, you know, what do you see in terms of breaking through all the noise and really capturing the imagination of our people, particularly as it relates to information? And thank you for your continuing work, Bob. With this whole piece about listening with the third ear and reading with the third eye, that came from an older politician. I remember the ride from Detroit to Lansing.

He was a state senator. And he said, look, young man, it's just brand new running the NAACP. And he said the best of of what's his name? Will Rogers. Will Rogers. He said, yes, there's a book out. Read the best of Will Rogers. Now, who is Will Rogers? Will Rogers was like the Johnny Carson of his day on radio. You know, he was the one that would say, you know, Congress is the second oldest profession. I mean, and people would listen to him. Oh, homespun. Oh, yeah. But political humor. Yeah. Now, the other thing he said was, listen with a third ear and read with a third eye. See, and so to answer your question,

too often we take what we see and not realize what's really being done in the background. That's that third eye that you see. What is that news story? What's really behind that news story? So, again, radio will always be around. I think it was a point in time where I think we used to say whenever people would take over a country, there would be a revolution.

First thing they take over is the radio station. Yeah, yeah. After the military, there's media. Yeah, they take over the radio station. And we see that. Radio station, newspapers. And so here's where I think it's going. And that is everybody now is a potential communicator.

Yep. Right with this. Everybody now is a, andator. Yep. Right with this. Everybody now is a, and we're seeing it. Like the story out of Michigan. Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids. And, you know, this guy, the passenger, became a reporter.

There you go. He pulled out a young girl in Minnesota. That's why I give lessons on the air saying shoot horizontal, please, so it fills the whole screen up. Don't shoot vertical. We get the black bars. I tell everybody, shoot video, shoot like this. Now, the other thing is that, and I know folks like to

criticize the younger generation, but I tell you, you know, I did my hunger strike. And folks thought it was crazy. But I knew what I was doing because Dick Gregory and I used to, and he taught me how to do it. And he taught me why you do it. You do it to get attention. You get it to shake, to get the people.

Now, we didn't get the legislation because we had two Democratic senators that just were traitors to our cause. But you know what we did? We woke up a younger generation. They now know what a filibuster rule is. They now know how Congress works. Young folk went on hunger strikes that, you know, you couldn't get them to pass a fast food place. They realized we have to make sacrifices. We woke up a generation.

And, Doctor, I will say this to you, and I say this with all due respect. Quit talking about passing the torch. Now, I'll tell you why. I'm not going to pass my torch. I'm going to hold on to my torch. Now, I'll tell you why. I'm not going to pass my torch. I'm going to hold on to my torch. I'll light your torch. Right.

Because if I pass my torch on to you, I'm in the dark. Right. I'm in the dark. I use the relay example Thank you This is what I explain to people

But you gotta keep running First of all, you're running at the same time they're running When you stick it out they have to reach back and there's a point when both of you are holding the baton

at the very same time, and then you got to let that baton go. And that generation has to run faster than we did. There you go. So what I tell folks, I've always hated that phrase too. Even when I was 20, 30, I hated that phrase

because what it said to a lot of people is, I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing. I wish all people would get out of the way. We were on, I'll never forget, it was after Trayvon Martin, after the Zimmerman decision, he's found not guilty. And folks were just, they were shocked. I'll never forget that. I'll never forget the night I'll never forget the night.

It was a Saturday night. The Delters had their national convention here. I was actually at their step show. And the thing just circulated. And about 3 o'clock in the morning, there were probably about 800 people around the world who were on the phone. The next night, it was like 2,000 people

who were on the phone. People just wanted to talk. It was interesting. They had no place to, they were like, they wanted to go to some place to convene. And they basically turned to a talk show. But what was a trip is that, so a group of black folks, folks 20, 30, 40s, started convening. And it was very interesting. And so we're on these calls. And one of the things, Joe, about really smart people, they, really smart people don't sometimes know how to slow down. So they're sitting here and they was like,

we call for, do this and do that, and this and this, and website, it was going on and on. And so Jeff Johnson and I, we're chilling. Jeff goes, folks, I'm just curious, who are we targeting? Who do we say we're speaking for? So Jeff and I, we started communicating on this deal. So that was this young lady who hit Jeff and she was like, you know, I'm just, I'm tired of these old heads like rolling

my, why is he on the call? And Jeff said, he said, let me ask you a question. You think he arrogant? He was like, and? He said, but who else on the call has a national platform? Yeah, exactly. He said, he's the only one. Then he said, who else on this call,

if we needed somebody to kick off what we were doing and put $10,000 on the table, who could do it and not blink? He said, him. He said, why in the hell would you not want that person at the table? That's part of that whole thing with this folk fighting and who I want

in the room. I'm like, hey, if you got something to contribute, we all can be... Everybody can do something. Everybody. Look, Rosa Parks lit my torch. In the book, we talk about... Let me tell you, we boycotted the city of Dearborn. And because of an issue with a park.

Dearborn is not the Dearborn you know now. Right. It was a sundown town, a dusted sundown. And the black population was less than 1%. Some black folks, here's Dearborn, here's Detroit. You cross the street, you're in Dearborn. Some folks went over and got into a park shelter. People came in and said, well, you can't,

this is Dearborn Park, you can't have this, it was a public park, you can't use this shelter. And lo and behold We're reading again the newspaper of good friend of mine we he worked at John Conyers office Rosa Parks worked there and He said we gotta do something about this. This is a public park. So we got together and said, okay fine We'll boycott the city of Dearborn You know, they had a huge regional mall. Black folks were spending their money.

We did. And Rosa Parks said, I'll join you. Oh, okay. And so we decided, we took a lesson from Randall Robinson and the boycott of the South African embassy. We did it the day before Thanksgiving. Why? Media.

Why? You know why. Because Thanksgiving Day was going to be a slow news day. So Rosa Parks and Joe Madison gets arrested and Dearborn calls for a boycott. 70%... It was instantaneous. It was spontaneous. People stopped shopping the next, what they call now Black Friday. They stopped. Let me

tell you who gave me more hell than anybody in Dearborn. The older black leadership. You did not get my permission to call a boycott. I was, because Henry Ford called all of the black leaders. Now Coleman Young was mayor and there was some powerful black folk. I'm just a young 20-something NAACP executive. I don't know. I wasn't even with... Yeah, I was on the political department at the time. Yeah, because I was with Ben Hooks. They called me into a meeting. This was a Saturday morning. They have eggs, bourbon,

and, you know, one of those meetings, like a kitchen cabinet. And there were some powerful folks. There was a federal judge. There was powerful folks. There was a federal judge. There was a mayor. There was a labor leader. Man, these were older brothers. Right.

And they said, you know, you remind me of myself when I was your age. But young man, this is Coleman Young, you got to, you know, you didn't get my permission to call this boycott. And you got Henry Ford pissed off at me and da-da-da-da-da. And I said, Mayor Young, with all due respect, I didn't think I needed your permission to call a boycott. And I have it in the book. He looked me in the eye and said, boy, you need my permission to fart a boycott. And I have it in the book. He looked me in the eye and said, boy, you need my permission

to fart in this city. But you know what? You can't stop it. It's already happened. It's too late. You've got to call it off. And they tried to pressure us to call it off.

It was too late. And the lesson I learned was boycotts are successful one of two ways. And Ben Hooks taught me this. They're either spontaneous or they're well-planned. There you go. And he told this group of folks who wanted me out of the city, we know it wasn't well planned because y'all didn't help me and he pulled me out of one of these meetings

and said no he's not because they said get him out of town and he said he's not going anywhere come on he stood me up and said come on we're leaving. This is and by the way this is what young people need to understand. It's never been kumbaya. Never. We've always, you know, Dr. King wouldn't go on the freedom, the bus rides, on the freedom rides, because he thought it was dangerous. Kennedy said, talk them out of it. Talk John Lewis out of it. And they say we're still going.

Yeah. And that's why all of this is in the book. And that's why it's radioactive. And I got that. I got to give credit to Ron Daniels, our brother Ron Daniels. He said, you know, you're just radioactive. And I always remember that from the good professor. We're going to go seven more minutes.

I know we're over. We're going to go seven more minutes. See, when you have your own show, you can do that. That's true. That's true. And also, I got to pay overtime. So I'm going to go seven more minutes. See, when you have your own show, you can do that. That's true. That's true. And also, I got to pay overtime. So I'm going to do this. So the panel, you're going to have another question.

But I'm going to ask a couple first. First, who black gave you the most difficulty interviewing them? Where they were like just getting on your damn nerves, and you had to just like, where it got contentious, it got hot. Nobody. So was there anybody, did you have any interview where it was a battle? It was a battle.

You know, that's what's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but I can't think of anybody, like you said, who was black. No, I really can't think of anybody. One of the things I always do, and you know why this is important, I always prepare. I've known you for, you know, decades.

I still prepare when I come, you know, because the one thing is true about the Roland Martin show, I don't know what he's going to ask. I don't know what attitude he's got. I don't know what Roland took out of this book. And so, but, you know, I have to be prepared. Now, and I say this because I've got to tell you, I've had some difficulties with elected officials that really piss me off

because they want the questions in advance. Right. And we've got to stick to these questions in advance. I'm not going to give you the questions in advance. First of all, I don't always know. I have a set of questions. The staff, you know, Sherry, my wife, is the executive producer, Sam Nassau,

they put questions together. And sometimes I'll use those questions as a springboard. But Larry King taught me something, and that was that the next question is always based on the last answer. There you go. Absolutely. And I'm not a journalist. I use journalistic techniques. Right, right. But I'm not a journalist, so I always tell elected officials, especially, don't treat me like I'm with CNN.

As a matter of fact, you ought to do what Trump learned how to do. don't treat me like I'm with CNN. Matter of fact, you ought to do what Trump learned how to do. Trump knew how to use all those folks over at Fox. And they'll tell you they're not journalists. If anything, they're advocates. Oh, absolutely. And what do you have here? You've got folks who are journalists, but they also are advocates. There you go.

So that's how I would answer. I really don't think any... I got a few. Okay. Who did you interview that you fanned out.

You were just... You're a professional, but man, you were a fan and to sit across from them and get to talk to them and interview them. Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks. Really, Rosa Parks.

And that's like asking your favorite child. Because she was just so honest in her answers. She didn't have to. She's at that stage in her life. There's no pretense. I don't have to impress you, young man. I'll tell you another person. Barry Gordy.

You know, I'm a Motown guy. And Barry Gordy, just honest, straight-up answers about all these folks that I've come to admire. And I'll tell you somebody else who I became a big fan of, Michelle Obama. I've interviewed the, you know, I tell the story in the book about they called me, the president would like you to,

would you mind doing an interview with the president? It was midterm. Republicans are going to take over the Senate and the House. And I said, sure. So what time do you want us to place the call? Oh, no, we want you to come into the Oval Office. Excuse me, this is radio. I'm not bringing it.

I don't have a TV camera. But I knew what the game was. I'm going to bring Joe Madison into the Oval Office. It's radio. We could have done this by phone. Oh, and by the way, Brother Madison, Joe, let's sit right here where all the world leaders sit. We have a photograph of it in the book with the fireplace. That's when I look at this fireplace, I'm reminded. Hey, Greg, I ain't get that call. And the one thing I learned, the one thing I learned. And they say, well, you only have, what was it, 10 minutes?

Right, right. Something with the president. And he's always long-winded. Well, and I never interviewed a president of the United States. So I went to a friend of mine, and I said, I only got 10 minutes. It takes him 10 minutes to answer one question. And this person reminded me of something.

This is what I remind everybody. He said, Joe, forget that. That's staff time. Right. He'll tell you when his time is up. Man, we went for 25 minutes. There you go. 25 minutes.

Now, was that interview September or October 2010? October. Okay. And let me tell you what. But here's the funny joke. So we get to it, we're now into the interview, and I hear this, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, it's the helicopter coming, and the Marine One, and it lands outside. And he stops the interview, he says, oh, man, Joe, brother, I got, man, I got to stop, my

ride has gotten here. And you don't want a brother to miss his ride. But Michelle Obama is real. No pretense. And we just clicked just like that. You know, because of her experience. Her experience is quite different than his experience. We just related.

And she was just, she put it where the goats could get it. So before I go to parents with questions, so let me tell you how that interview and others happened. With who? Obama in the midterm. Oh, go ahead, yeah. So Obama gets sworn in January 2009.

Right. He's on the Tom Joyner morning show the day before the inauguration. Okay? So, we go through all of 2009. He doesn't know black media. Oh, yeah, I remember that. So, we get to 2010. When I would do Joyner, I would connect before.

And we'd be on before. And so Tom was constantly complaining, how in the hell Michael Steele has been on my show more than the president? Yeah. Tom was like, all the stuff I did, all the stuff I... And we were all going through that. So Hurricane Katrina anniversary is August 2010. Obama does this sit down interview with Brian Williams.

I said, enough of this shit. I sent Valerie Jarrett an email. I said, y'all going to have to learn how to come home. I said, we've had Michael Steele on three times. Y'all ain't done Tom, Steve, Joe. I see interviews with everybody. I said, we got midterms coming up. We waited all of 09.

Here we are, more than halfway into 2010. Y'all need to be talking to black radio and black media. That's true. Oh, oh, oh, okay, I got you. So the next week, he's on Joyner. They start scheduling him. And when he comes on, he apologizes to Tom. You know what, I should've been doing more of this,

I should've been here earlier. But I sat there and I said, no, so Tom was trying to knock, I said, no, no, I'm gonna tell her. This don't make any sense. Now everybody who's watching, y'all remember when I was going off on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so let me tell you what happened. So I called Joe.

What y'all don't realize, y'all understand how we work. It's like passing the ball, who gets an assist. Yeah, that's right. You all understand. Like we did in the Senate meeting with the Democratic leadership two weeks ago. So I'm telling Joe about how I'm blasting Pelosi every day. Joe's like, shit, hell, they ain't done my show. Joe, I've been asking for years. I see it.

So we going, he said, I'm going to support you. So the next day, Joe goes on the show, says what I'm doing, what Pelosi's people were listening. Phone rings. She was on what, 48 hours later? Joe called me. Hey, Ro, she's going to be on the show in two days. And I was like, good.

She did April Ryan. April came. She's like, Ro, I got to thank you for show in two days. And I was like, good. She did April Ryan. April came and she's like, bro, I got to thank you for that. I said, here's my whole deal. I said, I still ain't got to interview. I said, but Joe got her. April got her. I said, but that's the whole point. It's not about your ego.

It's, yo, I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you. We all in this thing together, we all got to apply that pressure to them and say, don't play us small. And why is that the case? Because we have basically the same audience and the same responsibility to educate our audience. That's why. So to Terrain's question, part of that, how do you create that group?

Is you got to have folks who are willing to pass the ball to each other, which is why we talk, which is why we compare notes, which is why if I ain't get Joe, are you getting this here? No, hell no, that ain't coming on. Okay, cool. When I go in, I'm going to say, y'all got to do me and y'all got to do Joe. That's the thing that people don't understand. Most people don't understand the conversations that we have, like, before the meeting.

Right. So, like, to look ahead, we're going to this meeting. And that's why I said when we first started. So, like, when you hit them about Africa. Oh, yeah. What happened? I said, hey, Joe, we're going to hit Sudan, Cameroon, Ethiopia. Give me a name.

Roland, put this person on. That's how it happens. Because I had gone to Sudan with the brother from South. And he had been bathing Madison. You've got to get folks talking about the fact that 70% of the folk in South Sudan are starving to death. But the point is, we who are in with the platforms can't be so selfish when we don't talk to each other and work with each other.

All right, next round of questions. Final round of questions. I know, yes, staff, we're running over time. But trust me, I got something planned, and y'all going to get over it when y'all experience it. Recy. Yes, my next question is, you know, you do radio, and I'm on the Clay Kane Show every Thursday,

and I really enjoy the call-in aspect of it. Can you just talk a little bit about, you know, how that has influenced your career, having that back and forth on a daily basis, and really, you know, how it's helped you move the needle in terms of what Black America is talking about? Well, call us.

Okay, one of the things that I've learned, and is, if I had to do a boot camp on talk radio, callers can often, first of all, callers should never run your show. It should not be a call-driven show. I don't do open line. And I'll tell you why. Because too often that has meant the personality of the broadcaster didn't prepare. And to talk about. And I've tried that a couple of times where I say, you know what, y'all take over the show, the callers, y'all call.

We got, on social media, we were bombarded. Don't ever do that again. And because folk call up, they want to hear your opinion. They want to know. They want to... And then you let callers respond. But I tell you,

I think the worst mistake you can make is to one, let callers take over the show. I think the other mistake you make is what I call frequent callers. We have a rule on the Madison show. It's one call a week.

Now, the reason is, again, I learned this, that if you've got six million people listening to you and you can't fill up nine lines, then you're doing something wrong. And then what happens is, if I did that and had frequent callers, it'd be the same people every single day, and they would call in every single day. Well, that's not necessary now because we have something called podcasting. And that's what I tell them. Look, this is the Madison

show. This isn't a Joe Blow's show. And if you, if you want to, if you want your show, go do a podcast. And there aren't very many successful podcasts. No. Well, what gets me is, what gets me is when people, I love these people. They hit me yesterday. Why are you interrupting the guy? Because I have a very simple rule. I can't allow a lie to be told. Thank you. That's my rule. And allow it to stand. That's right. Because here's how I say it. You're right. If you're listening to me and a lie is told and I don't say anything, you think I just heard the truth. And there's another issue too. You see these distinguished professors we have here? They're listening.

And if they hear a lie and I let it stand, they're going to jump my ass. Boom. Right, right, precisely. Even when you make a basic mistake, like all these Sigma Gamma Rho's are mad because yesterday I was rattling off all the names and the colors, and I said Sigma Gamma Rho was blue and white. Cause I was thinking if I made a Sigma. Why would you mess with Sigma? First of all, cause first of all. Well, you're looking at a Sigma, shut up.

But they're irrelevant to me. Oh, you know. But Greg is an alpha right there. So, you know, we got, you got two alphas in here. So, you know, I mean, it's a cute little group. Shut up. Terrain, your question. Oh boy. Oh, boy.

Yeah, Joe, my question is this. How do you manage to keep your message on point and keep the show, your direction of your show on point when there's so much other noise around and there's so many other platforms and so much other stuff that goes on? You know what I mean? Like, Black people, there's so much entertainment,

there's so much other distractions. How do you keep focus on news and media and keep that on point? I have a great staff. You know what I mean? Like black people, there's so much entertainment, there's so much other distractions. How do you keep focus on news and media and keep that on point? I have a great staff. First of all, I there is no way I could do what I do without Sherry. There is no way. And then my producers, a couple of producers and our interns. So their charge every day is, after we get off the show, we have a production meeting. All right, what went down? What got a good response?

That type of thing. But then their job, all day long, people think, well, you end at 10 o'clock. Oh, no. We are constantly reading, reviewing the news, analyzing it, what was said, what wasn't said, how it was said. And then in the morning, which starts for me about 3 a.m., the producer is 4 a.m., we're looking at a list of topics, of stories. And we then decide as a team which ones we think folks want to hear about. So there's a couple approaches we take. Which one will get people talking

and give people an opportunity to vent and express their opinion. Then there's a list of shows, what are you going to do about it? See, I can't, for example, when the slap heard around the globe of the world, there's anything I can do about that. None of us can do anything about that. But I knew damn well that we were going to spend four hours talking about it. So that's how I do. But the most important thing is thinking critically. Again, listening with that third ear, reading with that third eye, am I hearing the truth?

Is there a story behind the story that people need to know so that I'm really educating my audience? And then the final thing I do is to debunk all of this lies and the critical race theory was the it comes to to uh my my uh mind and i i'll say this i was thinking of this while we were sitting here rolling we all were arguing oh they don't know what the critical race theory is they don't know what the critical race theory is and that was what was that people kept saying and i didn't know what the critical race theory is. And that was what people kept saying. And I didn't know what the critical race theory was. I hadn't heard of it. But I think that's the wrong thing we should be saying.

We should be saying, what is the critical race theory? We should be educating ourselves as to how it got started, who was the architect, what it has meant, and quit responding by saying by saying well they don't know well the reality is we didn't know either right that's what i said i told you i said i didn't run three black newspapers black radio station black website black magazine i said i had never heard a critical so so our. So our responsibility is to educate. And that's the umbrella that I educate.

And then once you're educated, then what are you going to do about it? I keep going. And I get these folks that call in. This goes back to the first question about callers, callers. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Now, here's my final question.

What are you going to do about it? Boom. Not what is Roland going to do. Not what Madison is going to do. What are you prepared to do? What are you prepared to do about it? And you usually get crickets. Yep.

Yep. Same thing. Because most people don't do anything. And that's why we call it radioactive. And look, I did the same when I was on WVON in Chicago. I would do the exact same thing. Don't sit here and same when I was on WVON in Chicago. I would do the exact same thing. Don't sit here and call a bitch in the morning.

What you going to do? All right. Final question from the panel by Alpha. Brother. Doc. I appreciate that, Roland. Well, we know, Bob and Joe, you and Bob and Dick Gregory, another Alpha was thick as brothers. So, I mean, we know.

You ain't got nothing against Alper. That was your man. So, let's do it. I want to ask you about something that you undertook in terms of action right around the time, a little bit after the time the book came out. Of course, we all remember in November you started that hunger strike.

November 8th. Yes, sir. And so, I guess my question is, you mentioned Ryan Daniels, you mentioned the great Ryan Walters you've seen and been at the center of so many battles, political battles. You know, obviously a sense of urgency animated that decision. You literally put your health on the line, sacrifice. I guess my question is, looking at this country right now, how close do you think this country is to a potential political fracture? Given the fact that you said,

look, I feel so strongly about this that I'm willing to put my health on the line. We've got to get this right. How close do you think this country is? Are we on the verge of something that maybe we've never seen before in history? Oh, yeah. I think we are literally looking at,

and it may not be like the first Civil War, I think we are looking at some form of Civil War. When I did that hunger strike, one of the problems I had was people were having moments, and they weren't creating a movement because people weren't sacrificing. God bless the folks who were... Some people were getting arrested and going to jail.

Some folk were getting arrested and they were getting traffic tickets, or what I call citation. And I didn't... And I didn't think that there was enough pressure. So I channeled Dick Gregory. I kept thinking, what would Dick do? And I talked to his son, Christian,

and we had a very lengthy conversation. He said to me, he said, you know, Joe, you know what Dick would, you know, my dad would do. First of all, he'd probably go on a hunger strike and he wouldn't ask anybody. But I had to ask my wife. And she only agreed. She said, now, first of all, you're not that 34, 36-year-old kid

you were when you and Dick were doing hunger strike. Man, you, as folk kept reminding me, you're not that 34, 36-year-old kid you were when you and Dick were doing hunger strike. Man, as folk kept reminding me, you're in your 70s now. I wasn't feeling 70. And so she said, but you got to go to the doctor. Doctor said, why do you want to do this? I explained. And he gave me the go-ahead. You're okay.

And I never will forget. I got in the car. We're driving out of the parking lot of the doctor's office, and my wife looked at me, and she had never done this before. She said, are you telling me that you're willing to die for this cause? And I looked at her with one word and said, yes, end of conversation. And here's what I said. I'm doing this because I don't want my children and my grandchildren and my great grandchildren to ask, asked, Papa, what were you doing when the end of the second Reconstruction was starting? I know what they did at the end of the first Reconstruction.

The first thing they went after was the vote. It was the birth of the Klan. They burned down churches. They lynched people. All over the vote. And I saw the same thing happening. And I may not live to see the end of the second reconstruction, but while I'm alive, I'm not going to have my grandchildren asking me, what did you do to stop it? And so that's what started the hunger strike. I think we are just a hair trigger away

from some real serious conflict if we don't stand up, speak up. And I'm telling you, November 8th, and I'm saying this to everybody, don't sit here and wait until October to get started. That's right. Don't wait till September to get started. We need to mobilize now. And I'm saying this to all the leaders. They can get mad at me if they want to. I'm like, dick, I don't care. And I'm saying this to all the leaders. They can get mad at me if they want to. I'm like, Dick, I don't care. And I'm not asking your permission. Will y'all please check your egos at the door?

Check your egos at the door. You know, that's the old Quincy Jones sign that was over when they did... We are the world. We are the world. He brought together the greatest artists in the world and he had a sign, Checky Eagles at the door and get organized and more important, mobilize. Nancy Pelosi said something to me when they, just as they were past the Emmett Till anti-lynching bill. God bless Bobby Rush, man. And he stuck with it. But she said something in this bill signing ceremony that she did at the Capitol. And she invited me to it. And Steny Hoyer invited

me. She said, you know what? In Congress, we maneuver. That's what we do up here. We maneuver votes. We maneuver. What y'all did to get this bill passed, and I say y'all because it wasn't just me, you mobilized. Yep. And that's what got that bill passed. Organized,

mobilized. After 250 attempts, after 250 attempts, and what, over 100 years? And that's what we have to do. Organize and mobilize, and I'm telling all of them, check your ego at the door. Because if we lose on November 8th, we're in deep doo-doo. I've been warning folks the same as well.

And in channeling Reesey, and I said this in 2008 on CNN, vote or shut the hell up. But it was funny with the Democratic National Convention, and we were under the tunnel, and I see Brian Williams and he pulls me aside and he says, I'm loving the stuff that you do. He said, you're right. Vote or shut the fuck up. I cracked up laughing, but that's it.

Put a dollar in the cuss jar. So that means $99 will go to the Bring the Funk fan club. Oh no, that's not true. No, no, no. That's yours. Y'all, the book is called Radioactive, a memoir of advocacy and action on the air and in the streets.

My man, my homie, my friend, Joe Madison, y'all. I'm telling y'all, y'all will realize, we talk all the time offline. We see each other. I hope they realize this was a treat, man, because we haven't done this on air in a long... That's true. I mean, this is raw. I'm sorry, unfiltered.

There you go. We see each other. Y'all understand. We see each other at events. Me and Joe being inside like, yeah, this is some bullshit. Yeah, I know. Like, man, how long we got to be here listening to this bullshit? I'm telling you, if y'all could actually hear those conversations and some of the stuff. Excuse me.

I put it in the book. It's in the book. Get y'all a copy. I'm going to have Joe sign it right now. I didn't sign that. I don't know if you signed it. You did. I'm sorry.

Okay. You did sign it. You are the GOAT. Joe Madison, the Black Eagle. You are the GOAT. That's you. You are the GOAT. Joe Madsen, the Black Eagle. You are the GOAT. That's you. You are the GOAT. Man, I always enjoyed our friendship.

Look, you've always been an honest truth teller. It's all about giving folks hell and letting them know that we ain't backing down. Or Sidney Poitier said to me, he said, there's no backup in you. There you go. That's really cool. There's no back. I like that. There's no backup in you. So ain't no backup in you. There you go. That's really cool. There's no back. I like that. There's no backup in you.

So ain't no backup in you. That's what I say. I ain't going back to the end of the first reconstruction. No. And I'm not going to allow my children to go through what we went through or what our folks went through for 100 years. That's it. I'm not going to allow it.

I appreciate it, my brother. All right, man. I appreciate it. Folks, y'all help us pay for the overtime for the staff. I need y'all, of course, download the Blackstar Network app. Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV,

Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. We want to hit 50,000 downloads by May 1st. And just so y'all know, today we hit hit 50,000 downloads by May 1st. And just so y'all know, today we hit 850,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. We're at 850,140. And remember, when we launched this show September 4, 2018, we started with 157,000.

We're now at 850,000. So please join our Bring the Funk fan club. Yes, Joe is a member. Y'all saw him give his money. I got a whole bunch of y'all letters over there. The people over here who don't know this Cash App stuff, they send checks and money orders. I got a whole stack over there.

So folks, PO Box 57196 Washington, D.C. 20037-0196 Cash App is DallasSideRM unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin unfiltered. Venmo is RM unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Let me thank Recy. Let me thank Greg Terrain.

Normally we don't go three hours. I appreciate them hanging with us for this conversation. It's always great to have our panelists. To the staff, thank you as well. Again, we normally don't go this long but this was a fantastic conversation. And so, I wanted y'all to appreciate it as well. And so, folks, I will see y'all tomorrow, Friday.

We're going to be restreaming the White House Equity Conference they had today. We'll be discussing that on tomorrow's show. So we're looking forward to that. Tomorrow is Jackie Robinson Day. Go to the Negro Leagues website. Get y'all Kansas City and Monarchs Jersey or some of the other Negro League teams as well.

Please support them. And so we'll be celebrating the great Jackie Robinson. If you have not read his book, get it. It's a part of the Roland's Book Club. Hashtag Roland's Book Club. I never had it made. Read that book. Not the books written about him.

Read the one that he wrote. And that last speech he gave where he said, I will not stand up for the National Anthem. He laid it out. He explained it. National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance. He explained exactly what it was about. And so, when you mentioned Rachel Robinson turning it

around, I looked it up. I knew he had passed away in 1972. He explained exactly what it was about. That's right. And so when you mentioned Rachel Robinson turning 100. And Rachel Robinson. I looked it up. I knew he had passed away in 1972. So her turning 100, Jackie Robinson, has been in October as would have been there 50 years. So she's lived half of her life carrying his legacy. Right. And he's been gone for half of her life. Folks, that's it.

I'll see y'all tomorrow. Y'all know how we end the show. You know how we end the show? No. We always say holla on three. Holla? Holla. Like holla?

That's it. That's it? That's it. One, two, three. Holla!