#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Police unions contradict Sen. Scott; Gov't shutdown looms; AL to use COVID $$ to build prisons

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

9.29.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Police unions push back against Sen. Tim Scott's police reform negotiation lies; Government shutdown looms after GOP blocks debt hike; Alabama lawmakers want to use COVID $$$ to build more prisons; Half U.S. population fully vaccinated against COVID; #BlackAndMissing: 13-year-old Veronica Wilson was last seen at 6 pm Thursday, September 23, 2021, in Brooklyn, New York; Dr. Gerald Horne exposes how Black boxers were exploited in his new book, "The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing" Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox#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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Today is Wednesday, September 29th, 2021, Roland Martin unfiltered, broadcasting live from the University of Texas at Arlington, where I'll be speaking here on campus in a couple of hours. On today's show, streaming live on the Black Star Network, fallout continues when it comes to the failure of the Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice Act.

You also have Republicans who are also two days away from saying, hey, what the hell? We're going to let America default on its credit. What will happen? Will they step up and actually allow Democrats to increase the debt ceiling? We'll break that thing down. Also, we'll talk with the attorney out of Tulsa, where they actually had a court hearing yesterday, where they are trying to establish reparations for the people who were the descendants of the Tulsa 1921 race massacre. We'll talk to Demario Simmons. Also, I sat down with author, of course, noted historian Gerald Horne, talked about his new book called The Bittersweet Science, Racism, Rekratering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. It's a fascinating conversation. You don't want to miss that. So folks, we got a great show for you. It's time to bring the funk.

I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered for Black Star Network. Let's go. Whatever the piss, he's on it Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling Best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling Yeah, yeah

It's Uncle Roro, y'all Yeah, yeah It's Rolling Martin, yeah. It's Uncle Roro, yo. Yeah, yeah. It's Rollin' Marten. Yeah, yeah. Rollin' with Rollin' now. Yeah, yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Rollin' Marten now. Martin! assert that he was not going to support a George Floyd Justice Act that actually limited or cut funds for police.

Democrats continue to insist that was not the case. Yet a couple of police unions that came out yesterday with a strong statement saying there was nothing in the bill that actually said that. And so I actually reached out to Senator Tim Scott. He decided several sections in the bill. He said he was going to have his staff send me a copy of the bill that was last night I'm still waiting I'm still asking where is it in the bill where he asserts funding was going to be cut which he keeps saying to defund the police I can't find it maybe my next guest knows what he's talking about Linda Williams she of course is the president of that of noble the National Organization of black law Enforcement Executives. She joins me now

from Nashville. Linda, glad to have you on the show. You had a couple of unions come out yesterday and said there was nothing in this legislation that would actually defund the police. Senator Tim Scott continues to insist that that is the case. Have you seen any evidence to support the position that he is taking at the bill that Democrats were proposing was going to make financial cuts to the police? Thank you, Roland. Good to have to be here again. And let me correct, I'm an immediate past president. I just passed the torch. But I was I was very pivotal in my presidency all of last year, and that is not correct. Matter of fact, Noble sat at the table to help create the language for the bill. We concur with the IACP and FOP that that was never the language. Additional funding has been given,

and a matter of fact, for training and accreditation and even other data collection initiatives. So that is not correct. The Democrats, nor anyone that sat down, talked about defunding the police. Well, and again, like I say, I mean, I hit him up and I wanted to know specifically what he was talking about. And what he said to me was that sections. This is what he said. Read sections 113, 114, 202, 204, 363, 382, 382. And he said and more. It's pretty clear. I'm still waiting on his team to actually send me the bill to actually see that.

But I said, I said, I'm still confused. You keep saying it's clear how these unions are saying that's not true. I think they would be probably more inclined to make it clear that they will not support something that actually cuts funding. So what is he talking about? And that's a good question. I am glad that other major organizations have spoken up so they don't think that it's one sided. I don't know all those numbers, but I'm very familiar with the bill. Matter of fact, as the national president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, we tried repeatedly to call Tim Scott's office, and he never returned the call. I've sat at the table with Cory Booker and even worked on legislation and, you know, op-eds with Sheila Jackson Lee.

We are very, very much on the same page. And where he comes from, left field, to use this as a stall tactic, it's just not fair and it's not true because it's not any language that was created and that we worked to put into the bill. So let me correct this. Let me just be real clear. You're saying the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives reached out to Senator Tim Scott to sit with him to discuss this bill and his office never return Nobles calls. That is correct. As a national president, when we sat at the table repeatedly with Cory Booker and others just to get an understanding so that we could have our voice, so that we could put the language that would be a benefit for community you know, community engagement for police officers,

as well as a better report with our communities. And so in trying to do so and to level the playing field that we could get feedback from both sides, we never received a call back from Scott's office. So what do you think should happen now? You're the White House that says they are going to move forward with an executive order. But the reality is, according to that statement yesterday from these other unions, they said there needs to be a national standard when it comes to policing so you don't have this patchwork of different rules and laws from different states. So even though you have executive order, you still need the enforcement of the law. What would you say that Senator Tim Scott, Senator Cory Booker,

would you say, hey, get back to the table, stop spending all this damn time doing television interviews and hammer out a deal? You say it better than I can, Roland. Absolutely. Get back in. You know, this is something that our country, this is not, you know, anything that should divide us. You know, law enforcement is an extension of the communities. And the fact that we're at this repass that we are now, it's time that we sit down, forget our differences and work on our commonalities, that law enforcement are here as the guardians of the community. And, of course, that means to protect the rights and the responsibilities law enforcement have, but to make them accountable to the communities that we protect and serve. So time is out for, you know, all the interviews and the stalling tactics. We need to get to the table and come back with something.

Something is better than nothing, and we all have to give and take. But it's something at a time in this, in our history, that would, you know, would mark this moment in history for those generations to come that we couldn't get it right. But the time is now and the time has passed that we have to put aside our difference and have the transformation that we need in law enforcement in our communities. And, you know, I've reached out to different families. They are the George Floyd family, not happy at all with what is taking place. They're deciding what is next. You know, I'll be I'll be perfectly honest with you. I think I think what what should happen

is simple. I think the George Floyd family and other families should come to come to Washington, D.C. and they should actually before they come, they should say we are calling a meeting and we want Scott at the table. We want Graham at the table. We want McConnell at the table. We want Booker at the table. We want Schumer at the table and Senator Dick Durbin at the table and said, we want y'all to meet with us to explain to us why y'all can't come to a deal. I think this is the moment where the families of those affected, Walter Scott family there in South Carolina, all those families should say, no, we're going to come to Capitol Hill and see if y'all are willing to sit down with us. And you know what?

Bring the cameras in and say, share with us. Tell us to our face why y'all can't come to a deal. And, you know, I'm with you. If you keep doing the same thing the same way, you're going to keep getting the same results. These, all those persons that sit on Capitol Hill, those are public servants. They are not above reproach, above the law. And maybe it takes the outcry from citizens, from folks like the George Floyd family and so many others that have become, you know, victims of this ongoing tragedy in our country.

So I stand with them. You know, the time is now. We can't keep pushing the envelope. You know, we don't want a repeat of what has happened. We need some relational transformation in this country. And if it starts from the very citizens and the law enforcement agencies and the congressman legislation for this uniform and these standards, we have to do that. It has to be law because if we leave it at the discretion of law enforcement, then we'll continue with the same issues that we have always had. The time is now. We have to come together and set aside our differences. It's not a black and white. It's not a red and blue. It's an American problem. And as citizens of America, we have to do better. All right. Linda Williams, immediate past president of Noble. Well, to do better. All right.

Linda Williams, immediate past president of Noble. Well, appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And you take care and keep up the good fight. All right. Thanks a lot. We'll go to our panel right now.

A. Scott Bolden, past head of the National Bar Association Political Action Committee, attorney in Washington, D.C., Robert Petillo, of course, with Rainbow Coalition, Peachtree Street Coalition Project, and also Breonna Cartwright Political Strategist. I want to talk to all three of you. That, to me, Robert, is if you want to talk about really forcing something, imagine if the families of people who have been impacted by police shootings, if they say we're coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Scott, Booker, McConnell, Durbin, Schumer, Graham, be at the meeting.

I would dare one of them to say they're too busy to meet with them. Well, you know, Roland, I think that's a great idea, but I don't know how much that will have to move the needle because we all know what the operative facts are on the ground. And as Tim Scott articulated on Sunday, Republicans are more interested in scoring political points than they are in actually ameliorating this issue. This idea that- No, no, but here's why. But here, no, no, Robert, Robert, here's what it does. Here's what it does. What it does is it says, no, no, no, no. You sitting here saying it's not this, it's not that. No, no. Sit across from the table. Since you keep

saying this this year, have the unions there. To me, you forced them to be in a room and no more dancing around. No more sitting here. Oh, it's this, it's that. Say no. Because it's a lot different when you've got to say it to a family member's face than when you say it on Fox News and CBS's Face the Nation.

But these people have lied to the family's faces before. You know, we've heard Lindsey Graham say that he supported police reform. We've heard Grassley say that he supported police reform. We've heard McConnell and Tim Scott say they're going to shepherd this through. At the end of the day, they're a far right Republican GOP base. There's not one any form of police accountability or police reform. First, they said that it was the qualified immunity was the reason they couldn't get behind a compromise bill. Now they're saying that's, quote unquote, defund the police while they can't get behind the compromise bill. The truth is that the police unions and many of those

law enforcement organizations control the GOP, and there's absolutely nothing that they would agree to. So what they have to do is find those names, find those Republicans who said they are behind this, and then fight like hell to make sure that you can get them on board. Right now there are no Republicans who are held to account. That's why they trot Tim Scott out there to pretend to be the face of it. They're their black friend to argue about this. But at the end of the day, they don't have the numbers on the Republican side of the aisle because it does not poll well among Republican voters. This whole back the blue thing is very

strong on the GOP side. And they think that anything that will help minority communities or help African-American communities, frankly, that will help poor white communities who are also the victims of police brutality also is a negative for them. And also, they do not want Joe Biden to have any wins on his record going into the midterms. Let's understand the GOP benefits through recalcitrance, that the government shuts down and the COVID numbers go up. If the economy crashes and you can't get police reform, you can't get voting rights done. That helps them in 2022. Breonna, bottom line is this here. I think something dramatic on the part of the families is necessary.

So you don't have the constant back and forth political sniping here that you keep hearing on television. I hear you, Roland. I do not know if that will necessarily be enough. We've been at this for a while. I think that Temska, honestly, as we've seen in other times, exhibits not caring about the people. So I think he can do the same thing in front of their face and be a doofus as, you know, on TV, et cetera. I mean, going back to what was previously stated, even if, you know, qualified immunity was the reason why there couldn't be a deal, that's just, I mean, that in itself is problematic, because the reason why we had, I mean, qualified immunity basically strips away what we had when we passed this prominent civil rights law bill. And so really, you know, it allows for police to get away with killing us without any punishment because it puts it to a higher standard to allow government officials, including police officers,

to be above the law. But see, Brianna, you're focusing on the qualified immunity part. You notice that is not, you notice in all the conversations that you have seen with Scott Booker on television, qualified immunity wasn't brought up. Scott's whole, see again though, break down what he kept saying. He kept saying they wanted to cut funding and he said that was a bridge too far. It was not qualified immunity. There were five critical components to the bill. What I'm saying is this is important because you have to change the narrative.

And right now, the whole narrative is, damn, they want to see him defund the police. I wasn't down for it, so therefore, that's why we're not moving too far. You got to sit in this space and say, point it out. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Point it out and then sit here and have the union say, Senator, we disagree. Union, Senator, we disagree. Booker, Senator, we disagree. Again, this is a narrative issue and I think forcing them on this whole deal and being in their face after all of this is necessary. Well, Roland, you may be right, but there's one missing part of your narrative that you, it anticipates

that they will sit down with the families. The GOP has no interest in sitting down with the family. Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott, I'm going to tell you, right. Do you, do you know, Scott, let me tell you how awful it would look. I'm telling you, this is how awful it would look. And this is why you do it. You do it. Okay, the visual.

I'm talking about you have a visual. Imagine. No, no, no. Scott, Scott, Scott. Scott, Scott, follow me here. This is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about narrative. I'm talking about putting. I'm talking about putting on front street. If you have a

visual of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 family members walking up those steps on Capitol Hill, going into, going into a meeting room, cameras are there. Democrats on one side of the table, and you waiting to see Republicans show up. Now you have changed the narrative, and now you have forced them to have to defend why would you not sit down with the families? That's what I'm talking about. But your narrative slightly changed. You said Democrats and Republicans and the families. What you just said was the empty chairs. That is a great strategy, because now that's how you change the narrative. My point was, you're not going to get the Republicans

to come for that photo op for all the reasons my colleague just said. There are no points in it. And I told you and I told Monique Presley three months ago when Monique sat here and said, I looked, Senator, the senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham in the eye. He's committed to police reform. I said then and I'll say now they can fiend whatever you want them to fiend, but they vote with their feet. And what they say about police reform is not the same as what they're going to do. They didn't do it. I told you they weren't going to do it. And by the way, the black senator from

South Carolina, hold on. He's not talking to you or me or the Democrats when he says they wanted to defund the police. He's talking to the Republican conservatives for their rally call that says we can't do that. Of course. So you're putting you're giving the Republicans really too much credit because they don't care. And you have to care to be embarrassed. No, you don't care to work. Nobody has zero interest in police reform. Zero. care and you have to care to be embarrassed. No, you have to care to work with the other side. He has zero interest in police reform. Zero. But Scott, but Scott, but Scott, again, what I'm talking about is you, it still is a question of tactics and narrative. Uh, DeMario Salomon Simmons, we're going to talk to him about the Tulsa hearing on yesterday. Hold on.

Uh, attorney DeMario Salomon Simmons, uh, we were discussing with him about the Tulsa hearing. Yes, hold on. Attorney DeMario Solomon Simmons, we were discussing with him about the Tulsa hearing in a little bit. He wants to end on this conversation. What I'm arguing, DeMario, and you've been doing this in Tulsa, there has to be something dramatic, not from a Democrat, not from a Republican. To me, there's nothing more powerful than to have the families of people who've been impacted by police abuse and police violence challenge both sides to say, sit down and let's restart the conversation. And we want to hear directly, what is the problem? Why can't this thing move forward? Well, Roland, you know, you're my guy, but I'm just going to simply say to you, we've done that. We've sat down with the Republicans. I agree with my friend Scott Bowden. They

don't care. They don't care. They have no shame, and they're not going to vote for it. And the reality is, the real problem is— And that's why you're doing it again to shame them. But the real problem is the Democrats not getting rid of the filibuster. The Republicans are doing what Republicans do. They stand strong. They stand united. And they stand against the things they're not for. They're not for police reform. They're not for getting rid of and spending the courts. They're not for voting rights for black people. That is not what they stand for. And that is not what their voters vote them in to do. So it's up

to the people we vote in, the Democrats, to do the things that we hoped that they were going to do. And at the end of the day, they simply have failed us at this point. My clients, the Crutcher family, have sat down... You're not going to get... Look, it's two main senators

who are saying they are not going to end the filibuster. It's not just two. Those two are the front. Cinema? Those two are holding the fronts for the others. that he supported a carve-out specifically when it comes to voting. Yes, there are senators. I'm saying the two main senators. That's what I said. Well, I agree.

We've got to continue to fight. That's all we can do. We've got to continue to push the envelope. I'm just saying that these particular Republican senators and elected officials, they have no incentive, as Scott said and other panelists said, they have no incentive to do the right thing because their voters don't want that. Their voters want, they don't mind us being killed in the street. They don't mind us being mired in the court system like we are right now in several of my cases because of qualified immunity, which makes it so difficult to be able to not only hold the police

accountable, but it causes our cases to be on hold for years as the court waits on making a determination. They don't care about that. So I'm not saying we don't continue to try. We don't continue to do everything we possibly can. But these guys have sat down. My clients have sat down with Lindsey Graham. They sat down with Senator Scott. We sat down with other members of the GOP and had these passionate conversations, the tears, why this is important, and heard them say, we believe in this, we want to help you, and then they come out and they never do anything that really substantially help us.

That is just our reality. Okay, but Breonna, here's the thing. It's very simple, okay? If DeMario says we've got to continue the fight, well, what the hell does that look like? Okay, what I'm arguing is continuing the fight. So what does it mean, continue the fight? I'm saying we don't challenge them.

We don't get in their face. That's a part of continuing the fight. Well, I think the premise... Yeah, I agree. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, one second. Hold up, Brianna. Hold up, hold up, Brianna.

I agree with the picture of having empty seats. It's a tool that's worked many times in labor negotiations, and it sends volumes that they couldn't even show up for the people that they're supposed to represent. But going back to what you said, the filibuster, right, that in itself is created on race lines. You know, it was created when they wanted to pass a bill against the heinous act of hanging Black Americans. And it took 100 years to break the filibuster, and it's still not on law. So the filibuster came into place to ban these civil rights legislations. And so going back to what this is and going back to, you know, what I was stating, I know that you said that they didn't talk about it, but qualified immunity, that once again was after the end of the streets is based on creating things to prevent it from going forward through race. And so they have Tim Scott there as a token, as a black man saying, oh, this is going to be bipartisan and see we have black people as Republicans, which is a whole other story. But, you know, it doesn't go past that.

And they don't really care because they don't lose their base by not showing up. And Bolden said it right. Okay, Robert. So here you go, Roland. Okay, Robert. So here's the deal. Okay, hold on. No, hold on.

No, Scott, hold on. So, Robert, if we say keep fighting, what does keep fighting look like? For you, what does keep fighting look like? Well, look, Roland, for you, what does keep fighting look like? I'm going to give you exactly what the GOP talking points are going to be to the empty chairs. They're going to come out and they're going to have Tim Scott there.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That wasn't my question. No, no, Robert. Roland, you got to let me respond. Okay, answer the question. Yeah, let him talk, Roland. Let him talk. What the Republicans are going to say is

Scott, I'm hosting the show. I got this. Look, all they're going to say is we are not going to be taking part in any political stunts. We've been trying to work with Democrats for the last two years and suggestedly just flat. All they are attempting to do is move the ball down the field and they want to cover up for Democratic

mayors and their failures to address police reform on the local level. This is why Democrats need to be petitioning Joe Biden and the Senate leadership on the filibuster. That empty chair moment worked with trying to get Mark Warner, trying to get Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to come up off of the filibuster, come up off of opposition to the filibuster. That is where the battle lines are going to be. There are not 10 Republicans who will vote in favor of any form of police reform. Not 10. Robert, you did not answer my question. No, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert, I'm going to ask you again. Answer this question. If we say let's keep fighting, what does that look like then? The fight is over the filibuster. The fight is over getting rid of the procedural rules and passing it on a 50-50 party line vote and having the vice president be able to break that tie. Right now, we do not have 50 Democrats.

You're still not answering the question. No, you're still not. Stop. No, you're still not answering the question. I agree with you on the filibuster. I'm asking you again. What do we do? What does that look like?

What do the people do? What should they, what is it? I'm talking about the action, not getting rid of the filibuster. What should people be doing to make that a reality? That's what I'm asking you. Well, one, it has to be petitioning the president, making sure our congressional leadership are meeting with the president on a regular basis to impress upon him the need to get rid of the filibuster. Also, we have to be lobbying Joe Manchin, Krista Sinema, Mark Warner, any others who are against that policy proposal on a regular basis. We cannot simply keep talking to the senators who already agree with us because they are already impotent on this. But we are going to need presidential leadership when it comes to abolishing the filibuster, not these lukewarm statements,

because this will never get passed if we are waiting for 10 Republicans to come across the party lines. Joe Biden's administration— You're not answering my question. That is what I'm saying. We have to address these senators who are against repealing the filibuster. Even if you want to do a cutout just for voting rights and criminal justice reform, that can be done and maintain the filibuster for other issues like national security, going to war, those sorts of things. But if you do not get rid of the filibuster on the criminal justice reform, you will never

get anything through. And you need the president and the vice president and Senate leadership all singing from the same sheet of music. Right now, there is no leadership on the issue. And the reason you got to turn— Okay, I'm going to ask—no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Scott. One second. First of all, I need, hold on.

I'm going to say who speaks next. I need everybody to chill. DeMario, answer the question. If we say we are going to keep fighting, what does that look like? What should the people be doing? What should the people be doing to try to make this thing happen? Okay. Doing what?

I want to know specifically because people are watching and listening and they're saying, all right, I need some marching orders. Marching orders is not Biden should do this. Schumer should do this. The Dems should do this. What should we be doing to force them to do it? That's what I'm asking. Demar. And I can answer that question because we're doing this right now. Number one, in a specific case of the crutches, we're going to the Department of Justice trying to seek relief

that they can provide us. We are talking to our Democratic senators. We are talking to the White House. And I agree with the brother that just was speaking. We need to put the pressure on the president of the United States of America to do so we could vote and live without police violence and have an opportunity to be successful and safe in this country. He has not done it. He came to Tulsa to talk about the massacre. He talked about equity, but he hasn't done anything. He hasn't passed anything. He hasn't signed an executive order.

He hasn't come out and said, I am against the filibuster. I want this bill passed and the filibuster needs to go away, period. He has not done that. And that's where the fight is. These Republicans are not going to change themselves. They are doing what they've been, their job. I respect Republicans for that because they do exactly what they say they're going to do. We don't like you Negroes. We don't want you to vote. We don't care if you killed in the streets. We're not going to help you. And they're going to do. We don't like you Negroes. We don't want you to vote. We don't care if you're killed in the streets. We're not going to help you. And they don't do it. And we continue to beg them while the Democrats who say they're for us, say they're going to do things for us.

They said if we flip the seats in Georgia, if we flip the seats in Georgia, then we can get all these things done for racial justice and for our people, for voting. That was the deal. That was the promise. And that has not happened period so so so what i so here's this is what i'm hearing scott which i said a couple of months ago when are you going to see on this very issue and people were getting arrested at the united states senate what What did I say? There should be folks sitting here chaining themselves to the fence of the White House fence. That is, wherever Biden goes, he is seeing those voting rights activists. He is seeing those folks demanding George Floyd Justice Act.

The reason I'm saying what to do is because we are excellent at saying this needs to happen to get the bill passed. But people are saying I need to happen to get the bill passed, but people are saying I need to know how to channel my action. People are saying on the very same, who am I calling? What number am I calling? Who's organizing that? Who's

driving that? That's what I'm talking about. It's one thing to say, we got to end the filibuster. We have to then empower the people and direct them on where to go, who to call, what to do, at what time. Otherwise, they're like, I'm ready to fight. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future

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

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

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. But there are groups doing it. But this fight is far more sophisticated than that, though. One second. One second.

One second. Scott is talking. Hold on. Scott, go. This fight is far more sophisticated than taking it to the streets and getting arrested. We've done all of that, right? This White House has got to step up. I am sick and tired of the rhetoric of this White House. I want their rhetoric to become a reality. And the reality is that only the White House has the power to pressure those two senators to end the filibuster and those who may be on the fence.

And we have not made them do it. So how do we make them do it? We get the top six, top eight civil rights organizations to go meet with him and put pressure on him because of their constituencies behind them and demand that he do something about Manchin and Sinema. Do something about it. Cut a deal. Cut them off. Cut them away. Cut them out

because they are not being loyal. The Republicans are loyal. They don't care. They had the biggest embarrassment in the White House and they stuck with him, right? They were loyal soldiers. The Democrats haven't been loyal soldiers. You've got to make them jump in line and make them do what they're supposed to do. And Biden and Harris and this White House have not done it. They'll do it for the budget. They'll do it for the infrastructure. But they won't do it for police reform or voting rights. And they demand that Black America vote for them again in 2022.

What really needs to happen, the only way this is going to change is you outvote them. You outvote them in 2022. But guess what? So, Brianna, the Democratic argument for black people voting for them again when we put them in the White House and they failed us within two years of 2022. That's your problem. That's a big problem. So, Brianna, I'll make this. So, Brianna, I'll say this about, so, Brianna, I'll say this also. All those folks who were protesting in cities all across America after the death of George Floyd in May of 2020 of last year, 2020. Where y'all at? See, what has to happen is a return to the streets. What has to happen is mass protests. It has to happen. And so that also has been the case. What you've seen over the last

three months, six months, you've seen largely black organizations. You've seen the Black Women's Roundtable, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. You've seen Black Voters Matter. You've seen others. You've seen them engage in mass and protest civil disobedience. What you have not seen in the sense of, I do not think those protests is going to move the needle enough. I do think that we need to be in every meeting. I think we need to have these conversations. I think we need to have them on social media, TV, in the streets, everywhere, kitchen tables, and have, you know, the faces out, right? Have these civil rights organizations out.

As it's previously stated, there are organizations focusing just on this. You can say that there was a protest after George Floyd, but you see how far the George Floyd Act has gone. I just, I don't, I don't think that us protesting and like Bolden said, us getting arrested on everything that we've been doing up until this point is pushing the needle far enough. I think the fact that we we put it back into. So what pushes the needle? So what what pushes the needle? I think if we collectively come together and state one statement and and show the numbers within that and that they can lose their job and literally show

okay, this is not working. This is who we're going to replace you with. Are you going to do the job or not? But that's actually what mass protest creates. See, what they really like, they like when

we go away. They like when we go away. They like when it gets quiet. They like when people are not mobilizing and organizing. What they are afraid of is when folks mobilize and organize. Let's be real clear. The White House is not afraid to meet with civil rights organizations. Hell, they already met with the NAACP, Sharpton, Urban League, LDM, Lawyers Committee, A. Philip Randolph. They already met with them. What they don't want to see, they do not want to see hundreds of thousands of people mobilizing in the streets, in cities across America. That's not what they want to see hundreds of thousands of people mobilizing in the streets, in the cities across America.

That's not what they want to see. And all I'm saying is, they ain't got no problem with nice, cute, closed meeting, but they do not want to see folks showing up. And we're protesting them. And you're protesting them. You ain't voting until this election. You're not voting until the election. And you're protesting. You're not just having a sweet meeting with them. You're protesting your constituents.

You're bringing them outside the White House. But you're protesting the White House. You're not protesting police reform or voter rights. You're protesting Biden for not doing what he's supposed to do and said he would do. That's a very different approach. And so what I'm saying is this here, because this is what I look, I travel all around the country and this is what I get wherever I go to Mario. What do we do?

That's what I get when I'm on airplanes, when I'm renting cars, when I'm going places. People say, what do we do? Where do I go? What do we do? And that's the piece right there. And here's the deal. Everybody can't go to a meeting in D.C. And so now is the question of, OK, who are who are the 10, 12 senators we're talking about? Okay, is it Coons? Is it Coons? All right. Who's mobilizing in his state?

Okay. Who are the folks moving on Sinema in Arizona? Who are the folks moving on Feinstein in California? Who are the folks moving on Warner in Virginia? That's what I'm talking about. So what I'm saying is we've got to give our people direction on who to call, where to go, what to do, because they're saying I'm ready, but ain't nobody giving the call. I think that that is happening. And I think there are many

groups that are doing that. And I think we've shifted this conversation exactly where we need to be. We were first talking about trying to sit down and embarrass the Republicans, and we've decided that that is not the play. But the play is to focus on President Joe Biden, who is the leader of this country, who was elected by black folks, and he was going to do and get these bills passed, and also those senators, those Democratic senators who need to step up. I would also personally like to hear more even from the senators from Georgia, Senator Warnock and Senator Ossoff. I want to see more from them getting out there, getting in and saying that, Joe Manchin, you can't do this. Look, last week, as you know, we were rolling with two weeks ago. I was in D.C.

We were trying to meet with the DOJ. As you know, Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, my client, we ran into Joe Manchin on the street because we were at the wharf and he lived down there. And she went up to him and she challenged him right then and there. And we want these Democratic senators to do the same thing. Stop playing nice with these folks. Our lives are on the line, period. Our lives are on the line, period. I said again, our lives are on the line, period.

It is not time to be trying to talk nice, anything. How the hell did Lyndon B. Johnson? Lyndon B. Johnson was able to get the most consequential civil rights legislation passed in 100 years. 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, 1968 Fair Housing Act. He was able to do that with the most overt racist people that were still calling us niggas in public. He was able to use the powers of the presidency to get that done. That is what we want to see from Joe Biden.

Right now, tomorrow, he should be signing his act of divorce. I'm sorry. That's not what we're seeing from Joe Biden. No, no, no, guys. Hold on. Hold on. No, no, no. I said, DeMario,

your final comment on this, because I got to talk about the Tulsa deal, then I got to go give this speech I said, DeMario, your final comment on this, because I got to talk about the Tulsa deal, and then I got to go give this speech. So, DeMario, yesterday, y'all had the hearing in Tulsa. Before, Judge, what took place yesterday in the Tulsa courtroom? We had our first historic hearing in 100 years of this issue. We got in front of Judge Carolyn Wall, and she allowed us to present our case. It went six hours of argument, which Scott knows is a very long time in the courtroom. Our three living survivors were actually there and they stayed the entire time. And listen, we were able to put forth a magnificent case. I'm so proud of my team of lawyers from

around this nation came together, put on the very best case possible. And all we're asking at this point is that the judge allow us to move forward. The defendants, the perpetrators of the massacre, those who bombed and murdered our people and continue to harm for 100 years are trying to kick us out of court. They want the judge to do what every other judge in Tulsa has ever done, not giving us an opportunity to prove our case. But we feel very strong about the opportunity to prove our case. I am looking for anybody who wants to stand with us to go to justiceforgreenwood.org. That's justiceforgreenwood.org. Support these three survivors. Support this community. Because Justice for Greenwood is not just about Tulsa. It's about Black America.

Because when Black America, when Black Wall Street was burned down, it impacted all of us. And if we can't get a win for the Greenwood massacre, it's not because Greenwood and the Tulsa massacre is unique, because they killed us all over the nation. But what makes it unique is the scope of it. You're talking about a town with at least 12,000 black people, the most prosperous place in the history of this country. You're talking about a city that had more black professionals per capita than any place in the history of this country. You're talking about a city that have more black professionals per capita than any place in the history of this country. And when that was burnt down, never to be rebuilt, it destroyed the economic engine

of all of black America. But if we cannot win Tulsa where we have documentation, video, pictures, we have insurance contracts and we have living survivors, how can we possibly think about reparations in a larger scope when we don't have living survivors?

So this is why Tulsa is so important and why I'm so excited for this opportunity for our judge to allow us to move forward and give our three living survivors. Can you imagine being 107 years old, 106 years old, 100 years old, and be in court and hear the people that burned down your community tell you that you don't have an injury, tell you that you don't have anything uniquely special about your injury. That's what happened yesterday. That's why we need the country behind us. That's why we need Black America to support Justice for Greenwood Foundation. And that's why we must have this win in Tulsa.

And we're looking forward to our judge to giving us this opportunity to move forward so we can prove our case. We can do it if we give an opportunity. So you presented the case. What is next? Would the judge get any indication how long it would take to rule on this? She did not give us a definite time period. What she told the local media was that she was going to do a time in as soon as possible. And, hey, like I said, it was six hours of argument.

We have six defendants, seven motions to dismiss. Very, very a lot to go through, but I think we made it very clear for her. But you have to understand, she needs to look at this because this has never happened in 100 years. It has never happened in the history of this country where you've had a scenario where you've been able to see racial terror, racial destruction at a mass level have an opportunity to go to court. But in Oklahoma, we're one of five states that have a very unique public nuisance law. It's found at 50OS1. And it simply says if there is an unlawful act or an omission of a duty that causes an ongoing harm, then you have a claim. We can prove that. We have shown that in our allegations,

and we just need the opportunity. So we expect that our judge will provide us an opportunity to move forward. We hope to hear from her in the next few weeks. We don't know for sure. Scott knows as a lawyer, we don't make that determination. The judge does, but we're looking forward to hearing from her soon. All right. Mario Simmons, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much. Roland, thank you for everything you do.

We'll be following that as well. Thank you, brother. We appreciate it. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. This is a truncated edition of Roland Martin Unfiltered with our panel. And so I want to thank folks for the spirit of discussion. I'm here on the campus of University of Texas at Arlington, literally about to run out of this door to go give a speech. And so let me thank Brianna, Robert and Scott for being on the show on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, we had an opportunity to talk with author Gerald

Horne about his new book that deals with boxing, racism, the money of boxing, the politics, some amazing insight that Gerald Horne uncovered in his latest book. Here is our conversation. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

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

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up.

See, retirement is the long game we gotta make moves and make them early set up goals don't worry about a setback just save up and stack up to reach them let's put ourselves in the right position pre-game to greater things start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Daryl, always glad to have you here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Let's get right into it. There are a lot of people, of course, who are boxing fans. And we know about Jack Johnson.

We know about Joe Louis. we know about Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes, we can go on and on and on. But people really don't understand the seedy, corrupt history of boxing in this country and in this world. Well, the cliche that used to be used with regard to boxing is that it's so morally corrupt that but for the lack of headroom, the matches should be held in sewers. Some of the most just reputable characters that you can imagine have been involved

in not only the promotion of boxing, but the profiting of boxing. Let's start with Donald J. Trump. You may recall during his time as a so-called mogul in Atlantic City, staged many boxing matches, and of course, like many promoters, as they're called, looted many boxers. Or take Bob Arum, for example, now headquartered in Las Vegas, formerly headquartered in New York City. He promoted many Muhammad Ali fights. He promoted many fights. In fact, even though he's in his late 80s, he's still trying to get it on. And he too helped to plunder and pillage more boxers than one. And what's interesting about this scenario is that the man who is usually accused of plundering and

pillaging boxers is Don King, who, as you know, is a black American, also headquartered in Manhattan. And he has been denounced more than once by Mike Tyson, Larry Holmes, et cetera. But I think what your viewers need to realize is that Don King is not necessarily unique. It's very curious that the denunciations are heaped on his head, while those like Bob Arum and Don Trump oftentimes escape denunciation. Well, absolutely. And part of that is because you've had fighters that have gone public. You've had Jack Neufeld's book that was on Don King and so many others. And you're right. I mean, there are a lot of unscrupulous characters in boxing. And for a long time, it was mob run, mob controlled.

Well, boxing also, I think, exposes and reveals many lessons, particularly for the younger generation. Oftentimes, many in the younger generation, they ask plaintively, why haven't black Americans been more heavily involved in the management end, the business end, the profit-making end? Why are they the ones in the ring, stripped to their trunks and taking a pounding as a result? Well, this occurred to older generations. And indeed, a story that I tell in this book is about the effort by the 1950s of the retired champion Joe Lewis and his comrade, a black American lawyer from the University of Chicago by the name of Truman Gibson, to try to take over boxing when

television as an appliance was entering many living rooms. But what happens, number one, is that in order to get involved in the promotion of matches in Chicago and New York City, Madison Square Garden in particular, they had to cross paths with organized crime. And then number two, what happens is predictable, that the prosecuting authorities, who do not necessarily bear influence from black Americans, then went after Truman Gibson, he barely escaped prison. And I think one of the lessons that folks should take away is that it is all well and good to have capital and invest in a business, but you really need to have some sort of influence with the district attorney or the U.S. federal attorney, because I guarantee

and assure you that your competitors and peers will, and by means mostly foul, they will then be able to unleash the prosecutorial authorities on you, and you will be lucky to escape prison. You talked about African Americans being involved on the business side, and I'm going to come back to that, to modern day and how Al Heyman has completely flipped the script and, frankly, has just really pissed off all of these longtime white promoters who have been making major grip, who become multimillionaires because of fighters. I'm going to deal with that in a second. But let's take it further back. You talk about when you mentioned Joe Louis, the first thing that came to mind is how the folks who represented him

essentially were bartering and negotiating his percentage of his purses for life to land fights. And all too often, you had managers who controlled so many aspects of these fighters that a lot of these black fighters were left penniless and broke. And really, it really was, it really was, the first of all, is it correct to say that Muhammad Ali, even though he had to deal with Aram and King as well, in many ways flipped the switch, if you will, on how boxers took control of their whole apparatus. Talk about that. Well, Muhammad Ali, the erstwhile Louisville Lip, who, as you know, is catapulted into prominence as a result of the 1960 Olympics in Rome,

where he emerges triumphant, and then in a startling series of bouts with mob-backed Sonny Liston, he is proclaimed heavyweight champion. And then he turns the tables when he announces that he's a member of the Nation of Islam. And I think that that connection should not be downplayed, because in my estimation, in my telling of the story, the Nation of Islam gives Muhammad Ali a certain kind of backup. More specifically, the fruit of Islam gives the heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali a certain kind of backup.

And therefore, he has a cadre, he has a core of men behind him who are willing to back him to the hilt, which obviously became necessary when he told Uncle Sam that he was not going to be drafted and conscripted to go fight in Vietnam. And there was a systematic and concerted effort to deprive him of his ability to fight in the ring and earn gigantic purses. And then he did another 180-degree reversal by becoming a kind of performer. On college campuses, for example, he acted in a number of movies, for example. He had an off-Broadway stage production, for example. And so Muhammad Ali, to a certain degree, was able to escape the snare that had gripped so many fighters. And you mentioned Joe Louis, who had to pledge a certain percentage of his earnings to a Euro-American champion in order to get about with him, which was not necessarily unusual. Or take Henry Armstrong, with roots in Mississippi and St. Louis, who pound for pound, as used to be said about Sugar Ray Robinson, may have been the greatest fighter of all in terms of the number of

championships he held simultaneously. His contract was traded from mobster to mobster, which obviously did not leave him with a high standard of living. And speaking of which, I start off the book talking about BoJack, B-E-A-U Jack, who was a star fighter of the 1940s. And it's striking how he learned how to fight, because during the era of slavery, and in fact, after the era of slavery to a certain degree, for the entertainment of slave masters and then their descendants, they would have these battle royals where eight or nine black men would be blindfolded and placed into the boxing ring and told to go at one another. And whoever emerges triumphant receives a prize of some sort. Well, BoJack of Augusta, Georgia, proved to be a startling success with the so-called battle royal.

And that's how he became an expert fighter. But the punishment and the pummeling that he absorbed obviously reduced his ability to earn another kind of living, not to mention reducing his life chances. And so after he was forced out of the ring and after earning a considerable sum, he wound up in Florida, shining shoes. And this was not necessarily unusual for these black boxers, because one of the reasons that the book is called The Bittersweet Science and not The Sweet Science, which is the term that's oftentimes appended to this sport, is because many black boxers suffered so tremendously

in order to barely earn a living, in order to basically feed their families. You talked about, obviously in that part there, the racketeering part. Let's talk about the racism part. We can go back to Jack Johnson. Man, white folks lost they mind when this brother... And describe for people, because first of all,

boxing today is such a sad state. And really, boxing that we know it, you rarely get the kind of attention that you used to. People now, you just look at the UFC, which is a different type of fighting. But boxing, just like horse racing, back in the day before television, before, I mean, boxing and horse racing were two of the biggest sports, bigger than football. Basketball didn't exist. Bigger than baseball.

The print journalists really told the story. So you had to rely on radio and these print journalists to really understand. So you have these larger-than-life characters. But white folks in America, ooh, they lost their mind when that black man beat the hell out of that white man and became the boxing champion? Well, Jack Johnson, the so-called, the man who induced the great white hope, which was the name of a Broadway play, then a movie starring the great actor, James Earl Jones, portraying Jack Johnson on the silver screen. And as the title suggests, after Jack Johnson, born in Galveston, Texas in 1878, became the heavyweight boxing champion by 1910, you are correct to suggest that it induced a certain amount of hysteria.

Because recall that this is the era of lynching. This is the era when a black man in particular could be lynched for a trivial offense such as malicious eyeballing. That is to say, you could look at a person the wrong way and wind up burned at the stake. And here you had Jack Johnson going into the boxing ring in Reno, Nevada in 1910 and becoming the heavyweight boxing champion shortly thereafter by beating his opponent, who happened to be a so-called white man, into submission. In other words, Jack Johnson was rewarded for doing something. If he had done it outside of the ring, he might have been lynched or murdered. So obviously this injected a certain amount of hysteria into the body politic.

You had black people, after Jack Johnson was victorious, being lynched themselves for celebrating too enthusiastically. This was also the era when cinema was becoming more widespread, and the film was captured captured on the film of the match was captured. In fact, you can probably go to YouTube and see it today. And then it was shown in theaters across the country, if not the world, which obviously helped to incite many white mobs to try to lynch more black people, just as it excited more black people and urged them to greater heights. And so it did not take long for Jack Johnson to once again face the wrath of a prosecuting attorney. And he was prosecuted successfully for violating a law that said it was illegal to take a Euro-American woman across state lines for reasons of so-called white slavery. another story because one of the reasons why Jack Johnson incurred so much wrath in a white supremacist society was his tendency to consort and mate with Euro-American women. And by the way,

he didn't give a damn. Joe Lewis. He didn't give a damn. He was like, oh, y'all don't like black men with a white woman? All right, I'm going to go get me several. Well, yes, that drove him out of the country, in fact. Rather than face the music in prison, he decided to go into exile. And he was a precursor of Muhammad Ali. Perhaps if you can accept this, he may have been more militant and radical than Muhammad Ali, perhaps if you can accept this, he may have been more militant and radical than Muhammad Ali because he went into exile in Mexico and then tried to set up a base in Mexico from which attacks could be launched on Texas and the other white supremacist states of the United

States of America. Obviously, this too infuriated the authorities. And finally, when you had regime change in Mexico, he was forced to come back to the United States and serve in prison. Wait a minute, hold on. So Jack Johnson was trying to lead a rebellion against the United States? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Even Muhammad Ali wasn't trying to do that. Right, right. So he was quite an extraordinary figure. And even The Great White Hope, that movie, which I admire, I don't think it really does justice to his entire career. And I sort of understand why, because particularly that chapter I've just outlined, where he tried to lead a rebellion from Mexico, that's not the sort of thing you expect to see on the silver screen. Well, keep in mind, Jack Johnson also was a native Texan. That's right. You know,

so that that sort of plays, you know, we are we black Texans are a bit rebellious. So I understand. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

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

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way.

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

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple

Podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game we gotta make moves and make them early set up goals don't worry about a setback just save up and stack up to reach them let's put ourselves in the right position pre-game to greater things start building your retirement plan at this is preispreetirement.org brought to you by AARP

and the Ad Council. Yeah, more rebellious than I think even black Texans realize. Can I add a vignette about some new revelations about Juneteenth? Yeah, go ahead. So, you know, I'm working on this book that would have been published now, but for the pandemic. So we all know about Juneteenth. Yeah, go ahead. So, you know, I'm working on this book

that would have been published now, but for the pandemic. So we all know about Juneteenth, June 19, 1865, supposedly General Granger shows up and tells the Negroes that they're free. But what's downplayed is that he was accompanied by 75,000 so-called colored troops. And why did he need so much backup? He needed so much backup because the settlers in Texas, which was the Confederate state least damaged by the Civil War and was the Confederate state in which slave owners from Louisiana and Arkansas were bringing their enslaved during the Civil War, because you saw the black population increase exponentially, they had this idea of resuming slavery in Texas. And not only that, but recall that Mexico, the southern neighbor of Texas, was then under

French rule. They were supporting the Confederacy. And so many of the black people were going to be deported into Mexico to continue slavery. Jefferson Davis, the head of the Confederates in Texas, and helped to save the United States from resuming the U.S. Civil War under different guise. Wow. And I actually had not heard that. Where did you discover that? I've been spending a lot of time doing research in the past few months during the pandemic, reading microfilm on lockdown. The U.S. State Department reports from Mexico,

for example. Also, you know, excuse me if I'm going on too much about this. Go ahead. Go ahead. I keep telling you, Gerald, it's a black-owned show. We good. Go ahead. We can talk about black stuff. We good. Okay. So the French in Mexico had brought African soldiers from Algeria, which they had colonized in 1830, and also from Egypt and Sudan, which they deeply influenced, thousands and thousands to Mexico as backup. And that's why General Granger needed these 75,000 so-called color troops, because this was going to be, pardon the expression, another battle royal that was going to unfold.

And the man in charge of the Confederate effort, Matthew Fontaine Morey, M-A-U-R-Y, who until last year had a statue in his honor in Richmond, Virginia, he was the mastermind of this plot to continue slavery. And by the way, even before then, he had this other diabolical plot of deporting all the black people. This is before the U.S. Civil War. Deporting all the black people. This is before the U.S. Civil War, deporting all the black people to Brazil. And that plot was also thwarted, which helps to explain why we are now in North America speaking English and not in Brazil speaking Portuguese. Wow. That is some deep history, some deep history right there. When you talked about just the deeply embedded racism, it is still stunning to in boxing. It is still it is it is it is so American. It is so American.

It is so white American. It is so white American, historically speaking, to how they would treat Joe Lewis, how they would demean black people. But oh, when it was time to fight the German, now we're all Americans. It is sort of like, oh, black soldiers fighting in World War I, fighting in World War II, fighting in Korea and Vietnam. Oh, you're an American. Oh, but when you bring your black ass back to the United States, you a nigga. And that's really, and I need people to understand that because it still exists. The Olympics. Oh, no, it's the flag. No, no, put those things aside. It's the flag. It's the flag. It's all about country.

You put country first. Well, hell, hold up. If it's all about country, well, make it about country when I come home. And that existed in boxing. How these racists would just love and adore watching Joe Louis and other black boxers in the ring. Oh, but I'm sorry. you can't come into this restaurant. You can't come into this store. You've got to go through the kitchen.

I mean, all of that stuff. That to me is just, it is still mind-boggling to imagine living through that and dealing with that and that contradiction. Well, just as a footnote, I'm sure you've heard the story about how longtime NBA all-star Dominique Wilkins, a black American star who, of course, starred for the Atlanta Hawks. Hall of Famer. Hall of Famer. A presumed celebrity in Atlanta. He was turned away from a restaurant recently. And I think it was in Buckhead, which, as you know, is trying to secede from Atlanta. He was turned away from a restaurant recently. And I think it was in Buckhead,

which, as you know, is trying to secede from Atlanta because I guess they don't want to live under a black mayor. But with regard to Joe Louis, you are correct. Recall that he had these significant fights in the 1930s with the German fighter Max Schmelle. And he lost one of those fights, won two. But what's remarkable is that Joe Louis then went on to raise money on his own dime through promoting U.S. war bonds when the United States was in a war with Germany. He did yeoman duty and yeoman service

for the United States government at its time of need. And yet, after World War II ended circa 1945, and particularly after he retired circa 1949, 1950, the U.S. authorities, the taxman, the Internal Revenue Service came after him with a vengeance. They figuratively held him up by the ankles and shook him until all the coins fell out of his pockets. And then when he tried to promote boxing with Truman Gibson, as I talked about a moment ago, then they went after Truman Gibson and he barely escaped prison. And ironically enough, after all of the money that Joe Louis earned as a result of these attacks from the U.S. government that he served so loyally, he wound up as a greeter at a Las Vegas casino.

That is to say, akin to a person who greets you when you walk into a Walmart. He did not end up very well, and it's a very sad and tragic story indeed. When we think back to the early days of boxing and going through the 60s, were there any African-Americans who are unheralded, who we don't know about, who are doing amazing, amazing things that don't get the credit, don't get the attention. And again, because when we think about, again, boxing, it's, again, I can be on the line. They can talk about, you know, again, Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis,

Jersey Joe Walcott. They can talk Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, and there are a few others. But were there unknown characters who really were cultural warriors who we really should know more about? Well, I have to bring up Truman Gibson again because in some ways he was the Don King of the 1950s. Where was he from? Except he didn't get paid like Don King. Where was he from? Don King got paid.

Right. I mean, some of the deals that Don King was involved in, they still boggle the imagination. I mean, multimillion dollar deals on a regular basis. Truman Gibson had the smarts and intelligence and managerial competence of Don King. But during the 1950s, he was not able to get paid like Don King. And in terms of boxers, I'd once again bring to your attention some in the sub heavyweight categories because the heavyweights tend to get all the publicity. Yep. Of course, Floyd Merriweather exempted. I'm speaking of the predecessors of Floyd Merriweather, not only a boxer like Sugar Ray Robinson, who you mentioned, who, as you know, was oftentimes viewed as the greatest fighter of them all. But those who were in that same chronological era, boxers who I've mentioned, such as Henry Armstrong, BoJack, and going back to the turn of the century, Joe Gans.

I think if there are any youngsters in your audience who are budding boxers, they really should study Joe Gans, G-A-N-S, because a lot of so-called scientific boxing was based on what he developed over a century ago. And basically, you probably can find books and perhaps even movies that demonstrates his scientific way of boxing and as a matter of fact Jack Johnson in some ways patterned him his boxing style after Joe Gans G-A-N-S. You mentioned Don King. And I dare say, when you talk about it again, I am not vouching for Don King and his family. They reached out to me to record a video for his 90th birthday party to include in it. So it's coming up soon.

I've got to find out things. I haven't even recorded and sent it. But he really did muscle in on the action. And man, he pissed off a lot of white folks in boxing because he used his

mouth and his moxie at a time after the Civil Rights Movement that you had this whole say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. And he really changed the game, if you will, and became a force to be reckoned with. And these white promoters had no idea how in the hell it happened. Well, you know, it's interesting about Don King and his ability to muscle his way up into the top of the pyramid in terms of boxing. A moment ago, you mentioned Jack Newfield, the late journalist out of New York, former columnist for the Village Voice, now defunct, who wrote a scathing and scalding book attacking Don King.

But what was striking about Jack Newfield's journalism is that for whatever reason, he tended to not scrutinize Bob Maron, who was Don King's major competitor and major peer. In fact, I recall when I was in New York doing anti-apartheid work in the 1980s, and Bob Arum had brought these boxes over from apartheid South Africa, because that's a major part of the story that I tell. And we tried to get Jack Newfield to do a story about it. He wouldn't do it. In other words, it seemed to me that he was almost acting as a flack for Bob Mara, Don King's major competitor, which in retrospect, I don't think your audience would necessarily be shocked or surprised by, because we know that Black men of an older generation oftentimes, once again, had to face the prosecutorial

authorities. You might recall Willie Brown, who's probably in the same age group by now of Don King, the former mayor of San Francisco, a mentor of not only Gavin Newsom, but Kamala Harris. Yeah, Willie is in his early 80s. Sorry. Yeah, Willie is in his early 80s. Sorry? Yeah, Willie is in his early 80s. Don is 90. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So when he was speaker of the assembly in California, the authorities basically enacted term limits so that he had to leave the assembly. That's why term limits came to California, to get rid of Willie Brown. And he was so notorious in terms of being able to elude the prosecutors that you might recall that in one of the Godfather movies, Willie Brown plays himself.

Godfather 3. Yep. Godfather 3. Where he plays himself as a politician who's able to elude the authority. So you know you're notorious. You get to play yourself in a movie in acting, which you actually do in real life. And therefore, what happened to Don King was not necessarily unique or peculiar to Don King. It was the lot and the fate of any black man in particular who was trying to climb the greasy pole of success.

We talked about the racism and racketeering part. Explain what you call what you describe as the political economy of boxing. What does that mean? What that means is that economics is political. I think that's the sub themetheme of what I've been trying to explain thus far. That is to say that the fact that Bob Arum did not have to face as many prosecutors or investigators as Don King was obviously a political decision. Likewise, who is able to earn money and who is not able to earn money is an economic

factor. And so when you merge politics and economics, you come up with political economy. That is to say, it would be a myth and, in fact, misleading to suggest that economics stands alone. Economics inevitably is integrated with politics. You saw that just a few days ago when ProPublica revealed that many of these billionaires, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, they're able to evade taxes. Well, people like me are paying taxes up the yin-yang. In other words, they're able to accumulate wealth as a result of the Internal Revenue Service, which is a political agency, an agency of the U.S. government,

not being able, because of various regulations and rules, not being able to extract taxes from them that would then go to health care, education, etc. That's what we mean by political economy. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future

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And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them.

Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. So let's get, so let's talk about, I want to move it forward to, we talk about power behind it. What, what, what, What Al Heyman has done. First of all, this brother gives very few interviews. I mean, like literally, he does not do interviews. He was a concert promoter.

Folks who might remember the Budweiser Superfest tours, he was the force behind that. And so then what he did was he purposely did not call himself a boxing promoter. He changed the language as well. And the reason Floyd Mayweather has the riches that he has and how he's been able to earn the money, because it was Al Heyman in his brilliance who went to Floyd Mayweather and said, you know you're the one who's making the money. You're the one who's promoting your own fights. You don't need Bob Arum to promote your fights, and he comes

off making 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 million dollars. If I'm correct, it was a $750,000 buyout of Floyd Mayweather's contract with Bob Arum. And it was Al Heyman suggesting to buy himself out of that contract that completely changed Floyd Mayweather's world. I dare say with all of these names and even with Don King, and I think if you mentioned all of these people, I believe that 50 years from now, 100 years from now, if the question is raised, who was the

most influential individual in the history of boxing? I would say it was Al Heyman because he completely flipped the script and changed the game and he wasn't about attention. I mean, I'm telling you, if you Google him right now, you might come across one or two interviews.

He does not go public. He is a stealth figure. You are correct. And, in fact, the only way I know about Al Heyman is that I read the Los Angeles Times on a regular basis. And a few years ago, there was an article about him. You are correct to suggest it's very difficult to find information and documentation about Al Heyman. very wise decision because when you are flamboyant as Don King is, when you are oftentimes portrayed in the headlines like Don King used to be, that really only attracts the sharks and the barracudas and the vultures and attracts those who want to take you down. And because Al Heyman

is not necessarily a household name, I think that that helps to facilitate his escaping negative attention, at least thus far. Although it would not surprise me that as a result of our talking about him, that some prosecutor looking to get notches on his gun belt, might be going after him. But even this last Floyd Mayweather encounter in the ring with Logan Powell, I understand that as a result of the fee and side bets that Floyd Mayweather made in favor of himself, that Floyd Mayweather might have walked away with millions of dollars, millions and millions and millions of dollars from that one celebrity fight, so-called. And so, once again, I think that Floyd Mayweather, probably more than most, knows that he owes a lot of his wealth, if not the better part of his wealth, to one Al Heyman. And the reason I think, again, I think the reason why I say Heyman is so important

is because, one, he was successful in getting these black boxers. And he managed other boxers as well. But the key was to get a black boxer to understand really more so and differently how King did it. Because obviously

what Don King did is he caused a schism between Mike Tyson and his white management team. And King played on that and talked about racism and black folks

doing business together, stuff along those lines. And yeah, and went on to totally screw Mike Tyson. But what Heyman did was to get the boxer to understand you're the one who's actually in charge. Look, my job is to be a facilitator, but I'm not the one who is the overlord of you. And by doing that, it completely shifts the game. And he's able to, I mean, again, the contracts that he has brokered with his own, he literally has his own boxing series. Not just, hey, I signed a deal with this network for my fighters.

I mean, creating really his own division. And, yes, there are critics, but I just think the genius of Al Heyman and how he was able to do it, and it has caused, because remember, we used to always hear about the Duvas and the Arams of the world. And they were always larger than life figures. And it was always these stories on them

to a certain extent. I remember Butch Lewis as well. You also had and of course he's going to get mad at me. He's escaping me right now. Riddick Bowles' manager, why is he escaping me? He's been on my show. Hey, Rock.

Yeah, Rock Newman. But I really think, from a business standpoint, I wouldn't be surprised. And people always talk about a Harvard review class, a master class. Damn that. HBCU should do a master class on Al Heyman. I'm proud of me. Al don't talk. But literally, the business genius of what he is able to,

how he was able to go from being a concert promoter to now being the most powerful figure in boxing as an African-American is stunning. Well, you are correct. And I salute him for being able to fly under the radar for so long. It must not be easy to do so. But I will say this. If he is listening or watching, I would hope that at some point he would do a book, because like the rest of us, Al Heyman won't live forever. And it's very important to pass on the lessons that he's learned to an upcoming generation so that an

upcoming generation can profit from his obvious intelligence. Although I have to say I'm sympathetic to why he tries to keep a low profile, because as I explain in the book, sports in general, and boxing in particular, is mob infested. There is a credible story, in fact, about Sonny Liston, who, as we know, was defeated by Muhammad Ali and then died under mysterious circumstances a few years later, that Sonny Liston might have run afoul of the mob in Las Vegas. And Las Vegas is a particular site and locus of the story that I tell. It's not just because it happens to be the home of Floyd Merriweather. It happens to be the home of Bob Arum as well. It's also a regional headquarters for organized crime. And it's a city that was built on gambling in a state where in some counties,

prostitution is legal. So if you're talking about corruption, if you're talking about immorality, you have to talk about Las Vegas. You have to talk about Nevada. I ask you this all the time we do interviews. I do this with every book author. And the question I always ask is, all the research, what was your wow moment that you uncovered that caused your eyes to just get big and you say, this is unbelievable. Wow. This is crazy. Well, that's a hard question. I will say this, and I'll say this for future researchers who wonder. There is a great boxing archive at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York, that, believe it or not, has not only correspondence from Muhammad Ali. I saw Muhammad

Ali's medical records at this archive, which as early as the early 1980s, a doctor at Columbia Medical School had diagnosed him with having a kind of Parkinson's. I saw the records of Muhammad Ali after he took this tour of Africa in 1979 at the behest of then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to try to get African nations to boycott the Olympics. So those sorts of primary documents about Muhammad Ali is sort of a kind of goal for researchers. And with regard to the aha moments or wow moments, it's just all the killings. I just made reference to Sonny Liston, and I mentioned him only because people were familiar with his name. But it's astonishing how many boxers have been murdered over the years.

I mean, if you don't get killed in the ring, you can be killed outside of the ring. And disproportionately and overwhelmingly, those who are being killed outside of the ring are these black boxers who refuse to go along with the mob. So I'll close on this particular segment by saying that I encourage other researchers to visit this boxing archive at Brooklyn College. And there is another one at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, that is not as rich in documentation as Brooklyn colleges, but is useful nonetheless. That's a tip to up-and-coming writers about boxing. I do want to ask you this here because I think people also don't understand this here, and there have been other books and documentaries done on this here, boxing was a savage sport, grossly unregulated.

And it was numerous deaths in the ring that caused this country to say, we've got to put a stop to this. And wasn't there a point when they literally even stopped showcasing boxing on television because of the savagery? Well, boxing in a certain sense suffers from saturation. At one time, there might be three or four boxing matches on television every week, four or five every week. But that was like an overdose. You have four or five professional football games on television every week. But that was like an overdose. You have four or five professional football games on television every week. And I think the NFL is coming to that point of saturation as well.

But you also are correct to point to the savagery and the bloodlust that characterizes boxing. As noted, I just talked about people being killed outside of the ring. Of course, you might recall the match in 1962 between Emil Griffith of the Virgin Islands and Benny Perrette with Roots in Cuba, where Benny Perrette had insulted Emil Griffith before the match. And when they got into the ring, Emil Griffith systematically executes Benny Barrett. He dies in the ring. And the referee does not stop the fight, amazingly enough, as the crowd is cheering for more. It's almost like the Roman gladiators of old when those men who were so unfortunate as to have to fight lions and then would be eaten

as the crowd would cheer. That's what we were dealing with not so long ago and to a certain extent even today. Well, you're absolutely right. And that's how sort of people looked at it. And then, I mean, you had Congress that actually took action, not only dealing with that, but also there was a bill named after Muhammad Ali that also was there to protect the interest of boxers. Yes, there have been efforts at reform. The late Senator John McCain of Arizona took this up as a personal project to try to force through federal boxing reform. Larry Holmes, by the way, has also been quite vocal on the question of reform of boxing,

but the interests are much too powerful. And then there's the deregulation. I mean, for example, you have 50 different state regulating authorities, with the most powerful ones being in Nevada, New York, California, New Jersey. And so if any of those particular states would move to tighten regulations, well, then the boxers and the promoters would simply move to, say, Kentucky, for example. That's why you need a federal law. And, of course, boxing, to a certain extent, has been outflanked by these other kinds of pugilism. UFC, for example, which John McCain described as human cockfighting. Thai boxing, for example. In some ways, the lust of the audience for blood

is now being slaked and stoked, not by the kind of boxing that we grew up with, but by UFC and various kinds of martial arts. Folks, the book is called The Bittersweet Science, Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. It's by Gerald Horne. Gerald, first of all, what number book is this? I don't know.

Maybe 34, 35, something like that. I don't know how, I don't know where in the hell you find all the time to write these books. I don't. My Lord. I mean, between the research and the writing, but we've certainly enjoyed your work. There's so many other books by you that we've talked about

that I've told folks to actually buy. And so, I think I'm probably responsible for some nice royalties that go to you. We've talked about your book enough. You are correct. More than you realize. Well, that's why we have this show.

I've read many of them, not all of them, and still reading them. And I'm definitely going to check this one out. So, Gerald, I appreciate it. And then next time I go to Houston, y'all, this is how bad it is. I'm going to have to bring all of my books from Gerald, and he's going to have to sign them all. I have a whole shelf just for signed books. I'm going to have to have a whole separate suitcase

for Gerald's books for him to sign. Gerald, I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch, folks. And of course, y'all, he's a professor at the University of Houston in my hometown, and I'm sure your students get a kick out of learning your class,

but you probably make them do a whole lot of research. Absolutely. Gerald, thanks a lot. Thank you. Good luck. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

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