#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Redskins name change; BLM co-founder speaks; COVID-19 surges; Poor People's Movement policy platform

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

7.13.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered:Redskins name change; Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrisse Cullors speaks; COVID-19 surges across America; Rev. William Barber talks Poor People's Movement policy platform; WNBA's Chicago Sky player Sydney Colson talks athletes and activism; Protests in Seattle; Trump admin shelved probes into Bank of America and other financial institutions. Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered #RolandMartinUnfiltered Partner: Ceek Be the first to own the world's first 4D, 360 Audio Headphones and mobile VR Headset. Check it out on www.ceek.com and use the promo code RMVIP2020 - The Roland S. Martin YouTube channel is a news reporting site 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. Today is Monday, July 13, 2020, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered. After fighting it for years, the Washington Redskins will retire. Their name and logo will have the details. Also, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors is here to talk about the movement for black lives. We also have the latest on the coronavirus pandemic.

The need for more testing and faster results. More states, California, telling folks no more indoor dining. Folks, the numbers are exploding across the country. Even in Texas, the governors, they're saying they might have to shut down the entire state. Hashtag, we tried to tell you. Reverend Dr. William Barber will also join us to talk about the Poor People's Movement Policy Platform. WNBA Chicago Sky player Sidney Colson is here to talk about athletes and activism, but specifically Kelly Loeffler, the U.S. Senator who's at odds with the WNBA

and their focus on Black Lives Matter, plus the latest on the ongoing protests in Seattle. Also, the Trump administration shelved probes into financial dealings of Bank of America and other financial institutions that dealt with discrimination in lending. We'll talk with the author of a report in ProPublica. Also, we've got some personal media news. We're expanding our digital footprint and media footprint here at Roland Martin Unfiltered. I will explain. It's time to bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfil 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. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's Rolling Martin, yeah, it's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah, it's Rollin' Martin. Yeah, yeah, rollin' with Rollin' now. Yeah, he's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Rollin' Martin now. Yeah.

Martin. All right. A new name and logo in place for the Washington Redskins. Well, that didn't place yet. They announced today that they are actually dropping that name as well as that particular logo. The announcement of a new name has been delayed because trademark issues are pending, but the announcement will come soon. This has been an ongoing battle in the NFL as they have been protesting for years of the people saying that that is a racist symbol and logo as well. Joining me right now, Dr. Avis Jones-Dweaver, political analyst, Mustafa Santiago Ali, Ph.D., former senior advisor for environmental justice at the EPA. Eugene Craig, CEO of the Eugene Craig Organization.

Mustafa, obviously, this is a big deal. Dan Schneider, the owner, had been fighting this for years, vowing never to change the name or the logo. But it wasn't until the death of George Floyd, again, and I keep telling everybody everybody the impact of the death of George Floyd eight weeks ago on Memorial Day. It was that death that unleashed this reckoning across the country that has caused people to begin to examine Confederate statues, begin to examine what's happening inside of corporations when it comes to employment, when it comes to black promotion. And in this case, the pressure was put on by them because you had people you had representing more than six hundred billion dollars in investment funds who wrote the folks at PepsiCo and FedEx saying you need to tell the Redskins to take it down. The owner of FedEx is a minority owner of the Redskins. Not only did he

say, take this down, he said, we will take the name of FedEx off of the stadium if you don't do it. As we've talked about numerous times here on the show, if you really want to get people's attention, then you have to affect the economics. You got to hit them in the pocketbook. And when Dan Snyder, who did for a long time now, over a couple of decades, you know, was saying that he would not change the name, you know, now they have no choice but to do it because they know they're going to get hit in the pocketbook.

And it's the right time. I mean, it's been the right time for a considerable amount of time now. I mean, that is a racist, it is a slur. If people understand the history behind the name, it's something that I've never used because it goes back to the 1880s, maybe a little bit before then when they actually were taking scalps of Native Americans, of indigenous brothers and sisters. And they use these names to dehumanize and to justify the behaviors that they were doing at that time. And then moving forward, it has also been used to dehumanize indigenous brothers and sisters.

And all kinds of things have come out of the dehumanization of them. So I'm so glad to see that people are putting pressure on these entities and saying that if you do not change, we will remove our dollars. It's a way of the disinvestment that has needed to be done for a long time. Avis, again, pressure bus pipes. But as we've always said, money, money, money. When the money started talking to Dan Schneider, that's when he buckled. Absolutely. We know the thing. Money talks. You know what walks. Right. I mean, it's been very funny to see Dan Snyder's come to Jesus moment on this, because you guys might recall that years ago, he was bold enough to say

it's never going to change. And, you know, as has been mentioned, once you start hitting people in the pocketbooks, all of a sudden they start taking it start paying attention. But it's a shame that it takes merely a financial interest to do what's right. All these years of people being able, you know, lifting up the fact that this is racist, that it's insensitive. I mean, the history of that whole franchise, even beyond the name, is rather problematic when we come to race anyway. And so it is unfortunate that someone had to die, and we had to literally go through a movement to get this man to do what's right. But we are there, although I tell you I'm going to withhold my full judgment until I figure out what he's come up with next, because I don't quite trust I don't trust. I don't quite trust his judgment. He's already shown in the past

that morality, it appears when it comes to these issues, is not his strong point. Eugene, in the White House today, Kelly McEnany was asked about this very change. Of course, they always have something stupid to say. This is what she said. Yes, a good question. You know, he made, I haven't talked to him since the specific announcements been made. I have talked to him, but not specifically on that. But last week, his tweet made it clear that these teams, these teams named their teams out of strength, not weakness. And he talked about the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians looking at changing their names. And he says that

he believes that the Native American community would be very angry at this. And he does have polling to back him up. There was a Washington Post poll from a few years ago that 90 percent of Native Americans say they're not offended by the name. It is reflective of a 2004 poll. And the Washington Post notes that many of these Native Americans voiced admiration for the team name, like Barbara Bruce, who said, I'm proud of being Native American and of the Redskins. I'm not ashamed of that at all.

I like that name. Gabriel Nez, another 29-year-old from the Navajo community, I really don't mind it. I like it. And there are several other comments like this in the Washington Post. Deborah. Thank you.

Thank you, Kayleigh. Well, Eugene, there you go. These teams were named for strength. No, they weren't. And the team name is a racial slur. You know, Dan Snyder, you know, he resisted this. He fought a tooth and nail, you know, literally came down to the corporate pressure. But the real schism here is that no matter what's happened in society, this White House, you know, takes the most extreme positions, takes the most racist positions and tries to drive them through. You know, what Donald Trump tweeted out and what Kayleigh McEnany defended, by the way, you know, by, you know, pretty much reading, you know, reading off her responses, you know, you know, defended, by the way, you know, by, you know, pretty much reading, you know, reading off her responses.

You know, you know, she doesn't know anything. You know, she's dumb as hell. You know, it's sad. It's really sad. Well, again, the point that we keep making is that if you want to change America, you must go after money. And that's the bottom line. And so I think that, again, look, it'd be great if people actually made decisions for moral reasons, if it was the right reason. But this has always been the case of America. If you want to change America, you have to target the money. And I think in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, that's where everybody has to be thinking. It has to be about you go after the money. When it comes to the boycott of Facebook, you go after

the money. When it comes to trying to get these media companies to change their racist hiring practices and to deal with the promotion of black people, you go after the money. In fact, you look at what's happening in the advertising industry, the exact same thing. We're going to talk about this thing a little bit later. But same thing, how they are penalizing even institutions over the coverage of of different things like, oh, no, don't run our ad next to stories where it says protest or George Floyd or racism. That's what we're dealing with. America has always been about the buck. It sure has been. A hundred percent. Even if you go back to the trafficking of black bodies that built this nation, it was about the money. I mean, it's a shame that our culture is, quite frankly, so individualistic in nature.

That's really just as American, no pun intended, is apple pie, right? We have a very individualistic nature that's built into the fabric of this country, which I would argue has a multitude of implications. And one of them is this issue of prioritizing individual wealth aggrandition over moral stances in a variety of ways. And so, unfortunately, it's gone back from the very beginning of this nation, and we've yet to be able to course correct in terms of providing a normalcy with our culture that is one that is more universal in terms of doing things that are right for right's sake, rather than doing things that we need to do in order to have more money on the bottom line.

I think you better jump in, Eugene. Go ahead. Eugene, go ahead. The thing is, you're 100% correct. When it comes down to it, it literally comes down to the corporate pressure. It literally comes down to the corporate dollars. It literally comes down to what kind of, literally comes down to the corporate dollars, literally comes down to, you know, what kind of economic loss are these entities and institutions willing to suffer for their views?

And what we've come to find time and time again is that their stomach for economic loss isn't really that tough. And, you know, you give them the slightest nudge and they're willing to pretty much hand over the whole cake. That's it. That's exactly what we're seeing. And in fact, the matter is, as I said, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, we have seen a number of companies move, make changes. But I keep using the phrase, I'm not satisfied. I'm simply not

satisfied with what they are doing. I want to talk now about the Movement for Black Lives, because this is a part of this continuing conversation. Joining me right now is Patrice Cullors. She's the co-founder of Black Lives Matter. Patrice, I want to talk about several different things, but I want to speak about still where we are. This is now eight weeks later. This is now a moment where people are still, we're seeing these announcements. I saw the other day, CVS announced a $600 million racial equity decision. Today, George Soros announced $200 million being invested to deal with the whole issue of racial inequity. I've seen a $1 billion announcement from PNC Bank, and we've seen announcements from Apple and from Nike and Michael Jordan's company, and we can, Adidas, and we could go on and on and on with what we're seeing.

But I still keep saying I'm not satisfied because I believe we have to be in a mindset of a third reconstruction, that we have to be thinking about this in the same way as the first reconstruction, which took place 12 years. Money was the one piece that was not dealt with. The second reconstruction took place for 14 years. Money was the piece not dealt with. This being the third one, if you don't get to the money part, all you're doing are repeating what we did in the 1800s and then, of course, in the mid-1900s.

Can't hear Patrice. Hold on one second. I think you might be on mute or double check the audio. Can you hear me? Now we can hear you. Go right ahead. Okay, great. I think that's exactly right. I think part of what you've heard from our movement loud and clear is that we must defund law enforcement. And what many people get caught up on is this idea of focusing on law enforcement. What we're really calling for is a reinvestment into black communities. And what we've seen, large and part, is a divestment from black communities for the last 30, 40 years. And what we've only seen investment in is policing and incarceration.

So we launched the BREATHE Act, and that act is a legislative policy platform that's really challenging all the ways in which we've seen elected officials not have the real conversation, which is where are our resources actually going and why aren't they going into black people having adequate access to housing, public education, healthcare, and so many other resources that we so desperately need. We needed those when George Floyd was killed, we needed them when Ahmaud Arbery was killed, when Breonna Taylor was killed, and we need them right now.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland. And the reality is, if you did not have that targeted policing, she would not have ever been placed in jail. She was targeted. She was tracked. That DPS trooper was waiting for that particular moment. And I think what people have to to understand, we talk. You're absolutely right. We talk about defund the police. It's the amount of resources that are being poured into building jails and then funding police. And then it's always the boogeyman. Oh, no, we do this here. Violent crime is going to go up when you actually look at the stats. The percentage of police involvement when it comes to violent crimes is really under 10%. And the number is not that significant. Really what we're talking about here, let's just cut to the chase. The amount of money that we pour into police departments

is to make white folks comfortable when it comes to this whole issue. It is not about actually dealing with the problem of crime. That's exactly right. I mean, you couldn't have said it any better. The role that police play, it's largely based off of myth. It's based off of what we see and on television and based off what we've seen in movies, which is the police are the good guys. They're the ones that keep us safe. And what that really is code for is they keep white communities safe. They keep white property owners safe. And what we've seen, though, I think in the revealing over the last decade of using cell phone video to actually see what police officers do, is large in part they are dealing with low-level crimes.

They're dealing with issues of poverty, actually, issues that have been criminalized, poverty being criminalized. So they're dealing with homelessness. They're dealing with mental health crises. They're dealing with domestic violence issues. They're dealing with people who are drug and alcohol dependent. And we have to really question why have we given the police that much authority over mostly black and poor people's lives. And so that, to me, is the biggest challenge right now.

And then what do we do? We're saying through the Breathe Act that we actually have to look at our dollars. Where do we put them? And we have to pull them out of the places that are toxic, that are not helping our communities and put those dollars back into the communities that really do need it. So let's just talk about that, the BREATHE Act. Who are your co-sponsors? It was announced last week. We covered this on Thursday. Who are the co-sponsors of this bill? And is it going to get pick up momentum and support in the House? So we have we have two champions of the bill.

We have Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and we have Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. And we are we have been in conversations with the Congressional Black Caucus, and we have talked to several other Congress folks to just open up the dialogue about what the BREATHE Act is really pushing for. The BREATHE Act pushes for a divestment out of policing and military, and then it pushes for an investment into communities, Black communities in particular. And it's also looking at us having the conversation about HR 40, the reparations conversation.

We want to lift that back up again. This is the time to take bold and courageous action in this moment. The streets, you know, New York Times said it, Black Lives Matter is the largest protest movement the country has ever seen. This is the perfect time to make the kind of change that we need. We've also seen everyone at the local level, both at city, county and state levels, making those changes. So we've seen school departments break ties with the police saying, you know what?

We don't need school police on our campuses any longer. We're seeing places like Seattle defund the police by 50% to put those dollars back into the community. Here in Los Angeles, our local Black Lives Matter chapter that pushed for a people's budget, forcing the city to actually decrease its dollars to LAPD, and also really pushing forward a new vision around how we deal with issues of homelessness and drug and alcohol dependency. So this is an opportunity, we believe, for Congress in particular to make bolder and direct asks. So, okay, so there are a lot of people out there who are absolutely confused

when they hear the phrase Black Lives Matter. You have the movement for Black Lives, then you have this Black Lives Matter network. OK, so can you explain to people? Because what's also happening is you've got corporations out there who are giving money. I saw one story where there was some some group out of the Bay Area that wasn't attached to nothing. And some of some corporation rescinded a several million dollar gift to them. So let's talk, what the hell is the movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter network? What's official, what's not? Sure.

Well, you have to remember when we started the Black Lives Matter, Alicia, Opal, and I, and today is our seven year anniversary. So when we started Black Lives Matter, it was a hashtag. Right. Alicia said a phrase, I turned it into a hashtag, and then we turned it into an online conversation platform dialogue. Right, and it became a catchphrase for, out of all the stuff, Black Lives Matter. Got it.

Exactly. Everything activist, it became Black Lives Matter, right? So that's just like what happened inside of mostly white media. They saw a lot of black folks. They saw protesting. They're like, oh, this must be the Black Lives Matter movement. So we never named ourselves the Black Lives Matter movement. The media did that. Right. But it's important for people to understand that was after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, right? So Black Lives Matter was in response to Trayvon Martin. Then one year later, lots of death happened between that, unfortunately.

But then one year later, we have the killing of Mike Brown, the murder of Mike Brown. That's when you see, you know, an uprising happen in Ferguson. And right before that, remember, we had Eric Garner. We had John Crawford III. Renisha Pryde. Right. Those literally happened about four weeks before. I mean, it was like all within the same time frame.

Tamir Rice. Yep. All happened in the same time frame. That's exactly right. So then Black Lives Matter, you know, we actually become a global network in which we start to have chapters. And that's when, you know, as I think as young organizers, we didn't realize that people would start making up their own chapters. So we had a chapter that we were in relationship to. And then there was chapters that would pop up and we were like, oh, that's not us.

Like, we're not connected. And so, and I remember, I think, when the Minneapolis, when everybody keeps talking, Republicans love bringing up the pigs in a blanket thing that march in Minneapolis. I remember covering it. That was actually in St. Paul. Right. And that was not our chapter. Right. And people kept saying, oh, that's Black Lives Matter.

And I kept going, mainstream media, y'all need to understand there are entities out, I said, this is not like the NAACP, where if you are NAACP branch, you are actually a sanctioned branch of the national governing body. So there are so for everybody out there, there are Black Lives Matter chapters that are actually not a part of the movement for Black Lives? So, let me clarify. Right, let's... We have Black Lives Matter chapters that are official affiliates of the Black Lives Matter global network. But then there are people who created chapters that are not official

to the Black Lives Matter global network. Okay, hold on, stop right there. Okay, hold up. So, you said the Black Lives Matter global network. Is that separate from the Movement for Black Lives? So I'll explain the Movement for Black Lives. Okay.

So the Movement for Black Lives is actually a coalition. It's a coalition of 150 Black-led organizations across the country. Okay. And Black Lives Matter is one of those organizations that is a part of the Movement for Black Lives Coalition. Okay. So who's over the Movement for Black Lives Coalition? Like who's like over that?

So there's a bunch of grassroots organizations. And the way that the Movement for Black Lives Coalition works is there's different pods. So there's different sort of like like there's like a policy table. There's an organizing and base building table. So they really work off of tables. And there's a decentralized movement leadership model, just like Black Lives Matter Global Network. Our generation is all about decentralized leadership. So there isn't sort of like one person in charge

that is saying what's happening. It's really about a decentralized group of people who are all part of helping make that change and shifting that change. And then there's leaders that are co-leading the table, but they're not the final decision makers. We often work in a consensus-based model. So we have to all make the decision together.

Sometimes we make rapid response decisions and the group is willing to let the rest of the group make that decision. But we're trying to build, it's a different infrastructure than what you see in the mainstream, you know, sort of corporation or even other nonprofits. We're trying to build decentralized leadership that is really about building from the ground up. And that's why it probably confuses people because it's not a model that they've seen or that they can recognize. But that's what we're trying to do

is build out a new model of leadership and governance. So who's, okay, so who's over the Black Lives Global Network? Who runs that? So the Black Lives Matter Global Network, I am one of the board members on the Black Lives Matter Global Network, but also the chapters are in deep relationship to the Black Lives Global Network. When we started it, we didn't see ourselves as a national organization. We actually identified as grassroots organizations, grassroots chapters working in their own location.

And so if you sort of like were to take a microscope and to look into each city where the Black Lives Matter chapters are, you realize that they are supporting a lot of what's happening at the national level, but locally. So Los Angeles is doing their work. Chicago is doing their work. D.C. is doing their work. And they're all having a deep relationship to what's happening locally. Right. And those local issues often mirror what's happening across the country. So so money that's been given. How much do you guys raise and how do you distribute that? I mean, are you funding things locally? Are you funding lobbying efforts? What like like what's because that's efforts? Like what's actually happening? So it's a C3. So let's be super, super clear. The Black Lives

Matter Global Network is actually a C3, which means we are not a lobbying entity. Well, when I say lobbying, you can lobby on issues. As a C3, you can endorse candidates, but you can lobby on issues. You can lobby on issues up to a point. Got it, okay. And you can't lobby on people, and you cannot give them money. So all that conversation around the Act Blue, BLM giving to the Democrats, that's just untrue. That's not even possible. As far as how the money gets distributed, it really does.

Because we did raise lots of money, we didn't raise it. I mean, it was a lot of money. Like what? $5 million, $8 million, $ was a test. Like what? Five million, eight million, 10 million, 20 million. What? We we don't know the exact number just yet. But what we do know is that we are going to be regranting at least twelve and a half million dollars. And this feels important to us because we see ourselves as part of a movement-wide ecosystem in which that dollar, those dollars don't just belong to the Black Lives Matter global network. We really see this as an opportunity to donate our dollars to our chapters, but also we're really interested in donating dollars to black LGBTQ organizations.

So when you say regranting, so let's say in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, when we've seen these announcements, this corporation is giving money to Black Lives Matter. That's going to the Black Lives Matter global network. Not all the time. And that's why I'm asking the question, because, OK, so when you see that, is somebody calling them saying, yo, who the hell y'all giving the money to? I mean, because that's because the fact that I'm asking all of these questions, I think this is part of the problem. So because I keep hearing as well, folks like, OK, we want to support Black Lives Matter, but who the hell do we talk to and who do we call and connect with to make

sure it's going to the right group? So some people know to get a hold of us, but the other thing, and this is a conversation that, you know, we're trying to have a corporation is you can't just make an announcement without having a conversation with the groups. Many of them, you know, our lawyers have said, yes, they can technically, but it does create a lot of confusion if you just make an announcement saying we're giving to Black Lives Matter. I, you know, there was a particular donor out in Texas who decided they're going to give lots of money to Black Lives Matter. I asked for the list and what I saw was one of the groups was a Black Lives Matter group, but it was about 10 groups, and it was only one of them that was Black Lives Matter. So it's very deceiving when you say we're giving to Black Lives Matter.

But now people understand, oh, Black Lives Matter is an organization. There's also chapters. So who are you really giving to? That's very confusing. And that's something that we are having to deal with in the aftermath. Not all that money was donated to us. Some of it was donated to other groups. Some people, you know, it was good for the corporation to make the public announcement, we're going to give to Black Lives Matter. Some of it,

I personally had conversations and said, hey, can you actually give to other groups? You don't have to give to us. And so this is a conversation that we're having inside of our movement as well as, OK, this is the first time we've seen this kind of money. That's exciting. Dollars help us win things. But how do we do it in a way that's ethical? And how do we do it in a way that actually is responsive to the needs of our movement? I'm bringing in my panel here, questions for them. I'm going to start with you, Dr. Avis Jones-Weaver. Your question for Patrisse Cullors. Hi, thanks so much for coming on and explaining. I think that a lot of people have, well, you know, I'm very sensitive to what you just mentioned about how a lot of

people are giving, but they're not necessarily giving, it sounds like to me, possibly even to legitimate organizations, right? And I'm concerned that a lot of money that people who have the best intentions and want to support you think they're supporting you. But in some cases, I don't know, could not be utilized by unethical entities? Because right now people are just giving money, giving money, giving money. And it's a tragedy that some of that money, it sounds like, are going to places where it should not be going. Sure. I mean, in the case of the Black Lives Matter Foundation that was incorporated in Santa Clarita and that a ton of corporations gave, I think, up to $4.5 million to, it's hard.

Because when we started Black Lives Matter, you all have to remember, we didn't realize it was going to become a global phenomenon. So when we started to think about, you know, protecting the organization, it was a little legally protecting it, right? Like getting, making sure we have the name. It was a little bit too late because it became public domain. So we had to create new names like Black Lives Matter Network, you know, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which is the technical name of our organization. And when we created those technical names, by that point, there were groups like the Black Lives Matter Foundation that had been created.

And we did try to stop it. We went and tried to stop it and we didn't win. We lost that fight. And so then we have a moment like this where tons of people are donating and then they're donating to what they see is called the Black Lives Matter Foundation and they don't know the difference. And that to me is, it's just challenging because it has a lot to do with just, you know, it being an unfortunate moment where people are so excited about donating and then donating into the wrong organization. I am glad, though, that a lot of people are rescinding those dollars, and they are getting in contact with the right people.

But it takes time. We live in a moment of misinformation and disinformation. And there's been full-on social media campaigns that make people confused about what Black Lives Matter is, and people don't know who to listen to. So I think these kinds of conversations and, you know, Roland, I only would trust you to ask these kinds of questions.

You know, these are important because then you get to clarify what's actually happening. You get to go to the source. Well, I mean, look, that's where it all started because I saw all these stories. I'm going, OK, hold up. I'm confused. Now, if I'm confused, I know other folks are confused. And as we're because, again, as I kept seeing this and not these announcements, then I see, well, this group. And again, knowing, well, that's a chapter, but it's not really a chapter.

But they call themselves a chapter. And yeah, for folks who understand typical infrastructures in terms of how you support. Let's go to Eugene Crave with your question for Patrice Cullors. Hey, quick question. Would you guys consider, I guess, publishing a list of the organizations that are directly affiliated with you guys? And then maybe even a broader list of organizations that probably could use funding, but may not necessarily be directly affiliated with you guys? That's a great question. So we, all of our affiliates, like official affiliates are on our website, blacklivesmatter.com, but we have done that internal memo around who

people should fund. And I think that would not be a problem to share that publicly, where we've been telling people to go. A lot of us were doing that at the very beginning of the national rebellion when people were coming to us, well, who should we donate to? And we had a list of folks, you know, Minneapolis had a list of organizations of who people should donate to. So we could, we would love to do something like that. I think that's super easy to do. Mustafa. Yeah, Patrice, thank you for everything you do. Every time I see you speak or I've read something that you've written, I always smile. Also, thank you for the Breathe Act, because you guys also talk about environmental justice in there and you take a holistic approach to building power inside of our communities. If there is a city or a town that wants to start

a Black Lives Matter, I'm gonna say chapter, I know it's not a chapter. How do they go through that process? That's the right letter. Okay, all right. What do they do? So sure, to start a chapter, you could totally go onto our website

and click on how to start a chapter. You all can imagine that lots of people have contacted us in this time. So we're asking people to be patient with us as we have so many folks who want to start chapters. What we also learned is that there's a lot of excitement to start a chapter, but there's a lot of work to building an infrastructure for a chapter. And when we first started the global network, I wish I knew then what I know now, what it takes to build institutional infrastructure.

So we also wanna be mindful as we are working with people to develop their chapters, that we are moving intentionally and that people, while they're excited, once you start a chapter and once you have that name, Black Lives Matter, it comes with a lot of weight and power. It also comes with a lot of baggage because there's a lot of right-wing people that are going after us. All of our chapters have experienced doxing. All of our chapter leaderships have experienced some form of harassment. And so we want to be really careful and intentional as we build that out. And we didn't have that carefulness

and intentionality when we were, when we built it seven years ago, because we didn't know any better, but now we know better. And so we're moving slowly as we build out the infrastructure for chapters. And on that point that you just made there, I remember when this was definitely in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin. And I'll never forget, that was after the verdict, there were a group of us who started, we were involved in these phone calls. And I remember being on the phone call, and you had different organizations and different people, and it was all this energy. And then folks, all of a sudden, all of a sudden we're rushing to, you know, we can do this and we can call the Bloomberg people and the gun campaign with this whole deal. And I was like, I'm sorry, I got a question. Who the hell are we? And what are we doing? And folks, and all of a sudden you had some younger people on there who pissed off. They were like, well, you know, why this old dude up here talking? And I'm like,

let me real clear. We can, I said, we can all rush out and do some stuff. I said, but if you don't really know what the hell you're doing and who you're targeting, you're going to fail. And I remember telling one of the leaders, I said, I'm going to give this three more weeks. And she said, what I said, these calls are going to last three more weeks and then it's going to be over. I said, because this was about to happen. And so it was so funny that it ended, it ended in three weeks. And she called me and she's like, damn, how in the hell did you know? I said, because the problem is really smart people don't also learn to study what happened before them. And the reason I say that, I interviewed Dr. James Lawson,

led the Nashville movement. Lawson said they spent three months, three months discussing who they were. Then another three months discussing what they wanted to do. He said it was six months before they did anything. And there were a lot of people after the Trayvon deal, after Mike Brown, and I kept saying, y'all, you can piss on the NAACP and the Urban League and everybody all you want to. I said there's a reason they're still here. Infrastructure matters. You have to create something that is able to harness the street power into actual policy.

I said without an entity. You can say decentralized. you can say centralized, whatever, but there has to be something that takes street action and then go, okay, but how do we maintain the policy piece every day? Now, I mean, organization, now meaning staff, how does it get funded? All those things. And I think a lot of people have learned some valuable lessons in the past five years, Patrice, about why infrastructure kind of matters. That's exactly right. I think we did completely. I think we understood seven years ago that we had a powerful moment and movement with many people who were just like us, you know, mostly queer, mostly trans, black women.

And we needed an infrastructure. We needed a container because no, you know, no knocking the NAACP or Urban League, but they didn't speak for us. Those organizations didn't speak for us. And so we needed something new, something that looked like and felt like our generation. And so we are going through our growing pains and I'm proud of them.

I'm proud of us. Seven years later, we're still here, even though people said we wouldn't be. And we're still working it out and we're still figuring out what our right size is and what our right right role is. And I'm proud of the work that we've been able to do over the last seven years. Got to ask you this question because it has come up. We run some videos. We've broken this thing down. And that is and this has come up a lot and it needs to be asked because it needs to be answered. And I'm looking at a lot of the comments on Facebook, a lot of the comments that are on YouTube. And that is the folks who say this is not that this is being co-opted as a gay agenda. This is not a black agenda. And again, I'm looking at what people are saying.

And so how do you answer that to people who say, wait a minute, why is this a gay agenda and not a black agenda? How do you answer those people who say that? Well, I start with saying that there's no such thing as a Black agenda, how do you answer those people who say that? Well, I start with saying that there's no such thing as a gay agenda and that Black people are queer and trans, we're bi, we're pan, we're all of the things, we're all of the LGBTQ plus rainbow. And we can't have a conversation about Black people

without having a conversation about all the things that we are. And so this idea that there is a gay agenda, I think, is a homophobic idea. And I think it's really important that we are able to challenge when people say that and say that we have to fight for all Black people. We have to fight for all Black lives.

Go ahead. when people say that and say that you, we have to fight for all black people. We have to fight for all black lives. Go ahead. Oh, that's it. Oh no. I thought, I thought, I thought I heard this finger snapping. I thought you had cut off.

I thought it had cut off. And so I was kind of like, no, you're still alive. You're still alive. Uh, so, uh,

final, final question here. Um, you laid out the breathe, the breathe at. What is the, and the reason I'm saying lobbying, it requires putting the pressure on people in Capitol Hill. It requires going door to door. And so what is your plan there to mobilize people

to do that grunt work of having to go to all 435 House members, all 190 state senators? You know, is there a plan of action where you're going to want people who are traveling to Capitol Hill, putting pressure on Democrats and Republicans to support this, to actually get the necessary 218 votes for it to pass? Yes. I mean, I think it's important for people to know that the first day that we launched the Breathe Act legislation, we had 10,000 people sign up to be co-sponsors, civilian co-sponsors. And that's really powerful, almost unheard of to have 10,000 people say, yes, we want this passed. So we're working with community members to meet their federal elected officials to have conversations about the BREATHE Act. We're also transforming the BREATHE Act into state and city and county legislation.

So as much as it's a federal legislation, we also want it to mirror what's happening on the ground. And that feels really important to us as well. So you're going to see breathe acts be passed and by different governors in different states. And that's part of what we're doing as well to pressure the federal government. People need to remember when Dr. Martin Luther King was an organizer, while he was trying to get things passed at the federal level. He was doing all the work at the local level so that we could build that pressure up to the federal level. And he was also using, he was also working with existing entities who were in those communities as well. Because I think part of the problem is that when we talk about narrative, most people, even when they talk about SNCC, they don't quite understand that SNCC was an umbrella organization that was comprised of a number of local organizations in different cities and states. Huh?

Sounds like M4BL. Well, and that was it. So I'm always because I think a lot of I think a lot of us, we taught we romanticize the black freedom movement without actually studying the infrastructure of the black freedom movement, because the Nashville movement that James Lawson led, after that. And so it's reminding people that the local organizations absolutely matter because the things that are done in Charlotte, in St. Louis, that are done, you know, in Atlanta. And even when you start talking about in a city like Atlanta, it's also in this neighborhood and that neighborhood. It's not sort of this one overarching entity that's sort of in control of the entire thing. That's exactly right. And that's like perfectly put. We don't understand movement infrastructure.

And so people don't understand what movement looks like in real time. And in real time, it looks like a lot of years of work without a lot of victories. And then all of a sudden, we get into motion and respond to a moment. And without a lot of victories. And then all of a sudden we get into motion and respond to a moment. And then we see our victories. We're seeing tons of victories at the local level. Will it translate into a national victory? We'll see. We'll push for that. Will it translate in

this moment? Maybe, hopefully, but we'll still be working. And that's the work of movement. You know, you keep on fighting even if everybody else stops fighting. Uh, I do have one last question, because I think this is important to discuss. That people, I also, uh, people criticize, quote, young folks today. The reality is, there is a significant amount of training that goes on.

Reverend Dr. Barber's going to be on with me later. And he came to the Poor People's Campaign. His whole deal is everything is about training, organizing, teaching, and then you have action. And so just share with the folks who may not quite understand the type of training, teaching, organizing that's going on that they may not even see. They only see the end results when it's a march, when it's a protest, or when there's some sort of action. Yes. I've been doing organizing work for 20-something years now,

and I learned everything from being trained as an organizer. I did a training camp for organizers. I was a member of an organization. I spent a lot of time being invested in by other organizers. That's the work. As much as it is protesting, it's also being trained to be able to show up to your elected officials office and have a conversation, creating the petition, creating the flyer, creating the website to get your message heard. There's so much infrastructure training into one individual to be able to be an organizer, much like a doctor, much like a firefighter. This isn't a job that is sort of like, go ahead and do it and figure it out.

Sometimes people end up doing it like that. But you can tell the difference between someone who's been trained in organizing and someone who hasn't. I think we need to spend a lot more time training our organizers. Absolutely. And also training them to also learn to take breaks. There are a lot of people, there are a lot of people in the last five to seven years who got burned out because it was actually a long-term commitment. A lot of people went, damn,

I didn't realize it was gonna be this tough. And how are you also dealing with the mental aspect? Do you also have counselors and others, because there are a lot of activists who are going through PTSD, who are going through depression, having to see these videos, having to talk to these families and people are unprepared for that part of the work. That is the last question. Yeah, I saw I saw I got Baptist preach. massage, of all the different modalities that are movement feels healing justice and that actually practicing healing justice. And it's hard. It's hard because we we come from a long legacy of people who just work and work and work and work because we have to work and work too much. So it's hard to tell people take a break when you're witnessing your community and your loved ones dying or in such duress, but it's important and it's critical

and it should be inside of our movements, not sort of go away and take a break and then come back when you're ready, but our movement should be steeped in healing justice and we really do try that. All right, Patrice Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Global Network, Movement for Black Lives.

I think if anybody now has questions, they should just watch this video so now we have an understanding of what all the pieces are. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, we come back. We're going to talk about COVID-19. It is exploding across the country. California shutting indoor restaurants and bars down. Texas may shut the entire state down. Record numbers being set in Florida. Hashtag, we tried to tell you, but all these folks didn't listen. That's next on Rolling Martin Unfiltered. There was a day earlier this year when our nation's intelligence and public health experts pleaded with Donald Trump to take the coronavirus seriously.

Did he listen? No. What did he do? He probably scrolled through his Twitter feed or daydreamed about his next rally or asked Lindsey Graham to play golf or ordered fewer tests. Slow the testing down, please. And now, more than 130,000 Americans are dead.

Three million Americans are sick. Thousands more infected every day. Tens of millions out of work. Isolated from the world. And what does Trump do? He tells us to live with it. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Throughout our history, when America has faced a crisis. A date which will live in infamy, Democrats have answered the call and stood tall for their country. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda. This is fake patriotism. This is fake patriotism. This is real patriotism. The blast from the RPG going off vaporized my right leg, and the force of the blast kicked my left leg up into the instrument panel

the aircraft amputated in. When Democrats went to war for their country, Donald Trump went to war against his own soldiers. You have sacrificed nothing. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? While Democrats proudly served our country,

Daddy Trump's big money got Donald five deferments. I'd earned my spurs on the battlefield, and Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor. The coward refused to fight for his country. Trump deployed the military to fight an invasion from Mexico that didn't exist. He used the military to attack our citizens for peacefully protesting. Donald Trump doesn't love his country. He uses the American soldier like porn stars that he cheats on his wife with. The next time you see Donald Trump hug a flag, call it out as the gross perversion that it is. Donald Trump does not own the flag.

The American people do. Stand tall for America. Vote this coward out of office. Vote for Joe Biden. I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me. Eugene, that last ad, Eugene, that last ad was, that last ad, Eugene, was run by author Don Winslow. He tweeted, he is not going to be writing any more books between this now and November. He said he's dedicating dedicating all of his time, energy and resources to doing more ads like that to get Trump out. I mean, they it's they are hammering him at every turn on social with these these ads.

Yeah. And look, that's how you have to fight him. That's how you have to fight somebody like him. It's a knife fight. It is a bloody knife fight. You have to shake him up. It's stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, and then keep stabbing a little bit more. Yeah, I really wish Democrats would pick up on it and, you know, put aside the feel good and, you know, really understand that. When you have somebody like Donald Trump, you know, when they go low, you got to take their ass to the ground. I mean, look, Mustafa, I mean, we are seeing, again, folks who are not playing. In fact, the folks at VoteVets put together this commercial here, y'all, with Trump in the mask. Watch this. Mustafa, they ain't playing. No, nor should they.

I mean, you know, it's amazing. You know, this is a man who allowed for there to be bounties put on the heads of our soldiers and decided that it wasn't that important, whether you want to say it was placed inside of a book that he read or there was a verbal briefing for him. This is a man who has allowed veterans to come back home and to be homeless, to not have jobs. So, you know, you should go and just tell the truth. That's all you really have to do. You just have to continue to share a truthful narrative. But you have to replay that narrative over and over and over again. So people know exactly who they're dealing with, because he will try and create this false narrative. He'll try to do revisionist history. And that's why it's so important for the repetitiveness of the truth be put out in front of the American people so that they can make the right decisions. It's also understanding how we operate in a different world.

It's not just about just running up with television ads. One of the things that Project Lincoln is doing is targeting their ads. They're targeting their ads, and they may run them just on Fox News to specifically speak to just his folks. They've announced they've raised $16.8 million. They've announced how they're going to be targeting different states' vulnerable Republicans as well. That's how you also pick folks off. Absolutely. I mean, they put the S in strategic. That's what you got to do. And I love that vote that's at, it was brilliant. Because unfortunately, this clown does so many tremendously just outrageous things every day that it's hard to keep up. And that's this thing about not only ignoring, because I do not believe for one second he didn't know about it,

so not only ignoring the fact that Putin had put bounties on the heads of American soldiers, but the fact that now that everybody knows and it's been put out in the public, his excuse, and I do believe he doesn't read, but his excuse about not knowing about it has clearly, you know, gone out the window. He's not done anything subsequently since then to address it. And there's been some reports that he's had multiple phone calls with Putin in recent months. What the hell are they talking about? Okay. So what I want to say is that this man is a danger. He represents a clear and present danger to this nation, not only in terms of allowing his best buddy, his daddy, Putin, to get away with whatever he wants to get away with, but also in terms of his complete ineptitude that has led to the deaths of over 130,000 people as it relates to COVID. And God knows how many in the future, given the fact that over 60,000 people are being diagnosed on a daily basis right now.

He is a clear and present danger to the American people, to the people who serve this nation in terms of in the uniform, a uniform as the previous ad showed, he was too much of a coward to wear. Well, bottom line is, again, you know, as they're dropping these ads like mixtapes, we're going to be dropping them every single day, showing you the latest as well. All right, folks, the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival, was established in 2018 to set an agenda based on the needs and demands of the 140 million people who are poor and struggling in the richest country in the world. Since then, they've shifted the narrative to include building power among the poor to

create systemic change. Now, why is this important? It's important because the number of poor people who have not voted could completely lead to a Donald Trump route if they are mobilized, organized, and they give them to the polls. Joining us right now is Reverend Dr. William Barber. He is the president of Repayers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. Reverend Barber, always glad to have you here. We are in what I consider to be crunch time. This is mid-July. We have not much time between now and Election Day. I'm not even thinking just November 3rd. I'm talking about the time between now and the deadline to get people registered.

I mean, this is where I keep telling people, forget all these polls showing Joe Biden leading 5, 6, 8 points, 11, 12, 14 points. Those are irrelevant. If you want to guarantee it, that Trump gets taken out, you must leave no doubt and blow him out of the water. Exactly. And that means forget the polls because polls don't vote, people vote. And so what we're doing in the Poor People's Campaign, the National Call for a Moral Revival, as I shared with you last year, we did an analysis of every county where if you just register 10 or 15 percent of poor and low wealth people or mobilize poor and low wealth people who are already registered but didn't vote, you could fundamentally change. And so that's where we are right now all over the country. Two weeks ago, we had 2.7 million people to turn out for our Mass Poor People's Assembly, but they also got an assignment. That assignment was to register people to vote, sign people up for the census.

We're launching something real big on the 26th of July, which is going to be a major, major mobilization. A couple of pieces of it I want to hold rolling until you and I can talk about them, and then I want to share with your people. But we also are mobilizing people around an agenda. That's the other thing. People keep saying, well, this candidate, forget that. It's not about personality. It's about power. And they say, well, this particular candidate may not have everything we want. Well, then what you do is you look at you do you do your chart. Whoever comes out on top, 70 percent of what you want, 80 percent of what you want.

Then you push them. Then you mobilize. You elect them and you let them feel your power at the polls so that if they win, they know that after the election, you're going to still keep pushing. But the last thing you can do is sit out. The other thing we're doing real carefully is we're doing a deep dive analysis of all these Senate races, Roland, because the reality is if we can track some of these Senate races that are now in play, they will also, if we have massive turnout around them, will also affect the presidential election. So it's crunch time now. It's deep time. It's winning time. And you win by the ground game. You don't win by what you talk about, but what you do about it. You make that point because today I was texting a very well-known entertainer.

And we were talking about, I'm not going to give the. And we were talking about, I'm not gonna give the name, we were talking about, of course, this whole deal, Biden and Trump and what folks are gonna do for black folks. And what I said was, to this particular person, I said, let me pull it down. I said, where we go? We're talking about young folks. I said, what we go? We're talking about young folks. I said, what I try to do is ask young folks, what do you care about and connect the dots on why voting matters?

I said, yes, Biden ain't perfect. He's had problematic stances in the past and we are going to have to kick his ass to do stuff. I said, see, that's what folks never want to do. Black folks didn't want to do it with Obama. FDR said to a Philip Randolph at a dinner at the White House that he was right about all of the racial issues in America. He then said, make me do it. I said this was why my issue when I talked about Diddy, when he talked about holding our vote hostage. I said you have to create an infrastructure that then after the election, you then mobilize people to be able to say these are our demands. And then if you don't do those things, we're going to drop a thousand protesters in front of the White House. We're going to chain folks to the fence. We're going to put pressure.

And then I told this I told this individual who said that he says, well, you know, he said this was his quote. Biden won't be listening to me. So tell him I said we need reparations. And I said, well, if he I said if he disagrees with you on the word reparations, I said, why don't you call it the third reconstruction and present a plan with trillions in it? I said to get his attention. I said, same thing, different title. I said now is the moment to use our voice and our power. Let's use it. That's my problem, what you just said.

People are sitting here saying, well, I need to see this, this, this. If he don't win, we know what this dude gonna do, but I gotta make sure I'm gonna and let him know, I'm gonna ride y'all behind to get these things and you gotta commit to doing that and not disappear.

And you have to put a plan out there, a clear plan, Roland. For instance, we are on this coming Thursday, July 16th. We've called both sides of the aisle to our own congressional hearing. We're going to invite both presidential candidates to look at a moral agenda for the healing of the nation. It goes through every edge. It goes through systemic racism. It goes through systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, public education.

We've attached the money to it. We've found the dollars. We've shown we've got economists that have signed off on it. So we're real clear with them that we have an agenda. Now, in how we mobilize, we push for that agenda in full. But when it comes down to voting, we have to see who's closest to that agenda, because I don't know any time in American history where people have voted for someone, for black people, for all that's concerned, that has ever been totally where we wanted them to be.

But one difference has been, one difference has been in the past is people kept pushing. Even if you were to elect President Obama, as happened in 2008, remember how people walked away in 2010? Didn't stay focused? And what happened? A new Congress came in, and that

wasn't Obama's fault. A lot of that was on us. Well, it wasn't a new Congress. Republicans took over state legislatures, and that's when voter suppression bills went through. That's when they began to attack other different areas, and that is actually related to the Shelby v. Holder

case that went to the Supreme Court where they gutted the Voting Rights Act. Exactly, and I heard a lot of people say, well, the president's not running this year. I'm not voting. That's not how you operate in a democracy. You have to stay engaged from the bottom up and you have to stay engaged all the time. And so what I'm saying to folk and what you're saying is have an agenda and and then, first of all, turn out, push on that agenda, turn out and then let folk know you are making a commitment both at the polls and beyond the polls.

Because the one thing you know, if McConnell goes back in there and has—and if he goes back as the Senate leader, and if Trump goes back in there, if you think it's bad now, can you imagine what they would do with not having to worry about another election holding over their head? I mean, we can clearly see. And in some sense, I love that quote from A. Philip Randolph that Franklin Delano Roosevelt told him. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of course, was a Democrat. We have to make people good presidents and good senators. Even in my church role, I say to the deacons all the time and the members, you all have to help push me to be a great pastor by having

a vision bigger than just yourself. And it's the same that's true in politics. The other day, Biden gave a speech. Now, it wasn't perfect, but there were some things in there we ought to be glad that we're starting to see. And like he started talking about, we can't give people, call them an essential worker and not give them the essentials they need.

We can't just praise them and not pay them. We need to. What does that mean? OK, if that means everybody's going to he's behind $15 an hour and a union, that's 49 million people that have come up out of poverty. And that means that will impact 54 percent of all African-Americans, because 54 percent of all African-Americans make less than a living wage. We've got to analyze every piece of this. He talked about Title I. And interestingly, he talked about Title I in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County. And I didn't, she had pushed it more. But what he was saying is 18 counties up there, and those are primarily white counties. We know that the current education person, Betsy DeVos and Trump, they want to end Title

I. They want to get rid of it. And we know how that would devastate public education. So we have to do analysis, analysis, analysis, and push our agenda. And we have to be relevant at the poll. Anybody who thinks this democracy is about doing one thing, it's not about doing one thing. It's about agitation. It's about voter registration. It's about voter participation. Sometimes it's about nonviolent civil disobedience. Sometimes it's about preaching. Sometimes it's about protesting. But the one thing it's not about is apathy.

Well, that's why, look, and we've talked about it beforehand, and I don't care. People can disagree. And I said it when it actually happened. Black people stayed at the inauguration parade for eight years. It took black leadership five years

to actually come together to put together some semblance of a unified agenda. I was at that news conference. I thought it was a joke. And then it took them nine months after the news conference to actually print the doggone document. I'm like, damn, but don't take nine months. And I think what happened was too many of us, we were, we were, we were hyped about seeing a black president, a black first lady, a black first family, and we did not demand of the 44th like we demanded the

previous 43rd, and that's the whole point. You got to make me do it. And that means putting that pressure on them, and there's nothing wrong with pressure. Well, do you remember when Obama was running and he did that interview with Rick,

forget his name, he was a pastor, Rick Warren. Yeah, Rick Warren. Warren asked him, if Martin Luther King was alive, would he be supporting you? And people forgot what Obama said. He said, no, he would be pushing me. Yes. He would be pushing me. And so it doesn't matter. And even in this moment, we have to be very careful with symbolism versus substance. I was sharing with somebody, they got a little upset with me the other day because I said, I believe the statues

ought to come down. God knows they've been up too long. They should have never been up. And I believe the flags ought to come down. But if the statues come down, but the statutes stay up. Right. If the flag, if Lindsey Graham says, oh, I believe the Confederate flag should come down and we go, oh, yeah, Lindsey Graham. But he's still against fixing the voter rights. He's still against living wages. He's still pushing policies that are racist. Racism is not about symbolism. It's about substance. Should they come down? Yes. But what we ought to do is not stop there and not hype that and not suggest that that is somehow dealing fundamentally with racism. It is dealing with symbolic racism. But even those statues, every one of them that were put up, most of them can trace back to policies. When those statues went up, they went up to signify policy changes. And real racism has to be dealt with by policies.

And that's why, Roland, whoever it is, whether they're black or they're white or they're brown or they're indigenous, if they are joining with this agenda that we've talked about that addresses systemic racism, systemic poverty, I'm saying, come on, come on, let's fight. And let's let you know, because every movement in history has had some diversity. But first and foremost, we must push a plan and an agenda beyond personality. And if you get to plan versus personality, the personality is not going to drive you away from the poll. Your plan is going to make you go to the poll. So then you can change the personality and make the personality move in a direction that will be healthy for the whole country. Reverend Dr. William J. Barber, I appreciate it, my frat brother. Thanks a lot. Take care now. Bless you, man. Yes, sir. Folks, as of today, there are three point three seven million cases of covid-19 infections in the United States. One hundred thirty seven thousand people have died with the disease and nine hundred eighty nine thousand have recovered.

The Trump administration has repeatedly attributed the increase in the coronavirus case count in the U.S. to an increase in testing. But if you look at the data, that isn't the case. Studies have shown more testing and faster results are needed to stop the spread of the virus. Folks, look at this particular chart right here. See when those numbers go down, but then all of a sudden, watch the blue line for the United States. then all of a sudden up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and it continues to go up. That, Mustafa, is our reality. And we've seen announcements in California where Governor Gavin Newsom has announced

they're shutting down indoor bars and restaurants to stop the spread of coronavirus. Texas Governor Grant Abbott, who opened the state Memorial Day, is now saying the entire state they had to be shut down. That was a stupid decision. Governor Ron DeSantis is admitting that testing is not the issue as to why the cases numbers are exploding in Florida. What we are seeing, Mustafa, all of these people who ignored the warnings, who refused to put on their mask, who did not want to keep washing their hands, who wanted to keep going out to pools and beaches and everything else. And now all of a sudden they're seeing what's happening where places like New Zealand, they have completely eradicated coronavirus because leaders led and put the right actions in place. Yep. And as I've often said, they should have some culpability in all the lives that are being lost

and the wealth that's being lost also by folks who are going through, you know, having to pay these tremendous medical bills and so many other things. You know, it's real simple. We've been talking about this, I think, since February, at least on this show. Maybe if people had been watching and paying attention, they wouldn't have made some of the mistakes that they have. But the CDC has had guidelines for folks.

If you do A, B, C, and D, this is what will happen. If you don't, this is what will happen. The WHO also is shared. So we have lessons from across the planet and we have the lessons from right here in our own country and they've refused to pay attention to them. They're actually allergic to science for some reason. We've seen it play out in a number of different decisions and all kinds of different issues. And when you don't pay attention to the science, when you don't pay attention to experts who have spent their life in this field,

Dr. Fauci and so many others, then you are going to see, unfortunately, more people get sick and more people are going to lose their lives. And this is a reality. And what we're seeing, the fact that you have a governor like Greg Abbott in Texas, Avis,

who all of a sudden is going, we may have to shut down the entire state. What he should be doing is saying, I apologize. I apologize for being an ignoramus. I apologize for ignoring Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston. I apologize for ignoring Judge Hidalgo in Harris County. I apologize for ignoring these big city mayors who are saying this is a stupid, stupid idea. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just want to acknowledge that New Zealand has a woman as prime minister. Secondly, I do want to say you're exactly right. He should be apologizing. But the bottom line is that so many Republicans all across the country have sold their souls to this person who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And they preference staying in his graces even more than they care about your life. And though it seems as if the governor of Texas has finally gotten some sense in terms of beginning to backtrack with that blind allegiance. You still have the lieutenant governor of Texas who is out here talking the same ridiculousness he was always talking. He was the one who said that elderly people, in essence, should be willing to die in order to save the economy for younger people. So really what's at the bottom of all this takes us full circle from what we were talking about a few minutes ago, about how this culture oftentimes purposes money over everything else.

The reason why Trump has pushed and his menus have followed him down this path that has put us in this position is because his number one priority was never to address this issue. His number one priority was never to save lives. His number one priority was to open back up the economy so that he could give this illusion that things were getting better and that people could ultimately start and more money could flow. He was willing to sacrifice your life and my life in order to get more dollars into the economy. That's the truth. And now that they've bungled

that, the next thing they're looking to do is to sacrifice more lives by pushing schools all over this nation to open up, regardless of where we are with this pandemic, once again, prioritizing money over lives because he wants people to be able, parents to be able to go back to work in the fall and not be home with their children. This is all about trying to produce a false sense of a roaring economy when all he is doing is sending thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people to certain death. All right, folks, got to go to break. We come back.

We're going to talk about a big shift in resources in Seattle. The black police chief and the mayor, they got to catch up. The city council says we are going to defund the police. Also WNBA players in Atlanta going off on their owner, co-owner Kelly Loeffler, United States Senator, saying, guess what? We support Black Lives Matter. We'll talk to a WNBA player. And ProPublica has an amazing story about how the Trump administration is easing off of banks who are showing discriminatory patterns of redlining. Hmm.

We'll also talk about redlining in the media industry. What happens with ad agencies or companies say, don't run our ads when certain words are being used. All of that, plus a big announcement of how we are spreading our wings with our media platform. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered. We'll explain all of that after this break. Back in a moment. Keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there? Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin.

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the kind of issues bringing you the quality black guests that we do every single day. Over the weekend, I saw somebody tweeting about three black guests on CNN. How was like, oh my God, it was great to see this. And I said, hmm, that's what we do every day, all day. That's the difference when you're a black own. And let me also say this here. There are a lot of people out there who were talking the trash. We knew media, you old media, all this sort of stuff. Here's the deal. Look at the numbers. We've got more than

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just simply go to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com and use Square as well. This is what we are doing to speak to our issues and our concerns So you want to use a credit card to simply go to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com and use Square as well. This is what we are doing to speak to our issues and our concerns when we are controlling the narrative. All right, folks, demonstrations and protests for racial justice continue in Seattle. The rallying cry has been to defund the police. Now, what's happening there, the city council has actually voted to shift resources. The police chief there and the mayor have been trying to fight that, but the reality is the votes are there on the city council. Now the police chief and the mayor

are putting forth their own ideas on how to make that shift. Joining us right now is Seattle activist and radio host, I call him Angela Rye's daddy, Eddie Rye Jr. What up, Eddie? Hey, how you doing, Roland? Everything is going great. Well, it's going to be expected.

And Shelton doesn't play as being an older brother. I don't want to take no chances out there. So the people that are paying a heck of a price for it right now. Indeed. Everything is going great. Indeed. Folks have been out there obviously protesting. And, of course, you now have the police chief and the mayor who realizes that they got to play catch up.

The city council has the votes to shift these dollars. And so what should that look like? We talk about defunding the police and shifting resources to other areas of need in Seattle. Well, I think not only in Seattle, but across the country, we need to have a division of law enforcement that are not weaponized, that are more like social workers. And when you look at the number of calls that come in, how many are life-threatening, how many are very serious crimes, I think we have to look at that. The other thing we have to look at, too, is that this is going to be a problem across the country. And what I've been looking at is what is the possibility of taking 10 percent of the military budget, which is 780 billion dollars, and take 10 percent of that and deal with some of the issues, not only with policing, but a lot of the societal and

economic and equity justice issues that we have in this country, particularly for African descendants of United States enslaved. I think that that approach also has to be looked at. But in terms of policing cannot continue to be like it is. And we've seen brothers get shot in the back for running away from the police. And we've seen other kind of police brutality. And the George Floyd execution that was videoed, the cop knew he was being videoed. And I think by having the pandemic, having people at home, and having people actually see

how we've been treated for years, I think that helped mobilize because a lot of people wasn't going to work. The college campuses were closed. The high schools were closed. And it was just a perfect storm for people to get out. The college campuses were closed. The high schools were closed. And it was just a perfect storm for people to get out. The thing that I'm most impressed about, it's about black. Okay. Usually when issues come up, it's about people of color and minorities, but our

history is a lot of folks are getting educated to the history of African descendants of the United States enslaved. How long we've been here. A supremacist will say, you blacks want us to give you something? Well, we gave you it until 256 years, and didn't get anything for it in the form of slavery. So I think that we're going to have to use some unique approaches. But I definitely agree that policing cannot stay like it is. It's really something in Seattle because the current chief of police was not initially in the last group of interviewees for the chief's job. But because of Azariah's mama and Mother's Police Accountability and other organizations ran by Reverend Harriet Walden, by them putting pressure on the mayor, not only was she interviewed but was hired. But at the same time, I think she realizes the kind of

position that she's in, and the policing cannot be like it's been. It's going to have to change, and there's going to have to be a less armed intervention. And on this militarization, police departments need to stop as well.

Good example, that's what happened in Washington, D.C. when 45 went across the street to the church and they used the U.S. military to clear peaceful protesters that exercise their First Amendment right, clear them with tear gas and rubber bullets and everything else.

So things do have to change. There's no question about it. Angela keeps sending me stuff and it's covering... Can you hear me? Yeah, we're good. Don't worry about it. It doesn't show up on this end, so don worry about it maybe she wants me to see her for you

to see her shirt oh look we built this joint for free yeah yeah uh she always trying to sit here and sell something i'm gonna tell her don't be interrupting your daddy when he talking man you know you know the bag lady always gonna have to have a bag absolutely y'all don't know what that bag lady joke is. I'll tell you about that later. I cracked on Angela and his daddy mama fell out laughing. She's still mad about that. Go ahead. Go ahead. One other item that I wanted to also in terms of economic equity and justice for African descendants of the United States enslaved, I had recommended to more than one member of the Congressional Black Caucus that we have a federal designation for African descendants of the United States enslaved. I'd recommend it to more than one member of the Congressional Black Caucus that we have a federal designation for African descendants of United States enslaved and have

a department in every federal agency ran by us for us and have contracts and other opportunities where we don't have to go through a white man to get the participation. And then that needs to be mimicked at the local level, because every time they come up with a program, the latest one with the Department of Transportation, they put white women in there as disadvantaged business enterprises. Well, in Washington state, the white women businesses, four of them were getting about 80 percent of the entire goal for the last 10 years. So we have to speak up for us to make sure that we're included and it has to come from the top and black lives do matter. And we want to make sure they matter in a positive way. And we have to be included that we want this federal designation. Once we get that, then we can talk about reparations. Well, last point here, and this is the people that people understand to hear you

have this effort to defund the police in Seattle. But you got a black police chief. And so people have to understand that, look, you have African-Americans who are police chiefs of some departments who may be very well against some of these efforts. And so people have to just realize there's no assumption that if you got a black police chief or even a black mayor or black people on the city council that it's going to happen? Exactly. Policing has to change. There's no question about it. Well, absolutely. So, I mean, I don't, the mechanics, I don't know. I wish I did, but it has to change. There's no question about it. There has to be a lot less armed intervention on little societal issues and mental health issues or somebody sleep at Wendy's drive-in and end up getting killed. That's got to stop. That has got to stop.

And policing has to change. There's no question about it. All right. Eddie Rod, man, always a pleasure seeing you. Eddie Rod Jr., I appreciate it. Folks, y'all can check him out there in Seattle. And go ahead. And Angela Swearer. I think we need to make one other comment. Yeah, go ahead.

We're talking about dismantling Confederate monuments in Washington State in 1941, the Daughters of Confederacy, with the complicity of the state elected officials named Highway 99 from the Canadian border to the Oregon border, the Jefferson Davis Highway. And in 2016, we finally got them to change. It's supposed to be named for a black Civil War veteran, U.S. Civil War veteran by the name of William P. Stewart, who was buried in the county just north of Seattle. The brother signs haven't gone up yet, but that's one of the largest Confederate memorials, I think, in the country was in Washington state. It did not become a state until 1889. All power to the people.

All right, then. We appreciate it. And again, Angela Square, she did not tell you to show the shirt. I think she lying. So go ahead and show the shirt again. So she won't be sending me a text and you a text. And so we built this joint for free. Y'all can actually go to Angela Rye's website. And so there you go. You tell her you did it. She fine. She can stop sending you text messages. I surprised her.

That's all. Eddie, I appreciate it. Thank you, brother. I understand. I appreciate it, brother. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks.

In 2018, bank regulators trained to spot discriminatory lending detected something out of place at Bank of America. The bank was offering fewer loans to minority homebuyers in Philadelphia than to white people in a way that troubled examiners from the office of the comptroller of the currency. Now, this is according to two people directly involved in the probe and internal documents reviewed by ProPublica and the Capitol Forum. Since Trump took office, this particular office has quietly shelved at least six investigations of discrimination and redlining, according to internal agency documents and eight people familiar with the cases.

Joining me now with the investigation is Patrick Rucker. He's a reporter for the Capitol Forum. Patrick, Donald Trump loves to talk about all the stuff he's doing for black folks. And Paris Denard and Rona McDaniel love to say all how he's helping black folks. This is a perfect example. Black home ownership was at 44 percent. It was down to 41 percent, the lowest since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 68. But this is a perfect example of how they have been undercutting civil rights in this administration. Well, I can tell you this was pretty surprising to me, and I think it speaks for itself. I mean, six cases.

One, of course, is quite a big bank. Everyone knows Bank of America. In that instance, you know, the examiners didn't get as far as they felt they should have before the exam was just was halted. It's all happened behind closed doors. And the investigations that in several instances, there was something very concrete was found to be discriminatory. In the case of Bank of America, they never even got to the bottom of things before the probe was stopped. So if you read the story, you obviously have, I think anyone can see, this is six specific cases in the last four years, Trump administration, where serious problems were detected.

Some of these agency staff wanted to go further. They said we need to publicly sanction some of these banks. If you don't sanction them publicly, no one will ever know these abuses were happening. And they just vanished. And if it weren't for some some sources and people that felt this was important to bring to light, we probably would never know about it. Well, folks also don't understand is that, look, this agency is a critical component to enforce the community, the CRA. And that's the problem here. What people don't understand is that these banks have a huge role in determining who gets to buy homes and also in terms of what those interest rates are.

And in fact, this administration, first of all, this is no shock because one of the first things they did, what Republicans in the House and the Senate and Trump signed it into law was to cut out Obama era rules when it came to ending discrimination against blacks and buying cars. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is, again,, again, this guy's been president for four years, so a lot of the, almost four years now, a lot of the, he's done, it speaks for itself. And what you just explained is plain to see. Then you have someone who's taken over the OCC.

I'm reading this story who says, oh, we've been doing this, that, and the other. Yeah, but if you don't have any current investigations, and? Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, there are many agencies that have a responsibility here. And all of them, we look at one, but you can see they're taking the foot off the pedal in terms of going out, doing the investigative work, trying to build the case to either bring them into settlement or take them to court.

That's the Justice Department. That's the CFPB you mentioned. That's Elizabeth Warren's agency she created, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You can see this part. You don't need a secret source or anything to tell you. You can see they've all pulled back from their enforcement. So a lot of this stuff's sort of in plain sight. They're just not enforcing the rules that are on the books. And that's exactly what the issue is. Patrick Rucker with the Capital Forum,

great job. We certainly appreciate this story. Thank you. I'm pulling my panel here, Mustafa. Again, this is where the federal government is to protect the people and the Trump administration undercutting civil rights. And that's why I keep saying stop listening to these fools when they say, oh, I've done criminal justice reform. Oh, this is what I've done for HBCUs. But you're not doing a damn thing when it comes to black people facing discrimination when it comes to buying homes, which is about owning property.

I mean, you know, policy without accountability, without any teeth, that doesn't have any real meaning. And it puts us at a significant disadvantage because we know policy on the face sounds OK. But in application, it is our communities who continue to be disproportionately impacted. And, you know, I'm so glad that you are raising this because I continue to talk to people around the country about the lack of enforcement underneath of this administration. Whether you look at the Department of Justice, if you look at EPA, if you look at HUD, if you look at some of the dollars that flow through the Department of Transportation, and then, of course, today we're talking about the OCC, which many people don't even know that exists. But, I mean, they have a distinct responsibility in making sure that redlining is addressed.

And you also talked about CRA. wealth because we know that most people actually garner wealth through the ownership of their own homes or land and being able to then pass that down from generation to generation. And that's the reason we had been stopped in the past and still in present day and being able to fully participate in that process, if you will, because people understand if you start to build power, then you have the resources to actually make sure that the framing that is being done on present and future policies and actions looks differently because you can hold people accountable. You have the resources then to help to fund candidates who are going to do the right thing. You have the resources that you don't have to

spend all the time at work so you can engage in the civic process. You can engage in community meetings. You can engage in the framing out of what our democracy is supposed to look like. And this right here is what we're talking about when it comes to power. And Avis, a real estate guy, he knows what this means. They know exactly what they're doing. Absolutely, they know exactly what they're doing. Absolutely they know exactly what they're doing. And I would just say, you know, the goal of this person who has yet to release his tax forms,

who is nowhere near as wealthy as he claims he is, but he does understand real estate. You're exactly right. And it's my belief that it is, you know, he is specifically looking first and foremost to see what he can pilfer for his own family while he has this office. But secondly, this really is about doing everything that they can in order to continue the economic extraction of money from the black community and the economic oppression of black people. There is no illusion in my mind that this administration at all wants to do anything to advance black wealth, because if that were the case, then we'd be seeing some very different

actions than we've been talking about here this evening. I want to bring up another form of what I call economic redlining. Guys, go ahead and pull this up. I had to pull up on form of what I call economic redlining. Guys, go ahead and pull this up. I had to pull up on my phone. I can't pull up on my pad. And that is the Wall Street Journal dropped this story right here where it says, Target MTV blocked ads from news mentioning George Floyd in protests. And when you go through this ad, when you go through this Wall Street Journal exclusive by Patrice Hagan, excuse me, Patience Hagan, what what what they laid out is that these companies did not want their their ads next to these particular stories.

So they create these block lists. OK. And the block list had words like shooting, bomb, immigration, Trump. Those are some of the other earlier words. There was ad blocking words, but then there were other words in here, uh, that were there. And you have folks talking about, it's about defunding the police. Now a target spokesman said this here, uh, the ad blocking does not discount the importance of reporting on the topics like black lives Matter or the murder of George Floyd. It's intended to acknowledge that the person consuming that content may not be receptive to a marketing message from a mass retailer like Target at that time. Target stands with our black team members, guests and families. Yeah, but here's the problem. And this is why this impacts us. So, and I can tell you this for a fact, we get, when we do this show,

when we click end, this show then is reviewed by YouTube. A determination is made whether we can monetize this show. And so we'll be told, we'll be told that because of certain content in the show, it can't be monetized. So we can have a great show seen collectively with our restreams by two, three, four, 500,000 people, but make no money off of it because of certain content. Now, if you're NBC, CNN, the rest of these companies, that's no big deal to you. You're earning billions. But black media, who covers protests every day, shootings every day, police brutality, Mustafa, this is a new technical form of the non-urban dictate that we heard about years ago when employers would say, yeah, don't run my ads on urban platforms. you know, and making sure if the stories that actually are real and matter and is what is actually happening in our country, in the streets, you know, you can't tell those or you have to

limit the amount that you tell those because it is linked to funding. So, you know, people, I hope people understand there are some smart people who are making these decisions about how they control you, how they control the narrative, how they keep power. And one of the ways is by making sure that, you know, these narratives fit what they think America should look like, because they know if people understand the trueness of what's actually going on, then they're going to demand change. So this is just one of the other ways of controlling what you hear, what you think, and then the outcomes from that. I love this here about this target spokesman in this article, Avis, that the ad blocking,

quote, does not discount the importance of reporting on topics like Black Lives Matter. Here's the problem. If you block the ads from people like me, I can't afford reporters. I can't afford to do the news. And again, and in fact, this article says that, hold on one second. Let me read this here. The article says that, and this is according to, this is what it says from Vice Media. Black Lives Matter coverage was Vice's most popular news in June, yet commanded ad prices 57 percent lower than news about other topics because so many brands are actively avoiding placing ads in those articles? Wow. You know, this is a real-life example of institutionalized racism. If anyone wants to know a prime example, you might as well put that in the dictionary right beside that phrase.

This is a prime example of what that looks like. And it also kind of reminds me of a discussion that I had earlier today. I was on a summit today, a virtual summit with various representatives from various corporations, and I talked with them about the fact that they all seem to enjoy in this PR pile-on of making a loud declaration that Black Lives Matter. But what will they do beyond just reciting that phrase in order to stay somewhat in tune with the direction of where public opinion has been going recently on this issue?

When you see actions like this, what that tells you is a lot of these same corporations that put out these wonderful tweets talking about how Black Lives Matter, or they'll even have their own little social media campaign around the phrase. When it really comes to where the rubber meets the road in terms of really what they are doing to really support or suppress the focus on issues that matter to Black lives, this tells you where they really stand. I want more. I want more. And we should demand more than these self-serving declarations from corporations, which are really putting those out there so that they can have some sort of cover such that people will continue to buy their product. I want more than that. What I want from them is to live by that statement.

And by doing this, they are doing exactly the opposite of that. Yup, that's exactly what we are looking at now, folks. The WNBA and the Women's National Basketball Players Association announced their new platform, The Justice Movement, as well as the creation of the Social Justice Council. Now the new platform will serve as a space to continue the necessary conversations about race, voting rights, LGBTQ advocacy, and gun control amid other important social issues. Now, what's been really interesting about this is that Kelly Loeffler, the U.S. Senator from Georgia, is a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream. She is being extremely vocal against this particular movement. Well, her players have fired back at her, making it perfectly clear

they don't care what she thinks. In fact, the Players Association has also said kick her out of the league. And the WNBA said she has not been a governor of the team since 2019 and they are moving forward. But it certainly is showing you exactly how owners, owners give their opinion. Now, in her case, she's actually a sitting politician. So don't be surprised. This is also part of the whole game that is played. Joining us right now is WNBA player Sydney Colson.

She plays for the Chicago Sky. Fellow Texas A&M graduate of mine has led them to, of course, a national championship. I was there to watch it happen. What up, Sydney? What's up, Roland? How are you? Good to see you. So, you know, so you got Kelly Loeffler not happy at all.

And her players are like, we don't give a damn. We don't care what you think. This matters to us. Yeah. like we don't care what you think this matters to us yeah i mean uh hearing her even say that black lives matter doesn't align with a league that's 80 black women is just like very weird like it's almost elementary to even have to explain the statement black lives matter to people but to say something outrageous like that she's essentially just doing anything to appeal to her base um there's really

not much for me to say about her i mean trump endorsed her so i feel like that that's where the book stops what we're seeing though is we're seeing these sisters make it perfectly clear where they stand in fact they were WNBA players were out front on this issue before a lot of these brothers in the NBA yeah I mean going back to I think it was uh 20 Eric Garner with I Can't Breathe yeah I think it was a 20 2016 season then I think Minnesota and um I forgot which other team but there were two teams in Minnesota actually the game where they wore their shirts they had the Minnesota police department walk out of the stadium that game so um they received backlash immediately and they knew beforehand

that they were probably going to um but yeah i mean we've been we've been speaking on issues um that matter to us for a long time i think that's uh just a part of what wmba players do is it also important to to send this message uh that you use that how you use your platform uh and the fact that you see a lot more, you see a lot more, I think, team unity on these issues, even from non-black players in the WNBA, than really what we're seeing in the NBA. That's what really I think is important people need to understand.

Yeah, I mean, I think that what we've seen with George Floyd's killing being televised and with Breonna Taylor being talked about, even though it's faded somewhat, I think witnessing somebody's death like that and hearing the words that he was saying, I think it struck people in a different way than them just hearing that, oh, black people are being killed by police. But they're like out of sight, out of mind. I'm not really seeing it. So it's not it's not affecting me. But this has changed people. And I think the fact that non-black players in the league, they are friends with us, they're our teammates. And when something hits close to home and it hurts somebody that you care about, then it now becomes like your own pain. So it's sad that this is what has had to spark this. But hopefully something good is going to transpire because of it.

Absolutely. Questions. Avis, I'll start with you. Yeah. What plans do you as a team and maybe even as a league have to take sort of collective action against her? Are you are you planning any protests? What what exactly do you have on the in your agenda in order to make your voices heard in an even more profound way? Possibly even a way that could hurt her pocketbook, since that might be the only thing that she would ultimately listen to. Right. Yeah, people like that, that's what they hear. But great question. I mean, we just started a social justice council in the WNBA. And it's for us to focus on social justice issues that we can address within the bubble. And we'll be talking about gun control, voting rights,

racial injustices, LGBTQ rights, mental health awareness. Like we're trying to do a lot of things to educate us within the bubble, but specifically about her, we realized that like once we had responded, which we knew we had to do because it's black women and even non-black women in the league, what would it have looked like if we didn't say anything? Because you're a co-owner of a team and this is ridiculous. But we had a chance to speak to Reverend Warnock,

who is running for special election in Georgia. And we realized, okay, we're being used as pawns by her for her to appeal to her base more and make Black Lives Matter be the Marxist, terrorist, whatever they're saying that it is. And so we decided we're going to go hard with making sure that she doesn't get reelected, not reelected because she was appointed, making sure that she doesn't get elected as a Senator. So we think if she doesn't choose to sell the team or stop being an owner, then it would be much more powerful to not have her making decisions over black lives in Georgia. So we're going to be really promoting people getting out and voting and even if it's not

for Reverend Warnock, just figuring out who do you want to go hard for and make sure that she's not a senator. Mustafa. What can fans do to be supportive of the movement that you all have going on? Great question. I think just follow

the league, follow the players that are speaking about the issues. I think it's really important for people to continue to talk about Breonna Taylor. I had a chance to speak to Kimberly Marshall, who is a co-founder of the Say Her Name campaign the other day after I did an interview. And it was really like fate that we even linked up so she just explained to me like how what we all know is that women sometimes are getting overshadowed when we're killed from police brutality so a league of women we're really pushing this season to make Breonna Taylor's name and say her name be something that

is talked about and that we make sure that we are putting pressure on the Attorney General and all the people who can make sure that the murderers are held accountable. So keep saying her name and yeah, support the W.

Alright then. Well look, great job. Keep it up. And of course, keep up with these crazy ass videos you keep posting on Instagram. I will. Thank you for having me, then. Well, look, great job. Keep it up. And, of course, keep up with these crazy-ass videos you keep posting on Instagram. I will. Thank you for having me, brother. All right, Sydney, thanks a bunch. I appreciate it. Okay. All right, folks, got some good news here. Kyle, do you hear the audio playing right now?

We're making reasonable and responsible decisions in the best interest of public health. In Mississippi over the weekend, protesters showed their support for... So folks, what you're listening to is iHeartRadio's Black Information Network, of course. They, of course, announced that network a couple weeks ago. And they launched about 15 different radio stations across the country. You can go back and play it. So what is happening is this here. And so we have some good news to actually announce with regards to that.

Beginning today, beginning today, my commentaries actually will be heard on that particular radio network. And, of course, this actually dropped today. This is the press release. Not only will be dropped on that network, they also are now going to be handling the distribution as well as the marketing and the selling of the audio podcast of Roland Martin Unfiltered. Now, let me be real clear. I still own it. I still control it. So let's just be real clear with that. But we've had an audio podcast of this show since we launched. We were distributing it ourselves. Now it's going to

be distributed on the iHeartRadio network. They also will handle distribution to all the other podcasting networks. They also are going to put significant marketing dollars behind it as well as selling it as well. And so what this does expands our footprint greatly, allows for us to be able to reach far more people than we are reaching right now. And these are sort of the deals that it's important for us as a black media entity to be able to do. They've got 2,000 sales folks. We don't have anything close to that. We don't have our own sales sales department. So this is a huge, huge deal. So if you are checking out the Black Information Network, you will hear my commentaries running, I think, three or four times a day. And so they're five days a week, actually seven days a week.

They'll be running. And so we certainly are excited by that. And so, uh, you can get more information. Uh, this is their logo right here, the black information network, but I heart media, uh, if you want to get the podcast, all you gotta do is folks go to our heart radio network network, download their, from their app. You can listen to the network, but you can also get our podcast there. And so we certainly are trying to do a bigger and better things right here at Roland Martin Unfiltered to bring you more information. There are some other things that I'm working on. I cannot get into right now that I cannot wait to announce. But what this is all about, folks, this is really all about building a larger platform for us to be able to cover our people and to share our stories.

But more importantly, for us to make the dollars from what's happening out here with all these companies, all of a sudden, black folks are all in. You have the streaming services who all of a sudden do black content. Everybody's doing stuff. But you have to ask the question, how many of us are actually owning, owning the companies? It's one thing to get a check from somebody else. It's another thing to own the company. It's another thing to be able to say, I'm going to hire the black PR firm. I'm going to hire the black set designer. I'm going to hire the black lighting company. I'm going to hire the black set designer. I'm going to hire the black lighting company. I'm going to hire black photographers. So that's part of the problem. Part of the problem here is that we have not in the position, been in the position to own. And so when I put this out there,

that people was like, oh my goodness, are you going back to CNN? No. Are you going to be taking Joanne Reed's place on a weekend? No. Because this is about being able to control a platform. If you look at the stories that we had on the show today, of course, the Redskins story, COVID-19, Reverend Dr. William J. Barber, having Eddie Ryan from Seattle talk about what's happening there with defunding the police, the ProPublica story dealing with redlining, talking about what's happening in the media industry as well. Mustafa and Avis, this is the thing that I keep trying to argue to people, that Mustafa, if you don't control the narrative, then you don't get to

determine who gets to speak and what they get to speak on and how long they get to speak on. Mainstream media ain't given 40 plus minutes to Patrisse Cullors to talk about the movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter global network. And if we don't understand one thing, if it wasn't for Black owned media, we would not have been able to have the platforms and the voices to deal with Jim Crow. Our voices, our power, our narratives. And through that, we get to frame out, you know, who we are. If somebody else is telling our stories then they're telling it from their perspective they're they're telling it from their their set of

priorities so you know i'm glad that this show is living you know in the same vein as those great black newspapers uh and all those radio stations um that actually were, you know, around to help to make sure that people got a chance to find out authentically who we are. So I'm always going to be thankful to you. And I'm thankful to the vision of making sure that we are framing out our own narratives. Avis, final comment. Yeah, it's absolutely essential that we have spaces where we can center black voices, black concerns, and uplift the black perspective on those issues that matter most to us. Because we know that though we're at a moment right now where black is the new hotness, the reality is that this nation shows us that this is a country that is fickle when it comes

to really prioritizing blackness so it's important to have if it's ever done that at all in a substantial way right and so that's why it's important that we do that we do that for ourselves and that we have spaces like this that allow us to always put our needs at the center absolutely don't forget the folks if you want to join our bring the funk fan club, all you got to do is join via Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, Square. Also, you can send a money order. Go ahead and pull it up, folks.

It's right there, New Vision Media Inc., 1625 K Street NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, 2006. Cash App is Cash App, forward slash dollar sign RM unfiltered, PayPal.me forward slash RMartin unfiltered. Venmo is Venmo.com forward slash RM unfiltered. PayPal.me forward slash R Martin unfiltered. Venmo is venmo.com forward slash RM unfiltered. And y'all also see today, no drama when it comes to our signal today. We finally figured out what the hell was going on.

And so thankfully we did not have any buffering today. Yo, we had to figure it out, but our team was on it. And so we're certainly glad we did not have any buffering today whatsoever. And so we certainly appreciate all of you who support what we do. Again, for the 5,224 people watching us right now on YouTube, please join our fan club. Your dollars make all of this possible.

I would love to be able to hire two and three and four reporters, more people who can also edit our video and drive the stuff out, but we only have a very limited staff. Your dollars makes all of that possible. And so please, we ask you to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Right now we've got about 9,500 people. If we get, we've got a goal of 20,000.

That's 11,500 more. We are completely funded and we can bring on additional people to expand what we do with this show. That's why your support matters. All right, folks, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Enjoy the balance of your day. Don't forget, say her name. Five years ago, Sandra Bland died. So prayers for her family as well.

Holla! prayers for her family as well. How? This is an I Heart podcast.